What's up? Welcome to Weekends. I'm Anna Casparian. Nando Villa is not here today. He's off, but I'm super excited for Jen Pan to join in and help me do the show today. Jen, how are you?

I'm good. Anna, it's been a righteous week for Jacob and Channel crossover. If anybody missed it, Nando was on the Jacob and show last Wednesday. Obviously I am Nando today, and I'm really excited for the show.

We of course have Thomas Frank, columnist at the Guardian and elsewhere, coming on to talk to us in a little bit. We've got a great show. Anna, how are you?

I'm doing okay. I missed you guys last week. I had that week off, and that's part of the reason why kale filled in for me, and I'm super grateful for that. But it's really good to be back.

I'm looking forward to both of our decodes segments today, not just doing the decodes, but having discussions about them. You're tackling the issue of homelessness.

I am, too, to some extent, but from a different angle and how poverty and this profit motive behind housing has really accelerated homelessness to the point where people are not just living out in the streets or in cars, but also a huge portion of this country is living in hotels and motels.

So I'm going to break that down, and I'm really looking forward to it. Before we get to that, though, Jen, you know, I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to talk a little bit about the Biden administration's messaging on the topic of unemployment insurance, because I feel that Jen Socky, the press secretary for the White House, missed an opportunity to do what needs to be done in calling out the GOP in their austerity measures, their efforts to support

essentially cut unemployment benefits prematurely to force people to go back to jobs that don't pay them a living wage. So let me set this up for you guys.

During a recent White House press conference, Jen Socky was asked about the unemployment benefits that have been provided by the federal government as part of Joe Biden's coronavirus relief package.

Now, as you guys have probably seen, there are GOP lawmakers and GOP governors who are raising alarm about just how generous these unemployment benefits are and how it's discouraging people to go back to work.

In fact, people are making more money off of sitting at home, collecting unemployment, and as a result, there's a labor shortage.

Now, we've done many segments debunking that, and we can talk about that in more detail after this clip, but get a load of how Jen Socky is handling this question.

There seems to be a bit of a shift in term here, because last month the president was pretty adamant that he did not believe that these enhanced unemployment benefits were playing a role or factoring into people's decisions not to get back into the jobs market.

Today, though, he's underscoring that these benefits are simply temporary, such to expire in 90 days. So which is it? Yes or no, does the president believe that these unemployment benefits are playing a role here?

Well, I think we shouldn't lose sight of some basic facts here, which is that those governors who have made the decision, as they have every right to do, to pull back on unemployment benefits or not accept them, I should say, accurately, that hasn't even taken effect in any state across the country.

So in terms of how we're evaluating the impact, we haven't even seen the impact yet. That takes effect in June.

It is important for people to understand factually that the president, known from the administration, has ever proposed making these permanent or doing it over the long term.

And sometimes I think that that was just an effort to make that clear in the public.

So Jen, the main line there that really caught people's attention is, you know, the governors have every right to do it.

Yeah. It was such a missed opportunity. What do you think?

Completely agree. I mean, you know, first of all, that kind of fall back on the right wing states rights rhetoric is a little weird and shocking coming from, I think, the Biden administration, which, you know, to its credit has been imperfect, but has really, I think,

stepped forward, especially from Biden's work in the Obama administration in terms of creating a federal response to what is obviously a national crisis, right?

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