Heather McGhee on Trump’s Wars on DEI and Immigration

Summary

Podcast Summary: Heather McGhee on Trump’s Wars on DEI and Immigration

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Al Franken Podcast
• Host: Al Franken
• Guest: Heather McGhee
• Episode Title: Heather McGhee on Trump’s Wars on DEI and Immigration
• Release Date: June 15, 2025

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1. Introduction and Context

Al Franken opens the episode by addressing the tumultuous week marked by widespread protests across the United States. He touches upon the media portrayal of protests as predominantly violent, contrasting it with the reality of mostly peaceful demonstrations. Franken sets the stage for a deep conversation with Heather McGhee, a renowned social economist and former advisor, focusing on Trump’s policies targeting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and immigration.

Notable Quote:

Al Franken [19:21]: "But maybe your audience doesn't know it."

2. Trump's Deportation Policies and Immigration Wars

Heather McGhee delves into the Trump administration's aggressive immigration stance, emphasizing the disparity between the promised targeting of "bad guys" and the reality of mass deportations affecting hardworking, law-abiding immigrants. She highlights how immigrants contribute significantly to communities and the economy, undermining Trump's narrative.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [30:06]: "What has most surprised me about this administration is the speed and volume of the attacks on everything we hold dear."

3. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): Origins and Impact

The conversation shifts to the origins of DEI in corporate America during the 1970s and 80s. McGhee explains how DEI initiatives were developed to address systemic biases favoring white men, fostering more inclusive workplaces. She distinguishes DEI from affirmative action, clarifying that DEI programs often function as remedial integration education aimed primarily at the majority group.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [08:09]: "DEI is really a program to help facilitate integration in the workplace for the majority group."

4. Trump Administration's Attack on DEI

McGhee outlines how the Trump administration, led by figures like Stephen Miller, politicized DEI as a form of legal discrimination without substantive evidence. This campaign targeted DEI programs in educational institutions and corporations, viewing them as threats to traditional power structures and economic interests.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [10:46]: "The Trump administration has decided that one big way for them to divert and deflect and distract... is to claim that everything in America is being destroyed by an acronym yet again. Right? And this time it's DEI."

5. Effects on Corporate America and Institutions

The administration's push against DEI has led to significant repercussions for major institutions. McGhee discusses how prestigious universities like Harvard have resisted DEI attacks, understanding the broader implications for research and societal progress. She also touches on the decline in diversity within top law firms despite these challenges.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [12:39]: "Less than 5% of big law partners are black. We still have a long way to go."

6. Economic Consequences of Anti-DEI and Immigration Policies

McGhee connects anti-DEI and immigration policies to broader economic downturns, drawing parallels to historical instances where segregationist policies led to economic stagnation. She argues that undermining DEI and restricting immigration not only harm marginalized communities but also degrade the nation’s economic and innovative capacities.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [35:02]: "What's really hurt is all of the premier and flagship hospitals in Boston... these are the places where our research and partnership is keeping those hospitals going."

7. Importance of Diversity in Innovation and Society

Emphasizing diversity as America's "superpower," McGhee explains how diverse teams drive innovation and solve complex problems more effectively. She provides examples of significant contributions from minority groups, illustrating that diversity leads to better outcomes in business, science, and governance.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [25:22]: "Diverse juries remember more facts... companies with diverse boardrooms being more profitable."

8. Protests and Public Response

The episode highlights the surge in protests against Trump's immigration and DEI policies, noting increased participation from military veterans and local communities. McGhee underscores the bravery of undocumented immigrants who risk deportation to advocate for their rights and communities.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [50:46]: "A community stood up... They are risking their very lives to protest."

9. Concluding Insights and Call to Action

In closing, McGhee urges listeners to engage with local civic organizations to amplify their voices against oppressive policies. She stresses the importance of collective action in influencing policy and societal norms, reinforcing the idea that diversity and inclusion are integral to America's future.

Notable Quote:

Heather McGhee [53:46]: "Please go out and make your voice heard."

Notable Excerpts with Timestamps

• Affirmative Action History:

  Heather McGhee [05:02]: "We are talking about what DEI... are required to create a diverse pool."

• Impact on National Institutes of Health (NIH):

  Heather McGhee [37:06]: "The NIH has been fully thrown into chaos for the Trump administration."

• Economic Backbone of Immigrant Communities:

  Heather McGhee [31:40]: "Martha's Vineyard have been the economic backbone of that tourist island for the past 10, 20 years."

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Conclusion

This episode of The Al Franken Podcast features an insightful dialogue between Al Franken and Heather McGhee, dissecting the Trump administration's targeted attacks on DEI and immigration. Through historical context, economic analysis, and personal anecdotes, McGhee articulates the profound negative impacts of these policies on America's social fabric and economic vitality. The discussion underscores the critical need for diversity and inclusive policies as pillars of innovation and societal progress.

Transcript

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[Al Franken]

Hey everybody. We got a great one today, you know, for a change. And this time, this time I mean it because Heather McGee from our pantheon of great guests returns. Well, it's been quite a week. You should know that I'm taping this opening on Friday, so I don't know how Trump's birthday, I mean the army's birthday parade went and the nationwide no Kings protests. But I have a great conversation with Heather who is the best, so I'll get to that quickly. But we've had a week of protests in LA and now all around the country and Fox keeps playing the same clips of the driverless cars on fire. Somebody an idiot or idiot started those and The LAPD is arresting the morons who commit violent or destructive acts, but of course, the vast majority of protesters have been nonviolent and they're speaking out against a very violent thing. And the whole point of Trump calling out the National Guard and the Marines was to escalate the situation, and that they did. What's not surprising is how Americans are reacting. Trump is underwater by 11 points, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll. And I predict that it will get worse for him as Americans understand who they are sweeping up in these raids. ICE is arresting hard working people who contribute to their communities. They're raiding garment factories, the Home Depot parking lot where day laborers are finding work so they can feed themselves and their families and keep a roof overhead. We heard that ICE was going to arrest criminals, but it turns out that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than citizens who are born in America. So they're picking up immigrants who are valued members of their communities. I'm no doubt saying stuff you've already heard. So I'll go now to our conversation with Heather McGee on a host of issues, including immigration.

[Heather McGee]

You've got this story that Trump sold, which was that it was going to be mass deportations, but it was only going to be the bad guys. You actually had a lot of people from immigrant families saying, yeah, let's get those bad guys out of here because they're giving us a bad name. And of course he'll keep us because we started a business and we're employing people and we're law abiding and we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and we contribute to Social Security. Literally. You know, you had significant numbers of Latino, Asian, you know, fewer African American, but still more people of color voting for Trump, not just in spite of his mass deportation agenda, but rubber stamping it and saying, yeah, that's probably a good thing because he's talking about those criminals.

[Al Franken]

So enjoy this interview with Heather McGee. It's a great one, you know, for a change. So when did affirmative action start on this continent for white men? When Was that?

[Heather McGee]

About 16 upon Christopher Columbus's the first step when he was treated with anything as anything other than a hostile terrorist.

[Al Franken]

Well, I put it 16, 20s or something like that.

[Heather McGee]

I mean, well, I would say actually technically in terms of the creation of race based laws that privileged people with white skin over everybody else. That was in the early 18th century in the wake of a series of cross racial servant class uprisings that had united people of color, indentured, enslaved black Africans and indentured soon to be considered white Europeans. And then in Virginia, they first issued race laws to privileged whites over people of color so that they would side with the elite and think that they could be part of it one day.

[Al Franken]

Okay, but wasn't it earlier? Just when did the first slaves come to Virginia?

[Heather McGee]

16, 19.

[Al Franken]

So I would say that's when, if you have slaves, then you sort of have affirmative action for white men.

[Heather McGee]

That's right, yeah.

[Al Franken]

And that lasted until technically just for white men, I guess, until. I don't know. When did the Civil Rights act get.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah, well, I mean, we first had the Equal Employment Opportunity act and Equal Employment Opportunity commission in the mid-1960s. And so you began to see people being able to sue successfully when they'd been discriminated, having a part of the federal government that dealt with those kinds of claims and, and companies beginning to have some kind of policies. And really what they are, Al, and I think this is often overlooked, is to check the bias that's already there. Right. The right wing has been so successful in shifting the idea, at least among their most ardent followers, to the idea that the bias is, you know, our whole society is biased towards women and people of color and other minorities. Ultimately, what the research shows is that without the kinds of programs that require a second look, that require a diverse pool, that even say, hey, it's a good thing to have diversity in these offices, in these classrooms, the bias towards white men still exists. And so that's what they're doing. Yeah.

[Al Franken]

You once gave an example of just when applying for a job, if the name is a black sounding name versus a white sounding name, that the black gets called back. What, about half as much or something like that?

[Heather McGee]

That's right. And the one that's really shocking is that if the white applicant has a criminal record, they are still as likely to be called back, more likely to be called back than a black person with no criminal record.

[Al Franken]

Okay, that's funny. That's funny. So let's talk about dei. What is DEI really? And why is it needed and what's the history of it?

[Heather McGee]

Yeah, so diversity, equity and inclusion really began in corporate workplaces in the 1970s and 80s as the population, and therefore the customer base of companies was becoming more diverse and leadership and boardrooms began to realize that the bias that has been so often made the employee base and the management, you know, so often biased towards white men needed to change. And not only that, and I think it's really important that we distinguish affirmative action, which is really about recruiting, and changing the makeup of a classroom or of an office. We are talking about what DEI Diversity Equity inclusion programs really are, honestly. And this is the big secret. They're kind of like remedial integration education for white people more often than not. Right? So if you, you know, a DEI program in, you know, Colgate Palmolive is often when somebody says, it's time for us to do a program to talk about the history of women in the chemical industry, and they do this kind of, you know, uh, it's like, you know, Women's History Month or Black History Month, but it's specifically for, you know, the industry that the, you know, that the company is in. And it's sort of like, listen, we know that everyone's education in this country is woefully inadequate and biased towards, you know, George Washington being the only important person in history. Right? So. And we know that most white Americans come to the workforce coming from mostly white social networks and 75% and above white neighborhoods. And so sometimes the workplace is the first time that folks have ever interacted with someone from a different background. And there can be conflict and misunderstanding and prejudices. And so, so often DEI is really a program to help facilitate integration in the workplace for the majority group. Right. Because minorities and women have always had to navigate the majority space, and the opposite is usually not true. So, you know, if you ask a DI officer what they're doing, so often they're creating educational content and workshops to educate white men about what it is to live in a globalized society.

[Al Franken]

Wow. So what does it look like in corporate America, DEI now, I mean. And is the Trump administration putting pressure on companies?

[Heather McGee]

The Trump administration has decided that one big way for them to divert and deflect and distract from their economic agenda of redistributing wealth to millionaires and billionaires and grifting all over the world, is to claim that everything in America is being destroyed by an acronym yet again. Right? And this time it's dei. And so immediately, Stephen Miller, whom we may remember from the deck of cards of henchmen from the first Trump administration, you know, a little Nazi apologist who has been on this white supremacist crusade for a long time.

[Al Franken]

Mr. Cruelty is the point.

[Heather McGee]

Exactly. You know, he's been one of the key architects of it. But the idea has been to suddenly say out of nowhere and with no legal basis and no evidence that diversity, equity, and inclusion is a legal discrimination. And therefore, any program or policy that a school or corporation, a law firm has, that's dei, is now the basis for the Trump administration going after you. And that going after you could be trying to pull your funding as it has for grants, for example, federal grants that may have been for, you know, first generation college students or people from underprivileged backgrounds who are amazingly, you know, going after Alzheimer's and various rare kinds of cancers. Their funding has been summarily pulled. You've seen law firms, elite law firms that have had DEI programs. Again, I mean, you know, you really can't understand American law if you don't understand race in the law. So this is very important educational programming that is often directed at white male lawyers.

[Al Franken]

I can imagine that there are a lot of law firms that have now finally have black partners. And that's kind of now the rule, I would think.

[Heather McGee]

Well, you might think, but actually less. Less. I looked up the statistic because, you know, you would think with the way that the Trump administration has gone after top law firms that, you know, they've just become these bastions of white male, underprivileged, and less than 5% of big law partners are black. We still have a long way to go. Anyway, you know, this, this attack has been used as a way to justify damaging these institutions of knowledge production outside of the Trump ideology. Right. If you think about it, Adam Serer did a great big piece in the Atlantic about how this is all an attack on knowledge. The attack on Harvard, the attack on law firms, on medical research, on scientific research, firing all the scientists in so many federal agencies, you know, trying to sort of dumb down the US Military's training, trying to attack libraries. All of this is a desire, this is an autocrat's playbook, to make sure that the only source of knowledge is what the regime wants it to be. Sort of what has been approved by the regime's ideology.

[Al Franken]

Is Harvard the only university that fought back, or is it just the first that fought back?

[Heather McGee]

It's the first that fought back in this way. It is the biggest and richest, obviously. It is the one that frankly represents in so many ways. I mean, this is hard for me to get out of my mouth because I actually went to Yale and I've been trained to say that Harvard is overblown in its importance.

[Al Franken]

But dare I say New Haven? That's what Harvard people say of Yale, that we just, dare I say, New Haven.

[Heather McGee]

But I mean, Harvard is older than the country, right?

[Al Franken]

What, 1609, 1631, something like that?

[Heather McGee]

Something you're supposed to know, not me. Yes, but it's a place that has, for the world, represented the Best institute of higher education. And so many technological breakthroughs, so much research has come through Harvard, which is why when they were attacked, they immediately said, you can attack us, but who's really going to be hurt is all of the premier and flagship hospitals in Boston. Boston, Children's Mass General. Right. These are the places where our research and our partnership is keeping those hospitals going. And so, again, I know it's sort of easy if you didn't go to Harvard to say, well, why should I care? But the very idea that we would stop funding medical breakthroughs and scientific breakthroughs that are today saving lives and tomorrow will save more because of why, exactly? Because of Trump's vendetta. Some people say that it's, you know, places he wish he had gotten into college. I don't know what it is. Right. But the excuse is diversity, equity and inclusion. Or the first excuse was anti Semitism, but they sort of moved past that.

[Al Franken]

I think it's because it's a symbol of, of all of it, you know, and they went after Columbia, but I think Harvard is the symbol. And also Harvard was the first to reject it. And I think that that's it too. So now it's a war.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah. And it's a great use of public resources. Right. Honestly, what he's been doing in the name of attacking diversity feels like what you do to a country when you invade it and you want to destroy it. Right. You try to crush its flagship institutions, you fire all its civil servants. You, you know, expel the scientists, you, you know, try to bring it backwards. You, you send its economy into chaos. You, you break its bargains with other countries and try to ruin its standing in the world. And then you grift, right? And then you try to, as much.

[Al Franken]

As possible, enrich yourself.

[Heather McGee]

Enrich yourself.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

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[Al Franken]

It's amazing, isn't it, what he's. I mean, it's. What has most surprised you about this administration?

[Heather McGee]

What has most surprised me about this administration is the speed and volume of the attacks on everything we hold dear. Right. You know, I'm a policy wonk, you know, by background and training. Right.

[Al Franken]

So I didn't know that. I did not know that stuff.

[Heather McGee]

So. But maybe your audience doesn't know it.

[Al Franken]

Right. Well, that's it. That's it. Yes. This is for the audience. That's right.

[Heather McGee]

That's right. You know, I think about, I think about laws and all the different programs and initiatives and policies that could be changed that have far reaching effects in the country. And I am impressed by the way in which three to four times a day a new policy is issued. And it's like before there was this sense in the Trump administration that there was sort of nobody at home and he was sort of wandering around in his, you know, track suit, eating cold French fries in the White House and you were like, what's going on in there?

[Al Franken]

That was the first term.

[Heather McGee]

That was the first term. But now it feels like this entire right wing infrastructure of people who are pouring through old statue books in the Federal Register and realizing that there are these arcane laws that he can invoke, that there's this one regulation that needs to be reversed, that there's this, you know, and it's all over. It's from the environment to, you know, to education to healthcare. Multiple times a day, something happens that is aimed at sort of repealing the 20th century, or at least the second half of it. It's an impressive. It's a shocking volume of changes. So many of them, obviously, are being knocked down by the courts, but the overwhelming effect is, is to put the opponents, which, by the way, is the majority of the American people who are opposed to so much of what's happening on their heels, to sort of get anticipatory compliance from people who work in government who are just worried about being able to keep their jobs and to make the private sector and civil society feel like he's all powerful.

[Al Franken]

This month is pride Month. And they. In New York anyway, the corporate sponsors have. A few of them have shied away and Target gave money but didn't want to be listed because they're afraid of retribution from Trump.

[Heather McGee]

Let's be clear. In the first administration, corporations knew that this was someone who had lost the popular vote, who was wholly unfit for officers. There were massive and very well publicized protests in the early days between the Women's March and the marches and protests at the airports around the first Muslim ban.

[Al Franken]

There's going to be a mass, massive demonstration this week. I have a feeling.

[Heather McGee]

Absolutely there is. It's being known as the no Kings rally. And this is coming on top of the days of demonstrations that have happened in Los Angeles against people, you know, workers, waiters, bus BO boys, delivery drivers, school teachers.

[Al Franken]

Being seamstresses.

[Heather McGee]

Exactly. Being snatched out of their homes in front of their children. The climate of fear that is going on in immigrant communities. So immigrants and their allies have been marching in la, and we know that Trump is gleefully sent in the military to try to attack our own people's.

[Al Franken]

First Amendment rights, to deliberately escalate the situation.

[Heather McGee]

That's right. So, you know, in the first administration, corporations were in many ways a beachhead, you know, of saying, you know, we're gonna side with the people and our customers and our shareholders over this one guy. Right. This time, by going after corporate law firms first, by lining up the big tech billionaires behind him in the inauguration, he has managed to.

[Al Franken]

Boy, those guys showed up, didn't they? Oh, my God, what a visual.

[Heather McGee]

Oh, my gosh.

[Al Franken]

Yeah.

[Heather McGee]

You know, I mean, it makes sense, right? They have a ton to gain from his tax cuts. They have a ton to gain from, you know, regulations being cut, antitrust. Right. In many ways, this is a response to the previous Democratic administration saying, you know, what? We need to regulate AI, we need to regulate crypto. We can't have, you know, too big to fail tech companies. And in many ways.

[Al Franken]

And monopolies.

[Heather McGee]

And monopolies. Yeah, exactly. And so many Democrats doing what Democrats are supposed to do made them lose the tech billionaires. And on some levels it's like good riddance, you know, but on the other hand, it has meant a trickle down effect of corporate fear and bedwetting and boardrooms. Not for everyone. Right. For every example of a Target that stopped its DEI programs on day one of the administration, you have Costco that doubled down Target has seen week after week declines in foot traffic as the black faith community, black churches have organized boycotts of Target since Trump came into office and they stopped their DEI programs, whereas Costco has seen a massive increase in their memberships. Because they said, you know, we, you know, we said that diversity was important to our bottom line, you know, two years ago, a year ago, 10 years ago. And we're sticking with it.

[Al Franken]

Wow, that's heartening, isn't it?

[Heather McGee]

It is, it is. Because listen, I mean, this is the thing that gets me. It's something that I am very, very sure about. It's that diversity is this country's superpower. It is in our best interest. It is the fact of our lives, right? We are the world's most diverse, large industrialized democracy. And that has time and time again been to our benefit. Whether it is just the research that shows that diverse groups function better, that they come to breakthroughs better, that they're more innovative.

[Al Franken]

Talk about that. Talk about that some more. Because what is the, I mean, it's kind of so logical, isn't it?

[Heather McGee]

It is. Basically, let's think about it, right? So if you've got a problem in front of you, I think of it like a tangled, you know, a tangled ball in front of you. And you bring to that problem, you know, eight people with the exact same kind of background, education, outlook, way of seeing the world, way of being treated by the world. They're only going to see one part of it. But if you bring to that problem people with all of these different backgrounds and ways of seeing, you're going to see more. And that's really the kind of synergy that creates innovation and breakthrough. It's actually, it's a Columbia business professor used to call it, it's the, the tension that comes from being with people who are different from you that creates the productive friction that creates breakthroughs. And so, you know, as I was saying, diverse juries Remember more facts. Right. Because you may remember a different thing if it speaks to you from a different part of your life or maybe, you know, and so put it all together and that diverse jury is going to remember more facts. You have companies with diverse boardrooms being more profitable, on and on and on. And it, it makes a lot of sense, Right. For, from a business perspective.

[Al Franken]

So if your client is guilty, you probably want an all white jury.

[Heather McGee]

The all white jury. Right. You know, and so we've seen this time and time again and the history of American breakthroughs. It feels like every other day we find another hidden figure. Right. Somebody who was a woman, an immigrant, a person of color, who actually was the backbone of a major technological advancement. Gladys west is a hidden figure. Right. That phrase comes from the black women who were the mathematical backbone of the space station Moonshot. Yeah, exactly. Gladys west was a black woman whose mathematics helped to create gps. Right. How often in our days do we rely on something that we did not know, wouldn't have been here were it not for a black woman. Right. So it's just.

[Al Franken]

Thank God for her.

[Heather McGee]

I thank God for her. It's the only thing I actually would like to keep about the Internet. But you know, I think that we have a real opportunity right now to firmly define who we are as a country. Are we a country that embraces all of humanity and the best of one another or are we segregationists again? Right. Because this is what, this is. What's the opposite of diversity? Right. It is segregation.

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[Al Franken]

Well, what's going on in LA and in terms of this attack on immigrants is just exactly what you're talking about.

[Heather McGee]

That's exactly right. So this administration campaigned on mass deportations and somehow because the commercials and the campaign speeches and the rallies so emphasized criminal migrants, right, Created this dehumanized community from insane asylums.

[Al Franken]

And he said that and that became his build the wall of the second term, which is, he just said that he just made this up, that they're emptying their prisons and insane asylums. And he said it once and then that was it and it became a fact and he repeats it every fucking time.

[Heather McGee]

That's right. And so you've got this story that Trump sold, which was that it was going to be mass deportations, but it was only going to be the bad guys. And so you actually had a lot of people from immigrant families saying, yeah, let's get those bad guys out of here because they're giving us a bad name. And of course he'll keep us because we started a business and we're employing people and we're law abiding and we pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and we contribute to Social Security literally. You know, you had significant numbers of Latino, Asian, you know, fewer African American, but still more people of color voting for Trump, not just in spite of his mass deportation agenda, but rubber stamping it and saying, yeah, that's probably a good thing because he's talking about those criminals and then they come after him. There was a story in the Times today about the Brazilian migrants of Martha's Vineyard who have been the economic backbone of that tourist island for the past 10, 20 years. And there have been massive raids there and the economy shuddering and, and you have business owners saying, I didn't think they'd come after me and my workers.

[Al Franken]

In the Vineyard.

[Heather McGee]

Oh, Martha's Vineyard, you have it, you know, in Iowa. And Right, of course, Al, you know this from Minnesota. Right. These, these rural places where immigration has created a full economic turnaround and created.

[Al Franken]

Communities that wouldn't be healthy communities without it.

[Heather McGee]

That's right. Where they desperately needed new people because the factories closed and the young people left. And, and these communities have been revived. And then, you know, the majority of people in them voted for Trump and they're surprised when, you know, Carol, the waitress at the diner is deported.

[Al Franken]

There's a town in Minnesota that's the perfect example, Wilmer. It's the county seat of the largest turkey producing county and the largest turkey producing state in the country. And the town works because of Latinos and Somalis. And one of my Senate pages was an amazing Somali girl from Wilmer, Muna Abdullahi. So a year after Muna left DC left the page program, I invited myself to her high school graduation in Wilmer. There were three speakers. Muna, the valedictorian, who was a young woman from Ecuador, and the class president, who was of German, Scandinavian descent.

[Heather McGee]

Yes, those old immigrants.

[Al Franken]

Yeah, yeah. And that pretty much represented the makeup of the entire class. And when they handed out the diplomas, Muna was first. Abdullahi, A B D, you know, Abdullahi. So she was first. And they told everyone, hold your applause till the end. And the principal said, muna Abdullahi. And the place went nuts with applause. The families were in the bleachers stomping their feet and they, they did it for every student. And this, this was just the town that worked. And it wouldn't work without the immigrants. It just wouldn't.

[Heather McGee]

Yep. And today there's a travel ban, a new travel ban as part of Trump's absolutely racist and xenophobic and self sabotaging attempt to limit who enters the country.

[Al Franken]

It's ridiculous.

[Heather McGee]

It's ridiculous. I mean, massive swaths of the world have just, I mean, the idea that just travel from those countries is banned, Right. The idea that they are attempting to stop all international students from coming to Harvard and then from any other school. They floated the idea of banning all of Chinese students from any university in the country. It's, it's insane.

[Al Franken]

The Trump administration is going to keep losing these lawsuits, but it doesn't matter because they'll file Another lawsuit. And those students won't know if they're going to be able to go to Harvard, if they're going to be able to be allowed in. So they'll go somewhere else.

[Heather McGee]

I guess that's right. Right. And why would you even put. If you've worked your whole life for this one shot and opportunity, why would you put it in the hands of the whims of a madman?

[Al Franken]

And it really helps Harvard because these people, by and large, pay the full boat.

[Heather McGee]

Yep, yep.

[Al Franken]

It's an economic loss for Harvard as well. But of course, that's Trump. I shouldn't even say that because Trump might hear it.

[Heather McGee]

No, he knows. They know. I mean, they know. Right. That's part of it was. It was really about trying to attack Harvard economically. But again, you know, who really gets hurt. And this is, you know, the core idea in my book, the sum of us is that when we have these racist, illogical policies, they end up hurting white people too. They end up hurting our entire economy and our entire society. And this administration has been a textbook example of the kind of self sabotage that happened when white towns drained their segregated swimming pools rather than integrate them. That's what's happening right now to our entire economy.

[Al Franken]

You know, some of us. That's the COVID of Some of Us is so great, which is jumping into a pool.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah.

[Al Franken]

Boy, oh boy. These towns and all over the country did that. Right. They, instead of integrating their pool, they decided to fill it in and plant.

[Heather McGee]

Over it because they were so wedded to the myth of white supremacy that if it couldn't just be a public good for white people, they would destroy it. And in so many ways, that's what's happened to our economy in this sort of slow shift we had in the wake of the civil rights movement to the kind of, you know, market fundamentalism where we didn't believe in New Deal public solutions anymore. We believed in the markets and we said, go it on your own families with healthcare and retirement and education. So we drained the pool of public resources. After the civil rights movement, once the public became fully, you know, all of the public, not just the white public. And that's what we're doing right now. Literally in the name of too much diversity, we've decimated the National Institutes of Health. Right. So we are going to have cancer breakthroughs, Alzheimer's, kidney breakthroughs. Right. All of these different major diseases, cardiovascular are not going to happen because the research is not happening, because there's too much diversity.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. And look at all these. I mean, that's because of Harvard. All their research projects are in danger.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah, but we had, you know, the National Institutes of Health has been fully thrown into chaos for the Trump, by the Trump administration, separate from the attacks on Harvard and their research stuff. Right. So you have the National Institutes of Health for some reason has been a major target of the administration's cost cutting and freezing. You know, I was reading about a first generation college student from, you know, rural Appalachia, whose mother, grandmother had died, you know, was suffering with Alzheimer's, but had been an alcoholic all her life. And she was studying, you know, links between Alzheimer's and alcohol use. Right. Something that could affect any and every family in the country. And because her grant was one of those grants that was particularly making sure that people who are first generation, you know, low income families. This girl was white. This, this young woman who was a scientist in this project, it was canceled. Right. So just like that. Right. Anything that is looking to expand the pool. Right. Of people who are.

[Al Franken]

And was that Doge? Was that.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah, that was Doge. That was Elon Musk. And that was a Trump administration executive order saying to halt any funding that's too woke up in the federal government.

[Al Franken]

Like usaid, which is.

[Heather McGee]

Well, don't get me started on that.

[Al Franken]

Well, yeah, I mean, Gates said it. Bill Gates said it was. It's the richest man in the world killing the poorest people in the world.

[Heather McGee]

Yep. And speaking of. Right. This, you know why again, I mean, some people say that the reason why Elon Musk wanted to go after USAID first was that that agency and that funding played a big part in supporting the NGOs that were against apartheid.

[Al Franken]

Oh my God. How about when the president had the South African president in his office and showed the bogus picture from the Congo and said it was from South Africa and then it was white crosses of Afrikaners who'd been killed by black South Africans. I mean, and it was a picture from. It was the exact 180 degree opposite. It was pictures of graveyards from a graveyard from the Congo.

[Heather McGee]

Yep. Of black people being killed by Belgians and Europeans. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, to say as Elon Musk and his, you know, right wing message board of a brain has tried to communicate to the world that there's some kind of white genocide going on is of course a total projection of what has actually happened throughout history, which is, you know, genocide of African people and colonized peoples by Europeans. And so we are in, we are in the Upside down for sure. And it's dangerous. But again, Al, it's driving this zero sum narrative that is trying to scare the majority of white Americans into thinking that their enemy is immigrants, people of color, their neighbors, and not the billionaires who are raiding the treasury to line their own pockets who are cutting the Medicaid. Largest Medicaid cuts in history.

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[Al Franken]

Let's talk about that big beautiful bill for a second. I mean, it's, it's, I, I, I can't say how awful it is. And it's going to, of course, the, the Republicans who are against it are against it because it's going to increase the deficit and their cure for that is to cut Medicaid more.

[Heather McGee]

Yep, yep.

[Al Franken]

Which is unbelievable.

[Heather McGee]

So the cuts. Let's talk about Medicaid first. Right. Medicaid is something that millions and millions of people rely on in this country. It is a, you know, modest government health care plan, usually for, you know, pregnant women who don't have insurance so that they can have prenatal care and delivery for people who work in low income jobs where their employers just don't care to give them health care.

[Al Franken]

The ACA expanded it by putting it in the. And how many states that were red states have adopted it because it works.

[Heather McGee]

That's right.

[Al Franken]

For rural hospitals.

[Heather McGee]

It brings money to rural hospitals even though it's part of Obamacare. This Medicaid expansion that sort of lifted the income threshold of who could qualify for Medicaid to just a regular working class job. You know, a lot of red states have said, you know what, this makes economic sense for us because healthcare matters to our economy and we don't actually want a whole bunch of uninsured people.

[Al Franken]

And it passed by referendum. I mean, in other words, people in the state went like, yes, we want this. Why are.

[Heather McGee]

Yes, people want health care? People, people don't want to not be able to afford to go see a doctor. And the affordability crisis, things being too expensive is the non racist reason given for electing Trump. Right? That things were too expensive, inflation was too high, health care costs were right up there in the list of complaints. And we're talking about cuts to Medicaid in this Republican bill that would lead to 10 million people losing Medicaid, 8 million people additionally becoming uninsured, affecting hospitals.

[Al Franken]

And doctors under aca. If somehow people lose their ACA there.

[Heather McGee]

Oh, it's both. Right. So direct cuts to Medicaid as well as some repealing of the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care act and then snap, Right. Food stamps, which an enormous number of people in this country rely on. This would be the largest cut to food stamps in history. And this is bad for families and children, schools, right, where kids would go hungry. It's also bad for farmers, right, who really rely on the food programs.

[Al Franken]

In the farm bill in Minnesota, they pass free breakfast and lunch for everybody. Isn't that cool?

[Heather McGee]

It's very cool. And you know, that's a state thing, so it wouldn't be affected by this, hopefully. But a lot of state spending is supported by federal, you know, federal revenue. And so we'll see. I mean, the thing that is so scary about this moment is that we know, we know that already decisions made in just the first few months of this administration are costing lives around the world and at home, and that that poverty will go up, that homelessness is going to go up, that hunger is going to go up. Right. Food banks are seeing massive increases in demand already, you know, especially around places where there are a lot of federal workers. Right. I mean, you have this administration gleefully destroying American jobs. Right. I thought he was supposed to be a job creator. And all these middle class jobs of public servants have been sort of, you know, just as I said, gleefully destroyed. And you know that there are going to be these terrible consequences no matter what, no matter what the courts say. Some of these decisions are already happening. And for me, this is a cost around the world to families who are white, black and brown of racist politics in America.

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[Al Franken]

Let's talk about immigration because what we saw in Los Angeles was the President deliberately escalating a situation to get it out of hand.

[Heather McGee]

Yeah. I mean we have, you know, as we were saying before, we have this president who campaigned on mass deportations and we know that so much of our economy relies on immigrant labor from the construction to the restaurant industry to home care and child care. Right. All of these sort of backbone industries of our society rely on immigrant labor. And so often it is undocumented because why? Because the United States Congress refused to reform our immigration laws. Right. So I think we have to always remember that there's a different path. It's not like there could be open borders or there could be mass deportations. We could have a modern 21st century immigration system, but we don't. Right. And so we have this system of failures that.

[Al Franken]

Why don't we? Why don't we is well, how are.

[Heather McGee]

You in the Senate? Why don't we?

[Al Franken]

We tried. We tried and we passed it in the Senate with 68 votes. And, and the House. And you know who was running the House then? Well, Republicans, I'm sure. Republicans were running the House. Yeah. And, but it was, it was Laura Ingram and those people who just whipped up this hatred of immigrants. And remember that Eric Cantor lost his election. He lost his primary. He lost a primary to a Republican who was out racist thing him. And that was it. It was over. They were never going to pass an immigration bill.

[Heather McGee]

So you've got this, this infrastructure that creates zero sum stories that says that immigrants are a threat to native born Americans, that you know, they're coming for you, your job, your way of life, your wife, your children. And then that whipped up base stops Republican elected officials from doing their job to make sound policy in the U.S. and so you have this sort of vicious cycle of, you know, dysfunction that then creates a sense of crisis in the cities. Right, because you do have a lot of people who are coming in and the courts are overloaded and there is no rational asylum system and all of this. But of course, that's just great for Republican politicians to always be able to run on immigration crisis. And then we have Donald Trump who has been with his ICE agents who, you know, like, why can't they just wear uniforms? Why are they wearing gaiters with their, you know, pulled up so that they're basically like masked unmarked men snatching people off of the street, not informing their families.

[Al Franken]

Cruelty is the point.

[Heather McGee]

That's right, Al. That's right. And so finally, you know, a community stood up. And I just have to, I think we need to take a moment to bear witness to the bravery of the protesters in Los Angeles because they knew that, you know, if someone is undocumented and they're protesting for the safety of their community and their family and themselves, and they get arrested, you know, they could be deported. Right. You know, when we protest, you and I as citizens, Al, we, you know, we think, okay, if we get arrested, that's part of our civil disobedience. You know, that puts us in a long line of anti war protesters and civil rights protesters, but they are risking their very lives to protest. And then the administration says, oh good, we've got a bunch of brown people, young people in a Democrat city, let's throw in my army and see if we can create some chaos.

[Al Franken]

And he's thrown in Marines now.

[Heather McGee]

You know what this is, right? I've been in touch with a number of military veterans who are organizing against this because this is not what they signed up for. They do not see these folks as the enemy. And so there are a lot of military families and veterans who are speaking out, groups like Vote Vets who are saying, you know, this is, this is not the mission.

[Al Franken]

So this, this, this immigration war, and that's kind of what it is, is deliberately making it as difficult as possible for people and as dangerous looking and as scary as possible. And they're taking people off the street and just in masks and handcuffing them and taking them off, deporting them to.

[Heather McGee]

Countries that they're not from. I mean, can you imagine the nightmare, right, of being separated from your family and ending up in a country, in a prison system.

[Al Franken]

Well, in El Salvador, in the Congo.

[Heather McGee]

When you're actually from Somalia, I mean, it's just in Sudan, when you're actually from Zimbabwe, I mean, it's just. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare. And it's, you know, the Statue of Liberty is weeping. Right. Lady Liberty is weeping. This is, I mean, also like, Donald Trump is married to an immigrant. I'm just like, what are we even.

[Al Franken]

Two of his wives.

[Heather McGee]

Two of his wives, Al. Two of his wives.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. My wife was born in Maine.

[Heather McGee]

She would say you're from away.

[Al Franken]

Yeah. Well, thanks.

[Heather McGee]

Wait. I don't want to leave people feeling like there's nothing they can do and this guy's all powerful and everything is hopeless.

[Al Franken]

Right, Right.

[Heather McGee]

Most importantly, you can sign up with basically any local civic organization. You're indivisible, your color change, your move on, your lots of other groups and be. Because we have already had more Americans protesting this administration than we had the last one. It hasn't been as reported in the media or in social media, but the people who track these things have seen more protests in more decentralized places all over the country. And it matters. It helps you feel better about exercising your values in public. It puts the administration and its enablers on notice. It helps corporations and those who are licking their fingers and putting it up in the wind and saying, which way is the wind is blowing? Or are people outraged? Or are they just not paying attention? It all matters. Judges pay attention to protest. The courts do. It all matters. So please go out and make your voice heard.

[Al Franken]

Well, thanks.

[Heather McGee]

Thanks, Al.

[Al Franken]

Well, I hope you enjoyed listening. That beautiful music is by Leo Kotke. The great Leo Kotke. I want to thank Peter Ogburn for producing this podcast. We'll talk again next week.

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[Heather McGee]

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[Heather McGee]

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[Heather McGee]

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