2 Sides To Every Story!

Your Rundown:

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0:49 – 3:40 Developing story out of TX about a hostage-taking situation in the Fort Worth area at a synagogue and why we’re paying close attention to word choice.

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3:40 – 7:48 Voting rights legislation/what’s going on in the U.S. Capitol today?

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7:48 – 10:15 A bipartisan group of senators in Ukraine on Monday and news that the U.S. Secretary of State is headed to Ukraine amid concerns of a potential Russian invasion…

Transcript:

00:00
good morning hope you’re after a great day so far we have a bunch of really big stories to cover for
00:03
you today and i was thinking about that expression this morning there are two sides to every story
00:08
because there are at least two sides to every story if not more and my job as a journalist is
00:13
to sample a little bit of all sides so that we can get a clearer picture of the story that’s in front
00:18
of us i like to think about it like a kaleidoscope you know you turn the kaleidoscope you get one
00:22
image you turn it again you get another image and eventually the image that’s in the kaleidoscope
00:27
becomes more clear and that’s what we’re aiming for we want to provide more clarity in a world
00:32
that can seem really chaotic so today i’m going to sample a little bit of different sides to these
00:37
stories that some of you are familiar with and it might feel a little uncomfortable but the reason
00:41
why i’m doing that is it’s important for us to be aware of what the other side or other sides think
00:47
and that’s what i want to do today i’m not ready to turn the page on this developing story out of
00:51
texas about this hostage-taking situation in the fort worth area at a texas synagogue just
00:57
a reminder you know friday and saturday are typically holy days in the jewish faith so
01:02
the fact that this incident happened on a saturday when you could expect people to be in a synagogue
01:06
matters it wasn’t on a random tuesday for example we know that a british man traveled over here
01:12
and spent about two weeks in america before he did this and we’re still wondering why what was
01:18
his motivation why did he choose this location why did he choose now and so we’re waiting for
01:23
more information on this story in the meantime i’m really paying close attention to word choice
01:28
president biden called this an act of terror the fbi says this is a terrorism related investigation
01:36
but in general those in authority are falling short of calling it a terrorist attack and that’s
01:42
what we really have to pay close attention to the reason why we want to pay close attention to this
01:47
is because we just ended america’s longest war we’ve talked about the war on terror being two
01:52
decades long and we want to get an understanding of just how relevant these terrorist groups
01:58
whether it’s al qaeda isis or beyond are to inspiring attacks because quite frankly during
02:04
this pandemic we haven’t seen a lot of them in the united states so it’s really important to get an
02:09
understanding is this actually a terrorist attack now why is that question even coming up apparently
02:14
according to reports this individual the hostage taker referenced a woman who is in prison in texas
02:22
related to the war on terror a little background on her she’s pakistani she was educated in part
02:27
in the united states she was investigated in afghanistan for ties to al-qaeda according to
02:33
reports she was radicalized after 9 11 and went down this path so some point during
02:38
the investigation she’s being questioned by u.s military and according to the story she attacked
02:46
and tried to shoot american soldiers she was convicted in a federal court for attempted murder
02:52
and for assaulting these soldiers and terrorism was a part of this case and led her to a sentence
02:57
of more than 80 years in the past whether it’s al-qaeda or isis her name has come up as part of
03:05
demands for different things whether it’s part of a demand to release an american hostage or part of
03:12
a threat to kill americans there’s been a demand a repeated demand by different terrorist groups
03:18
to get her out of prison now others have demanded that as well but it is a reoccurring theme for al
03:24
qaeda and isis and so that’s why we really have to pay closer to attention if there’s
03:30
any ties between this individual and any of those groups if there is then this is a different story
03:36
entirely if there’s not then it’s important to know that as well so let’s move back to what’s
03:40
going on in the u.s capitol today you’re going to hear a lot about and you have heard a lot
03:44
about voting rights legislation let me just pause there before we get into any of this
03:49
voting rights legislation or that term voting rights
03:54
depends on who you ask what we’re talking about here is voting rights legislation that the
03:59
democrats are advocating for and the democrats use that term for these laws the media uses that term
04:06
i’m going to use that term potentially very casually but it’s important what voting rights
04:11
look like to one group look different to another group so the voting rights law that democrats
04:16
are putting forward republicans are against now are republicans against voting rights in general
04:21
they would say no they would say we support voting rights but we support laws in a different way the
04:28
back story to all of this is that in a lot of republican states you’re seeing some changes to
04:33
election law or voting laws republicans are saying this is making elections at the state level more
04:39
efficient and more secure and quite frankly more accessible democrats totally disagree with that
04:45
they say these laws are meant to actually limit access and they want to pass these other laws
04:51
that will prevent the states from moving forward another part to this backstory in
04:56
general in america states run their elections so the federal government doesn’t have a ton
05:02
of federal voting laws that are determining how your state behaves why is that because we’re the
05:08
united states of america so that’s a really important part to this conversation as well
05:14
about whether or not the voting rights laws as they stand in front of congress right now not only
05:22
if they’re appropriate for the times but whether or not the federal government should have this
05:27
power to dictate how states run their elections so there’s there’s multiple layers to this debate
05:33
what you should know right now is that when we talk about voting rights legislation you have two
05:38
pieces of legislation coming before the senate but there’s a big question about whether or not the
05:42
senate will ever vote on these laws and the reason is is that there’s a procedural part of a law
05:48
attempting to pass and that is that there’s debate debate happens and you need a certain amount of
05:53
votes to end debate and start the vote on the actual bill now you only need a simple majority
05:59
in most cases to pass the bill in the senate and the senate the senate democrats have that
06:04
because even though there’s 50 republicans and 50 democrats or or lawmakers that associate with
06:10
both of these parties you have the vice president who’s a democrat that’s a tiebreaker and so if the
06:15
law could get to a final vote the likelihood is it would pass with the vice president that’s how
06:20
you could forecast it but there’s a question about whether or not it will get there because you have
06:25
this procedural debate that has to take place and you need a greater than majority to end the debate
06:32
and right now you don’t have that from lawmakers because you don’t have republicans and you don’t
06:36
have some democrats that are saying we should end debate on this particular law so what democrats
06:41
want to do is they want to end this procedural debate they want to say let’s not even have this
06:46
debate let’s not even require this sort of vote to end debate let’s just move to passing the bill
06:52
and that would be a change in the senate rules at least in the way that the senate
06:55
has typically operated so it’d be a really big deal some democrats say hey we’re not doing this
07:01
because these are the moderate democrats like kristin cinema from arizona because
07:06
it sets a bad precedent if republicans end up getting the majority in the senate then
07:11
they don’t have we don’t have to have any debate in at all anymore and they can just pass things
07:14
on a simple majority and we don’t want that but other democrats say no this is ridiculous we’ve
07:20
had so much partisanship there’s so much debate we can’t get anything through the senate because we
07:24
can’t stop debate on basically anything and this is just it’s antiquated equated we have to stop
07:29
this procedure there’s nothing that says that we have to do it it’s just something that we’ve
07:33
done for decades so here’s here’s what’s going on in the senate and that’s something to watch this
07:38
week not only what happens to this voting rights legislation but whether or not there’s any sort
07:42
of movement in the senate that would change the procedure that is typically followed i know that’s
07:48
a lot but here’s one place that lawmakers actually agree on that you’re seeing some bipartisan
07:52
support you had a bipartisan group of senators go to ukraine they were there on monday and
07:56
this is coming after a week of meetings between russia the united states european counterparts
08:01
because there’s all this concern that russia is going to invade ukraine at some point now
08:07
we also just heard today that the secretary of state anthony blanken is actually headed
08:12
to ukraine this is not something that’s expected or at least wasn’t announced so this is also sort
08:17
of ratcheting up this question of whether or not there’s actually more concern after this weeks
08:22
of meetings between russia europe and the united states that the potential for a russian invasion
08:26
is going up you’re getting more reports of russia withdrawing some of its diplomats from ukraine uh
08:31
microsoft came out and said that there is there’s malware in ukraine’s governments networks uh and
08:38
obviously everyone’s looking at russia it’s being responsible for this sort of hacking
08:42
and so the bottom line is tensions are way up here two sides to this story are as follows and
08:47
we’re going broad strokes here rush it feels like nato the north atlantic treaty organization this
08:52
is a huge defense alliance united states is a part of as well as most of europe
08:56
is moving too aggressively eastward and putting pressure on russia in a way that doesn’t feel
09:03
comfortable to them they say that we’re being aggressive meantime america and nato think that
09:09
russia’s being aggressive by you know going into ukraine annexing part of the country a
09:13
couple years ago moving into belarus in ways that seems aggressive and so both sides are looking at
09:18
each other saying you’re being aggressive and the other side’s saying you’re being aggressive
09:23
and this isn’t a great place to be so the question is where do we go from here we’re
09:27
watching this very closely there’s been this sort of arbitrary timeline that’s been reported that
09:32
somehow a russian invasion would come over the next several weeks or not come at all who knows
09:37
if that timeline is correct we don’t know what uh president vladimir putin is is thinking about this
09:43
but this is an important part of the world that we need to watch because the stakes are very high
09:48
if russia invades ukraine what will we do what actually we will we do and that’s one of the
09:53
questions how can we deter that from happening before it does and if it does happen what’s the
09:58
appropriate action by the united states and our allies ukraine isn’t part of nato but nato has
10:04
been courting ukraine the united states has been courting ukraine because why because it’s right
10:08
next to russia and because it’s an important strategic position so a lot to watch there
10:14
we impact a lot there’s a lot going on today i know that’s a lot to kind of follow but i hope
10:19
this is helpful sort of conversa a conversation about some of these current events that give us
10:24
a different way of perhaps looking at them than we would get if we just get 30 seconds here or there
10:29
so all of these stories and more are going to be up on our website that gives you a little
10:32
more time to read look through some of our sources so that you can also see where are
10:37
we getting our information besides doing something old-fashioned which is calling up a lot of people
10:41
and doing some reporting and that way you can get just another side of your story in a different way
10:46
all right so more on smarternews.com questions and comments let me know and have a great day