Hierarchy of Humanity

Matt Cortland on the COVID-19 response, the science of social distancing, and how to ensure people with disabilities aren’t left behind in the response — PLUS: Tom Jawetz and Emily Galvin-Almanza on the steps leaders need to take to reach the nation’s 5,000 prisons, jails, and immigrant detention facilities. Subscribe to Off-Kilter on iTunes.

All over the country and in every aspect of life, policymakers, institutions, and individuals are taking dramatic steps to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic in an unprecedented effort to save lives. Schools are closing, restaurants and bars are shuttering or limiting their capacity and hours of operation, businesses are moving to telework whenever possible, and public health officials are encouraging people to remain at home and practice social distancing in the months ahead.

On Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance recommending that for the next eight weeks, large gatherings of more than 50 people should be postponed. Less than 24 hours later, President Donald Trump recommended that people avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.

It is well past the time when things can remain business as usual. And that goes for every aspect of government, including the responsibility to enforce the law and to operate detention facilities housing large numbers of people.

So write Tom Jawetz and Ed Chung, who lead the immigration and criminal justice reform programs at the Center for American Progress, in a recent joint paper lifting up the need to ensure people behind bars in jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities are not left behind in the U.S. response to COVID-19. This week for Off-Kilter, we pick up where we left off last week, with a look at some of the critical steps being taken — and those which still need to be taken — to reach the people in the nation’s 5,000 prisons, jails, and immigrant detention facilities, with Tom Jawetz, vice and Emily Galvin-Almanza, executive director of Partners for Justice and senior legal counsel at the Justice Collaborative.

But first, for an update on where things stand with the COVID19 outbreak and response, Rebecca sat down (virtually) with friend of the show Matt Cortland, a lawyer and policy analyst who’s been organizing much of the disability community’s COVID19 policy response to ensure people with disabilities and underlying health conditions are similarly not left behind. They dig into the science behind social distancing, the measures needed to ensure people with disabilities can protect their health amid the pandemic, why the Trump admin’s botched COVID-19 response means medical professionals are putting their lives at risk fighting the outbreak without the masks and other protective equipment they need to stay safe, and more.

This week’s guests:

• Matt Cortland, lawyer and policy analyst (@mattbc)
• Emily Galvin-Almanza, executive director, Partners for Justice, and senior legal counsel, Justice Collaborative (@GalvinAlmanza)
• Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy, Center for American Progress (@tomjawetz)

For more on this week’s topics:

• **One important update after we taped: Trump’s USDA is now appealing the judge’s order blocking him from taking SNAP away from 700,000 people amid a pandemic (read more in the AP).
• For more on what’s in the Families First Act, the second-installment Coronavirus response that became law this week, check out these explainers from NPR and the Washington Post — and for more on the policy response we still need to see, our friends at the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have loads of resources and policy analysis.
• Here’s the social distancing “game” Matt mentioned: www.socialdistancinggame.com (and go ahead and follow him on Twitter)
• Read Tom Jawetz and Ed Chung’s joint paper on the need to ensure people behind bars in jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities are not left behind in the U.S. response to COVID-19 — and check out the TJC website on covid-19 response, which has a ton of resources, backgrounders, and policy recommendations.
• Watch this clip from Chris Hayes on Rikers — and dig into these horrifying tweet threads from Rikers doctors Ross Macdonald, Chief Physician of Rikers, and Rachael Bedard, who heads up geriatrics.
• And here’s the polling Emily mentioned on the widespread bipartisan support for letting people out of prisons and jails amid COVID-19.

This week’s transcript:

♪ I work and get paid like minimum wage

sights to hit the class by the end of the day

hot from downtown into the hood where I stay

the only place I can afford ’cause my block ain’t saved

I spend most of my time working…. ♪

REBECCA VALLAS (HOST): Welcome to Off-Kilter, powered by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. I’m Rebecca Vallas.

“All over the country and in every aspect of life, policymakers, institutions, and individuals are taking dramatic steps to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic in an unprecedented effort to save lives. Schools are closing, restaurants and bars are shuttering or limiting their capacity and hours of operation, businesses are moving to telework wherever possible, and public health officials are encouraging people to remain at home and practice social distancing, a new buzzword we’ve all come to know and love, in the months ahead.

On Sunday of this past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance recommending that for the next eight weeks, large gatherings of more than 50 people should be postponed. Shortly thereafter, President Donald Trump recommended people avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.

It is well past the time when things can remain business as usual, and that goes for every aspect of government, including the responsibility to enforce the law and to operate detention facilities housing large numbers of people.” So write two of my colleagues, Tom Jawetz and Ed Chung, who lead the immigration and criminal justice reform programs at the Center for American Progress, in a recent joint paper, lifting up the need to ensure that people behind bars in jails, prisons, and immigration detention facilities are not left behind in the US response to COVID-19.

So, to pick up where Off-Kilter left off last week, next, we’re going to take a look at some of the critical steps being taken, and those which still need to be taken, to reach the people in the nation’s 5,000 prisons, jails, and immigrant detention facilities.

But first, for an update on where things stand with the COVID-19 outbreak and response and a look at the steps that disability leaders are taking to ensure people with disabilities and underlying health conditions are similarly not left behind, I sat down virtually, of course, with my good friend and a friend of the show, Matt Cortland. He’s a lawyer and policy analyst who’s been organizing a lot of the disability community’s COVID-19 policy response. Matt, thanks so much for taking the time to come back on the show, especially when things are so absolutely mayhem right now.

MATT CORTLAND: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

VALLAS: Well, so, you have been following the pandemic and the policy response and probably more closely than most humans at this point in time and probably more closely than you wish were actually necessary. Give us a little bit of a general update on where things stand right now, kind of what we know. Not asking you to do the longest ever overview, given that we all recognize that everything is extremely fluid right now. But we’re talking on Thursday. What do we know as of right now?

CORTLAND: The key for me, for what you just said is where things stand right now. And in some ways, they stand about three months behind where they should be. Yesterday, Donald Trump in a press conference said that he was going to use the Defense Production Act, which is a law that came out of World War II that allows the federal government to really use the might of American manufacturing capacity to rise to existential threats like the coronavirus is to us right now. In World War II, obviously, it was production of things like tanks. Now, frontline healthcare workers don’t have the PPE (or personal protective equipment) they need in order to safely care for patients: Things like masks, gowns, face shields. Donald Trump could ramp up production of that using the Defense Production Act. But after his announcement at the press conference yesterday that he was going to use the Defense Production Act, he issued a tweet that said, “I only signed the Defense Production Act to combat [COVID-19] should we need to invoke it in a worst case scenario in the future.” Hopefully there will be no need, but we are all in this,” and then it’s in caps, “TOGETHER!”

Yesterday, I felt a great deal like Charlie Brown as Lucy just pulled the football away from me for the 30 millionth time. Right now, we are behind the curve. Our frontline healthcare workers are doing heroic work, exposing themselves to this virus without the PPE they need, and they’re asking for us to help them. We also need to massively ramp up production of mechanical ventilators. That’s the equipment that breathes for people, keeps them alive when their lungs are too damaged from the virus to be able to breathe on their own. And that sort of thing, that that can’t happen. That sort of production needs use of ramp up time. So, that’s the latest big news for me, because that’s what has the potential to save the most lives.

Around the world, South Korea seems to have gotten, really gotten some sort of containment. They have bent the curve. So, instead of more new cases increasing exponentially, their interventions have really turned the tide, and they’re seeing less transmission and really should be a model for what we’re doing here in terms of testing. We still don’t have testing. That’s the other big headline for me. The United States, under Donald Trump’s administration, has utterly failed to roll out the sort of widespread testing that lets people know whether or not they have the coronavirus. And if so, they know that they need to stay away from other people, to self-isolate. We don’t have that right now. And so, we are forced to use these, just interventions of basically locking down entire geographic areas like the shelter in place order in the Bay. And this morning, there’s some discussion about Portland sheltering in place in the near future, Portland, Oregon. And frankly, I expect that to continue in other places in the United States as other hot spots emerge. It’s not that there aren’t hot spots. It’s just we don’t have the testing, so we don’t know about it until it gets to really a crisis point. Those are the big headlines today for me.

VALLAS: Well, and with that as sort of some of the big unfinished business, the big-ticket items that you and others who have public health backgrounds have really been screaming from the rooftops, another big message, obviously — and very much related to some of those more forcible measures being taken in places like the Bay Area in the form of lockdowns — is, of course, the very strong call from the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, to engage in social distancing. So, this is the second week in a row of Off-Kilter taping all remotely. I’m in one place. You’re in another place. Will, our fabulous producer, is in another place. Will, say hi…. All right. Will’s not saying hi.

WILL URQUART: Hi. I had to unmute myself for that. This is like conference call style here. [laughs]

VALLAS: And that’s the lengths we are going through for Off-Kilter because we don’t want to be bringing people into a studio. We don’t want to be engaging in unnecessary levels of contact right now. So, we are doing the social distancing form of Off-Kilter, all kind of recording in our separate places on Skype.

But Matt, you have been one of the people for probably even longer than most people were taking the idea of social distancing seriously, really calling out the urgent need for us to be maximizing social distancing to whatever extent people can. Talk a little bit about why that’s so important and why the kind of response of “Eh, you know, I don’t think I’m personally all that much at risk. So, really, this doesn’t apply to me. I’m still probably good to go out to restaurants and bars and malls and whatnot. You know, why should I take social distancing seriously if I’m some young, healthy adult who doesn’t feel like this is going to be all that much worse than a cold or the flu?” How do you respond when you hear that? And what is the importance of social distancing here?

CORTLAND: So, first, you’re right. We are all in very different places. I want to commend you for not bringing people into a tiny little studio where transmission, if anyone has the coronavirus, is very likely to occur. I also want to commend the CAP, Center for American Progress, one of the first organizations in the Beltway to send everybody home and say, actually, we’re all going to work from home. This is not a time to be co-working with COVID. We’ve seen some employers insist on making employees come in to physical spaces and be close to one another. And what that allows really, is for the transmission of the coronavirus from someone who is infected to someone who isn’t affected. That seems very simple, very basic, but it’s an incredibly powerful idea.

This is a virus that is transmitted mostly via droplets, which means it’s not like we’re in some apocalyptic — wait for it — horror show in which the virus is airborne. Now, I would argue that some of what we’re seeing right now, especially from our leaders failing to lead, has certain je ne sais quoi of an apocalyptic movie. But the virus is not airborne, in that it’s not like we’re watching some horror flick. It’s droplet transmission, and we know what to do about that. We stay six, at least six feet away from each other. That’s what really, the core of social distancing is about. It is maintaining enough space so that the virus isn’t easily transmitted. And what does that do for us? Well, the sooner we all begin implementing social distancing, the more lives we save. Just because of the epidemiology of infectious disease, you get these sort of exponential curves. So, it looks like a hockey stick once it really starts going. The earlier we sort of try to bend that curve down, the more successful we’ll be, the more lives we’ll save.

SocialDistanceGame.com is a project I consulted on, led by fabulous colleagues Amy and Thomas, who have built a simulator that will show you how many lives, you know, model for you, how many lives social distancing implemented today will save versus social distancing implemented a week from now. How many additional lives can we save? So, that’s in the case in which there’s no vaccine, and we don’t have a vaccine yet. And in the case in which there’s no targeted therapy, by which I mean an anti-viral that really works on this disease that we know about. In the case in which we don’t have either of those yet, our strongest, our most powerful intervention really is this social distancing stuff that everyone is talking about.

Now, you have seen, I am sure, the Tik Tok that I have seen of the shirtless bro on the beach talking about how he’s going to party. He is young and healthy. And what we’re seeing out of the latest data, including out of CDC yesterday, is that up to one fifth of infected people from 20, ages 20 to 44 have been hospitalized, and 2–4 percent of those required treatment in an ICU. So, it’s actually not the case that the disease isn’t a big deal for younger people. It’s also worth noting that with this particular virus, what people are calling “mild to moderate disease,” moderate includes pneumonia here. This is such a threat to humanity that severe disease is really the sort of thing where we’re talking about you needing really, really intense clinical intervention in order to be able to survive. And we’re actually calling pneumonia, which in other circumstances would be considered severe, we’re calling that moderate disease. And so, up to one fifth of people 20 to 44 that’ve been infected have been hospitalized.

It’s also worth noting that there was some early hope and some data that this wouldn’t affect children. A study that was published in Pediatrics within the last week shows that actually, this is a disease that affects children: children under 1 years of age the most, children over 15 the least. And there’s sort of this spread in between. But children can carry this disease, and it can make children, especially very young children, really quite sick. So, the early headlines were, of course, true that this disease is a large, large threat to people who are older, especially over 80. But the rest of us aren’t getting away scot free. This is a genuine public health emergency for everyone.

VALLAS: And wrapped up in that, of course, is that hopefully your words resonate with people who are thinking purely about their own potential health status. But of course, the risk of becoming someone who carries the virus and then actually communicating it to another person who then themselves is high risk or higher risk than the people you’re describing or who then carries it to another person who is, is another reason why one needs to be thinking, in this kind of a moment, not just about oneself and one’s own chances, but of course, about that kind of social responsibility. And people with disabilities and people with chronic illnesses, the population you fight for every single day as a policy analyst, as a lawyer, those are some of the folks who are at greatest risk. And they’re some of the people that you’re most worried about when all of this starts to reach the levels that you’re worried it might reach.

CORTLAND: That’s absolutely true. There’s this, I think, popular perception that emerged in the lack of clear and decisive leadership from our leaders who are supposed to lead on these issues, there is this notion that people with what are euphemistically being called “underlying conditions,” this was only a disease that affected the elderly and those with underlying conditions. And I think there was a real lack of clarity about what underlying conditions means. It can mean diabetes. It can mean heart disease. Not just COPD, not just cancer, which was some of the early things that media were flagging. So, when we say “underlying conditions,” we’re talking about conditions that are incredibly prevalent in America. Diabetes, cardiovascular disease: these are things that are just really common here, high prevalence, if I can use some public health jargon. And so, you don’t know, when you’re out in the world, if the people that you are interacting with are in one of those categories that are at higher risk. You don’t know whether or not someone is taking an immune suppressant to treat an inflammatory bowel disease. You don’t know whether or not someone is diabetic. You don’t know whether or not someone has cardiovascular disease or COPD or asthma. You don’t know just by looking at someone whether or not they have one of these underlying conditions, these chronic illnesses, these disabilities that place someone in a higher-risk category for really serious complications from COVID-19.

And so, you’re absolutely right. It isn’t just pure, naked self-interest, although we always appeal to that, too. It’s also about social responsibility. I would argue right now, there is a duty to socially distance to the maximum extent possible. And I fully realize that it’s not always possible for people to socially distance. For example, our healthcare workers, they can’t socially distance from people with COVID-19. That’s why we need to give them PPE, so that they are protected. It’s also the case that we need our leadership in Congress right now to adopt aggressive, sweeping reforms to enable people who would otherwise not be able to socially distance to socially distance. And, you know, we’ve seen a little bit of progress. We haven’t seen nearly enough.

VALLAS: And that’s a great segues into, I think, the next chunk of this conversation, right, which is — and I think you articulated it perfectly — it’s terrific that the CDC is trumpeting loudly, here is what social distancing means. Everyone needs to be taking it seriously. People increasingly do seem to be taking it seriously, staying home. More organizations and companies sending everyone to remote. Bars, restaurants, shutting down. Whole cities, in some cases, really going into lockdown mode. And more and more of that really kind of on the way with pretty much every news update, it seems that I see on TV or hear on NPR. But in the course of that, there are these people — many, many, many people in many walks of life — who aren’t in a position to follow the guidance around social distancing because it isn’t quite that simple for them, or their employer isn’t making that decision. Or, and this really kind of goes to the heart of the heart of it, they are not in a position to put their job on the line, risk losing their job, if they go home and say, “I’m sick. I can’t be there,” because they don’t have any paid sick days. This has really, in many ways, created one of the most robust national conversations that we’ve had in, I think, any of our lifetimes around the urgency and the need and the importance of paid sick days and of paid family and medical leave, all now actually starting to get included in chunks, not perfect, but at least steps forward of sort of these down payment actions being taken by Congress and by the White House in recognition that we need to be allowing people to stay home if they are sick, if we are ever going to have a chance of flattening this curve.

Give us a little bit of an update on some of the steps that Congress and the White House have taken so far to make sure that people are able to take the appropriate social distancing measures that they need in this moment. And I want to refer our listeners to last week’s episode with Jared Bernstein to hear a little bit more about the economics of the coronavirus. Because, Matt, I know a lot of what you’re really focused on in this moment is more that public health side.

CORTLAND: I am, never have been, will never be. I am not. Well, yeah, I am not. Want to be super clear. I am not an economist. I am the opposite of an economist.

VALLAS: [laughs]

CORTLAND: I am the anti-economist. But that is right. So, the Families First coronavirus response package has become law. I believe it was signed yesterday. And that bill includes important paid sick leave provisions. But we are not done with that fight. The thing about paid sick leave is no other economic intervention directly targets those most likely to be coronavirus carriers and allows them to stay home, not infecting others. There was some debate about who should bear the fiscal responsibility of the paid sick leave. And so, I think the package that was enacted into law requires paid sick leave be, emergency paid sick leave for the pendency of the public health crisis, be given to employees of employers with no more than 500 people. Over 500 people, the sentiment, I guess, was the tax payers shouldn’t be paying for that paid time off, and those larger corporations can afford to foot the bill themselves.

I understand the argument. In this moment, I do not care who pays for paid sick leave. It is an existential threat to my community of chronically ill and disabled people. It is an existential threat to seniors in this country, to our grandmothers and grandfathers, our parents. It is an existential threat to the survival of far too many people in this country for us to be worrying about [sighs] anything other than immediately providing paid sick leave to every single person in this country. No other intervention, no other intervention I know of, is so directly targeting people who are most likely to be coronavirus carriers and gives them the freedom to stay home, not go out into their communities and infect other people, not go into their workplaces and infect other people.

And it’s important that we recognize, you know, in this work sometimes I run into a lot of people who, I get the distinct impression, have never not had enough money for food. Never not had enough money to pay the rent. It’s important that we recognize the economic realities that this system, this late-capitalist dystopian hellscape that we have found ourselves in with a diminished regulatory state to protect people, doesn’t have the slack in the system, the humanity in the system to give people the freedom to respond in the way that they might respond on their own, i.e. self-isolating, if they weren’t worried about not being able to feed their children, not being able to have a roof over their family’s head. And so, for me, it’s a massive failure just as a country that we can’t provide in a public health emergency, a pandemic, we can’t provide paid sick leave to everyone!? We’re supposed to be the United States of America, and we can’t do that? I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. I don’t care about really any of the excuses, any of the political games that are being played. People are going to die unless we do this. It’s costing lives right now.

VALLAS: And part of what’s incredibly just maddening about that sort of political football situation that we’re all watching on paid sick and some of the other remedies as well that are under debate, but particularly paid sick and paid leave, is just the continued chorus, not by all, but by so many, a nontrivial number of the traditional conservative opponents of this type of policy using the same old talking points about why they don’t want to see it take effect. And in this moment, to hear the usual suspects wringing their hands and saying, “But it will kill jobs and discourage work!,” right, when part of what it is explicitly about is actually discouraging work in this extraordinary moment, it just, it really does defy logic. And it also defies humanity and a sense of what moment we’re in, if people think that now is a time to continue the usual squabbling and to worry about losing an inch in the larger arc of things when we’re actually talking about saving lives.

So, I want to refer listeners, if they are looking to learn more about the Families First Act, which has now been signed into law. We talked a lot about it last week and what some of the early pieces of what looked to be coming together. But it does — we’ll have on our nerdy syllabus page kind of an overview summary, a set of resources — but it does include, in addition to that kind of compromised version of paid sick, an expansion of Medicaid in some key, important ways, expansions of food assistance through SNAP, unemployment insurance, and an important first step towards halting evictions and foreclosures for people in public housing and federally-backed mortgages in certain limited cases. So, more on the nerdy syllabus page for folks looking to learn more on that.

But Matt, a big part of what you have been focused on, in addition to some of the priorities that you outlined kind of up top, major failures of the Trump administration’s response to date, includes some of the types of things that other people just seem to sort of be forgetting. There’s these big-ticket items like paid sick leave, which everyone needs to be focused on and are really receiving kind of all hands on deck attention. As negotiations start for a third package of relief, lots of attention being given to emergency payments, direct emergency payments with signals from both parties coming that there is appetite to do this. And boy, is that absolutely the kind of thing we need to be seeing happen. But sort of looking below that top line of the big-ticket items that are going to get front page coverage, a lot of what you have really been focused on is the stuff below that level that is hugely, hugely important to enable people with disabilities and chronic health conditions to be able to protect themselves in this moment and to observe social distancing, rather than being perversely forced into compromising and dangerous situations if business as usual just continues in certain parts of their lives, which are sort of dictated by the federal government, if they receive certain types of public program assistance. Talk a little bit about some of that work. There was a big win this week on the Social Security front.

CORTLAND: The Social Security Administration yesterday announced that they were suspending these medical continuing disability reviews that we’ve been fighting against ramping up of the Trump administration prior to the outbreak. They said that they weren’t going to require people who are disabled, definitionally disabled, these are people receiving SSI or SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) payments. These are people who’ve been found to be disabled by the Social Security Administration. And they were going to have to, if they were chosen for one of these continuing disability reviews, which I really think about as a sort of, “are you still disabled enough audit,” they were going to have to like go places, to medical environments or to the medical records office at their hospital, maybe take up some clinician time.

The Social Security Administration also has the power to send people for what they call consultative examinations with their own doctors. They were going to force people who are disabled, many of whom have conditions that put them at increased risk for complications from COVID-19, including death. Death is really the complication when we’re talking about COVID-19 that we’re talking about. Other bad things happen. But the Social Security Administration, after receiving a letter from Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Bob Casey asking them to suspend these continuing disability reviews, actually put up on their website as part of their coronavirus response, that they are, for the duration of the public health emergency, not going to continue processing CDRs, which is a huge win for the disability community. Because, you know, it just…the…like I’m…slightly just — The hesitancy there was it shouldn’t have taken this long. So, that was a big win.

We’re also seeing some court systems talk about not having the capacity for arrestees. So, there’s a just a piece that I’m worried about, which is institutions in general; so, skilled nursing facility is keep me up at night. Because those are people who are definitionally at high risk, and what are we doing to protect them? But also, people who are incarcerated, in pretrial detention, for example, they are, as a matter of law, innocent. And we are subjecting them to inhumane conditions where the transmission of this virus, because of a lack of basic sanitation and hygiene, is an incredible threat. People who have been convicted of crimes, who are not pretrial but are incarcerated, those are human beings who have not lost the right to be treated humanely and with dignity and protected from a pandemic virus. And yet we haven’t seen the sort of aggressive steps to lower the incarcerated population so that — You know, it’s really hard to socially distance in an overcrowded jail.

We haven’t seen a response from the administration about what they’re going to do with people in immigration detention, in immigration custody. Courts are closing, but people are still being locked up, and that should tell you something. People with power — judges and attorneys — are protecting themselves, but what about the people who are vulnerable and who don’t have the power of a judge? How are we going to protect them? And so, those are the sorts of things that I really am worried about right now. And instead of the racism of Donald Trump trying to fire this up and turn this public health emergency into some sort of another moment for his racist, bigoted, broken ideology, you know, the virus ultimately isn’t going to care about that. And so, we need to take real action to protect people.

VALLAS: Well, and I’ll be honest, Matt. The thing that, to me, is the greater threat in terms of Trump’s rhetoric here is the risk of his spinning himself as the great hero and the wartime president who has pulled us, as a nation, out of the jaws of risk. And it seems very clear to me that that’s the message he is starting to develop, that he is starting to use out on what he views as his campaign trail right now. And a lot of the credit that he is taking for the work that you and others are doing on the Hill right now and with the federal government to take these important steps, the ones below the big-ticket items, the ones that are the big-ticket items, and kind of everything in between, it just, it, to me, is incredibly important that the accountability continue and that the message you’ve been carrying about the inadequacies of really key, urgent top-line pieces of this administration’s response are going to need to be part of the media narrative as we move forward and as we tell the story of what happened here.

Something I really hope doesn’t get lost in all of that is, for example, that the White House, it came out, had considered whether to suspend its food stamp cuts, its cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, for some 700,000 workers in the middle of the pandemic. And it came out that they had considered whether to suspend those cuts, which were taking effect April 1st. And then they decided, eh. You know what? Let’s move forward with them. And it actually took a federal court stepping in and blocking the administration, and also with an assist from Nancy Pelosi as part of some of those negotiations with the White House, to block those cuts from happening in the middle of a global pandemic. And these are the types of key details that need to be part of the history as it is written about this administration’s handling of this response, no matter how it turns out, because of how important it is that we not allow Trump to cast himself as some kind of hero who saved the day, given what we’ve already seen from his White House’s response.

That’s all the time we have, unfortunately, for this conversation. I know there’s a ton more that you’re working on that people should be hearing about. So, I’m going to make sure that a lot of that gets featured on our syllabus page and that Off-Kilter is amplifying the great work that you’re putting out through Twitter and other mediums as well. Matt Cortland is a lawyer and a policy analyst doing a ton of the behind the scenes work right now on the coronavirus response, with a particular focus on people with disabilities and chronic health conditions who are at special risk in a moment like this. Matt, thank you for everything that you’re doing. And I hope that a nap is part of your agenda later today.

CORTLAND: Thank you.

VALLAS: Don’t go away. More Off-Kilter after the break. I’m Rebecca Vallas. [hip hop music break]

You’re listening to Off-Kilter. I’m Rebecca Vallas. As I mentioned at the top of the show, two groups who remain at some of the greatest risk of being left behind in the COVID-19 response are people behind bars in prisons and jails and immigrants in detention facilities. So, to take a look at the state of affairs in those facilities, and the steps we urgently need our leaders to take at all levels of government, I’m thrilled to welcome my colleague, Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, and Emily Galvin-Almanza. She’s the executive director of Partners for Justice and senior legal counsel at the Justice Collaborative. Emily and Tom, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the show, especially at this incredibly chaotic moment.

EMILY GALVIN-ALMANZA: Thanks for having us.

TOM JAWETZ: Yeah, definitely.

VALLAS: So, Emily, I’m going to kick it over to you first to sort of paint a little bit of a picture about what is going on, what things are looking like for folks behind bars, in prisons and in jails. We’ve seen just a growing chorus of news stories over the past week or so, especially the past several days, shining a spotlight, finally, not just on people who are hoarding bottled water and bread and hand sanitizer and tips for social distancing — seems like there’s a whole kind of category of news now that’s just that — but the people who are behind bars unable to practice social distancing. And in many cases, not allowed to even possess the hand sanitizer that so many people are hoarding by the bottle. What does the picture look like in prisons and jails? Your colleagues at Partners for Justice have been among those who are working on the frontlines in the response.

GALVIN-ALMANZA: It’s looking really grim. To be honest, it’s not just hand sanitizer that’s restricted. Many people who are living inside locked facilities, inside conditions where they may be locked in a cell with two or three or more people, don’t even have access to soap. We were hearing reports out of Rikers of people going into the sink area where there’s usually one bar of soap shared by 30 or 40 people on each sink, and someone has the soap. So, they don’t even have access to soap and water: the most basic recommendation of the CDC and the World Health Organization and everybody else telling people how to be safe from COVID-19. So, what we’re seeing on a large scale are people who are in custody, terrified, unable to protect themselves, and unable to avoid being subjected to other people in close quarters. This includes both correctional professionals and other people who are locked inside these facilities.

So, basically, it’s a non-consensual [nervous laugh] close quarters with no opportunity to access proper sanitation. Folks who we, as a society, have locked away and promised to keep safe while we do so are being put at extremely heightened risk. And what’s more, creating circumstances where transmission to the community is not only likely, but certain. After all, when it comes to prisons and jails, these are not places where people go and never come back. These are places where people go to work every day and come home every day, and people visit. And people need to visit, because in order to psychologically survive detention of this kind, one must have some kind of access to the outside world. So, basically, the conditions are as bad as they possibly can be under these circumstances. And if things don’t change urgently, we’re going to see massive, massive loss of life in these facilities.

VALLAS: Now, one of the sort of through lines of the coronavirus response has clearly been, in the absence of rapid enough and significant enough leadership and action at the federal level, states and localities stepping up in great numbers to sort of do what they can and figure out how they can learn from each other on sort of a peer-to-peer basis in trying to respond, at least for their own communities. There has been an immense level of organizing and pushing going on to pressure state and local action. What are we seeing at the state and local level? What types of steps are states and localities taking? And are they enough? Are we seeing the leadership that we need at any level of government right now?

GALVIN-ALMANZA: That’s a great question. The short answer is no, [laughs] we’re not seeing enough. But I’m happy to walk through sort of what we are seeing. One thing I can point out is that we’re seeing great support from actual people in the community. The Justice Collaborative is going to be bringing out some polling in a report tomorrow detailing the level of support that likely voters show for letting out people who are at risk of dying of COVID-19. We see almost 60 percent support of likely voters who designate themselves as very conservative, a demographic that does not usually support releasing people from prison in large scale, supporting getting people out before they are put at risk. This includes elderly people, people with pre-existing conditions, people who are within six months of completing their sentence anyway and are getting out anyway. Voters across the ideological spectrum support letting people out. So, you would think, when there’s strong polling of this kind, and there’s universal agreement from experts in the field that this is necessary and urgent.

And I should point out, Ross MacDonald, who’s the chief physician of Rikers Island, tweeted yesterday about the urgency of social distancing and reducing population numbers and reducing crowding, so that we can let people have a chance of survival. He described Rikers as a cruise ship recklessly boarding more passengers each day. So, you have agreement from experts, you have support in the community, you have policy makers pushing leadership, executive leadership, to use emergency power to do a couple of really simple things. One is release elderly people and people who have pre-existing conditions that put them at heightened risk of death from COVID-19. The next is to release people who are getting out anyway, people who are within a few months of ending their sentence and will be returning to the community no matter what. There’s no reason to put them at risk. Third is people who are only locked up on technical violations of probation or parole, low-level offenses, things that make them not in any way a risk to the community should they be released. If we release those three categories of people today, that’s tens of thousands of people. And every person we get out creates more space for people who do remain inside to be able to distance themselves and use soap and water and access facilities and medical care. So, these changes are not controversial. These policies are not, they’re not pie in the sky. They’re actually very, very reasonable and broadly-supported.

Unfortunately, what we’re seeing in local jurisdictions is a critical failure of leadership to act quickly on this. In many places, public defenders are being asked to bring petitions to release each client one at a time. So, go through their entire client roster, figure out who has what pre-existing conditions, and file a petition or a writ or some other kind of individualized motion. I was talking to a defender in New York today who’s having to file a writ in person when we’re all being told to stay home and work from home. So, he’s writing writ after writ after writ to go file, on paper, in person at the clerk’s office, trying to get a court date where people can be heard. And that kind of a procedure is just not on the timescale that we need it to be if we’re going to make a difference. Other jurisdictions have done smarter things. Some sheriffs have been using their executive power to simply designate elderly and vulnerable people for release. California’s been a great leader in that. I think Alameda County released, or designated, about 250 people for release today. So, the jurisdictions that are moving faster and smarter are going to see less loss of life. Places like New York, absolute disaster.

VALLAS: And I’d like to send our listeners to a fantastic resource that The Appeal put out. The Appeal, of course, a related partnership with the Justice Collaborative. And that’s a regularly updated list of the kinds of measures that you’re describing that state and local governments are taking. It’s called Spotlight on State and Local Governments. We’ve got it on our nerdy syllabus page so that folks can refer to that as it continues to expand, as we see additional action.

Tom, I want to bring you in next. And we’re going to come back to the picture for people in prisons and jails. But there has been significantly less attention paid in the mainstream media to the picture for people in immigrant detention facilities. You’ve been calling on federal immigration officials to take measures, many of which actually are somewhat similar to what Emily was just describing on the criminal justice front. Tell us what’s going on in these detention facilities. What is the picture there?

JAWETZ: Sure, thanks so much. Yeah, I mean, I want to start off by just saying that there are a lot of similarities between the populations and the circumstances that Emily and I are both discussing. For starters, in both of these cases, the government has deprived people of their liberty. It is taking them into custody. And in doing so, under the US Constitution, it has taken upon itself an affirmative obligation to ensure that it’s providing for their care, right? And so, if you think about the anxiety people all around the country are feeling about the botched response to the coronavirus outbreak and the fact that no one really knows how they can get tested, whether they can go out to a doctor’s office if they’re sick, if they’re going to expose themselves to more danger by going to the urgent care or the emergency room if they’ve got concerns. Think about what it looks like when you’re in a detention facility where you don’t have the freedom to even have that choice, right? You can’t even contemplate whether you can get yourself to an emergency room or go see a doctor. You might have to follow sick call requests that may or may not actually get responded to within 24 to 72 hours. And so, these are individuals, whether they’re civil immigration detainees or people who are pre-trial criminal, or people who are post-conviction prisoners who really don’t have agency when it comes to actually protecting their own lives.

In many these facilities, one of the responses that the jailers basically did upfront, and this is responsive to one of Emily’s points, is to just 100 percent cut off visitation right? And so, basically, their theory was, well, we want to protect these individuals from having the virus enter these facilities. And so, one way to do that is to just cut them off in the public. Again, you’re talking about a population that already has such limited access to the outside world that having visitors, whether it’s family or many cases, contact visitation with attorney-client attorneys, you know, really is their only connection to the outside world. You know, in order to make phone calls, those phone calls can be exorbitantly expensive. And the response from the facility has been to just shut them off from the rest of the world. So, those are commonalities between these two populations.

The other thing, frankly, is there are lots and lots of civil immigration detainees who are in federal custody, legally speaking, but are actually being held in local jails all around the country. And so, there are sheriffs who side by side, they’ve got individuals in their jails who are there in criminal custody, there who are for the Bureau of Prisons being held by the US Marshal Services, federal pre-trial prisoners, and then people who are there for Immigration and Customs Enforcement on contracts. And so, the facilities themselves are often the exact same facilities, but not always. DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, does run a series of its own facilities. In many cases, they contract those out to for-profit prison providers. And by definition, all individuals who are in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody are civil detainees. Not a single one of them has been charged with a criminal offense. They were there solely because the government is putting them through the process of trying to determine if they’re going to be allowed into the country. That’s the case with thousands of people who’ve requested asylum, who are only in custody right now because the government actually has found that they have established a credible fear that they would be persecuted if they return to their own country, or in many cases, the government’s trying to decide of it wants to eject them from the country, deport them from the country. So, that’s basically we are right now. That’s who this population is. And they’re facing very many similar fears and constraints as people who are in criminal custody.

VALLAS: And obviously, Tom, it’s nothing new to have a national debate around the, and really crisis in the conditions that people detained in these facilities are facing. In many ways, it seems that the pandemic is sort of exacerbating those underlying, and in many cases, incredibly sort of dehumanizing and just terrible conditions that people face in these facilities. You have really been directing your fire, so to speak, in terms of the policy response that you urgently think needs to happen in this moment at a couple of key federal agencies that are obviously very involved with the detention of asylees, of refugees, of immigrants under the circumstances you’re describing and others. And those, of course, include the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, as well as ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. There’s Customs and Border Protection as well, CBP. People will be familiar with these acronyms because of outrage over the, throughout the course of the Trump administration, around keeping people in cages, separating families at the border. What is it that you are looking for these agencies to do in this moment? What should an adequate federal response look like right now?

JAWETZ: Yeah. So, there are three main asks that we have for the government that we’ve looked it up in this column. The first is the Department of Homeland Security at the top needs to issue a formal public statement prohibiting certain ICE or Customs and Border Protection immigration enforcement actions. So, what that means basically, is DHS itself has to issue a statement saying that its highest priorities at this time are promoting lifesaving and life-sustaining activities, that life and safety and health are their top priorities for the entire department. And they have to make it clear that they’re not going to be conducting immigration enforcement actions at or near hospitals, healthcare facilities, doctors’ offices, any testing sites, or any quarantine sites.

One of the things we’ve seen right now is that DHS has been totally reluctant to do this. They haven’t done this thus far. Immigration and Customs Enforcement first, basically was just sort of, on a one-off basis, making similar statements to the press when they got inquiries. The spokesperson for DHS kind of mocked a bunch of members of Congress who requested this and issued a tweet basically saying, you know, stop fearmongering about this issue. Just yesterday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement last night put out a statement in which they promised to change some of their enforcement processes. And they did make this affirmation about life saving, life-sustaining activities. But a top official at DHS, just a couple of hours ago, began to walk that back, saying nah, it’s business as usual.

The reason why it’s important for DHS to do this is twofold. One, it’s not enough to cover just ICE enforcement. It’s got to cover Customs and Border Protection enforcement also. There are, all along the US-Mexico border in particular, these checkpoints that are inside the United States. They’re within 100 miles of the US border, and they’re inside the United States that Border Patrol mans. And in many cases, they actually effectively cut off access for immigrant families, undocumented immigrants, parents of US citizen children who are themselves undocumented from accessing necessary medical care on the other side of the checkpoint. And we do not want any of those checkpoints to be stopping individuals from accessing the necessary medical care at this moment. So, the statement has to apply to CBP and their enforcement actions.

Second of all, this is a standard, standard thing that DHS does repeatedly whenever they’re dealing with an acute public health crisis like we’re in right now. During the Flint water crisis, for instance, DHS issued a public statement making very clear they wouldn’t be conducting any enforcement at clean water distribution sites. The Trump administration, on nine separate occasions so far, has issued statements affirming that it’s going to suspend immigration enforcement actions during natural disasters. It’s literally inconceivable to me why the Department of Homeland Security has not issued a clear public statement thus far on this issue. That’s the first thing.

The second things they need to do is meaningfully reduce the arrests that they’re making all throughout the country and focus exclusively on significant public safety threats, right? I think back actually to when I first started practicing as a lawyer over 15 years ago, the first thing I worked on when I was back at the ACLU was what happened at the New Orleans jail before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. And there were individuals who, a day or two before Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans, who were being arrested for public intoxication on Bourbon Street and found themselves in the jail, which refused to evacuate when the storm hit. They spent three days in locked cells, no water and no medication, no food, total chaos, and eventually were scattered all throughout the state for six, eight months, being held in medium- and maximum-security prisons because they didn’t have any records on them. The fact that New Orleans 15 years ago didn’t change its policing practices in advance of the storm, let alone the fact that they had no evacuation plan, is a mistake that we’re repeating today. Why are Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on the streets picking up parents going to the grocery store or picking their kids up from school when placing those individuals into our facilities is only going to create a clear and present danger to their lives and to community spread and public health generally? So, that’s got to stop.

And the last thing I’ll say is it makes no sense to just stop your enforcement actions on the street right now, if you’re not also looking at your detained population, about 38,000 people, and determining how many of them you can release immediately, right? The majority of individuals in immigration custody have never been convicted of any offense at all. There are thousands of individuals who are asylum seekers who pose no threat to public safety whatsoever, for sure. There are individuals who are elderly. There are individuals who are pregnant. There are individuals who have heart, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, who are particularly vulnerable to serious health consequences if they get the novel coronavirus infection. They need to get these folks out of these facilities now.

VALLAS: So, with that sort of bleak picture as what is happening and the very human consequences of the lack of leadership that we’re seeing at every level of government, particularly on the immigration side, but also way as Emily was outlining, on the criminal justice front, Emily, is there a federal response that we need to see on the criminal justice front as well?

GALVIN-ALMANZA: One of the things that’s most complicated about all criminal justice policy issues is that the US Constitution specifically reserves criminal justice matters to the states. So, changes in Bureau of Prisons policy, changes by DOJ in the rate of their prosecutions and the nature of what they’re prosecuting, obviously, there’s an opportunity for leadership by the federal system. But I think what we need more than anything is actually a lot of what we’ve just been talking about: reducing policing for minor offenses, not making unnecessary arrests. I remember reading a thread by Scott Hechinger at Brooklyn Defenders a few days ago about how packed arraignments were just a few days ago for low-level things! We’re talking trespassings. We’re talking driving on a suspended license. We’re talking people who really didn’t do anything terribly wrong being forced to go through central booking and be in close contact with other folks. Same thing happening in L.A. that was resisting closing its traffic summons court for a long time. So, a lot of this the federal government doesn’t have the power.

Perhaps there are creative strategies using emergency powers to order states to cease certain low-level arrests. That’s a bit untested at this point. And I think when we’re talking about these solutions, what we’re talking about is very much dependent on it happening fast. So, yes, if the president wanted to come out tomorrow and use emergency powers to order police to stop make trespassing arrests, [laughs] we could see what would happen in the states. But I think rather than waiting for a federal response to trickle down, what we really need is bold state action yesterday.

VALLAS: And question to you both, and this was very much in my mind as Emily, I was hearing you describe that just incredibly eye-opening polling that you shared just a few minutes ago, a lot of folks are desperately — I know I’m among them — looking for silver linings in this moment, right? On the one hand, I know from where I sit, and a lot of other folks who do economic justice work have had been making similar points, it’s a hell of a moment, from a policy standpoint, to be seeing the level of robust debate and front-page attention paid to policies like paid sick days and paid family and medical leave and even direct emergency payments, which might be a foot in the door to be talking about some kind of assured income. So many conversations all of a sudden happening in an actual bipartisan and very urgent way with potentially long-term benefits in those policy spaces. Is there an opening here, and do you see an opening? And this question really is, Emily, to you on the criminal justice front. But Tom, you as well on the immigration front, even though we’re not seeing the polling there. Is this moment an opening to really underscore the long-term policy failures that we’re seeing on both fronts as folks start to reckon with the fact that, in so many ways, the coronavirus is exposing policy failures and breakdowns that long predated the pandemic hitting the US shores? And Emily, I’m going to start with you, because at that polling. And then Tom, I’m interested in your perspective as well, given the very different politics on the immigration front.

GALVIN-ALMANZA: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the polling we’re talking about is a bipartisan report that’s from the Justice Collaborative Data for Progress and Our Street showing this really broad bipartisan support for release measures. What’s exciting to me about that is that American’s sentences are wildly out of step with our peers internationally. That’s why we incarcerate more people per capita than anyone else in the world. And we don’t need to. When we look at the data, the kinds of measures that actually make a person less likely to commit crime in the future are basically the opposite of the measures that we take. Locking people away for years and years of their life doesn’t make anybody better, doesn’t make communities safer, and doesn’t advance us as a society. All it really does is destroy lives and the health, well-being, and economic mobility of communities who are disproportionately impacted by this type of heavy policing, heavy prosecution, and heavy incarceration. So, if we shift our norms to seeing more people take accountability for any form of misconduct in a way that doesn’t involve a cage, then we have taken a massive step forward as a society.

That’s actually, when we train our advocates to go out into the field, one of the things we train the Partners for Justice non-attorney advocates who we embed with public defenders’ offices, we train them to tell clients’ stories in a way that will show a judge why this person will thrive in a non-incarceratory environment, why any individual person, how they got to where they are and what measures should be taken to help them succeed going forward instead of throwing their life away. And when I look at the crisis in front of us, what I see is the opportunity to create that mindset on a larger scale: the mindset of how can I help this person succeed and keep them safe and keep the people around them safe? Instead of merely resorting to the familiar but completely counterproductive idea of human caging.

So, because of the awareness that this horrible crisis is going to bring to communities nationwide, I think we do have an opportunity to revisit conversations about the way we structure our response to misconduct. I could even see a world — and I don’t want to sound like a pie in the sky [bleep] person — but I really, really believe that the future is a world without prisons and jails. The future is a world where we come up with smarter, better ways of engaging with harm reduction and engaging with restorative justice and finding mechanisms to help people succeed instead of throwing them away. So, that’s my hope. There’s my glimmer of hope for you. [laughs]

VALLAS: Oh, I will take that glimmer of hope. And boy, would I love to be living in that world that you were describing.

Tom, unfortunately, the politics are wildly different, obviously, on the immigration front, particularly in the context of the Trump administration, who has really leveled more of its attacks on immigrants than perhaps any single other group of people in this country. What are the politics around the response here? And do you hope that — obviously, you hope — but do you envision, and do you expect, that we will be able to see a federal response that would require the Trump administration to bring something of a truce when it comes to their incredible track record of treating immigrants in this country as less than human?

JAWETZ: Yeah, it’s a great question. So, I will say I was very surprised last night when we had the announcement by ICE that they were going to be standing down their interior enforcement practices and focusing solely on individuals who are a threat to public safety or who will be sorted to mandatory detention for criminal grounds. And what their statement said is that their officers will defer enforcement against individuals who don’t meet those priorities or will consider alternatives to detention. I was surprised because my theory over the last two weeks in working on this — and we started working on some of this issue with a call that we did a couple of weeks earlier. And then we’re talking to a lot of other advocates and speaking to people on the Hill about these recommendations before we finally published the piece on Wednesday morning — but my expectation was, frankly, the states and localities were going to have to take the lead and show that this can be done in the criminal justice context and that eventually, if that became the narrative, then DHS, being the outlier, would essentially become unsustainable for them. And so, you know, I was surprised that, frankly, as quickly as it was, we got this announcement on Wednesday night saying that they were going to change their practices.

You know, it was only an hour and half later that we started to hear from people on the Hill who had spoken with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who were being told that they did not believe that their policy announcements applied to current detainees, that they would only be applying it to new people that they were potentially going to be apprehending on the street. And then it was just this morning when Ken Cuccinelli, who served as [unclear] in the administration, who pals around with Steven Miller in the White House, did a Twitter thread in which he essentially said, yeah, psych. We’re not going to actually change our enforcement practices either.

VALLAS: Steven Miller, of course, being the architect of many of the anti-immigrant policies that come out of this US White House, including the public charge rule and many others that the listeners be familiar with.

JAWETZ: Yeah. Absolutely. And so, that is where I really thought they would be. Last night’s announcement seemed like it came too early, frankly, in this moment. So, I think it’s something that it’s going to take a while. But, you know, the problem is we can’t wait any longer. What Emily was saying regarding urgency is right. We’ve already got a staff member at the Essex facility where immigration detainees are held who has tested positive for coronavirus. We have an individual who’s a guard at the Elizabeth Detention Center who is self-quarantining and has been tested for the coronavirus. We have at least two facilities, I think, where individuals are being, detainees themselves are being isolated out of concern that they are symptomatic. So, this is happening right now in real time.

You know, my first hope, frankly, is that we can get these policies changed as quickly as possible and save as many lives as possible, but my broader thought really is really in line with much of what Emily said. I mean, I think there probably are a number of different policy changes that are being adopted right now that hopefully will take the opportunity to look at, after this crisis has passed, and see, you know, hey, you know what? That was actually a pretty smart change we had. I don’t know why we were following that policy to begin with. Right? You know, the fact that, as an emergency measure, we’re allowing doctors to practice across state lines. I don’t study that issue very well, but I do wonder whether folks are going to see that work well right now and then think hmm, maybe that’s something we should actually examine going forward. Certainly the expansions to unemployment insurance, certainly the expansions to paid sick leaves that are taking place at the federal level. And so, hopefully our approach to criminal justice policy and immigration detention policy are things that similarly, we sort of have a chance to look at with fresh eyes.

The only thing I’ll say is, my general sense, having spent now, since last Thursday in my house trying to juggle my kids and my job and anxieties is, I remember 9/11 very well. I was in law school at the time. And I’m a New Yorker, and we’ve been living in a post-9/11 world for the last 19 years. And maybe that seems sort of ridiculous in 2017, so many years later to still think that. But it really is true. Obviously, I think the general sort of fear of terrorism, the fear of the public safety threat that was sort of in the air still governed so much of how we interacted with politics, with decisions and stuff. It really feels like, 19 years later, we are finally entering a new epoch. And I don’t think we know what the governing theory will be. Like what is the thing that is going to define the overarching frame for the moment that we’re entering? And it may not be one in which fear of international terrorism is the main thing that’s driving us, right? It could be the we end up in a world where we have just much more protectionist, restrictionist worldview generally, more isolationist. I don’t think we know yet. But I think it’s going to affect everything. And I think it’s going to affect how we think about how we communicate on issues like immigration policy, for instance, the one area that I spend the most time in. Because we don’t yet know how this is going to change the way people and politicians think and act with one another.

VALLAS: And Tom, we’re running short on time. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention while you’re in this conversation that it really needs to be said, and it needs to be remembered as we document the administration’s handling of this response, the tremendous xenophobia that is just on full display with the way that this president and many in his administration talk about the very name of the disease, calling it, with every opportunity, “the Chinese coronavirus” or “the Chinese virus,” “the Chinese flu,” on and on, with the real concerns raised, particularly in the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community around targeting, around xenophobia resulting and potential threats and danger that that community faces as a result. So, just worth noting as part of their response to the policy.

JAWETZ: Yeah.

VALLAS: So, in the last — Oh, please [unclear].

JAWETZ: Yeah. On that, I’ll just say, I mean, there’s a video floating around now on the Internet of Senator John Cornyn making really, really grotesquely racist comments about why he thinks it’s totally appropriate to call it “the Chinese virus.” And, you know, he’s sort of spitting out all these stereotypes about Chinese people. And at some point, he says, you know, there’s no surprise why swine flu and MERS and all these things have come from China. You know, swine flu was first identified in the United States. MERS was first identified in Saudi Arabia. Just the fact that it becomes comfortable and appropriate to just engage in these just clearly racist, xenophobic tropes just sort of rots the mind and lets you say things that don’t make any sense. I mean, MERS is called “Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome,” right? And so, the idea that you just immediately translate that and say, well, you know, swine flu obviously started in China when it was first detected in the United States, it is very much in line with how this administration has been trying to, at all times, divide people from one another and capitalize on opportunities of fear to turn attention to the other.

VALLAS: In the last minute or so that I have you both, I’m going to raise up a New York Times piece from this past week, one of many pieces of coverage that really looked at and documented the many ways in which the coronavirus is both at risk of deepening the level of inequality, the level of poverty that we have in this country, while at the same time is itself responding differently as a result of inequality, depending on how much wealth you have, how much you have in the way of access to resources, and how marginalized you are in this society. So, in the last minute or so before we wrap up this fantastic conversation that I am so grateful to you both for, would love to sort of hear you both reflect on what the potential consequences could be if we fail to see the leadership that we need to see at every level of government in this urgent moment for some of the people that this society has decided to marginalize the most. And Tom, I’ll start with you. And then Emily, you’ll get the last word.

JAWETZ: Yeah. I mean, this is a moment when — You know, the president, this morning I think, referred to himself as a wartime president. And the definition of a wartime president is someone who can unify the country and bring people together and make sure that we’re all looking out for each other. And we’re seeing the exact opposite of that. He’s cutting states loose and saying, you take care yourselves. He’s providing mixed signals to the public generally. And in the first package, for instance, that was passed by Congress, according to reports in the New York Times editorial itself talked about how the White House and congressional Republicans were the ones who were fighting to limit access to paid sick leave to millions upon millions of American workers. There are individuals right now who don’t have the luxury of doing what I’m doing now, which is working from home and caring for my kids with my spouse, right? There are individuals right now have to go to work. There are going to be millions of people losing their jobs all around the country. And if the government doesn’t step in and play the role that it has to play of actually addressing things right, right now for them, the consequences for the country going forward are going to be much, much graver.

VALLAS: And Emily, same question to you, as you’ll get the last word, but with respect to folks who are behind bars.

GALVIN-ALMANZA: You know, I think when we conceive of the criminal justice system, it’s important to include folks who aren’t just behind bars, but who are on supervision, who are subject to other restrictions, who are trying to do a job while fighting a case and showing up to court maybe every other week and losing a day of work. I received a message from an advocate just a few minutes ago asking about an elderly client who’s experiencing some heart failure symptoms, but is afraid to go to the doctor because she doesn’t want to catch coronavirus. And while one of us with privilege might just, use our health insurer’s telemedicine program to video chat with a nurse and find out what to do, the stark inequality in the resources available to people who are primarily impacted by the criminal legal system on all of its forms is really, really becoming apparent right now. I think that a lot of the things that we’ve just discussed, a lot of the economic stabilization measures that are going to be necessary in order to keep our economy moving as a country, universal basic income, expansions of unemployment benefits, paid sick leave are going to have to conjoin with other measures like massive expansions in available housing and massive sort of expansions in the ability to get out from under crippling debts, many of which are imposed by the criminal legal system. I mean, they’ve been amazing reports on the degree to which people’s lives can be ended purely by debt alone in the criminal legal system.

So, as we move forward into an era where economically, we’re going to be forced to think about either building a real, robust social safety net or else having an economy that completely collapses because the bottom 80 percent of people are not surviving. I think we’re going to be forced to take a very, very hard look at the ways in which incarceration and confinement and supervision and over-prosecution and racially-biased policing all work together to destroy communities, both economically and in terms of their health and in terms of their liberty. So, we have the opportunity to build a better world here, but we’re going to have to pay really close attention and not let these issues drop.

VALLAS: I’ve been speaking with Emily Galvin-Almanza. She’s the executive director of Partners for Justice. She’s also senior legal counsel at the Justice Collaborative. And I’ve also been speaking with Tom Jawetz, the vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress. He’s also one of the authors of the report that we discussed just a little bit before, regarding federal action that needs to happen for folks in immigration detention facilities. I really appreciate both of you taking the time amid so much chaos. And I would urge our listeners to check out our nerdy syllabus page where we have lots of the resources and reports and research and polling that you both mentioned, so that folks can find them easily there. Best of wishes to you both to stay safe and stay healthy in this moment. And just another set of gratitude for all the work that you’re doing on behalf of some of the communities who are at risk of being left behind in this response.

JAWETZ: Thanks so much, Rebecca, you too.

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 by Will Urquhart and Allison Young, and our transcripts are courtesy of Cheryl Green. Find us on Facebook and Twitter @OffKilterShow, and you can find us on the airwaves on the Progressive Voices Network and the We Act Radio Network or anytime as a podcast on iTunes. See you next week.

♪ I want freedom (freedom)

Freedom (freedom)

Now, I don’t know where it’s at

But it’s calling me back

I feel my spirit is revealing,

And now we just trynta get freedom (freedom)

What we talkin’ bout…. ♪