One Country Project's Hot Dish

Heidi Heitkamp (00:04):
Welcome to The Hot Dish, comfort food for Middle America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp.

Joel Heitkamp (00:09):
And I'm Joel Heitkamp.

Heidi Heitkamp (00:10):
At a time when we're used to bad news on the political front, we've got a very positive episode today.

(00:17):
Now, if you're a regular listener to The Hot Dish, you know that Joel has a problem with binary triggers and other devices that turn regular guns into machine guns. Well, it turns out the Alabama House of Representatives, yes, you heard that right, the Alabama House of Representatives does too. Joel spoke with Alabama State Rep. Phil Ensler about his legislation to ban these devices and what it took to get his Republican colleagues on board.

Joel Heitkamp (00:44):
Representative Ensler actually understands how guns work, which has been a problem, Heidi, when it comes to any discussion on so-called gun control, which is don't sit there and use a letter or a synthetic stock or a number to define these guns. He actually got into, and I give him credit for that and I think that's why he got bipartisan agreement, on what we can change about the guns, Heidi.

Heidi Heitkamp (01:13):
Well, we're going to have a bigger conversation about this, but before we get to that, I want to share another positive story.

(01:20):
My friend, Mike Espy, former Secretary of Agriculture, points out that we've lost over 500,000 farms since 1981, but there still are farmers who are finding a way forward. The Hot Dish spoke with Harold Wilken, a fourth-generation farmer in Illinois who decided years ago that sustainable organic farming was the right path. Today, he's growing his operation to over 3,000 acres and he supplies grain and flour to consumers all over the Midwest. What a story.

Harold Wilken (02:01):
My name is Harold Wilken and I am a farmer in the Ashkum-Danforth, Illinois area. My family's been here since 1882. I'm a fourth-generation farmer here. My son joined me in 2012. He became the fifth-generation farmer out of our family. We operate a 3,800-acre organic farm here in East Central Illinois. I started in 1982 on my own. I left my family's operation and started my own, and we did corn, soybeans like most conventional farmers in our area. But I noticed that the more fertilizer, pesticides, petrochemicals that I used, the more it took to raise a crop, and I started looking at alternatives to transition to organic.

(03:01):
So I have to also tell you the story about what actually inspired me to do all of this.

(03:14):
In 2001, my wife and I lost our oldest child, Janie. Janie was 15 years old at the time, and she was very interested in everything we were doing, and I had complained to her about the way conventional farming was going and that we were looking at some alternatives, and she had encouraged me to maybe do something outside the norm.

(03:44):
Well, she passed in July of 2001 in a car accident, and that's when I decided, "You know what? Life's too short for me to do things I don't like to do." And so because of our her spirit, we've actually changed the farm, built the mill, and it was a life-changing experience that I know there's other parents out there who have been through this, but we haven't looked back. And then after doing that transition, I decided that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

(04:21):
I started marketing my grain to mostly organic feed companies for dairy farms, for chicken operations, and also, I was selling to a couple of small mills, but I realized that I was sending grain 700 miles to New York for feed when I had 10 million people in the food shed just an hour to two hours north of me. And so that got me into thinking about why aren't we feeding people instead of just feeding animals?

(05:02):
Now, as far as challenges to doing these kind of things, number one was the neighborhood wasn't sure I was going to be okay. There was some who thought that I was going to go broke. There were others that didn't like the idea of me not using herbicides and pesticides like they were, and so on and so forth. But over time, we proved ourselves as farmers organically and now we're well-respected in the community.

(05:40):
And one of the benefits of all this is that in our small towns, there's maybe 2,000 people in that area, and we employ 30 people with our mill and our farm. So that's a positive that has come out of this, along with myself being able to provide a place for my son to come back and we became a multi-generational farm.

(06:12):
You know, taking care of some of the challenges to becoming an organic farmer and also a small business owner in a small town, one of the things that has helped us is that the NRCS arm of the Farm Service Agency provides funding to help us with our certification costs. Certifications costs get very pricey, especially when you're doing a value-added product.

(06:44):
One of the beautiful things about living where we live, people do work together yet, they hope one another. We work with a number of different farmers and we've done a lot of mentoring to new organic farmers, and we'll give them advice that will help them probably not go through all the issues that we've gone through, and we feel like there were people in the beginning when we started that helped us get started and we feel like we need to pay that back.

Joel Heitkamp (07:25):
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it's a real privilege for me to get a chance to visit with State Representative Phil Ensler.

(07:33):
Now, here's the thing, it's courage. I mean, what we're going to talk about is courage today, the courage to do the right thing, but I want to give you a little background on the representative. Quite frankly, it could take up the whole time of the podcast so I won't go through it all, but he taught high school social studies in Montgomery, Alabama, started a program which I found really interesting called Marching On in which students fly to D.C. to meet with leaders, tour colleges, and learn about career opportunities. So his focus on kids, on making things better for kids definitely comes through. Went on, passed the Alabama Bar.

(08:15):
And I want to mention this, served as Claudette Colvin's attorney in her successful attempt to expunge her court record from being the first person arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus back in 1955. And imagine that. And in November of 2022, elected to represent District 74 in the Alabama House of Representatives, the only Jewish member of the Alabama legislature and the first time a Democrat flipped the district in the legislature since 2010.

(08:53):
So in other words, that's my way of saying he knows what he's doing.

(08:57):
Representative Ensler, good to have you on The Hot Dish. Thanks for coming on.

State Rep. Phil Ensler (09:01):
Great. No, appreciate it, and thanks for having me. And coming from you, saying I know what I'm doing is a big compliment, so I'm certainly trying my best.

Joel Heitkamp (09:09):
I have to tell you, I almost went and grabbed a jug of water, so in the middle of that whole bio I could have something. I mean, there is a list of work there, there really is, of being an advocate, of being an educator, and of course the most important thing that's going to jump out at people, worrying about that next generation. So you must love being around kids.

State Rep. Phil Ensler (09:32):
I do. And I loved being in D.C., loved being involved in the highest levels of government, but really doing Teach For America changed my life, and working with young people, that's been at the core now of my policy focus and public service. And it's very rewarding working with young people. It's challenging, but to continue to mentor them is something I really enjoy. Constantly bringing them into conversations around policy, asking them, "Hey, do you think this legislation is a good idea?" But to see them on their paths certainly is very rewarding.

Joel Heitkamp (10:05):
Representative, one of the reasons, well, actually the main reason that we asked you to come on today is about courage. It's about fortitude. It's about not being afraid to talk about the tough subjects, which Alabama, in so many ways, is just like North Dakota where I live, which is if you mention any gun legislation that people would be able to demand it goes against the Second Amendment, it's political suicide. And yet, you've been willing to do that, to talk about the sheer mechanics of a gun, which I think is always lost in the conversation about any level of gun legislation, which is how a gun works. And you've been willing to challenge that.

(10:48):
If you would, speak to that a little bit.

State Rep. Phil Ensler (10:50):
Yeah. And look, I don't see it as courage. I see it as that's what my constituents want, and it would be cowardly to not advocate for it. Gun violence is a major issue obviously throughout the country, but certainly in Alabama and here in Montgomery. And I say it all the time, I know that laws alone aren't going to stop every act of gun violence, but there are weapons out there that are designed to inflict mass harm and are incredibly dangerous and very hard to control.

(11:26):
And right, getting into the specifics is important because sometimes I think often there's this broad stroke painted of, well, guns and they're not all equal. There's certainly a difference. And focusing on the ones though that are the deadliest and really dangerous is something that I've started to focus on here, and I'm sure we'll get more into what that is and how we're going about it.

Joel Heitkamp (11:48):
Well, let's do that. What does your legislation say? What does it do?

State Rep. Phil Ensler (11:53):
So it's a little bit of a mouthful, but what it does is there are these things called trigger activators or box switches. There are different terms that are used for them and they're easy to put on the end of a pistol or end of a handgun and it converts that handgun into, essentially, into a machine gun. So it goes from something that, of course, a handgun is already deadly or can be deadly, but it goes from that into a machine gun that can spray dozens of rounds of bullets within just seconds.

(12:24):
So what my legislation does is it bans having handguns that have been converted with those trigger activators. So very specifically, we don't ban a handgun, we don't ban just the device; we ban a handgun that has been converted into a machine gun.

Joel Heitkamp (12:39):
So what response? Because you know if it hasn't happened already, it's going to get even hotter. What response have you been getting for what some people are going to say is taking away their Second Amendment right?

State Rep. Phil Ensler (12:53):
Yeah. And it, fortunately and pleasantly to my surprise, passed the full Alabama House of Representatives just last week. There was some strong Republican pushback where they took a pretty absolute stance on saying, "It's going to infringe on the Second Amendment." But between the Democrats and the super minority and then enough Republicans that did the right thing, we got the votes to get it through the House. It then passed the Senate committee just yesterday. It was a close vote. Out of the 10 members that voted, four were against it. And now we're trying to get it on the floor of the full Senate.

(13:30):
So there certainly has been pushback. There certainly has been resistance, but it fortunately so far has made a lot of progress all things considered. And a big reason for that is that it has a lot of support from law enforcement. So from the Alabama sheriffs, Alabama police officers, Alabama district attorneys, state troopers, and they see it as a public safety issue. So just talking about it in those terms certainly makes a difference, having that law enforcement support and backing of it.

Joel Heitkamp (14:01):
So what you really did was get into what I said, which is the mechanics of how the gun works. They see a synthetic stock versus a wood stock, and they instantly think that this is a way different gun than what another gun is. As an individual that owns guns, I've tried to use my opportunity as a talk show host to really get into what you are doing, which is to stop what some of these guys are doing, which is to turn their gun into an automatic weapon. It's that plain. It's that simple.

(14:35):
And do you think that people generally know that, that they can see that?

State Rep. Phil Ensler (14:40):
You know, in the world of politics and in society, things are often broken down or explained in over-simplistic terms, so people will refer to it as "gun legislation" or "gun regulations." So I've had to do a lot of one-on-one conversations, small-group conversations to make sure that my colleagues in the legislature, that they understand the specifics of it. So that's been really important. And also doing fact sheets, doing one-pagers, showing the video. So there's been a lot of need for education around it to say, "Look, this isn't just some sweeping bill to take away guns, but it's to deal with a very particular, very specific situation."

Joel Heitkamp (15:22):
What reaction has there been out of state? Has the NRA dealt themselves a hand, for example?

State Rep. Phil Ensler (15:29):
Believe it or not, and I'm grateful for it, the NRA stayed neutral on it. My guess would be that they saw this as a narrower piece of legislation, again, supported by law enforcement. So to have them stay neutral on it, that also has helped get Republican support. If the NRA came out against it, that would've essentially killed the bill.

Joel Heitkamp (15:55):
You mentioned the fact that the Republicans have a supermajority and you've been able to get enough Republicans to get this through to the House, and it looks as though you're finding some support in the Senate to make its way there. Have you visited yet with the governor? Have you had a conversation there?

State Rep. Phil Ensler (16:12):
Great question. So I've spoken to her staff just to get a feel. There, sense is they're essentially agnostic on it, so they're not going to push for it and support it, but my understanding is that if it passes that she would go ahead and sign it into law. So that's encouraging as well. But they're allowing the process to play out at the state legislature without trying to tip the scales one way or the other.

Joel Heitkamp (16:38):
How effective has it been to use video, to put that in front of people so they can physically hear it, to know what law enforcement is up against?
State Rep. Phil Ensler (16:51):
Oh, yeah, it's jarring. And even people that are familiar with these types of devices, to see a video and then hear the most important part is the audio of hearing how many bullets come out within a matter of just a handful of seconds, that, if they haven't already understood it, then they get it. So that has been really important to do that.

(17:15):
For some though that have seen it and heard it, they don't care. Their response has been, "Well, I wish I had one of those because if the bad guy has it, I want one too." Which my response has been, "Well, these things, once you pull the trigger, they're very hard to control." So the bullets can spray. They spray indiscriminately all over the place. So it's horrible already that someone may be aiming the gun and pulling the trigger at someone, but if they're doing that with one of these box switches, trigger activators, the bullets will spray everywhere.

(17:44):
So if you have family that's at home, if you have friends that are nearby, if there are bystanders, and again, that gets into really the mechanics, and that's why showing those videos of just how the bullets spray... The audio paints a strong picture, literally speaks volumes, but the video, seeing how the bullets spray, how hard it is to control is also really powerful.

(18:05):
And that is, cliche as this may sound, it's not a Democrat or Republican issue. Clearly, it's not just a white or black issue, it's not a urban or rural. It's happening all over. And the way that we enact legislation, we are there to be lawmakers. And I emphasize that term a lot. I certainly believe in heartfelt prayer. I believe in sincere words of expression. But we're there to act. We're there to take action as lawmakers to enact laws. And I certainly hope here in Alabama that we take those reasonable steps, and in North Dakota.

(18:38):
And the last thing I'll say on it, and I know you and I are in complete agreement on this, none of this violates the Second Amendment. People still have their right to own a pistol. They still... People go hunting. That's a huge recreational activity here in Alabama. I know it is in many states throughout the country. We're not trying to take away that ability at all. But what we're saying is some of these killing machines, some of these things that are just so insanely dangerous, we have to put reasonable measures in place.

(19:10):
And I'll just add in on that, with any amendment, with any constitutional right, there's some reasonable rules around it, whether it's free speech, whether it's voting. Nothing is absolute. We don't say, "You can just do whatever you want in society." Part of living in a civilized society is that we enact reasonable rules or parameters around any of those constitutional rights, and we certainly could do that when it comes to guns to save lives.

Joel Heitkamp (19:35):
So let's play a little devil's advocate. What are you going for next if you accomplish this? Because the rights that you then have taken away from gun owners is just the first step to taking away my guns, period. What was your answer to that?

State Rep. Phil Ensler (19:50):
My answer to that is that we have to focus on the legislation in front of us. This isn't an attempt to open the floodgates. It really is about looking at the facts, looking at what is currently an issue, and right now it is trigger activators, and that's all the bill does.

Joel Heitkamp (20:07):
Alabama State Representative Phil Ensler is our guest here on The Hot Dish. I mentioned the word courage and you disputed that a little bit, and I don't blame you one bit because you said, "It's not necessarily courage, it's doing the right thing, what you're elected to do."

(20:24):
But you and I both know that in many cases, legislation like this can hinder any opportunity you have for advancement of your political career. It makes you the enemy dollar-wise and commercial-wise of many people who might believe you should be governor of the state of Alabama, but you just gave them a tool to run a lot of ads against you. That's why I use terms like courage.

(20:52):
Was that something you just don't care about, or where do you go from here on that?
State Rep. Phil Ensler (20:58):
I'd rather fight my hardest, try to get this legislation through, and then, say, lose re-election or run into that issue in some other election. I need to be able to sleep at night knowing that I stood up for what was right and what my constituents wanted.

Joel Heitkamp (21:14):
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I would argue what he just said was courage. It is. It takes political courage to do something like this.

(21:23):
Well, I don't know if you realize in a supermajority with the Republican Party in Alabama what you're doing nationwide. If you're able to accomplish this, if you're able to do this, it's going to get the attention nationwide of other states where they're wondering why they can't do the same. They really are. And so win. Win. Get over to that state senate and find a way to get this through. Thank God the NRA hasn't dealt themselves a hand, but Representative, find a way to win this thing.

State Rep. Phil Ensler (22:02):
Absolutely, and I'm doing everything I can. And these days, I've been spending more time up in the Senate just trying to get my colleagues up there to bring it up. So no, absolutely. And look, this can of course help Alabama, but if it could have a ripple effect and encourage other places as well, that would be even that much better.

Joel Heitkamp (22:23):
Well, thanks for joining us on The Hot Dish.

State Rep. Phil Ensler (22:25):
Thanks so much for having me, Joel, and thanks for everything you're doing.

Heidi Heitkamp (22:33):
Joel, what the heck is going on in Alabama? They elect a pro-choice Democratic woman, and now they're actually passing legislation that deals with guns, and some could argue, it's probably going to be challenged under the Second Amendment. What an interesting story.

Joel Heitkamp (22:51):
Yeah, I don't think that the Democrats are polling Alabama close enough. I really believe this state's in play, Heidi. I mean-

Heidi Heitkamp (22:59):
Yeah, right. Joe Biden will spend all his time in Alabama. I don't think... But you know what? I want to make this point. When you take the issue to the people, when you explain the issue, when you do the work, you get things done.

Joel Heitkamp (23:14):
Well, there was nobody he was afraid to talk to, which is a huge part of winning bipartisan support. And I don't know how he did this, Heidi, but he neutralized the NRA. They stayed out of his business. I think they found that with what he was talking about, it drew such a line in the sand. And really in the end, it came down to law enforcement and people whose lives are in danger because of this.

Heidi Heitkamp (23:41):
Yeah. Well, I think that's right. But let's talk little bit about the Dakotas that have been in the national news. Our leader, Doug Burgum, in North Dakota and the governor of South Dakota certainly has been featured pretty prominently in the national media recently. People are like, "Really? We've got all this activity with Dakota governors."

(24:03):
So just to back up and give people a little insight, yes, the governor of South Dakota is Kristi Noem. She wrote a book. I can't even remember the title because it's gotten so much attention about her basically shooting her pet, Cricket, or her working dog, to be fair. That's not putting words in her mouth. So her book's been all over. And I will tell you, Joel, let's talk about Kristi first.

Joel Heitkamp (24:28):
Heidi, I just want to be clear so people understand what the title of her book is so they can reference it. It's titled, I Shot My Dog And Then My Goat Too.
Heidi Heitkamp (24:39):
Well, that's all you're hearing about. And Then I Went to Visit Kim Jong Un Maybe. That's the subtitle. That's the subtitle.

(24:48):
But I want to talk about Kristi first, about Governor Noem first because what bothered me the most about that story, other than obviously this horrible event of actually thinking about shooting a 14-month-old hunting dog without giving it a chance to reach maturity, and even then finding it a home, is that she keeps saying, "That's what we do in rural America. That's just the way it is on every farm in rural America. Every ranch, some dog, you get mad at a dog, you hate a dog and you take it to a gravel pit and you shoot it."

(25:27):
And guess what? I mean, you and I both have a family member that we've talked a lot about their dog. The dog's a very dangerous dog. They've taken it to veterinary, it's on medication, it's doing tons of stuff, and they control that dog and at great expense to them. But that's what you do when you end up with a dog that has a few problems in rural America. You don't take it out and shoot it, especially if it's 14 months old.

Joel Heitkamp (25:55):
Well, and I would add that a 14-month-old dog is a puppy. I mean, that's what it is. It's a puppy. Plus, she bought a wire hair, which a wire hair is meant to be an aggressive bird dog. I'm sorry, but you don't see a lot of wire hairs laying around on couches waiting to get petted. They're usually a cattle dog. They're usually something you hunt with and make sure that the cattle know that you mean business when you go out there.

(26:21):
And so 14 months old, that's a puppy. And when you're talking about a puppy yet to be trained and that puppy hops out of the pickup you brought them in and they eat up some chickens, that's nature at its best. And so if that dog couldn't behave, it wasn't the dog's fault. It was whoever was training the dog, which is clearly Governor Noem.

Heidi Heitkamp (26:46):
Let's start out first with the fact that she took the dog out there and thought old dogs were going to somehow have a little get-together and everybody, the old dogs, were going to train the young dog. Well, I think that's a little unrealistic. And then she takes a pickup with a dog that is already pretty jacked up from the hunt into a farm, and somehow the dog escapes the pickup, and she doesn't even take any responsibility for that. Either if it was in the back, it should have been in a kennel anyway if it were in the bed of the pickup. If it were inside, she shouldn't have let it out.

Joel Heitkamp (27:26):
Well, it clearly shows that she was embarrassed after the dog got after the chickens and got some of them.

Heidi Heitkamp (27:33):
And mad. And mad, Joel. Not just embarrassed. She was mad.

Joel Heitkamp (27:37):
Oh, yeah. I have no doubt about that. And I go back to encouraging everybody that's listening to One Country to go back, not that it's okay to shoot any 14-month-old puppy, but go back and look at the job a wire hair is bred to do. They're an aggressive dog. They're a dog that gets after it. I've hunted behind wire hairs. They're machines if you train them well. And you know what? Clearly they're dead if you get mad at them in South Dakota.

Heidi Heitkamp (28:07):
I mean, it's like she's sabotaging her own opportunities here. It's just an odd thing.

Joel Heitkamp (28:14):
Actually, I think she thought it was going to play into the "I'm tough" wheelhouse of Donald Trump.

Heidi Heitkamp (28:20):
But I think it'll be too much attention to her if she gets picked. He doesn't like that.

(28:25):
Let's transition to somebody who wouldn't get a lot of attention if he got picked, I don't think, and that's our governor, Doug Burgum, who has recently moved up in the speculation sweepstakes on who he's going to pick as vice president. He was down, he was in New Jersey for the rally, Governor Burgum was. And so I think they're testing him out, seeing what his call and response can be on the national stage.

Joel Heitkamp (28:54):
Well, I don't know that I'd want Doug Burgum around me in a tough bar because when the fighting would start, he'd change his mind in a hurry.

(29:01):
But there's two points about Doug Burgum that I want to make sure people know. Number one, every time I think I'm smart politically, I remember Doug Burgum because I begged Doug to run, and I begged him to run as an independent and he wouldn't show his cards. In the end, he ran in the primary because he couldn't get the nomination of the Republican Party in North Dakota. The party in North Dakota, the Republican Party. He got it from the people. There was a lot of crossover votes in the primary, but a billion dollars can do that. That's number one.

(29:33):
Number two, I went and pulled up all my old sound from Doug Burgum and just started going over it. In 2022, I specifically asked Doug Burgum if he ever would be a running mate or ever want to be a running mate of Donald Trump. It was a one-word answer, "No."

(29:53):
So something changed between 2022 and 2024, and I think it is the ego of Doug Burgum, I think it is this aura of, "Donald, can I wash your car?" It's something, but something changed with Doug Burgum.

Heidi Heitkamp (30:11):
Well, it's called ambition. Ambition over character, right?

Joel Heitkamp (30:14):
Yeah.

Heidi Heitkamp (30:15):
When he told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press that he wouldn't do business with Donald Trump, and then proceeded to tell him but he would vote for him. So he would be injurious to your business reputation, but you want to put him on the national stage negotiating for all the people in the United States.

(30:37):
As I said, it was an interesting couple of weeks for the Dakota governors.

(30:41):
But before we go, Joel, we have to talk about the One Country Project's 2024 Rural Progress Summit. It's right around the corner, and it's going to be June 4th through June 6th, and it's virtual, so we're doing it all by Zoom. No one has to travel to attend.

Joel Heitkamp (30:59):
Right. You have great topics. You really do. Child care in rural America, the rural healthcare crisis, the Farm Bill and rural agricultural policy, public education. When you talk about the rural area, there's just much, much more, Heidi. There really is.

Heidi Heitkamp (31:15):
Yeah. And the next time we're on, Joel, the next time we do this, I know sometimes people get bored with talking about the Farm Bill all the time, but there's going to be a markup in the House. Chairman Thompson has already signaled that. Chairwoman Stabenow over in the Senate is working.

Joel Heitkamp (31:33):
Well, I was looking at what happened with the recent leadership vote and thinking that might be good news for the Farm Bill, the fact that they've told that wacko right wing to just go home.

Heidi Heitkamp (31:46):
Okay. Let's see if I could do this sound effect. That's what would happen.

Joel Heitkamp (31:55):
Yeah, exactly. But let me take that a step farther. You and others with the One Country Project have focused very hard on making sure political leaders in the public know about rural America. And rural America is where agriculture is. Oftentimes in rural America, we hear the criticism of SNAP, and you and I both know that the vast majority of people on SNAP are the elderly who help build this country up and

Heidi Heitkamp (32:23):
Or veterans or disabled people.

Joel Heitkamp (32:26):
Exactly.

Heidi Heitkamp (32:27):
And the average time, the average time for somebody who is able-bodied and a worker is very, very minimal. It usually is just a transition kind of thing. And I want to make this point, there already are work requirements in the SNAP program.

Joel Heitkamp (32:41):
Well, and I would add one thing that I was building up to there, which was that if you separated those two out, the one that I think would have an easier time passing, because of all the people you just talked about, is SNAP. And so I think that the Farm Bill, we've got to remember that we have a minority when it comes to House members.

Heidi Heitkamp (33:04):
Yeah.

(33:06):
Okay. Thanks, Joel, so much. And that's another episode of The Hot Dish. We hope you enjoyed it. We're hoping that you will pay attention and go to onecountryproject.org. Register for the Rural Summit, but also check us out. I think we're doing good stuff, and it's always fun to talk to you, Joel.

Joel Heitkamp (33:26):
You bet. And thank you for joining us today on The Hot Dish, which is brought to you by One Country Project, making sure the voices of the rest of us are heard in Washington. Learn more at onecountryproject.org.