Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Listeners, keep your eyes on Washington this week. We'll help you do it. I know who wants to look at a dysfunctional institution like the Congress of the United States for too long when it's easier to look away, more pleasant to look at the leaves turning colors in New England or watch the baseball playoff chases in their final week of the season. Let's keep our eye on the national politics ball this week too, here's why.

By Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to know if she's got the votes for both the bipartisan physical infrastructure bill that addresses roads and bridges and broadband and things like that, and the Democrats only human infrastructure bill that addresses child care, elder care, and climate protection, and things like that. Some center-left Democrats, like New York's Tom Suozzi and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, are threatening not to vote for the human bill, unless it cuts certain taxes or becomes smaller than President Biden's proposal.

Some more progressive Democrats like New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez don't want to vote for the physical infrastructure bill unless it's tied to the human one. If not, in fact, she has said, "Nothing would give me more pleasure than to tank a billionaire, dark money, fossil fuel, Exxon lobbyist-drafted energy infrastructure bill if they come after our child care and climate priorities." Can the democrats reconcile their own differences this week? Here is Speaker Pelosi yesterday on ABC.

Speaker Pelosi: This isn't about moderates versus progressives. Overwhelmingly, the entirety of our caucus, except for a few whose judgment I respect, support the vision of Joe Biden and we will make progress on it this week.

Brian Lehrer: We’ll see. Meanwhile, some Democratic Party priorities that disproportionately affect Black Americans are notably floundering. The George Floyd police reform bill and the John Lewis voting rights bill are both stuck in the Senate with little or no Republican support and not enough Democratic support and the filibuster to get them through. The mass deportation of thousands of Haitian migrants in the last week, which we talked about on multiple shows here last week, has people asking would the Biden administration have done that so easily if they were white? So does this slow response to the health and safety crisis at New York's Rikers Island jail.

This happened after our show on Friday, so maybe you haven't heard it. Most of New York City's congressional delegation is now asking President Biden for federal intervention and to open a civil rights investigation into how inmates are being treated at Rikers. Even Rikers Island, in the middle of New York City, is a reason to keep your eye on Washington this week. We'll get a take now on what could be a defining week for President Biden's domestic agenda, and defining times in the push for racial justice under Democratic leadership from a special and prominent guest, Patrick Gaspard, President and CEO of probably the most important progressive think tank right now, the Center for American Progress.

He's previously been president of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, a US ambassador and political director for President Obama, national political director for the big Service Employees Union, SEIU, Executive Director of the Democratic National Committee, and more. He was also born in Congo to Haitian parents, grew up here in New York City, and went to college at Columbia here. Last week, he personally visited the Haitian migrants makeshift camp under the bridge to Mexico in Del Rio, Texas. An extremely relevant guest anytime but even more so than usual right now. Patrick Gaspard, thanks for some time. Welcome back to WNYC.

Patrick Gaspard: Brian, thank you for having me on. You left off an important part of my CV, which is that I've been listening to this show since its inception. It's an honor to join you.

Brian Lehrer: That's an honor to hear. Can we start with Haitian migrants? As head of a think tank, you did not have to go personally to Del Rio, Texas last week. Why did you, and what did you take away from that experience?

Patrick Gaspard: Brian, I thought it was terribly important, in this moment, following the horrific images that all Americans saw and that all Americans should be appalled by, I thought it was important to do two things. One was to bear witness because that's always a critical part of our work of furthering democracy. I also thought it was important to lift up not just my personal advocacy voice, but the advocacy voice of the Center of American Progress to center migrants, refugees, asylum seekers at the heart of our current debate, and to make it really, really clear that irrespective of the party in charge, the party in the White House, the party that has majorities in Congress, in the Senate, there are some basic and fundamental principles that we have to adhere to.

What we saw at the border was absolutely inhumane. Beyond just border patrol riding on horses and using their reins as whips, we should all understand, your listeners should appreciate that the Biden administration regrettably has continued to use Title 42, which is supposed to be used in health care emergencies to deny due process to asylum seekers. That's inappropriate, and I had to speak to it. I'm pleased that we have seen some progress from the administration in the days since.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about where we are now on that because there were close to 15,000 people huddled under and around that bridge, according to the estimates I've seen, and they've all been cleared out. Thousands deported, thousands admitted either because they're unaccompanied children or pending asylum applications in some cases. President Biden's envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, as you know, resigned last week calling the mass deportations inhumane considering conditions in Haiti. How well has the Biden administration handled the situation in recent days, in your opinion?

Patrick Gaspard: In recent days, we've made real progress. When I was at the camp on Thursday, Brian, I saw thousands of people overwhelmingly women with young children who were just sitting in mud without proper sanitary conditions, without proper access to shelter at all, and most importantly, whose asylum claims are not being considered. Now, 12,400 of them have been admitted into the US to have proper adjudication of their asylum claims and the camp has been cleared out. Tragically, the administration does seem to still hold on to Title 42 as a means of addressing the crisis at the border, and that's inappropriate.

Can we go just sit in Ambassador Foote’s statement for a minute? I really want to lift up something that Vice President Kamala Harris said on the view a few days ago. Ambassador Foote, in his resignation, did not simply say that it was inhumane for Haitians to be treated this way at the border. He connected the crisis at the border as said the vice president with the ongoing democratic crisis in Haiti. Unfortunately, US policy over many administration has held up autocrats in Haiti to the disadvantage of civil society, to the disadvantage of real democratic inclusion in the country.

That has contributed directly to the dislocation in addition to natural disasters that led to the surge that we had at the border.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed, but you said 12,000 plus have now been admitted to the country at least for now. I guess if that's out of approximately 15,000 people, then has it been over-reported that there's a mass deportation and are the critics on the right more accurate when they say, "Biden’s let most of these people in"?

Patrick Gaspard: No, it has not been over-reported. Let's be clear, up until the point that there was collective advocacy and activism on behalf of the asylum seekers, including from a robust and dynamic Haitian diaspora that's finally reaches political maturity in the US, up until that point, thousands were being deported. It's not altogether clear what the original numbers were, but we know that there have been multiple flights back to Haiti. Let's also recall that a vast majority of these migrants have not been in Haiti for several years. They left Haiti in legal migration to South America following the earthquake. Conditions deteriorated in the places they were staying like Brazil, like Colombia, Venezuela.

They were authoritarian turns in those countries that targeted those migrants, and that forced them ever northward. It hasn't been over-reported. The reporting has actually led to a change in transformation policy. Let's also appreciate that there continues to be a lack of transparency around the asylum claims and we're hoping to continue to press the case to shed light on that process.

Brian Lehrer: My guest is Patrick Gaspard, President of the Center for American Progress. Some of the press coverage and commentary, as you know, and as I mentioned in the introduction, has put the Haiti migrant situation together with the floundering in Congress of the George Floyd police reform bill, and the John Lewis voting rights bill, I'll add the apparent neglect of the basic health and safety of people at Rikers Island. To say the White democratic leadership is betraying their most loyal political base, Black Democrats, not to mention the moral questions that go beyond the political, how much do you see it that way?

Patrick Gaspard: Brian, I hope that we can unpack the various pieces that you just laid out. I would set aside Rikers, and I hope that there's time to come back to that, because it's a critical issue that I care passionately about and have worked on for years, and all New Yorkers should be focused on it. The George Floyd bill, the Voting Rights Act provisions, all went down because of people who I believe have been lighting votive candles to the full cycle of bipartisanship.

It's been clear for some time that there would not be bipartisan coming together around police reform. It's been clear for some time that Republicans are playing a very, very cynical game on voting. They have lifted up these false examinations in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Texas, as they spread the big lie from the 2020 election about Trump's margin of defeat.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, can I just jump in, in case people haven't heard it, and maybe you want to comment on it, to say that the bogus "audit" of the vote in Arizona ended. Even they concluded that Biden won in that state by even more than the official tally.

Patrick Gaspard: By even more votes, and that Trump had even less votes, they spent $6 million on that, but Brian, let's appreciate that the result isn't what matters here. We're living in a time when facts have the half-life of a flea. They are just determined to spread this cynical distrust of the process of voting. This is an illiberal moment and they are spreading this straight across the country. We already have 18 Republican state legislatures that have passed the most onerous restrictions on voting that we've seen in three generations. This is spreading like wildfire and there is not going to be a bipartisan resolution of it because the Republican Party, it continues to be completely owned by the Trumpian revolution.

The only way we get the Freedom to Vote Act passed is if we reformed the filibuster. The same regrettably is true about policing as well. Now, let's pull back to your bigger question about African Americans in the Biden agenda. Let's be really clear that equity, social justice, civil rights are squarely centered in the significant Build Back Better legislation $3.5 trillion bill that's being debated now by centrist and progressive Democrats in the House and Senate.

If you look at the provisions around things as fundamental as the care economy and the resources that now would go to support home health aides, which is like one of the largest growing parts of the healthcare sector, overwhelmingly dominated by women of color and largely Black women in the United States. I can say this, as a former healthcare organizer, nothing will have a significant impact economically on the lives of African Americans and the passage of that bill. Despite the failure of those other pieces of legislation, I think that civil rights, equity, economic inclusion is still a vital part of the Biden agenda that's going to have success in these next weeks and months of passage I hope.

Brian Lehrer: You said you wanted to talk about Rikers. You've been described in past years as an ally of Mayor de Blasio. Do you have a position specifically on the letter from the New York Democratic Congressional Delegation the other day led by Ritchie Torres from the Bronx, asking President Biden to intervene at Rikers with something like a federal takeover, I guess, of a local jail or to open a civil rights investigation?

Patrick Gaspard: Brian, at the opening, you mentioned that I used to be the president of the Open Society Foundation. I'm really proud that at OSF I helped to lead significant funding for the alternatives to incarceration and directly into activists who are working to close down Rikers Island. The progress that we've made on Rikers has come from activists, not from politicians, probably with the exception of former speaker of the City Council, Melissa Mark-Viverito, who is exceptional on this issue. I think that the mayor and other elected officials in this city and State have been laggards on this issue. I think it is damn shameful that Kalief Browder is not on the lips of every elected official in New York, the young man who was unjustly jailed in Rikers without any hearing whatsoever eventually took his own life. Rikers Island has-

Brian Lehrer: Can I jump in to say that one of the less reported facts about the 12 deaths at Rikers Island this year, which is much more than in most years, 5 of the 12 have been suicides.

Patrick Gaspard: Yes, they have been.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. I just wanted to highlight that for the listener.

Patrick Gaspard: We should add that the lack of attention has also endangered guards at Rikers Island. A few days ago, Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher tweeted, after she had a tour of Rikers, that it's a humanitarian crisis and a horror, a house of abuse and neglect. If anything, I believe she understates the state of the crisis there, particularly since we have a mental health crisis on the island as well with nearly one in five having been diagnosed with serious mental illness, which is the real crisis in care in Rikers and in our city. The mayor of this city has vowed to close Rikers.

This is a process that has moved painstakingly slowly and it's fallen victim to NIMBY cries and all kinds of challenges. The mayor has called on the state, the federal government, he's called on federal judges to release 250 people who are serving less than a year for nonviolent crimes, even though the mayor himself has the power, the authority right now, today to release those inmates. I think that there is an utter failure here in our political class, a failure of imagination, innovation,a failure of humanity, and everyone just hopes and prays that-- every politician hopes and prays to the problem of Rikers gets swept under the rug.

Brian Lehrer, we just came through a major mayoral election in New York where the contestants to be the next mayor were not even challenged in any meaningful way to litigate the question of the future of Rikers, shameful on behalf of New York media and something's got to be done here.

Brian Lehrer: Do you see a federal role?

Patrick Gaspard: I think that New York has the ability to lead on this issue and needs to just take up the mantle of its own accountability. That extends to the mayor of the City Council, the state, legislature. We have all of the agency, all of the resources that are needed here in New York to fix this problem. We have just lacked the political will and I think it's a disgrace.

Brian Lehrer: On the John Lewis voting rights bill and I know there's the other one that goes further, H.R. 1 the For the People Act, but even on John Lewis, which is considered more moderate and that could potentially have gotten Republican support, it seems like not at least for now. It would allow the Justice Department to review state voting law changes for racial discrimination and some other provisions. I just want to throw in another fact. Again, for our listeners' context, according to the Brennan Centre for justice, just since last year's election, 18 states have enacted laws making it harder to vote.

Now, none of those Republican majority legislators had a filibuster rule requiring a 60% vote to pass those partisan bills. The US Senate, however, as you well know, does have the filibuster. If all 51 Democrats hang together, that's not enough to pass this. However, if all 51 Democrats hang together, they could abolish the filibuster and then pass it. How much is the filibuster the ultimate arbiter of voting rights in America right now, in your opinion?

Patrick Gaspard: The filibuster is the pernicious part of the architecture of the Senate that stands in the way of this reform, just as the filibuster has been used in its 100 years in existence to thwart integration in this country, to thwart civil rights in this country. There's a reason why Strom Thurmond was a champion of the use of the filibuster. We know the kind of sordid history that it has and regrettably, in this moment, when we could be passing a bill to help stop partisan gerrymandering, to reduce the influence of big money in politics, and to make it harder for partisan state officials to subvert elections, the filibuster stands in the way.

Right now, today, the Democratic Party has-- Since the filibuster is a senate rule, you don't need the supermajority in order to eliminate it. I hope that Senator Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, can see the light on this after the failure of police reform and what I predict will be a failure of bipartisanship on voting rights as well. Senator Manchin now has the voting rights bill that he said he could sell to get 10 Republicans on board. Bless him. I hope he's able to do that. I don't anticipate that he can. Once he's failed to, I hope will make progress on reforming eliminating the filibuster.

Brian Lehrer: Manchin says and centrist Democrat Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona says that voting laws are so fundamental to a two-party system, that voting rights laws should only be passed with bipartisan majorities, not a Democrats-only 51 Senate votes, tiny majority, one party only. How do you react to that?

Patrick Gaspard: Well, there was a time when we could expect some modicum of cooperation from the Republican Party on the basic question of preserving and promoting democracy in America. That is no longer the case. If anyone had any doubt of that, I would show them January 6 in that insurrection as Exhibit A, and then the lack of urgent investigation of that insurrection by Republicans as Exhibit B. We are living in illiberal moment and access to just basic fundamental inclusion in this democracy, Republicans are not partners in this.

If we look at the history of the supermajority in the Senate, one, it doesn't exist as a constitutional obligation. It is just a senate rule. Even within that senate rule, there's no indication that the filibuster exists in order to encourage and incentivize bipartisanship. If you have 60 votes as a one-party, you can pass anything as a supermajority. Deepest respect to Senator Sinema. I just think she's just plain wrong on this issue.

Brian Lehrer: I know you got to go. Can you give me a quick take on what we're going to be covering all week this Thursday deadline to get the human infrastructure and the physical infrastructure bill passed in the House? This is, again, moderate Democrats, so-called, versus progressive Democrats, so-called.

Patrick Gaspard: This show, I don't mind being late for the thing, Brian. First of all, there are a lot of people who have gone bankrupt placing really bad bets against Nancy Pelosi's ability to get big things done. I'm a progressive. I believe we need that full 3.5 trillion bill, but I'm also a realist and recognize that we ain't getting 3.5 trillion for this bill, that's very clear. There will need to be some compromise amongst progressives and centrists in order to pass this measure. I'm confident that between Nancy Pelosi and our New York Senator and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, they'll find their way to that compromise.

I also want to quickly remind your listeners, I was part of the senior staff of the Obama White House when we passed health care. When we passed health care, it was not a politically popular bill. There were many Americans who felt that we were inattentive to the economy and jobs in that moment. Healthcare was underwater. Right now, for this bill, 7 out of 10 Americans, including the majority of independents, a plurality of Republicans believe that we ought to get this thing done. Let's make that happen and I'm confident they will.

Brian Lehrer: Patrick Gaspard, President of the Center for American Progress. Thank you so much for your thoughts this morning. We look forward to having you back.

Patrick Gaspard: Thank you so much, Brian.

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