Off-kilter With Rebecca Vallas

Nearly every time there’s a mass shooting in this country, you can predict what will follow like clockwork. First come the thoughts and prayers. Then comes the scapegoating of “the mentally ill.” Notably absent: any meaningful steps toward commonsense gun violence prevention. The national debate following the tragic mass shooting at a Florida school has unfortunately been no exception, with President Trump even calling for a return to mass institutionalization of people living with mental illness. To bust some of the myths around mental illness and gun violence, Rebecca speaks with Mary Giliberti, the CEO of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Next, to dig into the historical context on these issues, she talks with Ari Ne’eman, founder and past president of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and a former Obama appointee to the National Council on Disability, who recently authored an article in The American Prospect chronicling America’s ugly history of mass institutionalization and involuntary commitment

The first day of March marked a sobering anniversary — Minimum Wage Equal Pay Day, the day a minimum wage worker earning $7.25/hour caught up to how much she earned in a single year the last time the federal minimum wage was raised… in 2009. This anniversary comes as Congress is too busy giving tax cuts to billionaires and deregulating Wall Street to give the lowest-paid workers in this country the raise they’ve so long needed and deserved. Rebecca speaks with Congressman Mark Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who joined workers at the Capitol earlier this week to call on President Trump and Congress to raise the poverty-level minimum wage. Next a conversation with Elizabeth Catte, author of the recent book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, about why we shouldn’t be surprised to see West Virginia teachers — the “daughters and granddaughters of coal miners” — on the front lines of the fight for fair wages. And finally, Rebecca sits down with Elissa McBride, secretary-treasurer

“Many people are angered by the cruelties of the twenty-first-century economy. And their fury has fueled worldwide protest. Simultaneously, and almost everywhere, low-wage workers and small farmers began to revolt: in New York City restaurants, laundries, and warehouses, in Western Cape wineries and the garment shops of Phnom Penh, in Southern California Walmarts, and the big hotels of Providence, Oslo, Karachi, and Abuja. As capital has globalized, so has the labor movement. Marches, strikes, protests, and sit-ins from Tampa to Mali have changed the global conversation about workers’ rights.” So writes Annelise Orleck in her new book We Are All Fast Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages—which, as she explains on this week’s episode of Off-Kilter, tells the story behind the growing global labor movement through workers’ eyes. Next, earlier this month, leaked documents revealed that the Trump administration is preparing to go nuclear on immigration by ending the U.S.’s family-based immigr

Just six weeks after jacking up the deficit by $1.5 trillion to give huge tax cuts to millionaires and wealthy corporations, President Trump laid plain how he plans to pay for them in the budget he released this week. To unpack the budget’s winners and losers, Rebecca is joined by Chad Bolt, senior policy manager at Indivisible. Next, this week wasn’t just budget week—it was also infrastructure week, with the release of Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan. Rebecca is joined by Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress, to unpack what’s in the plan. And finally, nearly 28 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act became the law of the land, this week the House lobbed a major attack on disability rights by passing a bill that would gut the landmark civil rights law. Rebecca talks with Anita Cameron, a longtime activist with ADAPT, about how it feels to be fighting to save the ADA nearly three decades after she fought for its passage. 

The so-called “able-bodied” are now everywhere among government antipoverty programs, Republican officials claim. But, as Emily Badger and Margot Sanger-Katz write in the New York Times Upshot, this term has long been a political as well as a moral one, dating back centuries to the 1601 Elizabethan poor law, as a proxy for separating the “deserving” from the “undeserving.” To unpack the 400-year history of the term “able-bodied,” Rebecca talks with Emily Badger. Next, on the same day that President Trump releases a budget that is expected to—yet again—slash nearly every program that helps workers and families make ends meet, to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, fast-food workers will be staging a massive walk-out in Memphis, calling for higher wages and union rights. Protesters will be marching along the same route as the sanitation workers' strike that, 50 years ago, brought Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis, Tennessee, where he was assassinated. Rebecca speaks with Cheri Honkala, an organizer with the Poor

News broke this week that the Trump administration has been hiding evidence that’s of great importance to the public. No, we’re not talking about collusion with the Russians. We’re talking about the fact that we have now learned that the Trump administration lied to the public about evidence that a new policy the administration is pushing will cost low-wage and tipped workers billions of dollars in lost wages—which their employers will likely pocket. To get the scoop, Rebecca talks with Heidi Shierholz, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Dept. of Labor under President Obama. Next, black students are suspended and expelled at rates three times higher than white students, and students with disabilities are twice as likely to receive an out of school suspension compared with their nondisabled peers. Students of color with disabilities face the highest rates of school discipline of all. Yet the Trump administration is poised to roll back Obama-era rules aimed at cu

Rebecca sits down with Cornell Brooks, a lawyer, ordained minister, and activist who formerly served as the 18th president of the NAACP, and Patrick Cokley, a longtime disability rights advocate who serves as the administrator of the LEAD ON update which provides resources on technology, employment, and education related to disability.

Trump’s “shithole” comment may be his most blatant racist remark to date. But are his more subtle racist dog whistles even more dangerous? And why are so many people in this country so uncomfortable with using the word racist? Rebecca sits down with Cornell Brooks, a lawyer, ordained minister, and activist who formerly served as the 18th president of the NAACP, and Patrick Cokley, a longtime disability rights advocate who serves as the administrator of the LEAD ON update which provides resources on technology, employment, and education related to disability. Next, following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ rollback of the Obama-era policy that paved the way to legal pot, Rebecca talks with Inge Frykland, a former Assistant State Attorney in Cook County who serves on the board of Law Enforcement Action Partnership, which is devoted to criminal justice reform and stopping the war on drugs. But first, The Slevinator returns with the news of the week in poverty and inequality—and an outfit made for radio—in anothe

This week on Off-Kilter, Rebecca talks with Alastair Gee, the only homelessness editor at a major U.S. publication, about The Guardian’s year-long series looking at homelessness in the US. Next, continuing our series of interviews with candidates and elected officials living with mental illness and mental health disabilities, Rebecca speaks with Representative Garnet Coleman who represents parts of Houston in the Texas legislature. But first, with the federal government teetering on the edge of shutdown, Rebecca and Jeremy Slevin talk with Sam Berger, a senior policy advisor at the Center for American Progress and a shutdown expert from his time at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Rebecca is joined by Will Fischer, director of government relations at VoteVets.org

With 122 Dreamers losing DACA protection every day as Congress continues to debate funding to keep the federal government open, Rebecca talks with Claudia Flores, immigration campaign manager at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and a Dreamer herself. Next, following last week’s discussion about the national obsession with President Donald Trump’s mental health, Rebecca speaks with Reyma McCoy McDeid, an autistic candidate for office in Iowa, as part of a series of conversations with elected officials and candidates for office who live with mental illness and mental health disabilities. And finally, when you think of the face of poverty in America, is it a veteran’s face you see? Rebecca is joined by Will Fischer, director of government relations at VoteVets.org. But first, The Slevinator returns to unpack Trump’s new policy allowing states to take away people’s Medicaid if they can’t find work.

“Welfare reform”, infrastructure, bye-bye legal pot, and if no one takes Trump’s phone away from him, maybe nuclear war? To help unpack what’s on deck for 2018 (that we know of so far), Rebecca talks with Jared Bernstein, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden. Next, questions about President Donald Trump’s mental health hit a fever pitch this week, following his tweets about the size and potency of his nuclear button. Such questions are of course nothing new; throughout the campaign and Trump’s first year in office, news articles, op-eds, and tweets critical of him have routinely deployed words such as “crazy,” “insane,” and “unstable” as epithets against the man. Rebecca talks with Rebecca Cokley, a senior fellow for disability policy at the Center for American Progress, about the implications of armchair diagnosis – and of the use of mental health language in such critiques -- when it comes to how our society views mental illness?

Off-Kilter is on a break this week so we’ve rounded up up some of our favorite conversations to hold you over in the meantime. We’ll be back with new content next week.

Rebecca Vallas looks back over 2017 with Ezra Levin, Co-Executive Director of Indivisible.

A year ago, we were all looking ahead to 2017 wondering what the new world order was going to look like under a Trump presidency, and with the GOP firmly in control of both chambers of Congress. Now, after a whirlwind year of ups, downs, and words we can’t say on radio, 2017 is drawing to a close – and for many of us, not a moment too soon. So this week, Off-Kilter’s taking a moment to look back on the year in review. First, Rebecca speaks with Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress, about what she’s learned as we look ahead to 2018. Next, she talks with Ezra Levin, Co-Executive Director of Indivisible, as the movement spurred by a humble google doc commemorates its one year anniversary. And finally, with the DREAM Act in limbo amid Congress’s end of year funding debate, Rebecca’s joined by Tom Jawetz, CAP’s immigration guru, about what’s at stake for the tens of thousands of immigrants whose futures hang in the balance.

When Senator-elect Doug Jones addressed his supporters Tuesday night in Alabama, one of his first shout-outs went to his African-American supporters. As well it should have been – with exit polls showing that 30% of the voters in Tuesday’s special election were black, even beating the record-high black turnout in the 2012 presidential election. To unpack what was behind the wave of black turnout – and what Democrats can learn from it – I’m joined by Michele Jawando, Vice President of Legal Progress at the Center for American Progress and host of Thinking CAP, Off-Kilter’s sister podcast. Later in the show, while Trump and his colleagues in Congress try to push tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations over the finish line without a single democratic vote, they’re not even trying to hide what comes next: cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, Meals on Wheels and more – in the name of “welfare reform.” To discuss the role of language in debates around cutting these and other critical progra

Literally at the same time Trump and his colleagues in Congress are working to ram gargantuan tax cuts for billionaires and wealthy corporations through Congress without a single democratic vote, they’re making no secret of how they want to pay for them. By slashing vital programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and more. To help us unpack where they’re headed -- and what they mean when they use buzzwords like “entitlement reform” and “welfare reform” – Rebecca talks with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA). Next, when David Mullins and Charlie Craig walked into Masterpiece Cakeshop five years ago, they had no idea their search for the perfect wedding cake would take them to the United States Supreme Court. Following oral arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case earlier this week Rebecca talks with Sharita Gruberg, LGBTQ policy guru at the Center for American Progress about what’s at stake. But first, Jeremy Slevin brings some holiday cheer – plus updates on the tax fight, government sh

Deregulation is the word of the month, thanks to the Trump administration. Rebecca talks with Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine about the FCC’s plans to end net neutrality, which she’s calling “the free speech fight of our generation.” Next, with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the spotlight following Trump’s installation of budget director Mick Mulvaney as its acting director, investigative reporter Gary Rivlin joins with a run-down of the years-long, dark-money fueled GOP crusade to burn down the agency. But first, as Republican Senators resumed their efforts Friday morning to ram through their partisan tax bill without a single democratic vote, Rebecca and Jeremy spoke with Seth Hanlon to get the latest on the bill – with all eyes on Maine Senator Susan Collins.

The GOP tax plan wouldn't just give massive tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations while raising taxes on millions of middle-class families. It's also the GOP's latest attack on reproductive rights. Ilyse Hogue, President of Naral Pro-Choice America, joins the show to unpack a provision buried in the bill that would give fetuses legal status as people. And later, Rebecca talks with Angela Ciolfi of the Legal Aid Justice Center and Ariel Levinson-Waldman of Tzedek DC about how driver's license suspensions have  kicked off the latest wave of debtor's prisons.

On the heels of last week’s tidal wave of wins for Dems, what can we learn as we look ahead to the 2018 midterms and beyond? Michael Blake, an assemblyman who represents the Bronx in New York’s state assembly — and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee — joins to discuss. Next, sexual harassment and sexual assault have been all over the headlines following a broad range of accusations against famed producer Harvey Weinstein (among many others), spurring a deeply charged national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace — and what can be done about it. Rebecca speaks with Chai Feldblum, a commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the government agency charged with processing workplace sexual harassment claims. But first, following the House’s passage of the #TrumpTaxScam this week, Rebecca speaks with Chad Bolt of Indivisible to get the latest — and for tips on how to talk to your family about it at Thanksgiving.