#FamiliesBelongTogether

Rep. Mark Pocan on his trip to border detention facilities where children are being kept in cages; a conversation with a DC bartender who lost her job after speaking out in favor of Initiative 77; Sarah McBride on celebrating Pride in the era of Trump — plus the news of the week ICYMI. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

This week on Off-Kilter, as the public outcry around Trump’s policy of separating families at the border continues to mount, a group of lawmakers went down to south Texas to see the detention camps where children as young as age 5 are being kept in cages. Rebecca talks with Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan about the horrific conditions in the camps and how Trump’s executive order doesn’t come anywhere close to ending the horror show on the border.

Later in the show, DC voters this week approved Initiative 77 to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers to $15 an hour. But now DC Council is signaling it may override the will of the voters and stop the measure from taking effect. Rebecca speaks with Thea Bryan, a DC bartender who’s been supporting the measure, about how it will help her and other tipped workers — and why more workers in support haven’t been speaking out. (Spoiler: many are afraid of retaliation, and for good reason — Thea herself lost her job after she spoke out.)

And finally, with June marking LGBT Pride Month — well, for everyone but Donald Trump, who declined to recognize Pride for the second year in a row — Rebecca sits down with Sarah McBride, national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign and author of Tomorrow Will Be Different, about what it’s like to celebrate pride in the Trump era.

But first, with all eyes on the crisis at the border, House Republicans are trying to ram through a whole slew of horrors including another attempt at passing their cruel Farm Bill and yet another zombie health care repeal effort. Plus: new information on what may have driven the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Human Rights Council; Trump unveils his plan to reorganize the federal government, including slapping a dog whistle on the doors of HHS, and more, as Jeremy Slevin returns with the news of the week in a doozy of an installment of In Case You Missed It.

This week’s guests:

• Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI)
• Thea Bryan, DC bartender supporting Initiative 77 (who’s about to graduate with a master’s in social work and looking for a job!!)
• Sarah McBride, national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign and author of Tomorrow Will Be Different
• Jeremy Slevin, director of antipoverty advocacy at the Center for American Progress (and faithful sidekick)

For more on this week’s topics:

• Get caught up on how Trump’s EO doesn’t come close to addressing the crisis at the border — and find a #FamiliesBelongTogether event near you on the June 30th national day of action
• Get the facts on Initiative 77 in the Washington Post’s guide to the newly passed measure; see how DC voted over at CityLab (hint: if DC Council overturns the measure, they won’t just be siding with the restaurant over workers — they’ll be siding with the District’s wealthy, white voters over lower-income voters and voters of color…)
• Check out more from Sarah McBride in her new book Tomorrow Will Be Different

For more on the headlines from this week’s ICYMI segment:

• Tell your member of Congress #HandsOffSNAP in the Farm Bill at HandsOffSNAP.org and follow @rebeccavallas @jeremyslevin for updates
• Get caught up on the latest zombie health care repeal effort
• Read more about how Trump’s plan to reorganize the federal government is a ruse to slash programs like Medicaid and SNAP
• Get the scoop on what the U.S.’s decision to withdraw from the Human Rights Council might have to do with the U.N.’s damning indictment of poverty and inequality in the U.S.

This week’s transcript

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off Kilter, the show about poverty, inequality and everything they intersect with, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas. This week on Off Kilter, as the public outcry around Trump’s policy of separating families at the border continues to mount, a group of lawmakers went down to south Texas to see the detention facilities where children as young as five are being kept. I talk with Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan about what he saw. Later in the show, DC voters this week approved Initiative 77 to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers to $15 an hour. But now DC council is signaling it may override the will of the voters and overturn the measure. I speak with one of the workers who’ve been supporting Initiative 77 about how it will help her and other tipped workers and why more workers in support of the measure haven’t been speaking out. Spoiler: many are afraid of retaliation by their employers. And finally with June marking LGBT pride month, well for everyone but Donald Trump, I talk with Sarah McBride, national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign about what it’s like to celebrate pride in the Trump era. But first, Jeremy Slevin, the Slevs, this is me not asking about your beard because we have too much to get through this week, Slevs.

JEREMY SLEVIN: Yes.

VALLAS: But also hi.

SLEVIN: Hi.

[LAUGHTER]

VALLAS: I would ask how you’re doing but in a week like this there’s just no point.

SLEVIN: Yeah, no point and no time.

VALLAS: So I mentioned the continued horror show at the border, which Trump claims he has fixed and which he has certainly not fixed is continuing to rage on and I’m really thrilled to be talking later in the show with Mark Pocan, congressman from Wisconsin about what he saw touring some of those detention facilities and where things go from here. But notably the national attention is rightly focused on that horror show at the border. The Trump administration and Republicans in congress are really viewing this as an opportunity to ram through a bunch of stuff without anyone noticing and that’s a lot of what you brought with you.

SLEVIN: Yeah, I think this week has had more news in it than we’ve had in an entire year sometimes. And I think what’s happening is while everyone is paying attention the border they’re just as you said, trying to fire up their base by proposing their budget, by putting through another health care repeal bill and by voting a farm bill. So let’s start with the farm bill. Spoiler, we’re taping on Thursday.

VALLAS: And I think in this case, important for once to actually say when we’re taping because this is the latest as of Thursday before anyone has voted and so the stuff’s going to change in the hours ahead but we’re telling you what we know as of now.

SLEVIN: So right now Republicans are planning to vote today on a farm bill, the same farm bill they failed to pass in May and they’re bringing it up again, kind of in the dark of night while no one is looking. This is the same farm bill that cuts nutrition assistance by taking it away from at least 2 million people. It cuts the SNAP program by about $23 billion. What happened in May is the freedom caucus, along with moderates and Democrats who all voted against it. But the freedom caucus voted against it because they wanted their hardline immigration bill. So amidst this immigration fight, if the freedom caucus gets their hardline immigration bill, they say they will vote for a farm bill.

VALLAS: So now things are back in play and Republicans are saying they have the vote but no one is paying attention to this because everyone is rightly focused on the crisis at the border and now they’re cued up to take a revote where they might be able to actually pass this thing.

SLEVIN: Right, and more importantly we can still kill this bill because moderates, Democrats are lockstep against it, which is rare that you bring up a partisan farm bill because usually it’s a bipartisan process. And a lot of more moderate vulnerable Republicans don’t want to vote for a bill that slashes food assistance by this much, especially when there’s another bill moving in the senate that, on a bipartisan basis that doesn’t have these massive cuts.

VALLAS: So you and I are crossing ever appendage that by the time folks are listening to this that vote either has failed or they’ve had to pull it or something goes wrong but we’ll have more updates next week about what’s happened and where things go from here. I’ll give a little bit of a look ahead around the corner, if House Republicans are successful this time at doing what they failed to do last time, passing this legislation to take food assistance from two million Americans, to strip 265,000 kids of automatic access to free school meals so they can actually learn instead of hearing their grumbling stomachs at school. If they are successful at passing this heartless bill, then what we’re likely to see is conference between the house and the Senate to find some kind of compromise between a bipartisan measure that preserves the SNAP program, that being the Senate approach and the House’s taking a shotgun to the SNAP program which is the Republican bill that they’re now trying to bring back up for a vote. So that’s what’s going on here is the House wants to be at the table for some kind of negotiation as opposed to allowing a piece of legislation that the Senate has managed to make in a bipartisan fashion move forward. They don’t want to see that happen. They want to be at the table so they can try and make it worse.

SLEVIN: That’s right, so the best thing you can do if it hasn’t passed by the time you are listening, go to handsoffsnap.org, we have a list of the key targets and a switchboard number and a click to tweet function to contact your member of congress.

VALLAS: And if has passed these are the members of congress who need to be hearing from you all the same to say why did you vote for this and I don’t want to see SNAP cut in an ultimate compromise. More to come next week, this is what we know as of Thursday. But Jeremy, that’s not the only shenanigan, and I think is shenanigan a harsh enough word? I don’t know that it is.

SLEVIN: Well you’re being generous.

VALLAS: I am being charitable.

SLEVIN: You’re being kind to them.

VALLAS: I should not be charitable. That’s not the only total disaster dumpster fire thing going on undercover of night while people aren’t’ looking. So what else is going on this week?

SLEVIN: So two of their biggest agenda items they also secretly snuck in this week. So first they snuck in another healthcare repeal bill. Like you thought this was dead, you thought it was dead again, I don’t know the sixth zombie repeal. This was introduced in the house this week, it looks a lot like Graham-Cassidy, which if folks remember was the final repeal bill that was proposed back in 2017. It again guts Medicaid, repeals Medicaid expansion and replaces it with a block grant, would cause millions of people to lose coverage including people with pre-existing conditions. It would charge older people what we’re calling an age tax. It would impose lifetime limits. They’re trying to, again, and this is to appease their base ahead of a midterm election, they’re trying to again repeal the Affordable Care Act under dark of night.

VALLAS: I think one thing has become incredibly clear and that is that our healthcare is not safe until we vote these people out. If we don’t see Republicans lose control of at least one chamber of congress in the midterms in November, they’ve made abundantly clear they don’t care that Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, to take away protections for people with preexisting conditions, to destroy the Medicaid program as we know it. This is going to continue to be top of their list no matter how much public outcry there is in opposition. They’ve made that clear, I think they’ve made that clear already before this week but if anyone still needed to be persuaded that voting in November is the only way to save healthcare, then hopefully this is the evidence that will finally convince them. And Jeremy, I wish that were the only thing that they’re trying to ram through this week, but wait there’s more!

SLEVIN: Yes, also, so if people remember back in 2017 to get to repeal in the Senate on 50 votes, they needed to pass budget resolutions. So in order to fast track this repeal process, they also after not putting forward a budget at all, this week they put forward a budget in the house. And the budget is basically it should be seen in tandem to repeal because it again include massive cuts to Medicaid and it includes, get this, gigantic cuts to Medicare over the next ten years.

VALLAS: And Social Security.

SLEVIN: And Social Security, it repeals the ACA, it guts Medicaid, it turns Medicare into a voucher system. This is their budget that they’re proposing months before an election and this is all to include the massive tax cuts they passed earlier this year.

VALLAS: And folks will remember, it gets wonky but we’ve done some explainers on this about the reconciliation process, budget reconciliation and what means. A shout out to Ryan Collins who long ago actually did a segment with you and me called —

SLEVIN: Drunk-conciliation.

VALLAS: Drunk-conciliation because hey, why would you want to talk about this stuff sober? I’m sure some people have good reasons but I don’t know that I do. But reconciliation requires a budget resolution as you said, Jeremy that includes fast track authority for Republicans to try to ram through the legislation without 60 votes but rather actually just 51 votes and that’s what they’re trying to do again. That is why they’ve brought up another budget. It’s all about giving themselves the authority to try this again.

SLEVIN: And they’re doing this intentionally as a signal to their base but not to the broader public. They know that the pulic isn’t paying attention so they think they can sneak this through again before November. So $537 billion cut from Medicare in this budget, $1.5 trillion cut from Medicaid.

VALLAS: So again signally how they want to pay for their $1.9 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy at the same time that they give themselves new permission and authority to fast-track another repeal effort. But Jeremy —

SLEVIN: There’s more!

VALLAS: There’s still more! I’m like one of those awful infomercials right, that it’s like they didn’t just give you one ‘My Pillow’, now they’re giving you two ‘My Pillows’.

SLEVIN: And ‘My Pillow’ is like taking away your healthcare.

VALLAS: Exactly. But wait, there’s actually still more.

SLEVIN: I feel like this week, Tuesday, which was two days ago feels like another decade. That’s what this week has been.

VALLAS: A lot of people in Washington have lived a lot of lives this week. I know that’s certainly how I’m feeling. It’s become a joke in my house that I often say it needed to be Friday on Tuesday afternoon. I think I’ve been feeling that in spades and I know that you have too but you’ve still got more.

SLEVIN: Yes, so expected again today, the Trump administration is expected to propose a massive government reorganization, including —

VALLAS: Because you know, not enough going on.

SLEVIN: You know, why not? Just throw it at the wall because whatever we can throw at the wall.

VALLAS: It’s chaos theory is what it is.

SLEVIN: Exactly.

VALLAS: So what is Trump proposing?

SLEVIN: So what they’re proposing is combining several programs including food assistance under SNAP with what are traditionally health care programs under the Department of Health and Human Services, so Medicare and Medicaid which are already under that and renaming the Department of Health and Human Service ‘The Department of Health and Welfare Services’ or ‘The Department of Welfare’. All of this as you’ve covered on this show extensively is an effort to rebrand programs like food stamps and Medicare and Medicaid under the pejorative ‘welfare’.

VALLAS: And it bears repeating and listeners of this show will be familiar but it certainly bears repeating because of what the larger context is here. Trump knows exactly what he’s doing. Mick Mulvaney knows exactly what he’s doing. The American human brain goes to a very different place when it hears the word ‘welfare’ than when it hears ‘public assistance’ or ‘health care’ or ‘food assistance’ or any of those other phrases you might use to describe these types of programs, which polls off the charts. They’re incredibly popular. People don’t want to see them cut. 80% of Americans oppose cuts to Medicaid, 78% of Americans oppose cuts to housing assistance, 2/3rds of Americans opposed cuts to nutrition assistance but when you call these programs welfare as Trump has been trying to do and as Speaker Paul Ryan has been trying to do for a long time before him, the support all of a sudden evaporates because the racialized thoughts that come into people’s heads. It evokes thoughts of Reagan’s myth of the welfare queen. And that’s exactly what Trump is trying to do here by effectively erecting a massive dog whistle on the doors of the Department of Health and Human Services. So make no mistake, that’s the bigger picture and we’ll I’m sure have more conversation on this show about the actual practical implications of this. One note for listeners that I think is really important because as you said I think this is just another press stunt where Trump is throwing everything out there to try and distract from what they’re doing. This is something that can’t be done through executive action. It requires legislation so it’s not going to happen overnight but something to absolutely watch but connects I think in people’s minds to the bigger broader picture. Trump learned the hard way; it’s going to be a lot harder to cut these programs than he hoped and so as he continues to try to dismantle them by fiat, which he’s continued to do by Medicaid and is trying to do with nutrition assistance, he’s just trying to make it easier for himself moving forward by calling it all welfare.

SLEVIN: That’s exactly right. Final two bits of news —

VALLAS: Oh my god, there’s more.

SLEVIN: There’s more. Well, no it’s not good news.

VALLAS: We’re not to the good news yet. There is good news.

SLEVIN: There is good news at the end. Last bit of news we would be remiss not to cover because we recently had on the special rapporteur on poverty from the United Nations ahead of the US being called to the Human Rights Council essentially over extreme level of poverty and inequality in this country. This week, the Trump administration announced amid the border crisis that they were pulling out of the Human Rights Council, something they had signaled for weeks while they claim it is because of Israel and treatment the Human Rights Council has towards certain nations, toward Iran, we know that they had actually told, the State Department had told the special rapporteur on poverty that if they issued this report, that the US would consider pulling out of the Human Rights Council.

VALLAS: And this has just come to light now in the days following the news that the US would be withdrawing from the Human Rights Council. A lot of folks had been drawing the connections and correction between the horrific, awful separation of families at the border and then the simultaneous withdrawal from the Human Rights Council. It’s obviously all very much of a piece, but something that I think has been totally ignored by the broader mainstream media is right after the US announced that it would be doing this, taking this unprecedented step, Philip Alston, that special rapporteur for extreme poverty for the United Nations, he actually came out and came forward and said, you know what, when I was talking to the State Department for my report on US poverty and inequality, they literally threatened, and I’m only slightly paraphrasing here that if the US didn’t like in the report that might actually happen. I’m sort of blown away that this could be in part because Trump didn’t like being called out for allowing the American dream to die, which is effectively what that report found as listeners will know who heard that segment just a couple weeks back.

SLEVIN: And it’s all part, it’s almost unsurprising when you think about it. It’s part of their broader agenda to not be held accountable by international law, to not abide by international norms, to not cooperate with our allies, to not care about human rights violations and just to disrespect international cooperation and the legitimacy of international institutions, especially when they’re calling out the US over extreme levels of poverty.

VALLAS: And I’m going to quote Philip Alston here because I paraphrased but I think the words themselves are actually quite damning as he blows the whistle on what he was told. He told Democracy Now, “It’s interesting that when I arrived in Washington DC to begin my visit I met, as one must, with the US State Department and in that briefing a comment was made which suggested that perhaps I should bear in mind that my report might have some implications in terms of the US possibly withdrawing from the council.” He continues, “I didn’t take that suggestion too seriously, I’ve done a lot of reporting on a lot of countries around the world. The issues are always tough. Governments never enjoy being criticized but I certainly hadn’t expected that the United States would react in this way.” So I think his mind is just about as blown as ours in seeing this actually come to fruition. Jeremy, you are looking at Will who is making wild hand signals and so you’re not listening to anything I’m saying. That’s ok.

SLEVIN: I can walk and chew gum.

VALLAS: Um …

SLEVIN: I’ve been listening attentively.

VALLAS: It’s ok. It wasn’t for you. I don’t know if you know this but we’re taping a radio show right now so other people are actually going to be listening.

SLEVIN: Me and Will were just hanging out.

VALLAS: So the hand signals are not super successful when you guys do this. So I think that means we only have time for one more thing.

SLEVIN: One more thing.

VALLAS: But please make it good news.

SLEVIN: Really quickly because you’re about to talk to someone who will be helped by this, DC good news, passed a ballot initiative this week to raise the minimum wage for its tipped workers to $15 by 2026, this after a fierce corporate backed campaign to defeat it. It’s a huge victory and it’s a bellweather for other states who are currently considering this. We’ll continue to cover it because the DC council could still intervene and try to repeal it against the will of the people. But hopefully they won’t.

VALLAS: So I think we’re going to have to leave it there. I will be speaking later in this episode with as you said one of the workers who will be helped. Excited to hear from her what Initiative 77 will mean for her if DC council does not override the will of the voters but we’ll have to leave it there in terms of ‘In Case You Missed It’, and Jeremy here’s hoping that next week is a slightly slower week and maybe has a little bit more good news that bad, not that I’m holding my breath. Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, my conversation with Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan about what he saw in South Texas when he visited detention facilities keeping children as young as age five.

[MUSIC]

You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. As public outrage around Trump’s policy of separating families at the border has continued to grow, a group of lawmakers took a trip down to South Texas to see the detention facilities where children as young as five who have been forcibly removed from their parents are being kept. One of the members of congress who toured the centers is Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan and I’m so pleased to speak with him about what he saw. Congressman, thank you so much for joining the show.

REPRESENTATIVE MARK POCAN (WI-02): Oh thank you for having me, glad to be here.

VALLAS: So congressman you have been one of the few voices out there who has been willing to and I think rightly, make comparisons between the absolute horror show that we are watching play out right now and what we saw back in Nazi-era Germany.

POCAN: I’m using this as a comparison in modern history that we can remember. When else have children been taken away from their parents in a period of time? While there certainly are not every parallel in the world on this front, when you have the inhumane action of not treating someone with human dignity of keeping a family together, you certainly are replicating some of the most inhumane actions we’ve seen, in humanity in modern history.

VALLAS: Another thing that so many people have been unwilling to saw is even just the word cage. We watched folks representing government agencies, we’ve watched conservative pundits all expressing tremendous discomfort with calling the holding cells that kids again I’ll emphasize as young as five are being kept in cages but you don’t have that discomfort at all.

POCAN: The best comparison I can actually make is in my backyard, we have a dog run that is made of the exact same material and construction only the walls are shorter than the cages that people are held in at the processing center. There’s no question, it exactly replicates what we use to house animals in the United States and that’s what we’re housing people in and as you said, I think the part that’s so enormously troubling is that at that center before they’ve fully taken children away from the parents, if you’re four or under you’re allowed to stay with a parent even though they separate parents and they separate siblings but at least if you’re four or under you’re still with the parent for a few days. At five years old, you’re considered old enough to be on your own so you’re put into one of these cages with 50 other people you don’t know, elbow to elbow sitting on a bench. You’re given a mat and this I don’t think has been out there either, as we walked around I said where are the pillows? And they said well feel the mats, they’re cushy. That’s not an acceptable answer for how we’re housing people. So it really is, the horrific pictures you’ve seen verify the conditions that I’ve seen that people are being held in.

VALLAS: Share a little bit more about what you saw because there have been images released, there actually was a sound clip of children crying and just really horrible stuff that is starting to break through into the media but you’ve actually seen this first hand. Paint the picture for us.

POCAN: Long emotionless faces sitting side by side by side by side on these benches. At one point they tried to tell us the children have TVs and finally I think I found two TVs in the entire thing that I could see. And I said oh is it in Spanish and they said uh, some of it is. Well, ok I don’t know what you really solved with that. Kids don’t have toys, if I remember they didn’t have shoelaces on their shoes. So much of it is what you see in a prison like situation. But they set us up one woman to talk. We found ways to talk to a few other people. They told us the goal is to process someone out 12 hours, that everyone is processed out in 72 hours and yet the woman they set us up to talk to hand been there for two days and not seen her 13 year old daughter during those two days. As soon as they got to the country, but we talked to people who were there four days, five days, seven days, ten days and these are the worst conditions because these are the extremely crowded cage conditions that exist at the processing centers.

VALLAS: As we’re speaking, so far the only images that have been released by the government of these facilities and of the children being kept in them have shown detained boys. And this is something that you actually asked some questions about during this trip. You said where are the girls? And they wouldn’t tell you.

POCAN: Yeah so then we went to the detention center that again is pretty amazing, it’s a super Wal-Mart center that now is a Trump super detention center. And there are 1,500 boys that are housed there, they’re actually over capacity. It’s supposed to be for 1,250 is what they’re licensed for, they got a waiver to go to 1,500. But here’s the problem. When I walked around and what I saw, I worked a lot on prison issues in the state legislation in Wisconsin and I dealt a lot with supermax prisons. The space that a child is allotted essentially for living space at that Wal-Mart is 6 by 10 even though it’s a bigger room with 6 or 8 beds in that they’re in, it’s allotted 6 by 10 is the space. Supermax cell is 8 by 12, so this is about 40% less than a supermax cell. In a supermax prison you get about one hour a day out of your cell. Here while their not just in their rooms during the day but they only get outside to see the sun and get fresh air two hours a day. So at every measure this is a kiddy prison. And when we talk to the people who work there and many of them I think truly care about their jobs, don’t forget this was a crisis put together with no forethought by the president. So they’ve in six or seven weeks expanded from 500 to 1,500 people in a very, very quick amount of time. So they don’t have the staffing resources for it, they are 90 mental health professionals short to actually deal with this. In some cases this is children separated from their parents, in some cases it’s unaccompanied minors. But the bottom line is this is not a humane way to be dealing with people and it’s almost as if we’re not really considering them to be people. And that’s the policy that the president’s put forward.

VALLAS: And has been echoed by his rhetoric when he’s refered to people in many cases who are the people we’re talking about here as ‘animals’ in some contexts. You mentioned mental health, it just bears repeating how traumatized so many of these children are, what they’ve been through, what they even saw in many cases before they got to the United States, a lot of these just to remind our listeners are asylum seekers who were fleeing horrible conditions in their own home countries. Some of these children witnessed family members having their hands chopped off and other horrific things before they got into this country, which now is inflicted continued and increased trauma on them now that they’re here. And it’s come to light that some facilities, I don’t know if this is going on in the one you visited, some of these kids are being forcibly medicated, even injected forcibly with psychotropic medications in an effort to try to sedate them because authorities don’t know how to handle them.

POCAN: Yeah, I saw that later but one of the criticism that I brought up was when we talked at the ICE detention facility, at the end of the day some of the mothers, one of the mothers said they don’t ask you anything. They don’t ask you does your child have an allergy or a health condition. Have they ever been abused, what are their fears, the child is just taken away and in some cases they’re actually lied to when their children were taken away. So we don’t really know. So you’re taking a child with no information whatsoever, that’s not humanity. And that’s part of the problem. And another important I think is really important to bear and you touched on it when you were talking about it is almost everyone that we talked to was coming to the US seeking asylum because of the violence primarily in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. And the people we talked to told the situation of why they came here and the situations that they were facing in coming here. But when you talk to some of the mothers about the children being taken away we found that children aren’t just being in the next room or the next building or the next town but two of the mothers we talked to the children were in Miami. One had their child, their nine year old daughter in New York state. This is so far away, it’s so difficult for them to know. The one woman told us that she’s being told her child may be put up for adoption. Another mother told us that here nine year old daughter that was in New York, the woman was going to be released and eventually her daughter would be. But she’s a completely different state and she’ll be out of thee country at that point. So none of this is done in a way that respects how I think we universally separate from politics accept how you treat family relationships. And yet the Trump administration has made that part of the norm.

VALLAS: And in the process there has been continued denial by the Trump administration including by Trump himself as well as by Homeland Security Secretary Kristen Nielsen that the policy exists at all, that is a creation of the Trump administration, Trump even continues to insist that somehow congress needs to pass a law to bring this to an end. Just to reiterate listeners of this show will be familiar and have heard this in previous conversations about this horror show, this is not true. This policy is without question a creation of the Trump administration, they own it. They started it, they have the power to bring it to an end. And now following all of this public outcry Trump did finally issue an executive order that he claims fixed the problem. But it doesn’t fix the problem at all.

POCAN: A complete myth. So first of all, multiple problems, first of all the 2,300 children they’re currently separated, there’s no process to reunite them with their families. First problem, and that already is what’s brought the outcry including from groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce that aren’t normally the folks that criticize Donald Trump. Second, there still exists the problem that the reason that there was a surge of arrests is because we have artificially made sure that we are arresting everyone for almost any reason. So if you come to a legal point of entry like the Hidalgo bridge that we visited in Texas, if you go to that legal point of entry to claim asylum we’re supposed to process you for asylum. But what they’re doing is, they have a large waiting room with 120 seats, they only are allowing people about 7 at a time and they’re making everyone else wait outside in some cases for days in the hot sun because they’re claiming they just can’t process them for lots of different reasons. So what it’s doing is trying to make you be discouraged from following the legal process. So either you go back into Mexico where the attorney that was with us on this trip said her client did and then got kidnapped by the cartels and then extorting whoever they know in the US trying to get money for their live or you cross illegally through the river or some other way and then you’re arrested and brought into this process that the president has created. So that still isn’t resolved. So he’s still saying this is the most important thing I can stress, he’s still saying it’s ok to be a five year old in a cage, it’s just being alone you’re now going to maybe be with your mother. And that’s the end of what his executive order doesn’t accomplish. It doesn’t reunify families, it doesn’t fix the problem that’s been created in the first place that’s made this many people be detained and once we detain them we’re still treating people like animals, it’s just at least now we’re keeping the parent with their child.

VALLAS: Now while legislation is now required to change this, Trump again has the power to unilaterally end the policy that he unilaterally put in place and bring this horrific situation to an end, but there is legislation that Democrats are championing in both the house and the senate that would bring this to an end. You are one of the folks who has been championing that on the house side. Yet it’s still a partisan conversation. We’ve watched this amazing public outcry you mentioned even the Koch brothers and the US Chamber of Commerce are speaking out in opposition. We’ve got folks who have been prominent conservative strategists like Steve Schmidt coming out and saying they’re leaving the Republican party over this because they can’t countenance watching this happen and be championed by a Republican party that can no longer countenance being involved with or associated with and yet we’re watching the solutions that are offered still only draw Democrats and we’re really just seeing some tweets and public statements that don’t rise to the level of action when it comes to Republicans. Is that going to change and where do you see things going from here?

POCAN: Well there’s some artificial fake bills in the house to try to deal with this I don’t think are even going to pass among Republicans. The bottom line is Paul Ryan needs to rediscover the spine that he was given at birth and stand up and realize that he is the leader of a coequal branch of government and he does not have to be at the side of Paul Ryan waiting to have his belly rubbed in order to get permission to do something. we need to stand up to this action that is hurting the United States of America. This is a cruel action, it’s inhumane and it’s un-American. It’s Trump and we can’t as members of congress regardless of political party stand by and do nothing because if you do you’re complicit. And we saw this again at other significant points in history and I just hope that enough public pressure will finanlly force enough Republicans to make their leadership do the right thing because right now we are complicit with this and this is internationally what the United States is seen for.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Congressman Mark Pocan from Wisconsin, he’s one of the members of congress who toured facilities that are holding children as young as five who have been separated forcibly from their parents at the border. Thank you so much congressman for your leadership in trying to bring this horrific policy to an end and I look forward to having you back on the show soon.

POCAN: Thank you so much I appreciate it.

VALLAS: Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. In a rare piece of good news, voters in Washington DC on Tuesday voted to pass a ballot measure to raise the minimum wage for DC’s tipped workers who are currently paid $3.33 an hour, their wages will rise to $15 an hour just like other minimum wage workers. DC now joins 8 states that have established a single minimum wage. Initiative 77 passed 55% to 44% despite a well-funded campaign from the restaurant industry to pressure workers and restaurant patrons to vote against it. Yet the fate of the measure is still uncertain with DC council signaling it may override the will of the voters and overturn the measure. And DC Mayor Muriel Bowser herself on record vocally opposing the wage increase. Largely missing throughout the debate have been the voices of workers who stand to benefit from the wage increase including a great many who have remained silent out of free of retaliation from their employers. I spoke with one of those workers Thea Bryan, a bartender in DC about what the wage increase would mean for her. Let’s take a listen.

Thea thank you so much for taking the time to join the show.

THEA BRYAN: Thank you for having me.

VALLAS: So many folks in the media and a lot of opponents of Initiative 77 have made it sound like workers are somehow uniformly opposed to Initiative 77 and that they feel it’s not going to help them. But you’ve been supporting the measure and you say that it will help you. Why have you been supporting it and what would it mean for you?

BRYAN: I’ve been supporting it because the base pay is too low, $3.33 an hour is essentially free labor. That’s one iced tea, one iced tea pays your wage in this city. It’s important that we get to a fair base wage, it hasn’t budged in decades. it’s been stuck at the federal level since 1991 and it was never meant to be that low and it was never meant to be stagnant. It was supposed to be initially half of minimum wage and it never budged, not in many, many years. So it’s time that we keep up with the times and that people making these low base wages start to see a little bit of an increase in their paychecks if they even get a paycheck, many do not.

VALLAS: Now you are supporting yourself and also your family and one of the things that you’ve talked about in the past is how when you’re relying on tips your income can fluctuate wildly and you can’t predict what you’re going to make one week to the next. Would you talk a little bit about what it’s like trying to make ends meet on that kind of a flocculating income?

BRYAN: Absolutely, so I am in grad school and just a shameless self-promotion, I’m currently looking for a [Masters’ in Social Work] (MSW) internship if anyone out there hears of one or knows one let me know. I have worked, there’s week that you’ll make really good money. All last summer, I was making probably an average between $20 to $30 an hour. still not close to the $40 to $75 some of these bartenders and servers claim to be making but it was still enough for me to get by. Now I’m doing an internship, I’m in graduate school, I’m a single parent so I’m juggling a lot and when you have set days and you’re seeing ok, I’m making $150, $200 this night, and around that same the next night and then all the sudden it drops or it did for me the last week of October, suddenly business just slowed way down. And I literally went from making between $100, $200 a night to $50 a night and initially I thought it was just a bad day, then a bad week, and then by the time I realized what was happening we’re moving into December, I’m in the middle of finals, I’m trying to find another job. It’s impossible in December to find a job in this business. An hourly rate wouldn’t have saved me but it would have made that fall a little less painful and I had no idea that was coming. I assumed that my wages would at least remain somewhat the same especially since that time of year is generally busier and I didn’t see that happen where I was. I think that had to do with there was no shopping in the area of Cleveland Park that I was working. So many things can be a factor, the weather can be a factor, if it’s raining things can slow down. If it’s snowing, maybe nobody’s going to come in. January, February, August typically very slow months. And we need a wage to make those slow times a little bit more humane.

VALLAS: Now one of the things that a lot of folks might not be familiar with because it gets kind of wonky and in the weeds when you get into minimum wage law but employers are legal required to make up the difference when a worker’s tips don’t get them to minimum wage. But this is something that you’ve actually experienced where your employers have failed to do that when your tips weren’t enough.

BRYAN: Sure, last December I did speak with my manager about the fact that I did not think I was meeting the minimum wage requirements and his response was we have a great accountant, they’re going to catch that and it will be made up on your check. I never saw anything on my check. You have to understand that during the same time I’m juggling grad school, I’m juggling an internship, the job itself I’m a single parent, I have all that plus the stress and at the same time you’re expecting me to gather up all this information go down and try to get these wages made up by the Department of Labor, it’s too much. It’s too much for a lot of us and you’re also asking me to try and use a system that I’ve tried to use before and failed. Two years ago I worked at a place called the Salty Dog Tavern in Dupont Circle and I was told then that they didn’t have to pay me. They are since out of business but I did report them to the Department of Labor and I never saw a dime of that money. I never got paid an hourly wage, it was tips and tips alone and I reported them and it never went anywhere.

VALLAS: Now you’ve been a vocal supporter of Initiative 77 leading up to its passage, you’re talking about now why it’s a good thing and why it’s going to help you and other workers. But some people have been wondering why haven’t more workers been speaking out and why is it that media stories all see to make it sound like workers are opposed to this measure? What is it that you think is going on? Is it fear of retaliation by employers?

BRYAN: A lot of people are afraid to speak out because they are afraid to experience what I’ve been experiencing, which is I’ve gotten harassed repeatedly on social media I had a very bizarre job loss a couple of months ago. I did a speech about how hard it can be to get wages and two days was mysteriously let go. The reason I was given was they could no longer work around my schedule, which it didn’t really make much sense. Is there a connection? Maybe, can I prove it? No.

VALLAS: But you think you might have been fired because you spoke out?

BRYAN: I believe that there’s a connection but I cannot prove that. It was just very odd that suddenly they couldn’t work around the schedule that they initially were fine with. And a lot of people are surrounded by other workers that are against this and it’s hard being that one person when everyone around you is going on misinformation and you’re the lone wolf saying I believe this can help, a better wage would be better. In a city as expensive as DC when tips don’t always mean a whole lot of money for a lot of us.

VALLAS: And you referred to misinformation, anyone in DC and a lot of our listeners are in DC has seen signs that say “Save Our Tips” in windows of restaurants and bars and pretty much all over, blanketing downtown DC. A lot of the misinformation that’s out there has come from a campaign, a well-funded campaign backed by the restaurant industry that has led a lot of people who are restaurant goers to believe that somehow Initiative 77 would abolish tipping. It will not, that is a myth. But are you saying that you feel that workers themselves have actually gotten confused by the misinformation and is that part of what’s going on with why some workers are opposing a measure that might help them?

BRYAN: Yes, many people are under the assumption that this is going to move to a flat minimum wage and tips will be abolished, which is nonsense. That’s not the idea at all. The idea is to move to something that resembles what they’ve done in California, Oregon, Washington State, which is the minimum wage plus tips. I know in San Francisco you make as much as $14 an hour plus tips. Now they’re a little bit more expensive than DC to live there but not much more. And a city as expensive as we are, surrounded by six of the wealthiest counties in the entire country, we can afford to give our servers a better wage plus tips. The misinformation is ubiquitous and some of the arguments I hear that suddenly workers are going to become lazy and they aren’t going to want to do their job. It just doesn’t really make sense. If I’m an employer and I’m paying you and you’re lazy and you’re not going to do your job I’m going to fire you. Nothing’s going to change other than you’re going to see a better wage reflected on your paycheck.

VALLAS: Initiative 77 now has passed with the majority of DC voters voting on Tuesday to support it. It passed 55% to 44% and despite a well-funded campaign from the restaurant industry to try to kill it, and yet now DC council is signaling that they may overturn the will of the voters and block this measure from taking effect. Do you have a message for council and what would you say if they were listening to you right now?

BRYAN: Sure, I would really want council to listen to the data and the studies and not the fear tactics and propaganda that we have seen going on in this campaign. The other side didn’t really have a valid argument, they resorted to fear tactics, they resorted to harassment, they resorted to threatening their own employees. We know for a fact that several restaurants said that they were going to fire people that did not vote no on this. I want city council to listen to what this would do for workers. We’ve seen that it lifts people out of poverty, we’ve seen better employment rates, we’ve seen restaurant growth, we’ve seen happier employees, lower turnover rates, lower incidents of sexual harassment, I mean the lists goes on and on.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Thea Bryan, she is a DC bartender who would benefit from Initiative 77 and has been a vocal supporter of the measure. Thea, thank you so much for taking the time to join the show and for your work to support this important wage increase.

BRYAN: Thank you and I want to thank all the voters that listened to the data and the studies and didn’t fall prey to the lies and propaganda that have been going on. Thank you all so much for supporting us and supporting [INAUDIBLE]. We appreciate you and your vote.

VALLAS: Don’t go away, more Off Kilter after the break, I’m Rebecca Vallas.

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You’re listening to Off Kilter, I’m Rebecca Vallas. Finally this week with June marking LGBT pride month for everyone but Donald Trump who for the second year in a row has declined to mark pride month, I sat down with Sarah McBride, the national press secretary at the Human Rights Campaign and author of “Tomorrow Will Be Different” to hear how she feels it is to celebrate pride in the Trump era. Let’s take a listen.

Sarah thank you so much for coming back on the show, it’s always good to see you.

SARAH MCBRIDE: Thanks for having it, it’s wonderful to be back.

VALLAS: So people may have noticed that Trump yet again, second year in a row declined to recognize pride month this month. He instead decided to mark June as National Home Ownership month, National Ocean month, and Great Outdoors month. Those were really all important but not pride apparently. But wasn’t this the guy that said he was going to be a better friend to LGBTQ folks than Hillary Clinton when he was campaigning for president.

MCBRIDE: Yeah and he held up an upside down rainbow flag with ‘LGBTs for Trump’ when he pledged that. It wasn’t a surprise from a president who has quickly become the most explicitly anti-LGBTQ president in modern American history. This is an action that falls right in line with the dangerous policies that his administration under his leadership, under Mike Pence’s influence have implemented over the last year and a half. It obviously contributes to erasure. It says that LGBTQ people are not worthy of being celebrated as part of the diverse fabric of this country. But it again, it only also reinforces the dangerous message this administration has set since day one. Just a couple weeks after taking office Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions rescinded life-saving guidance promoting the protection of transgender students, targeting these young people for bullying and harassment during the school day. They’ve appointed anti-equality extremists to the federal bench and to administration positions, really a key part of their conservative agenda to remake America’s courts. And in a series of erratic tweets of course he attempted to reinstate a ban on transgender people serving in the military. And these just a few highlights of this record of anti-LGBTQ actions over the last year and a half. So it falls right in line with that, it’s certainly a far cry from the empty promise of being a friend to the LGBTQ community. One that frankly, didn’t fool our community in the least in 2016 as we actually increased our support for Hillary Clinton over even Barack Obama who was even an unparalleled champion of equality. We knew that Donald Trump would be anti-LGBTQ, we knew that from the start of his campaign recognizing that LGBTQ people are immigrants, we’re women, we’re people of color and we’re people with disabilities. But we also recognize that particularly after he chose Mike Pence, a vehemently anti-LGBTQ politicians as his running mate. And since that choice it’s been at ever since turning point, at every single moment of action, anti-LGBTQ actions coming from this administration.

VALLAS: And he’s also in addition to Mike Pence surrounded himself with a number of appointees who have extensive records of opposing equality and of action villianizing and targeting LGBTQ individuals. One great example that’s somewhat recent, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who has a long, long anti-LGBTQ track record, who felt the need in a confirmation hearing to be secretary of state to reiterate his opposition same sex marriage which was completely unrelated to anything that was being talked about. So not exactly unclear where this administration has actually come down when it comes to LGBTQ folks and whether they’re a friend.

MCBRIDE: It’s a who’s who of the worst opponents of LGBTQ equality in this administration, it truly is.

VALLAS: Now you used the word erasure when describing what the refusal to mark pride in June, which has been the custom for the past eight years. Also was a decision that President George W. Bush decided he was going to make, he also didn’t mark pride in June but it has become something that is a tradition nationally. I want to talk to you a little bit about the consequences of erasure and how that feels and what that leads to.

MCBRIDE: I think what is true for me as an out transgender person, what’s true for so many of us who are LGBTQ is that as we grow up and we recognize that there is something about ourselves that society disapproves of or holds a prejudice towards, we begin to wonder whether the heart of this country is big enough to love people like us. And when we had a champion in the White House like Barack Obama we could feel the ground shifting beneath our feet. We could see in the actions both symbolic and substantive that our understanding of ‘we the people’ was slowly but significantly expanding to include more and more Americans too long forgotten and unseen including LGBTQ people. And I think one of the most powerful moments of my six years as an advocate was not just the day that the marriage equality decision came down but the night that so many of us in Washington DC went and saw the White House, the symbol of this democracy lit up like a rainbow. And it sends a powerful message that we belong, that we are welcomed, that we are celebrated, that our lives matter and when a president or a leader takes the step of ignoring our lives, of erasing us from historic or traditional celebrations of the diversity of this country, it sends a dangerous message not just to LGBTQ people but also to those who wish to bully or discriminate against us. It sends a message that we aren’t a part of the America that our president believes in and it says that our lives are worth less.

VALLAS: People may be familiar with pride as a parade, maybe they partook in the last couple of weeks, I know I did, going out to bars, hanging out with friends, going to brunches, these are a lot of different ways that people mark pride, I’m describing some of the things I was part of in DC and full disclosure with a lot of my LGBTQ friends including several that you know, you can guess who I’m talking about.

MCBRIDE: I saw the Facebook pics, it looks so much fun.

VALLAS: Right, this is the thing with social media, you know exactly who I was hanging out with. you know where I was, when I was and you know what I was wearing. But people may not be familiar with the origins of pride and it actually has its origins in a pretty dark time.

MCBRIDE: Yeah well pride really has its origins in the same place that the LGBTQ movement has its origins, which was a riot against police violence at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. As so many people are aware, at a time when talking about erasure, when LGBTQ lies were so stigmatized and LGBTQ people were so discriminated against, that our lives and our identities and our activities had to go underground. And LGBTQ, particularly gay nightclubs were the place where LGBTQ people in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s in particular meant not just to find joy and one another, but to organize for our civil rights. And it was in response to a raid, an anti-LGBTQ raid on the Stonewall Inn that a riot ensued. And that riot, which I think so often we forget in the modern movement and in our discourse around the movement today. That riot from the flames of fire at the Stonewall Inn, a movement was born. Pride was announced and this month of celebration every year and this movement that has helped transform this country was born.

VALLAS: Do you like the way that the direction pride has headed in in terms of it becoming a celebration, something where some people do a lot of day drinking and hanging out in the streets and it’s very positive or do you feel like something has been lost in the transition from that difficult and incredibly violent set of origins to what it’s become and how it’s become a little more mainstream.

MCBRIDE: I think that when you have to navigate a world that’s structured in many ways against your success and your happiness, that joy can be a revolutionary act. And so I think in many ways I think it’s fantastic that we’ve gotten to a place where pride is a celebrating of our lives, it’s a celebration of our progress. But what we must never lose is that at the center of pride from the state has been the theme of resistance. Resistance in the face of hate and bigotry and in many ways I think after the 2016 election my hope is that people who have maybe forgotten that history and the degree from which we’ve strayed away from that origin that we will return to our roots. And that pride yes will be a celebration, yes will be a time for joy as I believe we all deserve that joy and that happiness and those opportunities to find, to relax and take care of ourselves. But my hope is that last year, this year and in the years moving forward we will return to that theme of resistance and not just celebrate our lives but rededicate ourselves to the unfinished work of our community and of our movement.

VALLAS: What is it like marking pride in the era of Trump and when someone in the White House is participating in erasure of your community?

MCBRIDE: Well I think it become even more important to very publically declare that we are here and we’re here to stay. That we continue to be proud of who we are and I think more than anything else on that point of pride and joy and celebration, there is a young LGBTQ kid in Kansas or in South Dakota or in South Carolina who is watching the news, who sees what this administration and maybe their state government is doing around LGBTQ equality and rolling back and attacking their rights. And in being able to see that there are so many people, not just LGBTQ people but allies who are participating in these prides, who are very clearly standing up and saying that LGBTQ people deserve to be affirmed, respected and celebrated, I think that gives a little bit of comfort to that young person who may be feeling alone and who may be wondering like I did as a young kid whether the heart of this country is big enough to love them too.

VALLAS: There’s been a lot of conversation and certainly not nearly enough but I’ve been heartened by a number of people, people I work with, people who are leaders in the progressive movement, a range of different types of voices, openly talking about what it takes to take care of ourselves in a time that is almost as though, and maybe not even almost, it is as though we are experiencing trauma on an ongoing basis. This is particularly the case for immigrant communities, this particularly the case for communities of color, this is particularly the case for people with disabilities, pre-existing conditions, this is particularly the case for LGBTQ folks. What are you doing to take care of yourself right now?

MCBRIDE: That’s a great question and I think I’m one of the many advocates and activists who talks about the importance of self care while ignoring oneself.

VALLAS: You’re in good company so feel free to be honest.

MCBRIDE: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty common theme. For me, I love to travel, I just got back from a trip with some friends actually overseas which was incredibly rejuvenating ad incredibly helpful for me and I think I’ve never come back from a trip so rejuvenated and ready to fight and having the energy to fight.

VALLAS: The Facebook photos were also great.

MCBRIDE: And the Instagram story if you haven’t checked it out is worth checking out. But I think it’s so important for all of us to recognize we can’t help other people, we can’t support other people if we aren’t taking care of ourselves. And as we turn on the television every day, for many of us we work in this field and we are bombarded with these message of hate and of bigotry and of regression, it is so important to take care of oneself. And like I said, joy can be a revolutionary act and that is a truth in pride and it is a truth everyday particularly in this political moment in our country.

VALLAS: There might be some people listening who are thinking to themselves, what is there for this movement to continue to accomplish? Didn’t we already get marriage equality? If folks can already get married, wasn’t that sort of the apex of what LGBTQ folks have been fighting for? That’s obviously not the case, there’s a lot more that still needs to be achieved and there are still ongoing threats on a daily basis not just from the federal government but from states which I also want to talk about with you. What do you say to folks who wonder if maybe this isn’t the top of the list or shouldn’t be for them because didn’t we already do this stuff?

MCBRIDE: Well it might be at the top of their list but it’s also certainly at the top of the list of the Trump-Pence administration. The areas of progress that they want to roll back. And at the end of the day, marriage equality was not the end of the road and I think no one in our movement ever presented it as such. Yes, same sex couples can get married in all 50 states and in the District of Columbia and every U.S. territory and that’s fantastic and historic progress that should be celebrated. But the reality remains that while same sex couples can get married across this country that LGBTQ people writ large still lack clear protections from discrimination a majority of states and at the federal level. We know that hate and bigotry remains far too common. We just did a survey of LGBTQ youth that found alarming rates of anxiety, of discrimination, of sexual assault and harassment and of bigotry and of hatred facing LGBTQ young people across this country. And of course 2017 was actually the deadliest year on record for the transgender community. At least 20 transgender people, mostly trans woman of color were killed and that’s part of a trend of increasing hate based violence against the LGBTQ community and other marginalized communities in this country. And frankly some of our biggest battles remain ahead of us. Marriage equality was a massive step forward but it truly was only a step in this fight for LGBTQ equality and frankly I think passage of the Equality Act, which is a comprehensive LGBTQ non-discrimination bill which would fill the current hole in our nation’s non-discrimination laws where LGBTQ people are not included would be our biggest step forward yet and again, it’s our biggest fight that remains ahead of us. We also are experiencing as you mentioned an unprecedented over the last several years number of anti-LGBTQ bills at the state level and so if it’s not at the top of your list know that it’s at the top of a lot of anti-equality hateful politicians around the country.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Sarah McBride, she is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, better known as HRC, Sarah thanks so much for coming back in to join the show and we miss you here.

MCBRIDE: Miss you thanks for having me.

VALLAS: And that does it for this week’s episode of Off Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m your host, Rebecca Vallas, the show is produced each week by Will Urquhart. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @offkiltershow and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the WeAct Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

This program aired on June 21st, 2018