June 23 - A Congresswoman Who Was a Victim of Gun Violence on the House Sit-In; An Update on the Brexit Vote; SCOTUS Blocks Obama's Immigration Plan; Immigration Lawyers on Our Broken Immigration System

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the historic sit-in last night by House Democrats trying to force a vote on gun reform that after nearly 26 hours, ended with a fiery and determined speech by Representative John Lewis who led the sit-in and vowed to continue the fight to stop recurring gun slaughters, concluding “it is a struggle and we are going to win the struggle”. Congresswoman Jackie Speier who serves as Vice Chair of the Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force and herself was shot five times trying to rescue constituent from the Jonestown compound in Guyana in 1978, joins us to discuss the Democrat’s strategy going forward to break the grip that the NRA has over Republican lawmakers and force them to go on the record in favor of allowing terrorism suspects on the no-fly list to buy assault rifles and explosives.

Part 2

Then we go to London for an update on the Brexit vote that is expected to be close and is still being counted. With the real possibility of a narrow victory for the leave vote, there is great anxiety, not just in the U.K., but in the E.U. and the U.S. Economist Stephany Griffith Jones, Emeritus Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and Associate Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London, joins us to discuss the the spasm of racist xenophobia stirred up by populist demagogues and inflamed by Rupert Murdoch’s press, that has gripped the normally tolerant British public ahead of Prime Minister Cameron’s self-inflicted political wound the Brexit vote, from which he may not recover.

Part 3

Then we speak with Angela Maria Kelley, the Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at the Center for American Progress who was formerly the Director of the Immigration Policy Center and Deputy Director at the National Immigration Forum.  She joins us to discuss the deadlocked Supreme Court vote that blocks President Obama’s immigration plan and Obama’s rebuke of the Republicans for not just creating gridlock in the legislative branch, but also for migrating it to the judicial branch with the holdup of Judge Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Part 4

Then finally we speak with a father and son team of immigration lawyers Michael Wildes, a former Federal Prosecutor, and Leon Wildes who was John Lennon’s lawyer throughout his deportation proceedings in 1972. Having been working in the trenches for decades, they offer their perspective on our broken immigration system.