Jun 21, 2018
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)