Americanswers… on 5 Live! Why is Lindsay Clancy’s mistrial dividing America?

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1:00pre-owned equipment and more options to their line-up can shop at machinefinder.com. Hello, it's Justin and you're about to hear AmeriCast. We are delighted to have you with us and if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way you'll never miss an episode. Now, on with today. What is Donald Trump's game plan with the mid-term elections? He's made an urgent appeal to the Supreme Court and it's all about limiting who's allowed to vote by mail. And this is happening while ballots are already being sent out through the US Postal Service in several different states.

1:35And lots of you have been asking about that today as we answer your questions with Matt Charlie on Five Live, along with Sumi and Mariana. And we'll also talk about why one of the biggest murder trials in America has ended in a mistrial and conspiracy theories, the trial of Lindsay Clancy, who has admitted to killing her three children. Welcome to AmeriCanswers. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league. The tide is coming. And this time, we intend to win it all. See, he doesn't want to do the job.

2:14He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

2:23Marianna Spring:When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

2:35OK, let's start with voting. Donald Trump is making an urgent appeal to the Supreme Court about who he thinks should be allowed to vote by post, or as the Americans call it, mail-in voting. Dee in Dublin sent us this voice note.

2:50Marianna Spring:We here are bracing ourselves for Trump's upcoming golf visit next week. and I've been reading in the news that the Supreme Court is thinking about helping Trump take another step towards achieving his hobby horse about limiting mail-in voting. Over the years, I've seen footage of long queues of people waiting to vote in parts of the US and for an Irish person, it astounds me because I've never needed a queue for more than about two minutes, if even that. And I was wondering if people cannot mail their votes in and they have to go to the ballot boxes in person. What provisions, if any, are being made to expand the times and locations for people to vote in person if that mail-in voting is curtailed?

3:33Great question. Sarah, explain the process and what it is that he's trying to do. Yes, so this is quite complicated. And the first thing to say is Dee is absolutely right about voting in America. Every polling day that I've been here covering elections, I've gone out and seen really, really long queues of people, sometimes in inclemently hot weather, it has to be said, down in the south, standing for literally hours in queues waiting to cast their ballot. And that's treated as absolutely normal. People just assume you've got to write off half the day in order to go and cast your vote. And they seem to be prepared to put up with it.

4:05So they answered to the question whether or not any provisions being made to make it easier to vote in person. No, not as far as I can see. But there is a huge controversy about the mail-in ballots, as they're known here, the postal votes. Donald Trump tried to change the rules, essentially, and he said that all states who are in charge of their own elections had to upload a list of voter names to a post office website, which isn't finished yet and isn't ready. And they would have to upload these names several times a day up to as they were keeping up to date with the voter rolls. And they would have to design special envelopes with unique barcodes on them to send out the ballots.

4:42Now, a lot of the individual states say it's simply not possible to do all of that between now and polling day, which is only 60 days away now. A couple of states have already started mailing out their ballots anyway, including North Carolina. And so basically there is an unholy row going on between Donald Trump and the states over whether it's necessary or possible to implement these new rules. And that has gone back and forward through different federal courts. The Supreme Court's now been asked to rule on it. And it's, Sumi, you know better than me. Is it weddings they were expecting to hear back from the Supreme Court on this?

5:13That's right. And we should say that the Supreme Court until now hasn't actually ruled on the merits of President Trump's executive order. They've only granted a stay. What that means is that we're expecting at some point the Supreme Court to rule on the merits. But most of the experts we've spoken to, Sarah, don't think that this executive order can stand precisely because what you said. It is not in the gift of the federal government to decide how votes are carried out because that is done by the states. And to add what you said about, you know, these long lines that you see when you see voting happening in the U.S., that is also a provision of the states.

5:46So they have to decide whether to give more resources to open more polling stations, for example, to relieve some of the pressure if fewer people are voting by mail. But as of now, I think there are 47 states and also Washington, D.C., that do create some sort of in-person voting before Election Day. So early in-person voting. And that is seen as some opportunity for people to come in and cast their ballot in person. But at the end of the day, for those people who don't have time before and can't vote by mail, it is a struggle on voting day to get there and stand in line, take time off of work or school or whatever it may be to cast their ballot.

6:23And Matt, do you know who doesn't waste his time doing that is Donald Trump, who had several times voted by mail-in ballot himself, including earlier this year. We've got a clip of him explaining just why some people do need to be able to vote by post. Let's take a listen. You mean I used a mail-in ballot? You probably said, yeah, I did. You know what? Because I'm president of the United States and because of the fact that I'm president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine.

6:57But you were in Palm Beach, sir, the last few weekends. That's right. And I, yeah, and I decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn't be there.

7:05Marianna Spring:He's got himself in a bit of a pickle, really, when he's talking about some of this stuff because he's so frequently, Donald Trump, posted on social media about how mail-in voting is fraudulent and means that stuff can be rigged and goes often beyond real evidence examples of where there's any wrongdoing or problems. And now it's kind of like, oh, but actually, like when you think about the voter bases, you want to activate as well. If you live somewhere that's particularly, I don't know, might be subject to extreme weather or there are older people who can't get out to vote and stuff, you do alienate a voter base if you're like, no, no, no, you need to be here in person.

7:35So we'll wait and see what happens with that. Thank you for that, Dee. Great question. Let's move on because we've had a lot of questions into us about the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. particularly the various conspiracy theories about why the whole thing has ended up as a mistrial. So, for instance, we've got someone from OneHat62 saying, how can they do another trial? There's no way they can find anyone who hasn't heard about the case. The media, the rumours, the lies and so on. I suppose, first of all, Mariana, explain the case if people haven't been following it and then we'll get to the conspiracies.

8:06Marianna Spring:Yeah, so it's likely been, or it may have been, popping up on your social media feeds or some of the news outlets that you follow, this case involving Lindsay Clancy. So Lindsay Clancy, who was a nurse, has admitted to killing her three children. And what this trial sought to establish is whether she'd done so in a way that would be considered first degree murder or whether, as her defence argued, she was suffering from postpartum psychosis. And therefore she was not guilty kind of by reason of insanity, as it's often described. And this trial is definitely not the first sort of trial by TikTok, but it took the Internet by storm.

8:41Marianna Spring:And while there were lots of really legitimate conversations happening, especially women in the US who feel as though the health care system does not properly support them after they give birth. And particularly because in the US postpartum psychosis isn't recognised in the same way it is in the UK. There became a kind of valid activist movement. But that was then co-opted by a lot of what we call the TikTok sleuths or conspiracy theorists who were suggesting that actually she'd never killed the kids at all, even though she herself had admitted that. and that it was her husband and a whole range of different unfounded conspiracy theories.

9:13Marianna Spring:The lawyer, Kevin Reddington, has become a bit of a sort of like fan favourite superstar and people making fan edits of him while lots of abuse has been directed at other family members and relatives. And if we come back here in a half an hour with a mistrial because of a juror that has just spurned the instructions of this court, it's a shame. It's a real shame. And that's why I object to the court's ruling. I request that we have further inquiry. I request that my motion is to remove this juror that refuses to listen to your instruction on reasonable doubt. It all got really heated and nasty on social media.

9:48Marianna Spring:And then when a mistrial was declared at the end of last week, so basically one of the jurors didn't agree with the others. And so the judge said, right, well, we're going to have to figure out what to do here, but I'm going to declare a mistrial. That just triggered even more conspiracy theories about, was this juror a plant or what had happened? And on Top Comment, my other podcast I do, where we investigate what pops up on social media. We discussed how difficult it is when a case like this takes social media by storm. How do you insulate jurors from what's happening online in the conversation?

10:16Marianna Spring:And certainly, like, if they do do another trial, I don't know how on earth you get around that. I mean, you might get to the point where courts have to just accept that jurors will have been exposed to a certain level of content or, for that reason, they might not have a retrial. So the court laws in America are much looser than the ones in the UK in terms of people outside the courtroom being able to comment on it. You know, once a trial is underway in the UK, you basically can't report anything on the case other than what's come out in the trial. So it's already looser. So the fact that now it seems to have gone to the point where this can't even work in America either.

10:48Yeah, well, what happens, Matt, is that, as you say, the press can cover whatever they want from the trial. The judge might tell a jury not to pay any attention to the press coverage, to stay off the internet, not to read what's in the papers. Or in some cases, they might sequester the jury, which is basically make them stay in a hotel and watch and make sure that they don't have any access to the Internet or to any of the news coverage. So that's one way of insulating them from what's being said in the press. But of course, what you can't do is stop potential jurors following the case as it's been happening for the last few weeks.

11:21If a mistrial is declared and you're looking for a new jury, how on earth you could try and find anybody in America who hadn't read a lot of the details of this case? I think that would be nigh on impossible. So what happens now? Where does it go now?

11:32Marianna Spring:So I think there's a decision that's going to be made in September as to whether there will be another trial or whether there could be some kind of plea deal, some kind of bargain that's made. I mean, if you look at the level of sleuthing and misinformation and hate and conspiracy theories, as well as valid activism and concerns, if you were anybody involved in this case, I can imagine you wouldn't want it to go through the courts again in that same way. But that might be the only option. We've seen that with some tragic cases in the UK, haven't we? But then when it gets to court, the sort of the national media...

12:02Marianna Spring:Yeah, so usually the frenzy happens at the time of the crime, right, or the time of the incident. So, say, Nicola Bulley, who went missing in Lancashire, that all happened, and then when her body was found in the river, it sort of quelled a bit and stopped. Whereas because it's so possible to speak outside the courts, to make content, you saw lots of women who wanted to support Lindsay Clancy, and some men too, but turning up in, like, pink. And then also the other issue here, and we saw this with Amber Heard and Johnny Depp and the trial that happened there. We've seen it with various cases in the US that because lots of what's happening in court can be live streamed, everyone is picking over the live stream.

12:34Marianna Spring:Like, look, the lawyer's done this and this person's wearing this and this person looked at this person in this way and it means this. Everyone becomes an armchair detective and lawyer but actually often in a way that undermines valid conversation that's happening around a case like this one. That was a great question. Thank you to OneHat62. That's a good name. Who got in touch with that? Right, very good. Let's move on. Barbara has emailed americast at bbc.co.uk about Jared Kushner, the US Special Envoy for Peace. Barbara writes, apart from being Donald Trump's son-in-law, what qualifications does he have?

13:07He always seems to be jetting off doing Trump's business. Does he have a top-secret clearance? I was a military wife. My eldest son was military. My grandson is also. We all had to go through quite a lot of clearances, which was quite understandable and took quite a while to go through. he's been off most recently to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin with the US envoy Steve Witkoff here is Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner speak to reporters after their meeting this weekend my job and Jared's job together is to bring the parties together to narrow the issues between them to create good communication channels and hopefully we began that process constructively in the last 48 hours and we're confident that there'll be a good resolution here With President Putin, we went through a lot of the ideas that hadn't worked to date.

13:53And we really tried to think about, you know, what would the elements be that are needed for this durable peace that we've spoken about? And what are the things that Russia can gain from it? What are the things that Ukraine can gain from it? And what are the things that the world can gain from it? And it was a very good dialogue. Sumi, what? I don't know if you've had a look at his LinkedIn profile. What are Jared Kushner's qualifications to go around helping to bring about world peace? Well, we'll say that Jared Kushner is a businessman. He has an MBA. He's a lawyer. He doesn't have a traditionally diplomatic background that you would have for a role like he has.

14:28But remember that he was a special advisor to the president during President Trump's first term. to Barbara's question. He did gain top secret security clearance at that time that then lapsed because he was out of government and is again now active because he is, as we heard there, acting on behalf of the government in negotiations on Israel and Hamas and also now Ukraine, Russia. President Trump trusts him. And you can ask what the qualifications are, but President Trump is known for taking, let's say, unorthodox positions on who should be representing his administration. And there is the belief, and Steve Whitcoff, by the way, is one of them who comes from a real estate background, just like President Trump.

15:09President Trump believes that it is people who don't have that traditional foreign policy establishment background who can get things done. And they point to the fact, or President Trump points to the fact that he sees the Abraham Accords in his first term as a major foreign policy achievement. And that was something that Jared Kushner was key in negotiating. And we saw Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff negotiating what was seen as an important foreign policy victory for President Trump in this term as well, which was the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Of course, they are now moving that through the second phase of President Trump's peace plan.

15:43But all of that to underline for Barbara's question is this is something President Trump likes to do is to take people from different backgrounds, particularly business, and put them in roles where he thinks that they can actually make a good deal. Well, there we are. Hopefully that's, well, yeah, shed some light on your concern, Barbara. Thank you for emailing americast at bbc.co.uk. Now, we've had several messages in about the midterms. We've already touched a bit on the fact they're coming down the tracks. John's just texted in saying, the AmeriCast crew, please. November midterms. How many of the Senate seats are up for election?

16:16Is it a third and is the House more important than the Senate to Trump? And then we've had this voice note from Ian in London. My question is, with the midterm election soon upon us, can you shed some light on what a flipped Congress could actually do to stall and reverse President Trump's agenda other than impeaching him? Could they, for instance, dismiss political appointments made by him, strike down executive orders already made or reverse policy generally? Many thanks. Sarah, take us through the quick idiot's guide to the midterms. OK, I'll do the idiot's guide and then Sumi can come in and correct me.

16:48She can play Anthony's role. I was about to say, this isn't Anthony's question. Where's Anthony? So very briefly, yes, one third of the Senate are up for re-election, as they always are every two years. The whole of the House of Representatives is up for re-election. The polls suggest at the moment there's a very good chance that Democrats could win a majority in the House of Representatives. It could go either way in the Senate. With a third of these seats up for grabs, there could be just enough to tip it the majority of one or two for Democrats, but maybe not. That's a bit harder. Now, the different houses have different roles.

17:22So, for instance, if Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, they could open a lot of inquiries and investigations into things Donald Trump has done. They could even go so far as to move to try to impeach him, which Democrats almost certainly would try to do. Now, of course, he was impeached twice during his first term, but never convicted by the Senate because there wasn't enough of a majority there to do it. But it would be time consuming. it would be politically difficult and embarrassing for him to go through all of these kind of investigations. The Senate has very different powers from the House of Representatives.

17:54So if the Democrats were to win there, there are different things they could try and do to stymie Donald Trump's agenda, the details of which Sumi will fill you in with. Well, that's really it. It's about gumming up President Trump's agenda. That's what the House of Representatives can do. On the question of which is more important to President Trump, it is most certainly the Senate. And that is for the following reason. Of course, the House of Representatives itself can impeach the president, as we saw in his previous term. But in order for that to essentially stick, the Senate would then also have to vote in favor impeachment.

18:26And there you would need two thirds of senators to do that. And so they would be kind of the binding vote. And that is why that is critically important to President Trump, besides the fact that if the Democrats had both the House of Representatives and the Senate, they make his agenda that much harder to actually push through. And it's important to remember, Congress holds the purse strings. So another way that they can really serve as a thorn in President Trump's side is passing budgets, is, for example, funding President Trump's war in Iran. And we've seen these war powers resolution votes happening in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

18:59You've had a few Republicans kind of defect to the Democrat side now saying they want to bring that power to declare war back to Congress and take it out of President Trump's hands, which constitutionally is actually the case, you can see if the Democrats win control of both houses that they push to stop President Trump from being able to continue his war in Iran or any other wars that he might be considering as well. There's a lot at stake there for President Trump, in particular for the Senate. As Sarah said, I mean, at the moment, it is kind of a toss up for the Senate. Republicans feel fairly good about their chances, but that could break one way or the other fairly late in the game.

19:35That's an excellent, excellent primer for... Who needs Anthony? We don't need Anthony, turns out. Don't tell him we said that. It's all a hoax. There he was, making out that he was needed. He didn't need him at all. Final couple of thoughts. Space uniforms. Let's talk space uniforms. US Space Force uniforms have been unveiled. Donald Trump uploading an image online of the new uniform with a graphic that says it's inspired by the discipline and functionality of the Starship Trooper uniform, modernised for the guardians of the space domain. What's the slight issue with that?

20:09Marianna Spring:The slight issue with it is that the director of Starship Troopers is this guy called Paul Verhoeven, and he intentionally based the movie's authoritarian military aesthetic on Nazi SS uniforms. So as you might imagine, it's triggered quite a lot of backlash. They're black, dark grey and black, with very high collars and sort of wing things. Yeah, and sort of like high boots. I mean, it doesn't look dislike a uniform, like an SS Nazi uniform, but I guess lots of military uniforms do look similar. You can imagine, though, and this is the classic, let's try and get inside Donald Trump's head when he's posting on True Social or thinking of these things.