← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Geico Customer 1
When I scraped my car in that parking garage, I was worried that it could be a long process to take care of it. Like a landscaper's first day trimming a hedge maze.
- [00:08]
Jonathan Cohn
I have definitely already been here. Now, was it left, right or right left. Well, maybe I'll cut a path out and find my way back later.
- [00:20]
Geico Customer 1
But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app, and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened.
- [00:27]
Jonathan Cohn
It feels good to get help quick. It feels good to Geico. With my Sapphire Preferred card, we took
- [00:32]
Lady Luck
a trip to a desert Oasis, earning
- [00:34]
Jonathan Cohn
five times the points on Chase Travel, two times the points on all other travel, plus $100 hotel credit.
- [00:39]
Lady Luck
Chase Sapphire Preferred the car that's preferred for a reason.
- [00:41]
Jonathan Cohn
Cards issued by JP Morgan, J's bank and a member fdic, subject to credit approval terms apply. Well, this thing is hanging over this policy, the spring part. Are you guys paying attention to it?
- [00:49]
Lady Luck
Are you?
- [00:49]
Esther's Brother
Oh, yeah, I'm always worried about it. Yeah, I'm always worried about it.
- [00:53]
Maurice
She's so worried. She. She dreamed about.
- [00:55]
Esther's Brother
I absolutely do. The whole thing is so terrible.
- [01:01]
Jonathan Cohn
So that was Maurice. She's a home health care aide in South Florida. She is also one of more than 300,000 Haitian immigrants living and working here legally because of a special refugee program that Donald Trump is trying to end. Trump says we have too many people from shithole countries here in the United States and we need to get rid of them.
- [01:21]
Donald Trump
Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?
- [01:24]
Jonathan Cohn
Well, I am Jonathan Cohn from the Bulwark. I'm here to tell you who these people really are, the vital role they play in our community, and how many of us could pay a significant price if they get sent away. So this story starts about 25 years ago in Haiti. Maurice is a journalist and a successful one. She. She works in radio. She works for some NGOs. She's got two children. And then disaster strikes. The 2010 Haiti earthquake, which leveled the country's infrastructure and tore apart its social and. And political fabric. Eventually, Haiti becomes one of the most dangerous countries in the world to live in.
- [02:01]
Maurice
I was in Haiti when it happened. Yeah, my daughter almost died. And when I asked her, you are sleeping. How did you come out? Because I was at home. I went to work. I was on a meeting, and then she told me something pushed her away from the bed, and then she got out and the walls collapsed on her bed.
- [02:27]
Jonathan Cohn
Maurice is in the United States with her two children. That's when the Obama administration acts and extends what's called temporary protected status, which basically means, hey, we realize that your country is very dangerous. We're not going to send you back there. You can live here and work here legally until it becomes safe. Just so for people to know, is it safe to go back to Haiti? Is Haiti safe now?
- [02:49]
Haitian Community Advocate
Haiti is not at all safe. Crime has increased, violence against women and children, Lack of access to, no access to education, actually no access to health care. Gangs have increased the territories that they occupy. Beyond Port au Prince. There's been 1.5 million people displaced, internal displacement because they can no longer stay in the neighborhood where they lived. And you know, the United nations did officially put out a report saying that 50 over 50% of the population of Haiti is subject to famine.
- [03:27]
Jonathan Cohn
Even before the earthquake and the temporary protected status, Haitian immigrants were gravitating to work in the care industry as home care workers or nursing home staff. Partly because it was the kind of job you could get if you didn't have great language skills and you could get it without a ton of training. There was a huge demand for the job. Frankly, there were not enough native born Americans to fill the positions. And beyond all that, in Haitian culture, there's a long tradition of reverence and care for the elderly, people with disabilities. So it was a natural place to go for Haitian immigrants in this country
- [04:03]
Haitian Community Advocate
looking for work, taking care of our sick and elderly. It's also part of our culture. For example, in Haiti, there's practically no nursing homes because elderly stay home and we take care of them. Right. And being able to take care of an aging person is actually considered a, you know, it's a blessing, we say, meaning that the donkey has children so that they can care for it, so that it can rest. And it's in our culture, you know, we, we take care of those who, we take care of those who came in, came here before us.
- [04:43]
Jonathan Cohn
Maurice was grateful again. She's got her two kids with her. She goes looking for a job. It's tough to find job as a journalist though. So she ends up with a relative in Georgia who suggests, why don't you become a home care worker?
- [04:56]
Maurice
I was looking for work everywhere. Yeah, Because I'm not the type of person to just sit down. No, look, I apply everywhere. Nobody was hiring. And then my sister said, okay, come to Georgia. And I went to Georgia. And she said, I know you're a professional, but you have to start somewhere. Why don't you go to CNL school? Matter of fact, she paid for it. And I went to Cnley School, and then I got my license, and since then I've been working. And in 2015, I moved back here because I. I had a job waiting on me.
- [05:39]
Jonathan Cohn
Once Maurice was back in Florida. One of her clients was a World War II veteran who had flown more than 50 missions over Europe.
- [05:47]
Maurice
That's how I met her brother. He was an amazing guy.
- [05:50]
Esther's Brother
Martin.
- [05:51]
Mistplay User
Martin.
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Esther's Brother
The best brother anybody could ever have. Yeah, he was wonderful. And he was a pilot in. In. In. In the war. Amazing that he was captain of this whole crew. And he did 54 missions and thank goodness.
- [06:09]
Jonathan Cohn
So you would watch Maurice with him?
- [06:11]
Esther's Brother
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We went everywhere.
- [06:15]
Donald Trump
Okay.
- [06:16]
Maurice
When. When I w. In the morning, the first question, where are we going to?
- [06:21]
Esther's Brother
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:24]
Maurice
He was an outdoor person. Always very outdoor.
- [06:28]
Esther's Brother
Outdoor.
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Jonathan Cohn
Like, what kind of things would he like to do?
- [06:30]
Maurice
Oh, we play a game. Play a game on the. On his iPad. We go to a restaurant. We go to concert at Kravis Art Center.
- [06:42]
Jonathan Cohn
Esther is in fantastic shape for her age. She's sharp as a tack, but she is physically frail. She needs help. That is what Maurice is there for. And how old did you sing?
- [06:53]
Esther's Brother
96.
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Maurice
96, 97.
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Jonathan Cohn
It's incredible.
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Zocdoc Narrator
Incredible.
- [06:58]
Jonathan Cohn
Just incredible. Maurice, how long have you been working here with Esther?
- [07:02]
Esther's Brother
Two years.
- [07:03]
Donald Trump
Two years.
- [07:04]
Maurice
But I've been knowing her for almost 10 years. That work without Border for seven years.
- [07:11]
Esther's Brother
And I fell apart.
- [07:13]
Jonathan Cohn
Yeah, you fell apart. You don't look like you fell apart.
- [07:15]
Maurice
She always did that.
- [07:17]
Esther's Brother
Well, I hurt my arm when I fell. You know, it's one of those, like, all axes if. Why didn't I do.
- [07:26]
Jonathan Cohn
She depends on Maurice for things, just like walking, not to mention companionship and help with other things. And now that is in jeopardy. Trump is trying to take away temporary protected status from home health care workers, from care workers and a bunch of other Haitians here on temporary protected status, because in his view, they don't really add anything to our society. They're not contributing. They're a net drain. We need to get rid of them.
- [07:52]
Donald Trump
We have many, many, you know, bad people in our country. Many of them are being taken out. Ultimately, they're all being taken out now.
- [07:59]
Jonathan Cohn
Haitians in particular have been a focus of Trump's ire. You may remember from the 2024 campaign, him talking about refugees in Ohio who allegedly were eating cats and dogs and pets of other people in Springfield.
- [08:16]
Donald Trump
They're eating the dogs, the people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.
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Jonathan Cohn
Well, that was Haitian refugees. And he's repeatedly referred to them as dirty or unproductive or even violent hellholes
- [08:35]
Donald Trump
like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries. Places that are a disaster. Right. Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.
- [08:45]
Jonathan Cohn
Of course, all of that was nonsense.
- [08:48]
Maurice
No matter what they're saying about people who have TPS here, if you don't stay, follow the law, stay out of trouble. You can get it. Yeah. No, you cannot. You have to stay out of trouble to get TPS because they do a background check on you every time you have to renew it. Yeah. And we works. We all work. We pay taxes and we're here.
- [09:18]
Zocdoc Narrator
Bulwark Takes is sponsored by Zocdoc. Now, we all know health issues don't follow a 9 to 5 schedule. And with Zocdoc having no time to book a doctor's appointment, well, that's actually no problem at all. So when you don't have any time for yourself until 11pm Been there. Or you cut your finger making a midnight snack. Definitely been there. Or you tweak your back on the dance floor at a wedding. And I actually recently was there a couple of weeks ago at a wedding, decided I was going to dance with my wife. Tweaked my back. Really happened to me. Go to ZocDoc anytime 247 and find a doctor. You love to make your health plan happen. Yeah, it even happens way after hours. ZocDoc is a free app and website that helps you find and book high quality in network doctors so you can find someone who you love. We're talking about booking in network appointments with more than 150,000 providers across all 50 states. Whether you're looking for, I don't know, dermatology, dentistry, primary care, eye care, or one of the 200 plus specialists offered on Zocdoc. You can easily search by specialty or by symptom to build the care team that's right for you. And that's what I do. I go to zocdoc when I'm blowing out my back on the wedding dance floor or when I'm cutting my fingers making that midnight snack. It's easy, it's reliable, you can navigate it by specialty. It gives you ease of mind, let's put it that way. So stop putting off all those doctor's appointments and go to zocdoc.com bulwarktakes to find and instantly book a doctor who you love today. That's Z O c d o c.com bulwarktakes zocdoc.com Bulwark takes thanks to Zocdoc for sponsoring this message.
- [11:00]
Jonathan Cohn
Trump, when he got into office, his administration, through Kristi Noem, who was the Secretary of Homeland Security back then, issued an order saying that, in fact, it was now safe to go back to Haiti. There were no longer emergency conditions and thus they no longer needed the temporary protective status.
- [11:17]
Esther's Brother
The State Department gives us the analysis and the Department of Homeland Security implements the program. So as TPS for Haiti expires, those individuals can all work with us to see if it is following the law to stay here. And if not, they will return home.
- [11:31]
Haitian Community Advocate
They would lose their work permit. They would be deported to Haiti. Of course, we expect that it would be in, you know, maybe in waves or audio priority. And it could happen as early as July 2, because right now the pause is effective up to July 1, 2026. The other side of it is that we're talking about 350,000 people plus US born children. Unless they leave the 50,000 plus US born children behind, who would be sent back to a country where there is no education, no employment, no food insecurity. We have more death. The death toll by gang and gun violence in Haiti is higher than the death toll in wars.
- [12:21]
Jonathan Cohn
Trump had actually tried to do this before. During his first term. He got stopped by the courts. So when he issued this order, immigration advocates, lawyers, people like the Archbishop of Miami, which, in addition to being a Catholic organization, runs a lot of the home care business down there, all of them protest. And they also filed new lawsuits in court alleging that the administration had not gone through the proper process in order to issue, get new findings to show that it was safe in Haiti. But then in addition to that, that there was some kind of racial animus at work. Because after all, even as he kept talking about these people from shithole countries, he kept saying, what we really need, you know, are people from, like, white South Africa.
- [13:02]
Donald Trump
Why can't we have some people from Norway, Sweden? Just a few. Let us have a few from, from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people. Do you mind?
- [13:14]
Esther's Brother
When Trump first got in and he kept saying, I'm going to make America great, I said, God, doesn't anybody realize what he's saying, that he's going to make it all white? Doesn't anybody understand that when he says he's going to make America great, that's what he's saying?
- [13:35]
Jonathan Cohn
Now, nobody knows how the Supreme Court will rule, but at oral arguments, it sounded like the justices were sympathetic to the administration. And if they side with the administration, then all those Haitian immigrants, they're going to lose their work permits and pretty soon the deportations are going to start. But there would be one more chance to act. In April, the House passed a bill from Representative Arianna Pressley from Massachusetts that would extend temporary protected status for the Haitians.
- [14:01]
Representative Ayanna Pressley
And I will not stand idly by while our Haitian neighbors are denigrated, dehumanized, criticized, or forced to live in fear of deportation. Haitian TPS holders are not the problem. Quite the contrary, they are part of the solution.
- [14:17]
Jonathan Cohn
It passed with Democratic votes, but also some Republicans, mostly from communities like South Florida, like Ohio or New York, where there are large numbers of Haitian immigrants doing the kind of work that Maurice is. They are the backbone of the care industry.
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Representative Ayanna Pressley
One in four of our healthcare workers are Haitian long term health care, and one in five of our healthcare workers are Haitian.
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Jonathan Cohn
Senate has not taken up the bill, but if the Supreme Court rules for the administration, there is a chance that Republicans would join Democrats if they feel enough pressure, especially from states like Florida, like New York, like Ohio, where Haitian immigrants are vital to the community.
- [15:01]
Haitian Community Advocate
We believe that the bill will be introduced for a vote sometime in July. We also understand that some Republican senators are saying that there is no way that this will happen and that this is an amnesty that we continue to advocate with senators across the country, both Democrats and Republicans, particularly here in the state of Florida, where we hope that our Senators Moody and Scott, understanding how that Florida is home to the largest Haitian diaspora in the world, but also understanding the impact that this will have on our Haitian families, on the Florida economy, et cetera.
- [15:41]
Jonathan Cohn
And if those senators need to learn more about just how vital the work of these Haitian immigrants is, they should ask people like Esther, ask them what it means to have home care workers who they trust, who they've gotten to know, and what it would mean to have them ripped out of their lives.
- [15:58]
Maurice
What would you do if she wasn't here?
- [16:00]
Esther's Brother
I'd be very sad. Very sad for her, for her kids and for the whole situation. And of course I'd be very sad to lose her because we're very close. We're just more friends than employer employee, I hope. At least that's the way I always feel about it.
- [16:24]
Maurice
She's right. She's right.
- [16:26]
Esther's Brother
And the whole family, everybody loves Maurice. I do worry about her and the kids and, and all the nice people, all the people that cut the grass and do the things that nobody else is going to do. In the weather and everything, they're not all bad. And if they only got rid of just the bad people, okay, but to get rid of and to have everybody looking over their back and worried about every day and about their kids going to school and what's going to happen and will they be pulled over for driving safely and it's just, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's not, it's not the country that I grew up with, at least as far as I was concerned. It's not. This is terrible.
- [17:19]
Jonathan Cohn
But of course, the biggest impact would be on people like Maurice who have no place to go, might have to go back to a country that they don't even recognize or find someplace else to go. Do you think at all about what you would do if you had to leave?
- [17:33]
Maurice
I don't want to think about it. I like to see when it happen. It might never happen and it might happen, who knows? You can. You cannot be worried all the time because life has surprises. I might go out today and have an accident. I don't wish that. The same way I can go out and then I close with the ice. I never seen them, but it could happen. This is the United States and Haiti is one of the first nations that built the United Nations. We were one of the first nations. And why they hate us so much,
- [18:33]
Esther's Brother
I don't know.
- [18:34]
Maurice
We just know we were all born to be free. The world, the earth is a free land. It belongs to all of us, no matter which part of it we form.
- [18:46]
Jonathan Cohn
Now you can read all about this. You can read the backstory of how this situation came to be. You can read about the history of the Temporary Protected Status Program, Donald Trump's attempts to end it, and what it really does mean or would mean for refugees in places like South Florida, New York, Ohio and really many other places around the country. It's all in the latest edition of the Breakdown newsletter by me, Jonathan Cohn at the Bulwark. I hope you'll read it and think about subscribing and watching these videos because these are really important issues for all of us, not just the refugees.
- [19:35]
Esther's Brother
Foreign.
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Lady Luck
Hey, everybody, lady luck here. And we're celebrating America's 250th birthday. Now, all summer long, I'm going to be celebrating by playing on finquest.com which is an American owned social casino. It obviously features over a thousand slot games and live blackjack pack, live crafts, live bubble crafts. Head on over to spinquest.com get yourself a 30 coin pack for just 10 bucks.
- [20:08]
Donald Trump
Spin Quest is a free to play social casino. Boyd where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [20:13]
Representative Ayanna Pressley
When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if a tween won the lottery.
- [20:20]
Mistplay User
I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With a helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound, but they're just being babies.
- [20:35]
Representative Ayanna Pressley
But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe.
- [20:38]
Jonathan Cohn
It feels good to save some hard earned cash. It feels good to Geico.
- [20:46]
Lady Luck
Another game day. But while he's glued to the tv, I'm winning my own way with Mistplay.
- [20:52]
Jonathan Cohn
Let's go.
- [20:53]
Lady Luck
Mistplay rewards me just for playing free mobile games. I earn points and swap them for gift cards to Amazon, Uber Eats and Sephora.
- [21:02]
Jonathan Cohn
Yeah, we won.
- [21:03]
Lady Luck
And I just redeemed a Target gift card.
- [21:06]
Donald Trump
Woo.
- [21:07]
Lady Luck
Download Mistplay today and turn your downtime into rewards.