Pod Save America - “Hot takes on ICE.”

Episode Date: July 3, 2018

Republicans try to hide the fact that Trump will nominate a justice who will overturn Roe v. Wade, and more Democrats join calls to abolish ICE. Then we interview people at Saturday’s Families Belong Together march in Los Angeles, including Senator Kamala Harris, Mayor Eric Garcetti, DeRay Mckesson and activist Ady Barkan.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Today we have a special episode of Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. Today we have a special episode of Pod Save America. We'll talk about the news for a bit, and then you'll hear from a whole bunch of people we spoke to on Saturday at the Families Belong Together March in Los Angeles. We have interviews with Senator Kamala Harris, Mayor Eric Garcetti, Adi Barkin, and a few people we met on the street. Yeah.

There were over 700 protest guys in all 50 states this weekend. Very cool. It was really cool seeing all of them on Twitter. A lot of people tweeted them at us. Yeah. Hashtag that organized a lot of them. But it was like small towns in rural Maine where it had people out on the streets. It was very...

Every single state. Every single state. So there is a lot of outstanding advocacy groups and charities who are offering legal assistance and other kinds of assistance to help reunite families. If you would like to donate to this cause, please go to go.crooked.com slash families. It is go.crooked.com slash families. And you can go donate. And we were so inspired by what we saw on Saturday. Three of us and everyone from Crooked who went.

It is a company. We're donating $50,000 to these groups. What? We just didn't run it by love it until just now. I mean, it's hard to walk it back. I'll seem like a real scrooge. Leave it in. But anyway, so please go contribute.

It's going to make a big difference. There's not enough lawyers to help all the families who need help right now.'s going to make a big difference there's not enough lawyers to help all the families who need help right now so this will make a big difference a few other

housekeeping items before we get into the news if you haven't already go pick up a copy of Ben Rhodes' book The World As It Is and Dan Pfeiffer's new book Yes We Still Can

a portion of all the proceeds from Dan's book between now and July 14th will be donated to NARAL so that's great. We sell books here at Crooked Media. That's what we do. That's all we do is hawk books.

We're pushing books off shelves. Yeah, making America read again, you know? Tommy, what can we expect on Pod Save the World? Check out the episode I have up right now. It's with a journalist named David Sanger who also has a book out about all the growing cybersecurity threats that are out there. It will scare you to know what's already happening, the cyber wars of the future. But one interesting part of the conversation was David's last book included a whole bunch of reporting about efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program. That led to a leak investigation. That

led to David getting a lawyer and me having to get a lawyer and us not speaking for about a year and a half. And so we hashed it out on the pod about what that experience was like for him on the journalist side, and for me fucking terrified and alone sitting in my office, not allowed to talk about this with anybody except for Eric Dolinsky and Zuckerberg Spader.

Thank God for you, even though I did nothing wrong. It was scary. It sucked. You worked out a lot of stuff in the last 10, 15 seconds. Thank you. It felt good.

Were you the Michael Cohen of our administration? No. I don't know what that means. Wrongly persecuted? Oh, thank you. Yes. Now that he's trying to be a national hero. Okay. Well, that's great. Everyone go check it out. And of course, go check out the first episode of Hysteria. It is awesome. Talk about

Hysteria. You know? Oh, it just says here, talk about Hysteria. Number one on iTunes. Number one on iTunes. Number one on iTunes. Love it or leave it, never got to number one because of fucking S-Town. That sounds like you're working out some stuff too. I'll work on everything. Okay.

Let's talk about the latest news on the fight to prevent the Supreme Court from becoming Gilead. Since our last podcast, Donald Trump said he'll announce his nominee on Monday, July 9th, and that he's narrowed his list to a group of about five people. In what was called a Fox News interview with Trump supporter Maria Bartiromo, the president said he, quote, probably won't ask the nominee about his or her specific opinions on Roe versus Wade. He told Bartiromo, quote, they're all saying don't do that. You shouldn't do that. I'm going to try and do something,

but I don't think it'll be so specific. And then he said, quote, maybe someday it will be to the states, which would be exactly what happens if Roe is overturned. States would decide whether or not to criminalize abortion. Guys, what does it say that the Republican game plan here is to hide the fact that they'll be nominating a justice who wants to overturn Roe? Doesn't it feel like we're kind of back to the old Washington language that was like pre-Trump

before you tweeted all your inner monologue, your exact intentions, where like clear, like these justices who are on his list that was written up by the Heritage Foundation and by a bunch of conservative lawyers, they weren't born judges. They're human beings who have friends and have had conversations and careers prior to this where they've expressed their views. And those views are incredibly well known, whether they're personal or private. So, of course, the plan here by the right-wing evangelical community is to get a judge put in place who will overturn Roe. And you have states that are passing laws on a regular basis. Iowa recently did it, that are designed to go to the Supreme Court to be the vehicle that is used to overturn Roe versus Wade. So anyone who's listening to this who thinks Roe settled law, it's fine.

Everyone has respect for precedent. You are completely wrong. a law. It's fine. Everyone has respect for precedent. You are completely wrong. This is an enormous fight and we have to fucking approach every election with the amount of fervor about the Supreme Court that the Republicans have. This is the quid pro quo at the heart of the capitulation to Trump. This is it. That the right wing gets these Supreme Court justices. This has been the final argument in the intra-conservative fight over whether or not it is morally reprehensible to get behind Trump. What about judges? And this list of judges, I mean, this is an extraordinary thing, right? The conservative intellectual

underpinning of the movement that has pushed the judiciary to the right over the past 30 years, put together a list and are basically dictating to the president who he can choose from. I mean, previous presidents would have said something like, I'm going to make this decision. I'm not going to let some outside group tell me. But the weakness that Trump had as a candidate allowed them to kind of do an end run around this process. And because Trump doesn't actually give a shit about any of this, he's like, I give them this, They stay with me forever. That's the deal.

Okay, I'm in. I'm in on this. Did you guys see the thing where he said he wants them to have gone to Harvard or Yale and he wants to see some of their academic writing? But his aide conceded that he wouldn't actually read the academic writings. He just wants to see how long it is. He just wants to see how long it is. It has been a decades-long project of the conservative movement to overturn Roe. There is no way on earth they would have come up with a list of 25 justices, potential justices, and not made sure that every single

one of them would absolutely overturn Roe v. Wade. There is no way. Look, if you're looking for a list of judges that put them in the best position to overturn Roe, this is the list. They can't predict what will happen when these guys get on the court. But the days of not being sure where a person would stand are over. These people have been vetted all the way through. They've been vetted. They've written about it. A lot of them come from Republican politics.

Exactly. Some of them are. If you write the Ken Starr report, you're probably not a squishy liberal. Brett Kavanaugh. So we know that and and you know a lot of these republicans especially mitch mcconnell are disciplined enough that they will continue the talking points well we don't know what they'll do about roe and we're not going to ask them and who knows donald trump uh is already close to saying the quiet part

out loud and by the time we get to the end of this process he will definitely definitely tweet like, so happy my justice is going to overturn Roe. Like it's going to happen. Yes. It's funny when Trump is told by his aides to play by the old rules. Like even this conversation with Bartiromo, he's basically – he finds it all quite silly, this dance, right? Because the dance around Supreme Court justices is inherently silly. Everybody pretends that people don't believe what they believe or that they're not going to judge things in advance and all that.

So if you ask them, you're giving up the game. And he's like, yeah, I guess I'm not supposed to ask. That seems silly. Why shouldn't I ask? He always reads the state directions out loud to the journalist. Yeah. He doesn't get it. Here's what they're telling me.

Here's what my asshole staff is telling me. Fucking Jared back there. They're trying to tell me not to say what I want to say which i'm gonna say pretty soon um susan collins who's one of two republican senators who democrats hope may be willing to vote against trump's nominee did a round of interviews on sunday where she said quote i would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to roe v wade and she also said that there are some people on that list, on Trump's list, that she would vote against. But she also said that she didn't think either John Roberts or Neil Gorsuch would overturn Roe because they've said in the past that they're very big on precedent. So here's my question.

Is Susan Collins playing us or is she getting played? I think she's actually doing neither right now. I think she is trying to get out of having an opinion until there's an actual person. Because you can you can read whatever you want into what she has said so far. And it's because they're all playing this game of trying to avoid taking a position on the list as a whole in the hopes that whoever Trump picks will make, will reveal something that will make it easier for her to have an actual position, I think. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Like, she's clearly playing the game to try to minimize political pressure. It is like, it is hard to listen to. You know, Michael Barbaro had her on The Daily today where she seemed to express shock that she was immediately thrust to the center of this fight. It's like, come on, you are a very, very smart person. You're a smart politician. You've been doing this for a long time.

You know exactly how this is going to go down. And so like our job has to be to put maximum fucking pressure on her and make sure she understands that voting for this judge is a vote to overturn roe and that we are going to do everything in our power to vote her out because she did get played previously she got played by mcconnell during the tax right uh fight she thought she was going to get this vote on health care i think she i think that's an example of someone saying play me so that i can say that i got a promise and just so that I can get out of this fight. Maybe, but either way, it doesn't look great for her now. You know, she got hammered, she's getting hammered in her home state, and she gets very defensive about it. And like, there's this part of the caucus that, you know, thought that the way that we can fix everything

is by getting in a room and passing around a stick like your children, and you talk one at a time. is by getting in a room and passing around a stick like your children and you talk one at a time and i think our approach needs to be uh maximum political fear i think this i think what you said this is about as soon as the nominee is named making sure that everyone knows a vote for this justice is a vote to criminalize abortion yeah um and be very clear about that i mean because she's talking about oh gorsuch and ro and Roberts said they're very big on precedent. They don't overturn precedent. Last week, they overturned a 40-year precedent in the Janus case about public unions.

And they've all been, they were both very clear in their confirmation hearings in being unclear. This is a huge fight about abortion rights. It's about the future of the Affordable Care Act and healthcare in this country, campaign finance, it's voting rights, the future of unions. It's literally the future of the Affordable Care Act and health care in this country, campaign finance, voting rights, the future of unions. It's literally everything we care about. A century's worth of economic regulation that they've been trying to overturn.

Right. Yeah. And that is an untold story, the amount of regulation that they're just letting get gutted. Clean Air Act, all kinds of stuff. Kennedy's liberalism on gay rights in a lot of ways created a narrative around him that he was moderate. He wrote those decisions, and that's true. But his record on issues related to corporate power versus the power of working people is very conservative and not moderate at all. And the next judge on this court will just continue that steady erosion of individual rights versus corporations and individual rights versus the government. I mean it's just – it's so clear that that's what they want to do.

So the question is are Collins and Murkowski gettable votes and what's the path to get them? Chuck Schumer wrote an op-ed today. He's got that. on Monday, which said, well, the number of Democrats in the Senate is not a majority. The number of senators who believe in protections for those with pre-existing conditions and women's reproductive rights is. The best way to defend those rights is for a bipartisan majority in the Senate to lock arms and reject a Supreme Court nominee who would overturn them. So Schumer has a strategy where he wants to make this all about health care, specifically pre-existing conditions, because those are very popular.

And also those are very much at risk now that the Trump administration has decided not to, the Justice Department has decided not to defend a lawsuit that would gut pre-existing conditions. Also, the court could gut the rest of the Affordable Care Act. And he realizes that because Collins and Murkowski voted with the Democrats on the ACA and during the ACA repeal fight, that maybe they will switch parties again. So this is the, so what do we think about this message, this strategy, and what is the path to getting Collins and Murkowski here? I think that's a smart frame and a good strategy. It's also relevant that 67% of voters do not want

to see Roe versus Wade overturned. So I think that's a very important issue that we should be fighting on just as strongly as pre-existing conditions. I think that the only thing politicians respond to is fear, period. And I think we need to go, people need to go to all of her events. You need to call every single person you know in Maine. People need to call their offices like starting tomorrow. call every single person you know in Maine. People need to call their offices like starting tomorrow. And I think one thing with her too is what really mattered to her during the Affordable Care Act fight and Murkowski, it wasn't just, it was fear. They know their states, they know the voters in their states. But it was also like when she would come, when they would fly home and go to the

airports, it was like the stories of the people with pre-existing conditions the story of the people who needed health care um and that there was an emotional um thing there that really sort of got both of them yeah you know nobody wants to be the 50th vote for an anti-row justice you're going to see republican pressure to try to get democrats to break up and to get some of the vulnerable 2018 Democrats to come out in favor. And then you're going to see pressure from Democrats to try to get Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to say they're against it. And both of those groups are going to be watching each other very closely, because if one jumps, the other will jump. If neither will jump, they'll kind of hang back as long as humanly possible.

And what that means for Democrats is we should try to get every Senate Democrat to a no, obviously. But those who are unsure, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin, whoever else it might be that's up in 18, at the very least, do not give an answer until the very, very end, until we know what Collins and Murkowski do. Because they need to feel the pressure. I sincerely think it's good policy and good politics to let every senator who wants to meet with the nominee, go to the hearings, read everything they want to read, and then make a decision. We shouldn't rush people to come out immediately against no one or someone the minute they're named.

That's totally fine. Politically, there's no harm in it. And politically, it's advantageous probably to wait. Right. But we want all the Democrats to get to know. Yeah. And by the way, one piece of this too is this is a tough fight. But the important thing for people who aren't Democratic senators, which is I assume most

of the people listening, is that whatever happens, the amount of pressure we put on senators now will send an important signal. It will send a signal to vulnerable Democratic senators that there is a cost to voting yes. It will also send a signal that this is an issue on which we will vote. So we need to create maximal pressure because it will shape how we campaign in the fall. It will shape the way this Supreme Court seat is covered, and it will ideally help make sure win, lose, or draw that we have a better chance of taking the Senate. We had tweeted it. We talked about this last pod even before the announcement of Kennedy retiring. But the Supreme Court, at least the majority in the Supreme Court, was acting like an arm of the Republican Party, especially in the last couple of weeks. And we need to make sure voters realize that this is not a vote for some justice who's going to sit up there and weigh all the considerations and sometimes vote left and sometimes vote right. Like this is voting for someone who's going to criminalize abortion, who's going to get rid of the rest of the Affordable Care Act and a whole bunch of other decisions about issues that really matter to people's lives.

Right. I mean, we have seen decisions that are not only harmful economically, not only harmful to women's health, we have decisions that are about undermining the power of democratic constituencies from gerrymandering to unions. And that will continue. And so one thing that this is a vote about is a vote about whether or not Democrats will have to work even harder in the future to win elections, to exercise our political power. So the stakes of this are so extraordinary. stakes of this are so extraordinary. All right, let's talk about immigration and specifically abolish ICE. There are more than 2,000 children who the Trump administration is still keeping

from their parents as we speak. And as the crisis drags on, more Democrats are proposing that we repeal and replace Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, including Democratic senators and 2020 hopefuls Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris. A little background on ICE. ICE was created in the wake of 9-11. It did not exist before then. It was created to manage the detention and removal of people who've already been arrested for immigration violations. Its stated goal when created was, quote, 100% rate of removal for all removable aliens. This means finding and deporting immigrant families and children who've been living, working, and paying taxes here for decades, which it is now doing under Trump with great success. Guys, I think it makes sense to

start by asking, what's the right policy here before we get into politics, because it's 2018 and who the fuck knows how anything plays anymore. So what do you think about Abolish ICE as a policy? I've been thinking about this a lot. I think it's right. I think it's right, but it's also a bit confusing. The point that some of the Democratic senators who have been afraid to say abolish ICE have made is, but if you abolish ICE, you still have the Trump administration pursuing the policy that ICE has been administering. Now, I think that's a bit squishy, and it's kind of a way of saying, let's deal with reforming ICE when we have power. Let me avoid taking a stand. But there's also some truth to it, and there's some truth to it in the sense that

abolish ICE is a process point. It's not a policy point. Now, there are very good arguments for why it's an important step in the process. The abuses that ICE has been participating in, the culture of the agency is fundamentally broken. Also, the idea of having a pure, the idea of separating the parts of, the idea of how we divided the role of INS between kind of the administration and sort of social work aspect of immigration and the kind of legal and deportation side. There are really good arguments against it. But ultimately, I think one of the reasons you're seeing Republicans use it as a cudgel is because it's a little bit cart before the horse, be for abolishing ICE, be for getting rid of it. But the question that then follows is, how does that fit in to your larger plan for what to do about the broken immigration system? And the answers to the questions associated with that are actually

much more important and much more impactful moving forward because abolish ICE, don't abolish ICE, how about we change the laws and put people on a path to legalization so that even if there wasn't ICE, they wouldn't be vulnerable to deportations? Right. As I say, the most important policy goal on immigration that Democrats should be fighting for is the one that we had been fighting for in the past, but still haven't had a Congress to pass yet, which is path of citizenship for 11 million people who are undocumented in this country. And then as we talk about enforcement, we should say, yes, of course there should be border security in the interior of the country as opposed to

fucking mass deporting every single undocumented immigrant that's here which is what trump wants to do you can prioritize so like yes we should be able to uh go after people who are committing crimes in this country uh whether they're immigrants or not immigrants yeah drug trafficking isn't isn't uh it's not only illegal for citizens. Right. Everything that happened after 9-11 in terms of the creation with DHS was kind of half fucked up. Right. You know, like things got thrown together. More than half. Right.

I mean, like, again, thank you, Joe Lieberman, for this brilliant idea to create this silly bureaucracy. But, I mean, like I'm fairly new to digging into learning about this as well. So I do feel like we're kind of swimming underwater in murky waters. I don't exactly know where to go. But my understanding is that ICE had a counterterrorism mission because people were looking back in 9-11 and saying, how did all these Saudi hijackers get in and stay in and train. And so clearly, when you have an agency raiding, you know, farms and plants and whatever in the middle of the country, it's no longer serving that counterterrorism role. We also have CBP, Customs and Border Patrol, doing a lot of these raids, and some of them that are the most egregious and that are getting a lot of theethically, out of line, in a way is not just fucked up because people – we have a porous border.

It's fucked up because we are putting resources towards ripping people out of communities and deporting them for no great reason. Why are we spending a ton of money on taking people out of a community where they're doing a job that no American wants to do and sending them to a country they haven't lived in decades? That doesn't make any sense. Right. I mean, it brings up – I mean, people say, oh, it's focused on a small thing. But actually, ICE is a symbol of a much bigger policy problem, which is not just what do we do with the undocumented population in terms of offering them a path to citizenship.

But for hundreds of years in this country, we have treated immigration infractions as civil infractions. And we have not criminalized people for doing this and detaining them indefinitely. That is very new. That happened after 9-11. And like you said, Tommy, originally it was because of terrorism. It wasn't because of migration from Mexico. But when you look at the actual agency itself, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, an independent watchdog, issued a scathing report in 2017 detailing widespread

human rights abuses at ICE detention facilities. It's unconscionable. This is DHS in 2017. This is under Kirstjen Nielsen, DHS. Some of these human rights abuses included beatings, sexual assault, drug smuggling, malnourishment, lack of medical care that has resulted in multiple deaths. They often hold people without warrants. They detain them indefinitely, even without a bond hearing, which has resulted in the erroneous

detention of U.S. citizens. In 2010, after a decline in deportations, ICE also violated Obama administration guidelines and developed detention quotas for its agents. This year, last year, in 2017, it ignored a directive from Defense Secretary James Mattis to stop deporting veterans. It detained a dreamer by falsifying documents to indicate that he was in a gang and it was a lie. So this is the part where people are like, well, it's just one agency and you need to change the policy. Agreed. Absolutely. We're not going to change immigration policy in this country without a Democratic president, Democratic Congress. But it is clear that this is a rogue agency right now that has been given too much power and you know obama could have done a

lot more during his time to not have as many detentions as he did but we also remember in 2010 2011 2012 obama was issuing directives to try to reprioritize who ice goes after and a lot of times ice just fucking ignored it and they dragged their feet and we had a little more success in the second term trying to reprioritize. And they also have a super vocal union that was highly politicized. It's very politicized. Maybe political statements.

It's very weird. It's a, when you have a law enforcement agency that is targeting non-citizens who don't by just dint of their economic situation, by the fact that they're picked up in the middle of nowhere often, by the fact that they are not afforded the same legal protections as citizens, you end up with a situation where the checks against abuses just aren't there. They're just not there.

And so things get worse and worse. So this is an agency. Last year, they arrested and forcibly removed a woman who was awaiting emergency surgery for a brain tumor. She was in a hospital. Like, you know, what happens when you see kind of a policy like this emerge on the left is you end up with a kind of debate, which I think is really silly around like the politics of it. But so putting that aside, like, is this going to alienate moderates? Put aside the politics of it.

The point about the policy that I think is actually true to me is that Abolish ICE sounds radical. It's actually not that radical. What we need is something more radical than Abolish ICE. We need a set of laws that make the kind of abuses that ICE is practicing impossible because there is that the fundamental mission we have given to this agency would no longer exist. Yeah. Look, I think it's very easy to say, of course we need border enforcement in this country. Of course we need an agency that can be focused on national security threats, child pornography, transnational crime, which was under immigration and naturalization services before ICE came to be.

Of course we need some agency in the government to do all these things. We do not need a rogue mass deportation force that is detaining and deporting all kinds of people in this country, including U.S. citizens. It's also like one of an infinite number of examples where the policy prescriptions we put forward for real problems prioritize toughness and cruelty and punishing someone versus dealing with the root problem of, say, horrific gang violence in El Salvador. And you're not going to convince anyone, not with a CBP guy or an ICE officer, that they shouldn't get their kid the fuck out of El Salvador if they're trying to force them into a gang. And like, saying that isn't easy. You can't chant it at a rally and like get a bunch of angry white guys fired up to vote for you. But that's the reality. And, you know, Malcolm Gladwell's podcast did a really smart episode on this something called circular migration, where back in the day, a lot of migrants would come up from Mexico where they lived, work through a season on farms, and then go back because there was no cost to crossing repeatedly. And then you build these barriers that increase the cross. So people cross over and then they stay and they send back for their kids in Mexico.

And like, we've actually maybe made the problem a lot worse through a lot of the enforcement policies put in place. Now I get it. Like, you can't have an open border. Totally agree. We can't have Al Qaeda people or ISIS. So, you know, pick your horror scenario of what could happen. Sure. fine. But are we really

resourcing the right things to solve the problem? I don't think anyone would argue we are. And look at the data. Things have gotten worse. Law enforcement will say this. ICE officials said this themselves in a letter that was written last week. This is not an agency that is fighting crime right now. This is not an agency that is protecting us right now. And forget just the agency. Our immigration policy right now is not keeping us as safe as it could be. It is not securing the nation as much as it could be because it is going after people who've lived in this country forever, who've done nothing wrong, who are working and paying taxes, and it is taking away resources from people who are committing crimes. Not to mention the fact that, you know, to Tommy's point,

over the course of decades, we built a system in which we told people to come here and work here. If you could make it, you could stay, unless you were caught up in the capricious raids of this agency. But of course, who experiences the pain of an undocumented person who is doing a job here and then is suddenly arrested? It's not the company that's been paying them for years. They never touch employers. The employer never gets touched. No, just the person we told

to come here because there would be a job here, the system we built to employ undocumented people, and they get rounded up and deported based on bad luck and bad timing. And then that company can just turn around and fill those jobs again, and they never pay a price. So let's talk about the politics. Trump says without ICE, you're going to have a country that you're going to be afraid to walk out of your house. I already am, John. The White House Twitter account went after Senator Kamala Harris and Senator Elizabeth Warren today, tweeting at them, why are you supporting the animals of MS-13, which is

crazy. The animals of MS-13, which is crazy. The animals of MS-13, though, it did sound like a charitable calendar to me. Who's Mr. September? And, of course, there are a bunch of now Democratic strategists. Some of them go on background to the reporters. Those are the real, you know, and then some of them are just on the record and saying, you know, I wish Democrats would talk about immigration reform and path to citizenship.

And I agree with all that. Right. If Democrats are out there and the only thing they're saying about immigration is abolish ICE, I do think that's a problem. I think people should talk about your whole immigration policy. Of course. That's what people want to know about. But this is a thing. And you can either – again, you can either decide to run away from it and never say anything about it or you can say, what is the policy that I believe in? And then figure out what you're going to say about it based on the policy,

not based on the politics because we don't know what the politics are. I don't think we should be sanguine or naive about the fact that immigration is a powerful issue for Republican parties, especially in a lot of swing states. parties uh especially in a lot of uh swing states but the reason i have a hard time like debating today the politics of what this is going to look like then is that trump is going to make up racist lies to scare people no matter what he literally said he's watched ice liberate towns from the grasp of ms-13 where did that happen on the holodeck what What movie? What were you streaming when that happened? And so like, you know, yes, he's going to do crass events with families of individuals who were killed by undocumented people who are in this country. He's going to do whatever it takes to make this emotional and to make this race-based

and to make it fucking disgusting. And what has to be incumbent upon us to do is to put forward whatever our reforms are for immigration in a way that tells a story, that makes sense to people, that moves them, that motivates the people who care about taking care of undocumented people. But like I don't think that means we should use the same like stale DLC language of like get back in the line, learn English, like all the bullshit the Democrats have been saying for 20 years because it hasn't protected us here's the thing we haven't won elections on it and we haven't passed anything so i'm going to call it a failure no here's the thing he was he was saying that nancy pelosi is a supporter of ms-13 before the abolished ice thing happened they were running all the ads about ms-13 in a way we are lucky because the hyperbolic attacks from Donald Trump and the Republican Party on immigration have liberated us.

He said Obama created ISIS. He said Obama was the founder of ISIS. And if there wasn't abolished ICE, it would be sanctuary cities. If it wasn't sanctuary cities, it would be they don't want the wall. He would find something. Their hyperbolic attacks have liberated Democrats to take a second, look at the policy, figure out what the best policy is to fix the problem, and then run on that. My only criticism of Abolish ICE on the politics is it fits into the larger problem we have on immigration, which is we are defining ourselves as what Trump is not. Because Abolish ICE is only a small part of the larger story we have on immigration, which is we are defining ourselves as what Trump is not, because abolished ICE is only a small part of the larger story we have to tell. I am very,

I am very comfortable with abolished ICE being a flank of our immigration agenda. But we need to have an immigration story we would be telling even if Hillary Clinton was president. I want the next Democratic president to get rid of ICE and reconstitute the agency so we have someone that's focusing on crime and we're not criminalizing every undocumented person in this country. So that's what I want. But I also know that like the road from now until then is also paved with having an immigration policy, like you said, that's talking about what we're for and what we want to do. And that's path to citizenship. That's all the other things. That's DREAMers. That's everything else that goes along with immigration policy. So, of course, that's what we should for and what we want to do. And that's path to citizenship. That's all the other things. That's dreamers. That's everything else that goes along with immigration policy.

So of course that's what we should be talking about. But anyway, I mean, we know, so, you know, they were doing some initial polls on immigration. Dave Weigel wrote about this. We know that people want border security. That's very popular. But they also think that Trump has been too tough in enforcing immigration laws by 45 to 30 percent. Let's also not forget the northam gillespie race

in virginia where everyone said oh they're talking about ms-13 the whole time the democrats are going to lose and ralph northam won by nine points more than anyone ever thought he was going well one thing that happens when you tell people that ms-13 is uh in your basement but it's not there it's a problem right they open their door and it's uh it's it's not sicario well so that, and so they're like, well, I'm going to vote on the things I was going to vote on this morning anyway. That's not fair. Norfolk had just been liberated from MS-13s. I've seen towns liberated. I thought that Kamala's response to the White House tweeting that gross shit at her was great, which was, as a career

prosecutor, I actually went after gangs and transnational criminal organizations. That's being a leader on public safety. What is not is ripping babies from their mothers. Yeah, I agree. Not so hard. Framed perfectly. She is very smart. Let's all move on. Yeah. Also, just one other thing, too, it's like,

oh, you think that there's someone who's pro-Republican and is an immigration voter, and you think that abolish ICE is going to cause us to lose them? You think we can get them back by talking about reforming ICE as opposed to eliminating ICE? Like, where is this nuance for you going to take us? And to Tommy's point, though, I do understand. We talk about health care. We talk about taxes as something that can unite our base with some of these swing Obama-Trump voters, right? Immigration is different. Immigration is tough in this country. And there is an argument that you have to make, especially to a lot of people in this country who have been told over many, many years that immigration is connected to crime, that it's connected to depressing wages, that people are taking benefits and all that other kind of stuff.

And there is a way to message this that will appeal to the broadest possible audience. And I'm all for messages that do that. But again, Democrats can't just run away from stuff that's out there. You've got to figure out something to say because Trump and the Republicans will make this an issue and they will make it a debate and we have to respond by not seeming afraid of the issue. Right, because there's a difference between wanting to run on health care and ignoring immigration

and wanting to run on health care but still being confident in your position on immigration and making a case and then going back to healthcare. Issues don't always start out popular. You have to frame them. You have to make a case. And like, I think Sean McElwee and the people who've been really driving this movement online, like they're pretty honest that their goal is to widen, to broaden the conversation about

how to fix our immigration system from just like building a 75 foot wall instead of a 60 foot wall to like actually dealing with the terrible enforcement. That's correct. That's right. Good for them. Okay. When we come back, you will hear from all kinds of people that we talked to at the Families Belong Together March in L.A. on Saturday. So hope you enjoy it.

And we're back. And now you're going to hear all the different interviews we did at the Families Belong Together March on Saturday. We are at First and Broadway downtown. We're starting to see a sea of people. It's a beautiful day for a protest. What we've seen over the last year and a half is a lot of people who have understood the value of marching have been joined by a lot of people who maybe have never marched before. Protest has been one of the few ways that we've been able to take the microphone away from Donald Trump

and make an argument that really resonates with people. Politicians react from a place of fear. And when they see their constituents, tens of thousands of them taken to the streets, they know that they damn well better be there too. And they damn well better listen to those people. Marches like this and this many people turning out reminds people in power, from Trump to Republicans to Democrats in Congress, that people fucking care about this.

And people are not going to just go quietly here and just accept it. I'm Valerie Herrera. I work at the International Institute of Los Angeles. I'm the managing attorney and I work directly with unaccompanied minors. So what have the last few months been like when they put in this put in place this policy to rip kids away from their families? I mean, how has that impacted you personally and the work you do? So personally, I would say we're seeing a lot of slowdown in terms of like how the immigration process is working for the kids. Asylum is a lot harder for the kids to acquire. Same thing with the other defenses. It's taking so much longer. And even in the immigration, like when they show up at immigration court hearings, I mean, the process is just so slow. Nothing is happening. And how are these kids handling this?

Like, how do they typically handle it? And what kind of stories do they tell about why they came here in the first place? There's two basic storylines we hear a lot. There's a lot of abuse happening, a lot of abuse from parents or caregivers. Usually what happens is sometimes the dad abandons, mom comes here to the United States, they're left with a caregiver who's abusive, and so then they have to, you know, live their lives with this abusive caregiver. And then the other storyline we hear a lot, which is really unfortunate, is, you know, the problems they have with gangs.

The boys, you know, they have problems because the gangs want to recruit them. And then the girls, they're being forced into these relationships because the gang members want them to be their girlfriends, and if they don't want to, then they're being threatened with death. And so they have no other option but to come here. I can tell you personally, the youngest client I've had was 6 years old when he came here. He was being threatened because his dad was in jail, and he had no other option but to come here. And he didn't understand the whole process.

I remember trying to work with him, and all he knew was that he was here with his mom. The hardest part is just asking them exactly what happened because sometimes they don't know. He didn't know exactly what had happened. He just knew that he was here to be with his mom. He didn't realize his dad was in jail. And so it's heartbreaking to have to tell mom, hey, mom, I need you to tell your child why they've come here. And so, yes, it hurts. And sometimes I have had children crying.

So you just have to work through that and be patient and try the best that you can. So we're looking at several, I would assume, thousand people facing up towards where the stage is. But this far back, the protest is big enough that you can't hear the stage. And this is something that was true in the women's marches. This is something that was true at the March for Our Lives, that there are so many people here that what's happening at this stage

is just a small part of what's going on. Oh, Maxine Waters is about to take the stage. She's reclaiming her time. You get it. You get it, listeners. ...the country to say to Donald Trump and his cabinet and all of them, we're not afraid of you. You should be ashamed.

We want our children connected back to their parents. How dare you? How dare you! How dare you! Take the babies from mothers arms. How dare you! Take the children and send them all across the country into so called detention centers. You are putting them in cages.

You are putting them in jails. And you think we are going to stand by and allow you to do that? I don't think so. Why did you guys decide to come out and sing at the protests? It's a message of love. Community chorus. Yeah, community chorus was born out of vocal exhaust for just marching so much after Trump was elected and wanting to do something beautiful with our voices instead of just yelling and really singing together, I think, encapsulates There might be someone down in the valley trying to get home. I'm Sister Susan Alice.

Sister Anne Francis. Why did you guys decide to come out today? Well, for one, it meets with our baptismal vows of striving for justice and peace and respecting the dignity of every human being. And besides, it's just wrong to separate the children from their families. We want to show that it's supported by the church. What does Christian social teaching tell us about immigration? We're supposed to welcome the stranger, you know, loving your neighbor as yourself.

You know, there's no such thing as an illegal person. DeRay McKesson, host of Pod Save the People. I'm here. Why are you here today? Because we've got to keep families together. I know that when some people are oppressed, everybody's oppressed. So this issue is important for everybody. And we should abolish ICE.

We should have a criminal justice system that is about justice and not about power. And we can do it. And what do you think marches, what kind of impact do you think marches like these have on the politics? What I know to be true is that these things help people find power that they didn't know that they had. And like, it's incredible. You see all these people out here. You think that only you might care about it or your neighbors. and then you're part of, like, a whole community of people, and you realize that you can do something about it. So I think we see it across the country, like, people coming out and, like, being heard,

and that's really powerful. And what do you think? We've been talking to a lot of people about this. At the end of this week, maybe one of the worst weeks since Trump's become president, a lot of people are feeling angry. They're feeling despair. Some people are like, should I just give up hope? And what do you, what do you say to people after a week like this? Yeah. You know, King talks about

the, the arc, the more arc of the universe bending towards justice. I'm mindful that it only bends because people bend it and it'll take like all of us keeping the fight on the pod. John, you talk a lot about like, how do we apply intentional pressure? And I think that this is a moment where it's like, where is Tim Scott? What is Susan Collins doing? Like, all these people who sort of perform a belief in justice, like, this is their moment to hold him accountable. I love you, Joe Hill. It's time for President Trump to do his job. It's time for us to do their job.

My name is Salma. Hi. What's your sign say? My sign says, fuck Trump, abolish ICE, and end family incarceration. What about the other side? It says, free Los Ninos now, which means free the kids now. So do you come out to a lot of protests, or is this new for you? I actually have been to some protests before, but I'm just new to all this still because I've only been to two or three protests so far.

Yeah, me too. Why did you decide to come out to this protest today? Well, I feel like this is an issue that specifically affects me personally because I come from a family of immigrants. My parents came here from Mexico over 20 years ago, and my sister is a Dreamer. So I feel like it hits me at home because like these are children these are families that are just trying to look for a better life instead of being stopped by the government. Your sister's a dreamer so this must have been a really tough

frustrating year and a half for you guys with Congress and the White House going back and forth on a fix for the Dreamers. Yeah, because when it came out that they wanted to end the DACA program, my sister was absolutely heartbroken because by the time she would have been able to renew the program, it would have already ended. So she just left in this state of grief because all the possibilities and all the hard work she's done isn't going to go to waste

because she won't be able to have the papers in order to get a job and where she wants to be and continue pursuing her education. It's just a really stressful moment. So we're lucky that the federal judge has ruled to continue on DACA and continue on accepting applications for renewal. So yeah. It never ends with this march. Basically, immigrants are always constantly facing issues

in our government. And as you know, in the detention center now, there are men, women in there that are incarcerated because of the fact they just wanted to pursue a better life in this country. You're awesome. Thank you for being here. We are marching. This is the part of the protest

where you get exercise while doing the right thing. It's quite an innovation. But yeah, there's probably, I can see three or four blocks behind me, three or four blocks ahead of me, three lanes of the highway are totally filled up with people. Everyone's got signs. People are singing. They're playing music. It's a big turnout. It's a lot of people.

I'm Kendall Rideout. Zee Oseemay. Sorrel Lee. Sydney Goff. How old are you guys and why did you decide to come out today? I'm 17 and I decided to come out because I hate Donald Trump and I hate the GOP and I think it's really disgusting the way that they violate human rights. I'm also 17 and I decided to come out because I'm tired of just watching the news and like feeling bad about things and I just want to get out there and do things.

I'm 18 and I think this issue goes beyond political parties and this is a human rights crisis, not just your political stance because, and especially as a young person, I think it's important to use your voice. I'm 18 and I just think it's a crime against humanity and kind of everything else they just said. And I don't want to be complicit in this pivotal time in history. When you guys go home at night and talk about these issues, do your parents listen? Has it changed their point of view or are they already on your side? They're already. They're already.

My dad is an immigrant. My mom was also an immigrant. So this issue is obviously very close to home. And beyond the fact that this is affecting mainly Muslim and Hispanic communities, I believe that, you know, as a child of an immigrant, it's my position also to support other people who are in need because it easily could be me or another friend of mine. So this is really close to home. I'm also a child of immigrant. My mom came here from Rwanda seeking asylum. And so when we're seeing that people are being put in jail for coming here legally and asking

for asylum, it's just completely wrong. All right. So you guys are 17 and 18. You're going to school. You're going to be running the country in probably less than 10 years. The people in Washington are listening. What do you want them to know about how you're going to vote based on how they vote on these policies?

I think starting by supporting politicians that don't take PAC money or corporate money is extremely important because that is when they truly represent the people and their constituents instead of responding to certain agendas by certain corporations. And I think that that starts from local communities, especially we saw with the congresswoman who are running for Congress, Alexandria, what's her name, or Ocasio-Cortez. I mean, it really starts from that. And I think we're starting to see a lot of people waking up and seeing that the corruption really starts from our own leaders. And it's time to stop that. And I also think that the party system has kind of gotten thwarted into something that is more about winning than it is about doing what's right for people. And I think that that's

something that's discouraging, especially being a new voter really soon, that I don't feel that the two parties that I'm being really provided with are really great representations of the way I want to vote. And I think that what Sora said is really true, that I'm looking for politicians that align themselves with the causes that I think are really important and also just with humanity and people who aren't so ingrained in this really broken institution of politics. And as for the GOP in Washington, we're going to make sure that no one ever forgets

that you guys were the villains of our history books. So, yeah, we're going to make sure no one ever forgets, and we're going to ruin your lives. Says it with a smile. Let's talk to Mayor Garcetti of beautiful Los Angeles. How have you felt watching the last month unfold with Trump's immigration policies as someone who has been dealing with this issue for a very long time? You know, I've always taken this Trump era as a time not to resist or just play defense, but to be strong in the push.

But this was a rough, rough week. As a father, it stalked me in my tracks. When I was on the border in El Paso, right where my own grandfather crossed in his mother's arms as a one-year-old baby, and my father sent me the picture of their border crossing card, I realized I wouldn't be here if this country had said no, if this country had closed its doors. This is not who we are. But I think in dehumanizing immigrants, Donald Trump has finally rehumanized them. When I was at the border, almost half the mayors were Republicans. You see people who are just parents, who are not necessarily Democratic supporters, progressives who are with us on this issue.

And it's opened up a door, not just to point out the inhumanity of the White House right now, but the incompetence. What do you think about the various calls to abolish ICE? What do you think should be done with ICE? What's the future of that agency? ICE, or whatever we want to call it in the future, needs to reset the mission that Donald Trump has given it.

I know good people who are federal law enforcement agents who we work with, who go after traffickers of little girls who are brought into the sex trade, serious drug dealers, people who break the customs laws of intellectual property of this country. We need federal law enforcement officials. It's just sad to see that this mission is so misdirected. People are saying just abolish them altogether. And I think that that is sad for law enforcement. When you see people inside ICE saying we need to rename ourselves, reset the mission because we can't do the work protecting our families and our neighbors and our fellow Americans, this is a president who's really screwed up.

our families and our neighbors and our fellow Americans, this is a president who's really screwed up. One of the things that mayors have faced are questions around how should local resources be used when the federal government wants to do immoral things in these cities. And we've seen that around sanctuary cities, but we've also now seen protests trying to stop ICE from separating families to get in front of buses. And I think a question that a lot of mayors are going to face is what's my job to enforce the laws of my city when enforcing them means helping ICE do its job that I think is immoral? What do you view as your role there when you support the mission of protesters? Do you think that local law enforcement that is under sort of your aegis

has to get involved to stop them from disrupting ICE? Well, we have probably the strictest laws in the country to make sure we don't collaborate on these separations or on any civil immigration enforcement. Not just this. I mean, even the more routine things. We've set up advocacy inside City Hall. So the case you might have read about this week

that had a positive outcome of a father coming home, another father who was ripped away from his daughter when he dropped him off at school last year. We got them back together by raising our voices, talking to our federal counterparts and legislators. I think also at the police headquarters, we sat down with advocates this year and said, we won't honor detainer requests,

which is another way that people get separated from their families all the time. And by the way, when people think that this is some wacky left-wing thing, that's 40 years old, even though we strengthened it under a guy named Daryl Gates, who was probably the least progressive police chief we ever had. And even he knew that it wasn't the job of local law enforcement to do civil immigration enforcement. Now, on the flip side, it's important for us to say, somebody breaks the law seriously. Their undocumented or documented status does not protect them. We will go after somebody who threatens us, period. But we do not collaborate. We absolutely have those strict rules. And look, and I'll tell you why. I'll give you one quick story. Right before Christmas, we had an LAPD officer who was shot in the leg.

And somebody just leaned out a window and shot her and her partner nine times. She happened to be an immigrant, actually, herself, from South Korea. And within a half hour, we caught that guy in the most immigrant-heavy part of L.A. They said he went that-a-way, he's over there, we know who he is. And we caught a would-be cop killer because immigrants trust us here. When you lose that trust, you can't patrol your streets. And I'll never stop listening to police over a politician when it comes to public safety. Trump, Republicans want to talk about immigration. They want to make the election immigration.

We want to talk about the economy. How do you think Democrats should handle immigration 18, 2020? Is it something to just sort of ignore, to react to Donald Trump? Do we need a positive message of our own? Look, I welcome the conversation. It's not the only part of the conversation. I think Donald Trump would like to only talk about imaginary folks that are coming over the border, the worst cases, and smear a class of folks at a moment when border crossings last year were the lowest since 1971. But we've got to flip the script on this. It can't just be the immorality of this.

I can speak about this as a mayor, saying his policies on immigration are making us less safe in Los Angeles. He took, because he doesn't agree with a 40-year-old policy put in by a conservative police chief in his town, he's taken dollars away from our police that go towards going after our gangs, including MS-13. So Donald Trump's weak on MS-13 in my town. You got to flip the script on families. You're pro-family. You're opening up the White House to the most quote-unquote pro-family judges and legislation ever, and that

you're ripping families apart. And then you have to look at the economy. Here in LA, like many main streets of America, 61 percent of new businesses are started by immigrants and children of immigrants. So, you know, I think you have to flip that script. It can't just be about, you know, saying we're right or we're about sanctuary or this or that. You have to be about what's practical. And this is a weak president. He doesn't understand how to govern. He doesn't understand how to protect people here. And who cares more about the safety of my family and my city? Those of us who live here or him? That's an easy question. We're looking at Senator Kamala Harris,

who just ran into John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, who has their brand new baby. We're all out here to speak and support the movement. And then the real star of the show that we're all trying to get to is Adi Barkan, who's just beyond them. So we're going to interview him as soon as we possibly can. So do you think that people are making a connection between what we're seeing on immigration, which has obviously gotten people pretty upset, and what we're seeing in the decisions coming out of the court, decisions around pre-existing conditions? Do you think that people are seeing this as part of one story about what the Trump administration is trying to do? Well, I think that's our objective

and that's woke and on your side, you lose every election in a landslide. But if you have 53, then you political power. So the question is how do we reach people who are only marginally interested or who are too busy to pay attention every day and hopefully this issue is breaking through. But I don't think we'll know until, you know, Wednesday morning after the election. Does it feel different to you now than it did 12 or 18 months ago? than they did 12 or 18 months ago? Or is this just more of the same with more attacks and difficulty? I feel like the last month since the family separation crisis started,

there's been a bit of a shift where there's more people who are already angry or angrier. People who may not have still been paying attention to politics are now paying attention. I had a bunch of friends text me even about this march and be like, I think I want to do this. I want to go down. I haven't marched before. So I think it's reached a fever pitch over the last month or so. I think there was a couple of months there between the health care fight and the tax fight now where people were sort of just like, what's the news?

Is it Mueller? Is it Russia? Is everyone yelling? And now it's back to issues where there are huge stakes for people, and it feels like more of a crisis atmosphere. That's my sense of it. I agree, because the Mueller stories are like

the intrigue that people look forward to unfolding. The bad thing already happened. But when family separation happened, it shows the stakes of the election. And then when the Supreme Court opening occurred, it could be a moment where people go into the deepest pit of despair they've been in since the election, or they get to fucking work. And thank God for guys like you. We're putting together events like this, and people are getting to work.

So this tour that I'm going on, launching today, we're going to go in an RV, a wheelchair-accessible RV, from here all the way to Maine to talk to voters and Americans about why they need to organize in their neighborhoods and their schools and their workplaces and treat this election like our democracy depends on it. The tour schedule is posted on my Twitter feed at Adi Barkin. I would love to see people come out. We're doing town halls and rallies, voter registration drives. We're going to run up on some Republicans and chase them down.

So I'd love it if the pod listeners go to BAOfund.com. Our schedule is there, and I'd love to see you on the road. Thanks, buddy. Great to see you. Good to see you. Thank you for doing this, man. We're about to speak with Senator Kamala Harris, who represents us, represents the state of

California and has been a leader on the conversation about immigration and ICE and the separation crisis that's happening on the border. Sarah, thank you so much for doing this. Of course. What does this crowd in California say to everyone you work with in Washington? Are they paying attention? I think they are paying attention. I mean, this crowd reminds me of the crowds that came out around the Affordable Care Act.

It's a cross-section of who we are as a country. You can see every walk of life in this crowd who are out fighting for really fundamental values about who we are as Americans. And I think in that way, this is a universal discussion. And it's based on universal truths and ideals and principles. And I think it speaks to not just this region, but to the whole country. And again, it speaks to who we are or who we are not as a country. Obviously, you were one of the first people to say, you know, ICE should be reconstituted, rethought of. A lot of people around America probably haven't even heard of ICE, let alone

abolish ICE. What do you think the future of this agency should look like? How do we have, how do we constitute the best kind of enforcement system? Right. So part of it has to be that we have to prioritize public safety and understand that criminalizing people who are fleeing violence is not prioritizing public safety. So it is fundamentally about also re-evaluating and actually critically evaluating, based on what we've been saying, whether we are living up to the core mission

of what government should do. And in particular, agencies that are supposed to deal with public safety and deal with public safety, but stop criminalizing parents, stop separating parents and tearing them away from their children. So this has been the end of such a shitty fucking week. We saw Kennedy retire and, you know, give his replacement to Trump.

We've seen no plan to get families together again. We've seen a terrible shooting. There's a lot of people that feel really discouraged. They don't know that Senate Democrats will hang together and fight hard enough against this Republican nominee. What do you say to people out there who right now feel incredibly discouraged about what they see and feel a little bit helpless? One, we are better than this. And so let's remember that. Let's not buy into those powerful voices that are trying to sow hate and division among us, because on fundamental issues like whether parents should be with their children, we're all in it together and we are not divided

as a nation. And we cannot tire. We will get past this moment, but we cannot tire during this moment. This is a moment where everybody is going to be held accountable. You know, to future generations, where were you? And it can't only be about how you felt. It has to be about what you did. And this is that moment in time to get out there and fight and vote and march and talk and speak out and shout when and if necessary, which apparently is all the time these days. I will say, though, we do draw the line at cheese plates. Everyone gets a cheese plate. No exceptions. A cheese plate in every pot.

A cheese plate no matter what you do or what you say. How about cheesecake also? That's a good platform. Thank you for sweating with us for a few minutes. Thank you so much. We were walking for a couple hours, and we saw hundreds of people who weren't just there to march, but their lives were directly affected by immigration policies. There were people working in stores and restaurants and hotels,

and not all of them could go to the march for obvious reasons because they had work or they didn't know this was happening or they aren't on liberal Twitter. But we saw a woman named Berta. She was standing in front of an immigration attorney's office with two little girls, her granddaughters. She has an immigration case open, and this march is really for her and her family too. And she was watching from the sidewalk. So we went over to talk with her. She didn't know the march was happening, but she was willing to share her story. We're not all like you think. We came here to be independent and help the country in whatever way we can, but not to abuse the country.

I'm happy. Our amazing producer Mukta was translating for us and leading this conversation. And Berta was telling us that she was glad that the city felt united and that there are misconceptions around immigrants and that most people are just trying to be independent and get an education and a career and that they'd like to help the country however they can. Everyone can do it. Everyone can succeed. But sometimes some people need doors open so they can achieve. Berta said, hopefully, here is a united town that can help make everything different.

All right, and that's our show for today. Hope you guys enjoyed everything we heard at the march and some of the people we talked to. Thanks for going out there and marching if you did that. And if you didn't, you'll get them next time. We don't know what you're waiting for. The thing to know about these marches is actually it's fun. And you feel good not just while you're there but for days afterwards

because there's a community of people who feel like you do and they're doing something. It is the best antidote to reading the news. Yeah, don't read fucking tweets while you're there either. And it makes a difference. It actually makes a difference. It makes people focus. Okay, Dan and I are going to do a mailbag episode, and that will be out Thursday, July 5th.

And so you'll be hearing that then. And then other than that, everyone have a great 4th, and we'll talk to you after the break. Wear sunscreen, all those who are a little pale like me. Bye, everyone. Thank you.