Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - LeBron and the Mighty White Lakers. Plus, Are You Proud to Be an American?

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Van and Rachel react to the biggest news of the NBA offseason before questioning whether Kamala Harris is gearing up for a presidential run and discussing Barack Obama’s opinion of George Washington. Then Maureen Edobor, an assistant professor at Washington and Lee School of Law, joins to help break down the impact of some recent Supreme Court decisions before Van asks a patriotic question. (0:00) Intro (10:01) The new-look (white) Lakers (15:57) LeBron’s latest decision (41:02) Is Kamala Harris running in 2028? (50:50) Obama on admiring George Washington (1:21:24) Maureen Edobor on SCOTUS’s latest decisions (1:50:02) Are you proud to be an American? Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guest: Maureen Edobor Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Jade Whaley Social Producer: Bernard Moore Video Supervision: Chris Thomas and Jacob Cornett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yay, I thought warriors. So much happening. What is up? Higher Learning is on is I. Van Lathen, Jr. You can take the little IFB thing off. Oh, yeah. We just did an interview. And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay.

We did an interview with Marine Edibor. She's a constitutional law professor. We talked to her about the Supreme Court. Supreme Court decisions that went down. Yeah, it's a lot. I mean, this actually crept up on me. It's the time of year. This always happens, right?

End of June, right, at the top of July. You get the most controversial decisions, the ones the court holds out on before they take a break. But I forgot until they, even when we talked about this on Tuesday's podcast, it didn't even hit me. I was like, oh my gosh, yeah, it is that time. The court time. It's just a lot of stuff going on all the time.

They sneak it in in the summer. They want to come in there and do their racism. They want to crack down on us and stuff. Not just racism, all the, all the. You still believe in the court. You're still a court believer. You believe it. Because you have to because you're dad.

Well, yeah, but all levels of the court. Right. Right. Right. Like, you know, we'll talk about it with, you know, the professor when she comes on. But all levels of the court. You believe in the courts. We have to have a judicial system.

Yeah. I mean, but it needs to change. Like, it's, it's extremely problematic. They're contradicting themselves. Like, they're, it's almost, it's almost, it's almost, it's almost, it's almost, laughable at the length that they will go to in these opinions to defend something to align with their political beliefs or their moral values, or their values, I should just say,

rather than what's good for the people or what's right or what precedent says. Let's talk about the hat. What about it? I don't know if I've ever seen you wear something designer. Now, when you told the story on the podcast about the hat, it wasn't Gucci. I got two hats.

Whoa, let's talk about it. I got a Jivanchi hat and I got a Gucci hat. Where's the Jivanchi? It's at the house. How do you feel you've been getting compliments? I mean, nah, it's just the hat. I wanted a, so I love the bucket hat life, but I wanted a bucket hat.

I have an everyday bucket hat. I want a bucket hat can wear out a little bit. And so I got a couple of bucket hats and decided to, you know, do the bucket hat today. I think you should put it up a little more. You have a little far back. It's, yeah, it's a little, right, right, Jesse? But you know what?

Because I looked at, what I looked at was niggas who wore bucket hats in the pack. and like I identify with almost all of them. You know who wore a bucket hat? Who? Inspector Gadgett. And let me tell you got something right now. This podcast is basically Inspector Gadget.

It's a guy that is doing all of this histrionics that people think is the person that's solving it when there's a smarter, more complicated, competent woman who's actually making it go. I am the Inspector Gadget of podcasting. Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. And then she makes all the sense. Inspector Gats, so like, niggas with bucket hats in the past

have been actually like kind of trustworthy. Think of one that wore a bucket hat that you didn't like. I don't know. I think you're right. I'm not going to argue against you. Can you think about it? Can you think about anyone who's been in the bucket who's had been the bucket life that was a villain?

No. When I'm Googling a famous bucket hat wearers and the first one that comes up is Gilligan from Gilligan's Island and I hated that show Oh my gosh, I loved that show. But see what I'm saying?

Loved Gilligan's Island. Gilligan was the man. Now I don't count a Kangol as kind of a, but maybe if you count the Kangol you don't count that as a bucket? Okay, well if you count that as a bucket hat then you got LL Cool J as well

who really is the first. hip-hop superstar. You know what I'm saying? Nobody can rap quite like I can't. I take a muscle-bound man. Then L.L. took the bucket hat through errors. Actually, here's the thing about L.L.

in his bucket journey. Because he had the hat. And then he took the hat off. And then when it came back to L.L. at the end, when he went on the Atkins diet, do you remember Atkins diet, L.L.? Did he go on that? L.L.

throughout the entire 90s, always was a body guy. He was buff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was buff. But then something happened. In like 2001 or 2002, when LL came back out and he wasn't just buff, he was shredded. And it looked like he went on a no-carb-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-ac-and-a-cans kind of situation. It's Ackins L.L.

Was it around Headstrong? I feel like that's when he was. It was headstrong. It was headstrong. Remember, did I ever meant to hurt you, laugh together, cry together? Lord willing, we're going to die together. He said, Lord willing, we're going to die. I never understood the Lord Willough we going to die together part.

When you say, Like you grow old together. That's how I took it. But I get it. But when you say die together, do you mean like at the same time? Because that's tragic. I just think he might grow old together.

I did. Yes. Yes. I hear you. That never happens. What happens is one person checks out like six or seven years before the other person. Not necessarily.

And then, well, you think people like they die exactly. Some notebooks shit? No, but sometimes. Even in a notebook, he, I think, I feel like she died slightly before he did. because he found her dead.

Didn't she die? No. They went to sleep. Yeah. She remembers him. He gets in the bed with her. They hold hands and they wake up and they're gone together. So I've always had a thought there.

Which was? He poisoned her. I've always had a thought. I've always had a thought. You're adding things that are not there. There's like no reason to even make room for that. But they die acutely. They were both old and they were having a conversation.

then they just fucking die. Have you not heard of the whole thing when a woman dies first or when a woman's like really sickly a man usually, unless he gets married quickly, like we'll dive very quickly after. Like from a broken heart, like without.

So I think that that was weighing on him. The stress. That shit is six months to a year. No, no, no. When that happens, this nigga checked out. Have y'all seen this? They checked out at the same time. Do you remember what happens before that though?

They have this huge moment. And she's like, He's like, she's like, I remember and he remembers. And they're crying and it's so emotional. And then immediately she can't. And he is broken over it. Broken. I think that was the chaos.

They were married in real life that couple. That was James Garner and, wait a minute. Maybe they weren't. I don't know. Like here's the deal though. Was the couple, I think they were. James Garner played. No, no.

Rachel's the young. James, these are the, we're talking of the older. The older people. Like James Garner was, James Garner did a lot of shit. I don't think he was actually married to a real life. That woman might have been, because the actress was also very famous. Was that Nick Casavetti's mother? Yes.

Yes. Okay. So they definitely don't know why I know that, but that's true. His father was John Cassavetes. Gina Rollins. Gino Rollins. Okay. So like, yeah.

So I apologize to her. She is not just the lady from the notebook. She's been doing a whole bunch of amazing shit in her. entire life. She doesn't know she's passed away now. But yeah, so when I just, back to the bucket hat thing to kind of put a bowl on this whole thing, L.L. is also a bucket hat connoisseur. He's had all different guys. And when he got into the paradise level of his career, he brought the bucket hat back. Because he actually left bucket hat life in the 90s and was just wearing a ball cap. Fubu ball cap, different types of ball cap. But then he brought the bucket back.

I love that you're so well verseness. Listen, you're in good company. Do you like my slides? What kind of slides are those? Nike? I am not a slideware. You all like them, Ginzi approved? Kobe's slide. I am not a slide.

I am not a slideware. But I'm obsessed with these. These are super comfortable. I would tell you to put your hand in them. They're Nike. I want it. They're Nike. I don't want to put my hand in it.

Let me put my hand with your feet were. What kind of disgusting shit you want? Look at the bottom. No socks. So then. What's trying to say? Thank you. I got socks on right now with my slides.

That's how I know you're a real nigger. These are super comfortable. You actually don't need socks. These would look crazy with socks in my opinion. If they're closed-toed, I'm for sure. They're clothes-toed. Exactly. Yeah. Hey.

This is an interesting question. I'm not a sock wearer in slides. These are so comfortable, you would not want to put socks on with these. Because I see the bottom of it. About to be my whole personality. What? Where did you get them? From Nike.

They're Nike. I felt like somebody would have gave you, though. Why? Because you get a lot of shit given to you, then you put the link. Oh, actually, I don't put my outfits on a link on my stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, not necessarily stuff given to me.

Sometimes. We have a lot of news. We have the Supreme Court, obviously. We're going to talk about that. LeBron James has left the Lakers. There was a Jalen Brown trade that Jalen Brown was criticized for being smart.

Barack Obama. I feel like that's not the first time we've heard that. Barack Obama weighed in on slavery and slave owners and slave peoples. We'll talk a little bit about that. I also want to pitch something to Rachel and ask Rachel a question later on.

I want to pitch you a special episode of higher learning. I also want to ask you a question that leads into this weekend, which is not just the 4th of July, but the 250 of the United States. I'm going to ask you a question, see what you think. Ask the Z corner as well.

I want everyone to weigh in on this question. We'll talk about a little bit later. But, Donnie, get us started. All right, let's start with one of the stories you teased in the sports. There's a bunch of changes happening. in the NBA with a free agency having just started. One of them is that LeBron announced that he's not returning to the Lakers.

He hasn't decided on where he's going to go yet, but it won't be in L.A. You're a Lakers fan. What do you think about the new look of your team? You mean the white bullshit? Just being a lot of white players. So let me tell you something. Look, here's a deal. You know, the Lakers, if you play well, that's all I care about, right?

Now, it is kind of crazy to go out there and everybody from the Waker, the Wakers, the Quakers. He's like, no, it's the white. It's the white, you can't get past it. You can't get past it now. Lemore called him the L.A. The snow time Lakers. LeMorne said that they're like the L.A. Quakers and all that, stuff like that.

The Wakers, all of this stuff. I only legitimately care about how good they play. So if Walker Kessler, Mamu, and the rest of these guys come out there, Austin Reeves was re-signed. Shout out to Austin, Reggie Berry, all the people over there. If they play well, I'm waiting. It's funny. It's funny.

But, you know, they look like a bunch of niggas that John Wick tried to kill. Like John Wickville is. They look like the Lakers. I'm good with it. I don't have a problem with them. You think they're going to be good? With that starting lineup, what do you think? Some of the decisions made are interesting, right?

So if you look at what happened with the Lakers this season, you have, they brought Walker Kessler in. Luke Kinnard is gone. Rue Hachimori looks like he's gone. Marcus Smart is gone. LeBron James is gone. There are some players in there that you wonder what the fuck was going on.

And specifically I'll talk about Marcus Smart. Marcus Smart comes in after a career where he's played really well. The defensive player of the year was a real huge part of the Celtics culture for a long time, but actually has like a resurgence in Los Angeles, right? With what he's able to do. And you feel like if Marcus Smart

is not going to be a Laker next year, that he must be going to get a bag from someplace, right? That's not what happened. Marcus Smart, I think, signed a two-year, $13 million contract. Somebody looked that up with Houston. Now, he has M.A. doka there, who he was with in Boston, so that might be a reason that he would go there. But it's not like he got broke off to leave the Lakers and go to the Rockets.

We look at some of these other guys that they're not bringing him back. They're not bringing back Rui, who's fantastic for him. They're not bringing back Luke, who was phenomenal for him at different times, particularly once Luca was injured. Like, it would seem like what, yeah, two years, $13 million contract with using Rock as Marks Mark. It would seem like what you would want is go out and get that 3-D wing, get somebody in the middle that Luca could deal with.

It was like he likes Walker Kessler, and then you would run the team like that. But that's not what they did. They went for a weird white overhaul, and they let out a bunch of guys who had already been contributing, so I don't know. But has that been, and I'm, Lakers are not my team, but has that not been the story over the last several years of the management with the Lakers? Hasn't that been a critique from, from fans of like the miss, like who they've brought to the team, maybe who they've overpaid for rather than like building a certain team around LeBron? Hasn't that been some of the talk or am I? So like is this not kind of in some of the decisions that were made just in as of recent in line with how the team has been managed over the,

last several years. I mean, yes and no, right? So they were able to build a team of LaRan James that was good enough to win a championship, albeit a championship. In the bubble. In the bubble. Okay. But still, though, that team was an elite NBA team before that. I would say if you're being your most cynical, the time off between the pandemic happening and the bubble is probably the thing that helped them the most. I think that team probably still is the best team in the NBA that year. but you don't know they're older Anthony Davis gets hurt a lot LeBron James was getting older

would they have gotten injured up and nicked up on the way to that title and not been playing as well in the playoffs but I still think that team at its best probably was the NBA championship that year even though a lot of shit happened in the bubble it was weird whatever yeah whatever but they still around LeBron James

was able to go put you know Caruso Anthony Davis brought in Dwight Howard. They weren't able to put a team around LeBron James, at least at that point, to go out and win a championship

and be really competitive. This same group brought in Luca Donchick, and Luca Donchick is there now, so the question is, how do you build around him? When you can't build around him and LeBron James at the same time, you're probably going to have to get one guy out of the air. And now they're building around Luca.

But what I don't understand is some of this stuff is work they had already done. They already brought in guys, a couple of guys at least that were good Lakers, right? When you go back to Luke, when you go back to Rue, and you go back to Market Smart.

You feel like you get rid of a couple of different pieces, bring in some new pieces, you address some of the athleticism concerns, you address some of the three-point shooting, you address some of that stuff, and then you take it away. But, you know, Quinn Grimes,

a small guard, like Colin Sexton, all of these guys. They traded Jayla Brown! Why didn't they do that? That's Bill Simmons, you guys are hearing from right now. Still upset. Still pissed about it.

But anyway, So you say all that shit and it's like, I don't know what the direction is. Who knows? So as a Laker fan, did you think that this was LeBron's last year? Did you feel that that was going to happen? I was hoping that it was.

For him or for your team? For everyone involved. Okay. Yeah. For everyone involved. I was hoping for everyone involved. Okay. But I'll be honest.

For me first. I wanted LeBron gone, yeah. Do you think that you, because you said they can't build the team around both Luca and LeBron, do you think that it really was LeBron's decision to leave? No. Okay.

I don't think it was really LeBron's decision to leave. I think... Because Rich Paul is saying the decision came down to happiness. Well, yeah. But the reality is whose happiness?

This is the deal. No, he's saying... Here's a situation with LeBron James. Here's a situation with LeBron James. LeBron James is not anybody's everybody's player. He's not. It's impossible for him to be. I don't care who you are in the NBA right now. And I mean this for any player. I mean this for Yokic. I mean this for SGA. I mean this for

any player. Save maybe one. Save maybe one. If LeBron James is in your locker room is his locker room. And it doesn't really matter how much better you are than him. No one is close to LeBron James in cultural significance in the NBA right now. Nobody. No one. It's a joke. Steph, maybe. So if you go up to,

if LeBron James ends up in Golden State, then you can make the argument that LeBron James is joining Steph's culture. But even then, you got two big dogs sitting at the table again. You got two big dogs sitting at the table, right? But if LeBron James is in your locker room, he might not be the number one basketball priority

in the locker room. he might not be the number one like organizational priority in the locker room but he is the number one cultural priority in the locker room the player that's the biggest deal culturally in the NBA to me should always be the best player on the team always if you have an incongruent team if the player that's the biggest deal culturally

is not also the best player on the team because what that means is that the best player on the team because what that means is that the best player on the team has to make cultural space for the biggest cultural deal on the team, and the biggest cultural deal on the team has to make basketball space for the best player on the team, and that ain't going to work. So with that mentality then, where does LeBron go? I mean, what's being thrown out there, Golden State, Cleveland, Miami?

Well, it's up to him. But I was saying to your point, using that, like what you're, to what you're saying, because it makes a lot of sense, which of those, if those are the top three choices, right? Because we know that he's not necessarily chasing the max contract at this point. I think happiness means a championship for him. Do you think so? Well, what else does it mean?

What do you think that that means? I mean, when I hear happiness, I don't think he's, I don't think, well, he doesn't have to. It's not money. To me, it means a ring. I don't think it means right. So then what does it mean to you? A nice city, a fun city. happiness means to him

legitimately the situation where he's not under a ton of scrutiny. Look. Why would you, I don't know. What happens is, obviously LeBron James would love to win like another ring. I would imagine he would love to win another ring. But

the most distasteful thing for him to do and all of this would be the rain chase. But I don't think that it's being, it's never going to be couched as that. My opinion is, so if it's not if it's not for a ring or for competitiveness, so you're just going to play another year on a team what, with people you get along with your friends?

Like I don't understand what would be the motivation if it's not, because they're never going to say he's going to chase the ring. Like at this point, that would never be the narrative. But I would imagine that that's truly what it is. So what would be the motivating factor to choose a team then? If it's not money, if it's not competitiveness, what is it? A good time?

So I really do think that that's what it is. And so let me tell you what I... So where is he going? So I don't have no clue. We have a podcast here that should be trading in this and we'll see what they say. But right now, there was two most anticipated podcasts ever. One was Bill today when he was talking about Jalen Brown and the whole trade. The other one is everybody going to be waiting to see what Rich and Max say on Game Over about where LeBron James is going.

Let me tell you what I think, and I don't know LeBron James. I've talked to Rich Paul and like a couple of times, but nothing on this. Like never. They're not going to do that. But let me tell you what I think. I think the most important thing about all of this stuff is that LeBron James does not want to stop playing basketball. That's true. So that's the most important thing.

Yeah. So legitimately, what place has the most upside for him playing basketball? What is the path of least resistance? to him as a basketball player to where he can still go do this thing that he obviously still wants to do and do it without people breathing down his neck and it being a pressure cooker. If you have Luca Donchik on your team, people are going to be like, we're in Lucas Prime now,

the Lakers need to be competing for championships, Luca needs to be competing for MVP's. The question on that team is not how LeBron James is going to be sent off. The question is how good can Luca Donchard to be? And so Luca is going to be pressed. We're going. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Make this team like I want it to be in all of that because I can't have my career be a washout. That's a lot for somebody who at this point just want to hoop. So there are a couple of places where you can just hoop and be competitive. And there are a couple places where you can just hoop. If he went to Golden State right now, that's a just hoop decision. You would have LeBron. you would have Steph, you would have maybe Draymond if he, if they resigned him because he opted out.

And you'd have a situation where people would just have fun watching them play basketball. And if they made it to the playoffs and they were healthy, people would be like, oh my God, who's beating them in a seven game series if it was LeBron and AD and all of these guys together. But also if it broke down by March and everybody was hurt and there was nothing, nobody would really give a shit. People would be good. People would literally look at this like, look how cool this is. And that's kind of the situation you almost want to be in if you're him because he can't be the best guy on the championship team anymore. He can't be the second best guy on the championship team.

I don't think LeBron James, he probably can be the third best guy on a championship team. Right. At this particular. And look, that's still probably the best 41, 42-year-old guy we've ever seen. That's still incredibly impressive. I think if he wanted to stress it, if he, if he wanted to stress it, If you wanted to play until he was 16-pointed game with LeBron, he could probably pay to about 45 or 46 if you wanted to.

But the pressure of being that guy, I don't think is a part of the happiness component. I think the happiness component is, just let me hoop. So I don't have to go into the basketball abyss because I'm not quite ready yet. Hmm. Agreed and disagree.

You think he wants to win another ring? I think he wants to be competitive. He's an athlete. I don't think he just wants to just go somewhere to keep playing. I do think that's a part of it. I do not think he's ready to retire for sure. But I believe within that, he also wants to be on a team that is competitive.

Absolutely. I think he wants to be on a team. That has a chance to win the ring. I think he wants to be on the team that is relevant. That too. And there's no such thing as an NBA team that is relevant and not competitive. So I get that.

So we're saying the same thing. But what I don't think, though, is that LeBron James, because if it was about winning a round, ring, LeBron James would say, hey, I'll come off the bench for the San Antonio Spurs. Or LeBron James would say, I would come, like. He wouldn't have to come off the bench there. Well, I mean, shit, they just signed Tobias Harris.

So, like, I don't, he wouldn't, he wouldn't necessarily have to come off the bench. But if he were just about, I want to go and be a part of something where, like, I want to chase one last ring, because can be, can I be honest with you? And we can get out this? The last ring that he gets is not even going to matter. We're on LeBron watch Because I'm really curious to see how this plays out Give me your teams right now

Before we get off this Give me teams right now LeBron James could go to Winnery So Denver Miami So Well Miami's on option I mean

We don't know what that looks like yet If you go there right If you go to Miami Miami is reconstructing a roster And they don't have a ton of money to spend So if you think that LeBron Janis

and Bam. Bam and Wiggins. You add LeBron James. Maybe. Maybe they, but at the same time, if you go there,

you are not the guy there. So this ring that you win is not even going to be viewed in the same way. This ring is, for history, it's just another, it's a Wikipedia stat. No one's going to care.

This ring doesn't really. I don't agree with this. Hold on. If LeBron James goes and wins a ring in Miami. If LeBron James, goes to Miami or goes to any place where he's going to be the second or third best guy, I could argue that that diminishes him in an argument with Michael Jordan.

You can argue that, but you're also... If he goes to Golden State, right, these rings that people get, like Robert Ory has seven rings or something like that, right? It's seven. Right. There's a song. He has seven rings, right? When Robert Ory is having a conversation with Charles Barkley, the only thing those

rings mean to Charles Barkley, is that Robert Ory can look at Charles Barclay and go, ha-ha, nanny Boo-boo, he can't compare to Charles Barkley. If LeBron James and goes and wins another ring on a team where he's not the man, I would suspect that people would be like, Jordan never had to do that. Like Jordan never had to, like, and not even just Jordan. It's already different.

Like they already have different stories as far as their legacy because one was loyal to a team. One was, one goes from team to team. So like the story is already different. Nobody looks at LeBron like, oh, he's that loyal player that stays with the team as they do with Jordan. It's already different in that. I just think I think this is interesting. It's I disagree.

I think that if when you talk about somebody being culturally relevant, which is obvious LeBron, like you said, like hands down, that still makes him the man. So I feel like I could make an argument for him going to Miami. He's still like the man. The only problem with that is that the Lakers just. just told him to go ahead and leave. Well, that's what you said. That's not what he said. No, that's what happened.

So, so, so what, this is what happened. LeBron James was. Also, they're not in the conversation for winning. LeBron James is, he's the man culturally, right? But he wasn't the basketball guy. So that, there's a lot in your locker room with that. They clearly decided that they were moving on with Luca, which they would be stupid not to.

Lucas 27 years old. And like what and the averaging 34, 35 points a game or whatever the fuck it was, like leading the league and scoring first team all NBA, Lucas, that's the guy that you want to continue, right? For sure, he's the future. Like, he's the future. He's the now. So really, like wherever you go, so LeBron legitimately just could not override Luca Dodgers in LA.

If he goes to Miami, he's a complimentary player to Janus Anteux. Kupo. If he goes to Denver, he's a complimentary player to Nicola Yolkich. If he goes to San Antonio, he's a complimentary, at least from a basketball standpoint, from a cultural standpoint, he dwarfs all of those guys, which is why it's a precarious situation. The thing is, everything that you just named about LeBron James chasing, going around and chasing stuff, every time he went to the new place, he was the focal point of the place. He went to Miami. It was, let's build around. The man in Miami took a backseat to LeBron. Dwayne Wade, who was already there, took a backseat to LeBron.

Kyrie Irvin, who was already in Cleveland, took a backseat to LeBron. Everybody that was already in Los Angeles took a backseat to LeBron. For LeBron to go to a place now and take a backseat to win a championship, I'm sure he wants to compete, but he's now in a legacy mandingo fight with Michael Jordan, and that just don't help it that much. I'm so interested to see. Yeah, I'm interested to see, too. I'm interested to see what's the happiest place for him to hoop.

Yeah, yeah. But, you know, shout on it for wanting to find happiness. I hope he finds it. I hope he gets it. Do you think it's interesting? Never mind. No, no, no, no. Ask me, please.

No, no, no, no. Because we don't know this. And everybody who has said this, remember this. What's you done in the NBA, you've done? And everybody that has this conversation, including myself, has to understand it, like, you ain't never really seen your face on the Jumbotron like that. So saying to somebody else who's been on the Jumbotron, who's held up the MVP award,

who's been to the places, you ever see that video where LeBron's dancing and a girl comes over to LeBron and LeBron does like, he basically snaps his finger and tells his man, he tells his man, like deal with this. Like, turning that off, everybody feels, feels like, oh man, just lead a game.

Go be a dad and a husband and a tequila salesman and all of that stuff like that. Just cut the switch off. Your light switch and his light switch ain't the same. Yeah, who's saying that? Your light switch turns off your kitchen and your living room. His light switch turns off the fucking crypto arena. His light switch turns off the American Airlines arena. His shit turns off Madison Square Guard.

it's tough to hit that motherfucker switch. Of course it is. So like being that that's the case, you know, what I was going to say is the other thing for happiness would be to find happiness

off the basketball court. But it's clear that he's not quite ready to do that yet. And people that criticize that haven't had to make that decision. Oh yeah. I don't understand people criticizing that. Do you have any thoughts

in a Jalen Brown trade? You guys know this? Where's Bill? Get Bill in here. Like you have any thoughts on the Jalen Brown trade? Not a whole lot. I mean, I guess I'm a little surprised of the trade.

And surprised in some of the conversation. Like you already alluded to it where it's like he's too smart or the analytics reports that people are talking about. Just like the conversation that people are allegedly having behind closed doors about Jalen Brown almost like a smear campaign. A little surprising. But, you know, Boston's not, I mean, neither one of these are my team. But yeah, just. Jailen Brown was traded to the Phillies. I saw you have to tell Chris.

I saw that one. That was nice that you were here able to capture that. Crazy trade. I waited till Taught the Thrones was over. But you knew a trade was coming. No. The trade had happened. Fucking Chris didn't know.

No, no, I'm saying, but we knew that this was being talked about. Well, we knew that it was being talked about, but here's the deal. They kept looking around the league and it looked as if... They were trying to say he didn't have, like, value. Like, all that conversation. That, to me, was more of the shock. Like, oh, he doesn't have value. Oh, he's this, he's this.

And it's like, why are we on this whole smear campaign with Jalen like this? Apparently, that was right. Apparently, he didn't have much value. Because of what the actual trade was. They traded him for Paul George. That's the first round picks. Yeah, it's a first round picks. But those first round picks are going to be Philly's first round picks.

And Philly now is going to start, presumably. This is always a presumably because you never know with Joelle and B. Philly's going to start Joel and Bid, Tyreys Maxi, V.J. Edgecombe, Jaylen Brown. That's going to be a strong team if healthy. If healthy, the Phillies are going to be...

The Phillies, the 76ers are going to be... Baseball, baby. The 76ers are going to be a team that's going to compete at the very top of the East. So those firsts that you got ain't going to be shit unless it goes terribly in Philly, unless... And Bid fucking gets hurt,

then all of this shit gets fucked up and they can't win at all. Then first ain't gonna be worth a motherfucking thing. Right? So like those picks are nothing. They traded him for Paul George. 36 year old Paul George, Paul George who played decently in the playoffs.

It's a historically bad trade. It's like one of the worst. For Boston. For Boston. It's like one of the worst trades, but they felt like they had to do it, which tells you two things. One, they felt like they had to trade him.

Yes. And two, they didn't get a lot of good trade offers for them. They didn't want to come off Hugo. They wouldn't want to come off Shireman for it to get Yannas, which seems fucking nuts. But Bill is one of these fucking crazy Hugo people. That nigga Hugo Hugo got to start averaging 40 quick. Hugo Gonzalez must average 40.

Okay? It needs to happen quickly. They didn't want to do that for Yannis sent to the coupon in Boston. And everything that you heard, you heard Jalen Brown might go to Atlanta. Jailen Brown might go to Portland. Jailen Brown might go to Houston. apparently none of that shit was twerking none of it so they made this try it don't know why it doesn't matter why I'm just saying it doesn't necessarily mean all the things people were saying no it means

that he didn't have a crazy market it if he didn't have a crazy market because the niggas state thinks that he's smart or because if you guys are telling me right now that's crazy that jalen brown didn't have a crazy trade market because he thinks he's too smart it's like my dick yeah what's what y'all What's my woman. Like, so look, Jalen Brown thought he was the smartest guy in the room. What the fuck? But yeah,

he's smart. Like, he went to Cal. Like, he, like, you know what I'm saying? Like,

he thinks, if you're telling me he's some sort of asshole, then that's one thing. But, yeah, I feel like that's what they were trying to say. I just, I just,

you know, it's like, how, how, how dare this big black buck? No, I'm, I'm with you.

It's ridiculous. That's even, that's why I'm calling a smear camp. How dare it is. Oh, he's smart? This guy thinks he's a, this guy thinks he's, you're using these big words around us? Jalen?

You're not supposed to use these words around us. Put the ball in the hole, nigger. Shut up and dribble. Shut up and dribble. Get the fuck off his dick, man. The nigger's eclectic. He's an eclectic guy. He's a curious guy.

But I can tell you one thing when he looks across the lines and he sees somebody else that thinks they're as good as him. This is the thing about Jalen Brown. that I fuck with more than anyone Jalen Brown sees somebody on the other side

and Jalen Brown in his head goes Gerd, that's acid reflux from Rage right there. Jalen Brown sees somebody on the other side and Jailen Brown goes, let's think I think he's better than me. No, no, no, sir. You're not better than Jalen Brown. And then Jalen Brown locks up and then he goes crazy.

Does it always... The kind of person I would want on my team. The type of guy I would want Jailen Brown locks up and Jailen Brown goes crazy. advanced analytics might have his on off, all that shit like that, I get it. But when it comes time to fucking compete, like Jalen Brown goes,

I know you don't think you better than Jalen Brown. And then he goes crazy. Jason Tatum didn't say anything for him and step up. I'm telling you, man, light skins, bro. Wow. It always comes back. You were trying to work your way to it. You just put your faith in them.

And then you need something. You get traded for Paul George, man. I hope Philly is fantastic. That might be my new favorite team. Somebody tell Bill. You're a new favorite. You're just going to. Why not?

That's not how you're supposed to do it. Why not? I don't have a basketball team. I don't have a favorite team anymore. Really? Mm-hmm. It's not the Mavericks anymore? Hasn't been Mavericks for a while.

Why? They blew up my 2011 team. It's been a long time. They blew up the 2011 team. Yeah, the championship team. It hasn't been the same team. That team was so fortunate to get there. It doesn't matter.

We did. Okay, we did. They won. I know. And then it wasn't, and then everybody went, there's separate ways. That's been the same sense. I know. So that might.

But Luca took it back to the finals, man, Gaffert, lively. Luca. Carrey. I don't have a favorite team. Until now. And now your team is Philly. You like that shit. Sixers.

I'm coming back, you know. Philly is team dark-skinned. I used to be, I used to be, I used to be, you know, I had all the AI stuff. I'm back. I'm back. It's a full circle moment.

Philly versus Boston. Hold on. Somebody just dawned on me. Philly versus Boston is light skin versus dark skin. Animus. This is your dream. Bro. Boston is team light skin.

Boston is Derek White fucking Tatum. And now they got Paul George, who's a red bone slash high yellow, right? They got rid of Jalen Brown. And now Philly got the dark nights. Philly is the dark nights in the NBA. What did you call Paul, George? M.B. fucking Jalen.

They're the dark nights, bro. They're the dream chasers. Don't you love how in real time he's unlocked this? I didn't think about this before. I didn't think about this before. Like they called Jalen Brown. They probably, Jason Taylor, the front office, probably asked him what he thought about Jalen Brown.

They're like, get his black ass on. Not dying. That's funny. I can't believe this motherfucker. He thinks he's going to take my team. Man. Get a ship them out. This is perfect time.

I'm going to Philadelphia too next week. You're going to that bitch looking for Jalen Brown? I'm going for the MLB All-Star weekend. But I'll get a jersey while I'm there. I'm telling you, man. I'm back. The dark nights. I'm back.

My brother's a die-hard at 76ers. Man. Me too. Me too. Excited. Let's see if we can get CR to answer the phone. Me too. Let's see if we can get CR to answer the phone.

Hold on. Chris Ryan. Let's see if we can get Chris Ryan to answer the phone. If we can get Chris Ryan on the phone, I want to know what he thinks. Hold on. Chris Ryan. Let's see. Is he going to pick up?

Chris, pick up. Oh, that's my guy. What's up? Chris, you're live on higher learning right now. This is Chris Ryan. You're live on higher learning. I want to ask you a question. What do you think about Philly versus Boston as light skins versus dark skins?

Hear me out. So Boston. Hang up, Chris. Boston has Tatum. Hi, Chris. Boston has Tatum. Boston has Derek White. Now they have Paul George.

Think about Philly. Y'all, Dark Knights, Edgecombe, Maxie, M.B., Jalen Brown. What you think? Lightskins versus dark skins. What are your thoughts? Whatever you say, man. That's a smart man. That's a smart man.

Okay. All right, real quick, before you go. Seven game series with the way the teams are currently constituted right now, Philly versus Boston, who will win? I think the Philadelphia would. I think they would win, too. That's my team. Rachel says that's her new team. She loves a mandingo.

It's come on in. The water's warm in Philadelphia. Oh, shit. Fuck I'm talking about. Come on in. It's warm. All right, Chris. Appreciate you, brother.

Bye, bye. Bye. Yeah. Is that a team? A lot of people stay, they like stay loyal to the teams that they're from.

You made from here? Yeah, but I've started, I lived here for two years. And I am loyal. I lived here for two years when I was a kid and that's why I became a legist fan. I am loyal, cowboys.

Are you all? That is, yeah, I am quite loyal. You got to be loyal. Thank you. Thank you. You got to be loyal. That's like fucking.

That's like, being in a relationship with Jeffrey Domit. I wonder how soon I can get my Jalen Brown jersey. You like that, nigga. You know, O manages him, right? Really? That's on a Runday client. Shout out to him.

Shout out to Jalen Brown. I didn't even know he had athletes. Good for all. Great, I'll get tickets. Let's do some politics. All right. Kamala Harris. She is reportedly strengthening ties with Mayor Zoranam Dhani as speculation grows about her potential presidential campaign.

There's also multiple reports that she has been meeting privately with other progressive leaders, activists, and people in the Democratic Socialists of America as she worked to rebuild relationships within the Democratic Party. What do you guys think about Tamila Harris's strategy? You think she's running for real? I think she's going to try it out. I think I think she's going to try it out. I mean, what she could have obviously been the governor. She'd have washed everyone of California. I don't think she should have done governor. Well, she didn't she didn't want to do governor. I think I think it would have been a great thing for her to be the governor, but she obviously didn't want that. So unless she is going to pivot to something else,

it seems as if she's going to continue her career in public service and run for president. This tactic is really interesting. This made me feel like she's running more than ever. Before I was kind of like, we're just kind of floating her name around because nobody else has really declared yet for some of the other front runners that we know will definitely throw their name in the hat. But their names in the hat. So I understood the conversation. being around her, but this makes me think she's definitely running now. Definitely. And I think it's interesting, too, not because of 2024, because of what we talked about

on the last podcast. You've got moderate Democrats, you know, putting up their letter, signing it, you know, talking about DSA and progressives in such an extreme way that doesn't unify the party. And then here comes the story with Kamala Harris, reaching out, not being critical, not being, I think it's interesting, not being critical, not joining on the side of some of the Democrats that are established, but reaching out and reaching out to Mundani, which again shows his power in all of this, and having conversations with other progressives. It's interesting. Breathakingly smart strategy by her, if true, these are reports. But if true, let me tell you why. It's smart for her doubly to me.

Number one, it gives her the opportunity, at least rhetorically, to address, begin to men. Some of the men that healed, some of the wounds that existed after she was part of, administration that underwrote a genocide and Kamala Harris or anyone that would come from that administration would have to speak directly to that and about that. Talking to Mamdani of the DSA is not the way to do that. It's to engage with the people here and engage with people who are affected by this and who have done this work and I'm sure I don't know anything about this but if you you were sincere about doing that, that's what you would do, right?

And there were mistakes that were made. And so Kamala Harris is going to have to remedy those things in order to get any type of, I don't know, credibility back on that particular issue. And so if she's talking to these people, she's talking to this wing of the party, maybe perhaps that's part of it. That's part of her want to do that as part of that. but also they're up. They're popular. They got momentum. So from the standpoint,

not just of politically, but like how are you guys doing what you're doing? Like no one else from the center of the party seems to be willing to reach out and talk to you guys and make you a part of this so-called big tent. I will. I might. What advantages that can I glean from you guys

and also what counsel from someone as politically successful as Kamala Harris might you guys need? Might there be some way of communicating that you guys are not open to or haven't been that I can give to you? And might there be something that I learned from you guys, which to me, in a true Big Ten, is what would happen? Well, and to add to that, I also think that it puts her ahead of the competition. So of course people are initially going to, well, one, the first seed she planted

with this and separating herself was in her book, right? She talks about Biden. He's a proud Zionist. She talks about how she maybe tried to talk to him to get him to see the other side of it. But he is, he believes what he believes. So she planted the seeds in the book. But this also puts her ahead of anybody, if she decides to run in 2028, it puts her ahead of them. Because if people try to question her sincerity. It would be too late if she waited till closer to announcing that she was going to run. The fact that she's doing it now, she can say for the reasons of the things you're saying, I'm seeing what's happening, I'm listening to the people, I'm watching this movement, I'm watching the energy, I'm learning from the past. I got, I started doing this, I was proactive

in doing it. She could make an argument more than the people that are coming, who might also run in the 20208 race, assuming she runs as well. That's what I also think is smart by this. She'll be able to point to more of a sincerity in what she's doing rather than just it looking totally like I'm just trying to win your vote. Well. And still people will think that regardless,

but she's ahead of the competition. Number one, this story, who reported this? Who reported this? Axios, right? Well, this comes from the post, but I don't know who originally was political. Who did the original reporting on this? Like you guys find that out.

Axios has had a full breakdown of it. But just, okay. So here's the thing. This story coming out is interesting too. Because this story coming out telling, it's telling me that Kamala Harris wanted people to know that she was doing this. A hundred percent. Right.

So the fact that she wanted people to know that she was doing this means like this and of itself is a political move. She's courting the DSA. She's courting Mamdani. She's seeking, at least with her name and her reputation and her standing with the center of the party, which she's a pretty good standing or has been in the past. She's seeking to legitimize them or with that group of people, right? That's what I'm saying, as opposed to the headlines we were talking about earlier this week. Right.

So number one, this could be a thawing of the relationship between the DSA and. and the center of the party, which I don't think it's going to be because once again, I believe that fight to be existential for the center of the party. Any left-of-center organization

or left-of-center political momentum just, once again, I've already said, just destroys the center of the party because they no longer will look serious. Like, they just won't look serious anymore. You won't look serious taking corporate money. You won't look serious. underwriting the genesis side.

You won't look serious saying we're for health care for all, but we're not really willing to fight for it. You won't look serious anymore if people believe that there's a cohort to your left that is serious. You just won't look serious. Then your donations dry up. Then your power dries up. Then you either have to become them or become something else.

That's an existential fight. But Kamala Harris doing this is very interesting because she's, either saying we don't have to have that fight. Yeah. Or she's saying she's willing to fight to the left of where she was before, which would be a really interesting development if that happened. I don't think it's possible. I don't think it's possible. I mean, in 2020, when she ran...

Axiot's first reported, which means it was definitely leaked. Yeah. When she first ran, the first time, she was more left of where she was under Biden. So, you know, because remember it was all, she's flip-flopping, which one is she, which one is she? So if she's leans to that, it's almost going back to kind of how she originally started this when she ran for president the first time. Kamala Harris, in her own campaign, had the opportunity to either distance herself from some of the stuff that was going on or tell or make the case to America, how she would have done things differently. Yeah. A lot of times she neglected to do that.

On the view, she straight up. The view was the moment. But I will say this, though. It doesn't really take it back in the book, but keep going. I will say this, though. Doing that while being the vice president of the United States is precarious. Doing that while being an active part of the administration. Not saying you would do things differently, she should answer that question better.

But being a critic of the administration publicly, while inside of the administration, I'm going to admit that that's a tough. situation for anybody to be. Of course, but I think there was a way to answer it where you don't shit on Biden, but also recognize that you are two different people at the end of the day. I think they should have thought about that more. Okay. Barack Obama was talking a little bit about slave times, George Washington and stuff. Did you see this? I saw. Donnie? Yeah, he did an interview with MS now and talked about the complexities and contradictions in history and had this to say about George Washington? And I think sometimes we get confused in thinking that these two stories are completely separate.

They're intertwined, right? Which is why it's possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington, and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder. And that does not negate his greatness. It simply acknowledges that there is a profound deep flaw in these founding fathers who were also geniuses and gave us these tools. And which is true of all of us, right? It's true of every president.

That were this mixed bag. We've got contradictions. and embody the country's contradictions. Wow, you're disappointed. You're disappointed. I'm not going to rage about it. It's just more of like the softness, softness in the way we're talking about it.

Yeah. You know, a lot of people didn't like what I had to say the last time I talked about someone from that family and how it was a little bit. Oh, Michelle Obama. Yeah, and how it was a little bit, hmm. What?

It was a little soft in the, the phrasing. I would like to think that he misspoke when he said great admirer. I would like to think that that's not the word that he meant to use because I guess for me the question then becomes what does it mean to admire someone? And how was then also how was the greatness of George Washington established? What did he have to do to become great? Who did he have to overpower? Who did he have to slave, who did he have to torture in order to build his greatness? Whose back did he literally have to whip and stand on in order to build the greatness that we talk about now?

You can't separate that. You can say factual things and recognize them. He was our first president. He fought in the Revolutionary War. He was a great general. He was, you know, a part of laying the law and, you know, as a founding father. Those are true things. But to say you admire someone means you revere them.

You have deep respect for the things they did, for what they value, for their morals. And so to me, again, we talk about there's a way to say things and there's a way not to say things. You know, you can't separate the fact that before, you know, before. he was the president of the United States. He was the president of the Constitution Convention, which established that black people were three-fifths of person, right? For taxing and counting the population in order to establish, like, the House of Representatives and stuff like that and how people were represented in different states.

He was a part of that. He presided over that. You can't separate that. I'm never going to call that person an admirer. And you can go down a number of list of things in order he did to protect his wealth, to protect his property. And I'm not talking about his house or his land. I'm talking about slaves, things that he established with his power as president in order to keep black people in their place. So he could be great.

That is not somebody you can call an admirer. And there's, again a way, without being redundant, to talk about what George, Washington did and separate that as something that you look up to. I'm going to, well said, I'm going to talk a little bit about George Washington in one specific case here in a second. But before I do, you realize that like, so Obama's one of them. A president. No, no, no, no.

Obama, yeah, he's a president, but this is uncomfortable for us to do. And I get that people like... What do you mean one of them? Who's them? Okay, so let me tell you. Let me tell you. Let me tell you. Let me give you example.

So we just got through talking about like LeBron James and all these people. And sometimes the thing that I was trying to like articulate with too many words, as always, about LeBron James is that LeBron James retiring from his job is not exactly the same as the rest of us retiring sometimes from our jobs. Sometimes we do our jobs longer. but if you've been someplace and 30,000 people have been screaming your name come on like it's like it's that's a thing

like that these guys you have to go from being a king whatever to a duke every single night in the night out all of that stuff is tough right the reason why I say that sometimes it's like I want people to remember that when we're putting these frameworks on people that they're not us and I'm not saying that they're better

I'm saying it's different. Like that's a specific culture and that's a specific thing and that's its own thing that you have to turn off. Obama's one of them. Obama admires like George Washington.

Of course he does. Of course he admires him. Like he's in the, he's way more George Washington than he is Vanner or Rachel. Like it's not even close. Oh, Rachel. Like way more.

Like he's way more George Washington than he is me or you. or anybody in this room. And he would have to be because he became the president of the United States of America. He would have to be. Do you understand the life of service

that Barack Obama has led? Do you understand that Barack Obama someone, I think this is actually, to me, it's interesting because the criticism of Barack Obama that comes from the right is inverse of the criticism that comes from him from the left

in an interesting way. So the people on the right believe about Obama the same thing that you actually believe. a little bit, if I'm reading you right. They believe that he couldn't possibly be one of them, that he couldn't possibly be or have the love or the belief in America and country that most people like Obama are assumed to have in order to get where they go.

And we're hoping that that's actually not true. And then they're saying that it can't be true. But the reality is it is true. The reality is is the belief. in America that George W. Bush had to have, the structures and the systems of America, that George W. Bush had to have, that Ronald Reagan had to have, that Bill Clinton had to have, that all of these people have that we criticize all the time. Obama has them. So when like when you're asking Obama about an American president, Obama's going to go, yeah, look at that guy's a genius. A lot of the frameworks of the country and the precedents and the America's belief in the rule of law. Like America's belief in, or supposed belief, adherence to the rule of law and to the Constitution, all of that stuff. Those are things that are probably deeply and profoundly important to Barack Obama, right? And when we talk about those things, we're normally talking about them from a critical standpoint.

Law rights we didn't get, laws that don't work for us. People who believe in that, they look at the brilliance and the operating efficiency of that system. And they go, I think I can make it better. But the first thing you have to do is kind of submit to it. And so when I'm listening to him talk about George Washington,

I'm listening to him. I'm listening to a guy that's in the club, talk about somebody, talk to somebody who's out of the club, about somebody else who's in it. Like, you know, like within your friend group, you got people within your friend group that other people don't like.

And they criticize those people. But they're one of you, So there's a way that you talk about him. Obama is defending not just George Washington's identity. He's defending his own because, just to be real, he had to J-Sock people extrajudicial killings of terrorist tort. He had to do some of that stuff. Some of the stuff that a president has to do, some of that stuff that a president that he feels like a president has to do, that you have to be involved in it, he had to do it. like not slavery stuff but at some point somewhere a group of people were sitting in a house

and there was a guy in that house that was a terrorist or suspected terrorist and Obama dropped a fucking bomb on their head and killed everybody that was in that motherfucker the children too and those are decisions once again just like I don't have I don't I can't make the I can't tell people that it's easy to make the decision to leave NBA basketball. I can't believe I'm comparing these things. I also can't tell people what types of decisions have to be made in promotion of national security in the interest, should I say, of national security. Like I'm not going to act like I can sit back and Monday morning quarterback going in.

I can tell you that those things are against my morals and my values and I wouldn't want to do them. but I'm not the president and I don't know that I believe in the American system enough even to be involved in that type of thing I believe in a different system I believe in something that could be rather than necessarily something that is and this has to do with the question I'm going to ask you later

but like this is like one of his guys like legitimately people would say there's no possible way a guy that looks like Obama and has a spiritual Obama can believe in America enough to be president and then we're hoping that he doesn't But the fact of the matter is he does now, he always did. Like, this is another frustration that we have when we're talking to our friends that are deeper into this.

Like, obviously, some of the people that we've had on this, like a conversation between me and Bacari is interesting. Bacari is, like, me and Bacari were talking one time, and we were talking about America's interest in the Middle East. And I was like, I don't give a fuck about America's interest in the Middle East. I don't fucking care about America's interest in the Middle East. Bakari is somebody who, from the frameworker of his mind, right, is a political person. So he thinks that America being strong in the Middle East is better for Americans in other places. He doesn't believe that because he's cynical or because he's a warmonger or some sort. He believes that because that's a part of his framework as well.

being somebody that's involved in that type of stuff. So when I know that I'm talking to them, just like I know that when I'm talking to people that are to the left of me, they go, let's burn everything down and live on a commune. They go, let's control the means.

And I'm like, hey, you know, I'm not quite there yet, but I realize that I'm not even them. But I definitely know I'm not Obama. So when he says that, I'll always go, huh, how will people respond to that? But he didn't misspoke.

I think he was being very, very genuine. I don't think he's more like George Washington than he is. I think that I understand your point in the sense that I think that there's a commonality. Not think, there is a commonality that they have as being presidents that they share. And that makes them, there's a similarity there, things that a president has to do in order for country or constituents or you would think that they have to do. I'm talking about George Washington on what he was doing also personally for himself, laws that he was making that would benefit himself personally, like the fugitive slave law. Let me ask a question. How many people have you killed for political

reasons? No, no, no, no. Again, that's why I said I believe there's a commonality. Obviously, the answer is zero, but I'm saying there's a commonality with him as a president, things that you end up doing or that are a part of being a president, like that happened, right? Which is what your point is when you're asking me how many people that I've killed, whatever you just said. But I, but what I, the difference I would say, which is why I don't say he's more like them than me, is because of his lived experience as a black person. And this is what I believe.

Say what you want. We can agree to disagree. I'm just not agreeing with the more George Washington. We can agree to disagree. And I know we will. I'm just saying that I also look at people what I believe to be their intentions and their motivations for doing something.

And to me, George Washington and Barack Obama are never going to be motivated by the same things because of their different lived experiences to run for political office. That is my opinion. We can agree to disagree. Right. Okay, a couple of things.

Barack Obama's even lived experience as a black person is different than yours. Well, everybody's black. Right, because we're not a monolith. Right. I'm not biracial. Of course. Of course. But you're assuming a commonality because of it, though.

So what I'm saying is because of how he identifies. Right. So we're saying that. So it's interesting kind of sometimes what we do is we say, hey, his experience must make him closer to mine. But I understand that his experience is different than mine. I'm also listening to how he expresses himself. But yes, like how he represents himself. And which is why I said what I said.

No, no, no. I said, I was like, I would like to think he misspoke. That's what I said. But he said it, right? He called him a great admirer and then he talked about his greatness. He said it twice. That's just me saying, I wish, I said that. I said, I would like to think that.

And then I go on to talk about how problematic it is. But I think that to your point, it is because of the commonality that they have as being presidents and what that requires and things that you have to do and execute. I am saying when you say, but he is more alike in general like him than me is where I disagree with you. That's what I'm saying. So just so we all know, he said that. He said all presidents, we're a mixed bag.

He said all presidents, we have to do things. We have to do. He, he said that. He said we. And the we is him in George Washington. Yeah, he's president. So when I say that he's more like George Washington than he is like us, I'm not talking about like, you know, the fact that he know Al Green lyrics or the fact that he

went to a black church or anything like that. I'm talking about two things. Number one, the fortitude of his belief in country, which he probably has more in common with George Washington than he does with me. And he would have to have that. It would be almost malpractice for a president not to have that. Yeah, a politician. You'd have to be, but particularly one that achieves,

you have to be a dyed in the wool, granted patriot, which people don't want to believe that Barack Obama is. For sure. Right, but he definitely is. Like all the stuff that he says, by all that stuff,

I believe it. There are also some things in Obama's history. That suggests he is to the left of a lot of these guys. And there were some things like that, that even suggested that Barack Obama want to take a different relationship or a different tenor on even something like Israel that other American presidents did, right?

But he didn't. Like, at the end of the day, he, like, he didn't. And so when I say he's more like George Washington than he is like us, I'm not talking about like on race or anything like that, like, or even in his personal life. I'm talking about the fact that if it gets down, Obama in that clip is trying to convince us to have some compassion for George Washington. You think compassion? Nuance at the least.

Nuance at the least. Yeah, we say compassion. He's, well, I mean, he's taken up for his guy. He is. Am I tripping? He's both siding it is how I took it. I don't like... Because he's like, yeah, we can acknowledge,

which is why the right had something to say about that comment, totally different. And then we're saying something different about it. The right was mad. They felt like he was smearing. The found, like two people heard a statement or two groups of people heard a statement and took two different interpretations. This is why I say he both sided it because they think that he was smearing the founding fathers by mentioning the fact that you can recognize that they're slaveholders. And we're looking at it like, how the hell are you going to say that we should have fucking admire George Washington?

So I think I wouldn't say compassion. I feel like he politiced it. He both cited it. And the reason why. And I think that's a problem. And the reason why is because they think. think he's one of them. We think he's one of us. And really, he's one of them. He is part of a class that those people aren't a part of. He's part of a class that we're not a part of. Yeah.

He's part of a class that is very specific that we continue to try to identify with. We continue to see our morals and our values and our cultural norms in this particular class, those particular class of people like Barack Obama hangs out with George W. Bush. He has a Barack Obama,

Barack Obama and his family have a fuzzy relationship with George W. Bush. I blame George W. Bush for the death of thousands of black people. I don't want to be around George W. My job that I lost at TMZ. I lost that job at TMZ because I got an

argument over people treating George W. Bush with furry, fuzzy, whatever, Ellen DeGeneres, yeah. And then everybody was telling me I was tripping, I got mad and flashed the fuck off, lost my job in front of the... But verbally. On the U.R.R.R. Nothing happened on that.

We just want to be very clear. Verably. Verbly flashed the fuck off. They smear me. Yeah. They smear me. But at the same time, if Barack Obama has a a president problem, he might call an ex-president. Like he might get with an ex-president. He understands

he is one of those guys. Who would he call? Which president could he call that wouldn't, you know what I mean? Like, who's before? Well, this is my point. My point is, and, you know, belabor, I'll get to what I was talking about, but my point is I just thought we got an interesting threat. It's like,

yeah, we, we, obviously we agree, we can agree to disagree, but like, I feel like in our sort of inability to sometimes understand that, that actually leads to arguments like we had, like last week or the week before with everyone around Crockett or Tau Rico or anything like that. Like we start having conversations where we count people

as part of our cohort because they look like us and because we have a connection to them. When the reality of that situation is in that clip that we just watched Obama was talking about slavery to black people. Remember, Obama is also not, just so you know, to my knowledge, the descendant of enslaved people, okay? But like just Obama is talking about that

to black people and with George Washington. I'm not chiding him for it. I'm saying he's talking with George Washington on that. Yes, I will just, the only thing I will say is, in relation to our conversations that we had before and how people need to start talking about it, it would be different if I looked at that and I was like, he clearly misspoke and I left it there.

I can listen to that interview and how he spoke and not be afraid to say he was wrong. And that to me is a conversation that sometimes, and we talk about this, that we are not having. We have to be able to call out things that are problematic and not say, well, I can't say that, because of the way that they look. Or we have to be able to listen to the gravity

or the weight of what somebody is saying and how it can impact us rather than focusing just on who's saying it. If that made sense. It didn't make sense. All right, I just want to say one thing before we move off of this because I was going to do a whole thing about it by now. Okay, so George Washington?

No, you should mention this stuff. Love slavery. And I don't want to hear that narrative that at the end of his life he changed his mind. I cannot fucking stand that. Like George Washington loved slavery. Love the slavery. He was a big, big, big fan of slavery guys.

Like he liked it. And the life of one woman is indicative of this. Now our audience is like super duper educated and smart. So even like a lot of the Haiti shit, niggas was like, man, he ain't putting us on shit. I actually saw a lot of people that wrote me that we're really grateful for your breakdown. I appreciate it.

And at least even for the acknowledgement of it. Even if they understood it, it was the acknowledgement and taking the time to do it. So continue. But there is one story of one black woman that is indicative of just how far George Washington went for slavery.

Her name is Ona Judge. She was Martha Washington's personal assistant, personal attendant. She's a skilled actress. She's a skilled actress. grew up at Mount Vernon. She grew up there, basically raised inside of the household. Washington became president. He relocated to Philadelphia and he brings his enslaved people with them. Now, this next thing is one of the, is one of my favorite George Washington tidbits.

Okay. Pennsylvania law at the time said that six months of residency meant automatic freedom. So Pennsylvania was trying to get rid of slavery. There's a lot of northern states that were passing stuff that were trying to limit slavery. So if you stayed in Pennsylvania for six months, you got freedom automatically. They had passed that law. Washington moves from Washington to Pennsylvania. Okay, cool. He knew that.

Washington and his people knew that. So while he's the president of the country, he's shuffling his slaves in and out of state lines every six months. So like Washington would take some of slaves on the trip below the Mason Dixon line or wherever to reset the clock on their slavery, then bring them back. They loved slavery, loved them. Like this is a premeditated act to continuously hold on to the institution of slavery. In 1796, Ona figures out that she. She's being given away as a wedding present to Martha Washington's granddaughter.

And this woman was apparently like cruel. She was mean. She was like a lady that on a Washington, on a judge, didn't want to go work for. So while the washington's are sitting down at dinner, she escaped. She, on a judge, left and disappeared out of the front door. She disappeared into what was Philadelphia's free black network, catches a boat to New Hampshire without telling anyone.

She's like she just, boom, gone. No secondary plan, no nothing like that. She's out of here. You would think that in that case, George Washington, champion of freedom and liberty, would be like, hey, we lost one. Like you can't, you know, slaves is basically like Pokemon to him. He had hundreds, by the way.

We're going to catch them all, including her. He uses the government to hunt her down. You guys think that I'd be making this type of shit up? He did. I know that our audience knows a lot of this, but I'm just reiterating when we talk about George Washington.

He sends an agent after her. He sends her nephew after her. She is like legitimately living a life if there was any type of, we would have been got Carrie Washington in this role if we were thinking, if we couldn't, if we could tell the truth about our founding fathers.

she is asked by people on the street if you are in fact this woman that the president is looking for she says no but she's telling people also around her that she would rather give her life than to go back and work for Washington but the president himself was using federal resources

was using his power his cultural power to pursue a 22 year old woman He dies in 1799. She's still legally his property. She's a fugitive for the rest of her life. She's considered a fugitive. Never legally free.

Just not caught. She marries a black sailor, has three kids, and lives in poverty in New Hampshire, dies free in 1849 after 50 years on the run from the president of the United States of America. Obviously he wasn't president at that. entire time, right? But she lives a life in secret

or basically in hiding, trying to like outrun the clutches of George Washington. So when we talk about these guys being products of their time, they weren't just products of it, guys. They were believers in it.

They created it. They were believers in it. They believed in it. They believed in it. I could go into a whole situation about Jefferson. Jefferson was a product of the Enlightenment. So all of the people that had come before Jefferson talked about the natural rights of man and all of that stuff. Jefferson actually, as a private lawyer, defended a couple of people, defended a couple of freedmen, right? But the question that you should always ask the people that are supposedly your allies is not whether or not they believe in something, but whether or not they're willing to pay for it. Like, what does it cost you?

You believe in the freedom of men, but what if it costs you, your slaves? What if it costs you economically? Are you willing to play the cost of freedom for somebody else? And these guys were not going to do that because that's not what they believed in. And they didn't believe in that. They didn't believe in any of that stuff.

And so there are legitimately lives that are on the other side. And of course, we know about Sally Hemming's life, raped by Thomas Jefferson for, however, you guys call it the greatest love story of your time. or whatever, I just know that Thomas Jefferson allowed his children to live in slavery. So he couldn't have loved it that much, right? So, so like, all of this stuff, and that's, I know you guys know that, but all of this stuff when we're talking about this, we're not talking about, these things are both grand, but they're

also, like, quaint. They're also, like, specific. There's also, there's, like, there's viscera there. There's stuff that gets on you. There's all kinds of stuff around that. It's gritty. It's real. So this isn't in no way to kick Obama's nuts.

I happen to, I'm still comforted by the sight of Barack Obama. And I probably always will be. Comforted by the side of Barack Obama. But I'm not a fool. I'm not. And it's not, I'm not a fool. We disagree and I think you made a very, very compelling case. I'll end on this.

Do you know who, do you know who Brian Scalabrini is? No. Brian Scalabrini is this gigantic white person who used to play for the Boston Celtics And he became kind of a meme Like he became kind of a meme Even though he played for the Celtics for a long time Scalabrini I actually like Brian Scaliburini

He would do this thing where he would play He would ginger yeah Like Brian Scalabrini, yeah White Mamba White Mamba they called him yeah Okay Scalabrini would do this thing where he would play random guys that would talk shit about him

Because he didn't have the most successful NBA career, right? And what he would tell those guys is he would say, I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me. And then he would play them, and he would prove that I don't give a fuck how nice you think you are. It's a different type of nice in the NBA. Barack Obama is closer to George Washington.

Go ahead. That's what you want to end on. Go ahead. Obama is closer to George Washington than he is to me. Okay. Just everybody, me and Rachel disagreed, so don't put it on her. They won't. But they might agree with you, but they might agree with you.

Like, don't put it on her. Okay, let's take a break real quick. All right, guys, we have somebody that's coming in and talk to us a little bit about con law, Legal Eagle situation and the Supreme Court and all that kind of stuff. her name is Marine Edibor and she's going to be on the podcast we also want to talk about

how she speaks about how her learning in the streets true okay the Supreme Court is back up to their old tricks and their old tricks are giving out decisions what do you call it

what do you call it rendering a decision because it's not a verdict when the Supreme Court does it what is it it's not a verdict what is it called it's a decision Supreme Court decision I am one of their main ops and haters.

Rachel loves the Supreme Court, but we wanted to get somebody on to help us make sense of these decisions. So we brought on Marine Edibor, who is with the Brennan Center for Justice and Assistant Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law. Teachers and Rights about constitutional law, voting, and elections was the policy director and counsel for the congressional black. counsel. She joins us on higher learning today to help us understand these verdicts slash decisions slash whatever. Marine, thank you for joining us. It's really good to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, an interesting time to be a constitutional law professor. I say this all the time. I cannot imagine being in law school right now with everything that seems to be coming down from the Supreme Court. I'm going to start with birthright citizenship because although

we knew this decision was coming, it's that time of year where we get some of our most controversial decisions before the Supreme Court takes off. And I think majority people thought, okay, the Supreme Court will decide, will uphold the Constitution when it comes to birthright citizenship. But a lot of people were surprised how close the margins were. Starting there, I mean, it's six, three, but technically, I guess if you look at what was written when you take what Justice Kavanaugh put in there, it really is kind of 5-4. So what to you do the slim margin say with this decision about where the court is today? That's a great, great starting question, Rachel, and I appreciate it because I've been reading a lot of news about the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship decision. and many people are praising the court.

They are proud of the court for doing the right thing. But when you dig a little deeper into the reasoning and you read the majority and then read the dissents, something really troubling comes to the fore. And it's that, you know, the court might have done the right thing in this instance. But the dissents are setting up the Republicans effectively to create policy around limiting birth. right citizenship to people who are legal permanent residents or people who have some sort of like legal right to be here in a way that is completely contradictory to the purposes and intentions of the 14th Amendment. Most troublingly, you know, there are clips going around about Justice Thomas walking through the, you know, the Rayburn House office building. Supposedly,

he might have been meeting with some people or maybe he was just taking an afternoon walk. But the questions that come to my mind after seeing that clip in reading his dissent is that he's making an argument that the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship provisions are really race conscious and they were for the reconstruction moment. They were only for the children of the enslaved and for the enslaved to become citizens. And we've stretched birthright citizenship beyond what it was intended for. And that is actually just a fiction. It's complete fiction and it's preposterous. I mean, you could go back to 1855 predating the 14th Amendment. And you would find that, you know, for example, in Massachusetts, there was an impoverished Irish mother.

She was the citizen of Ireland. She came to the United States. She had a child here. Massachusetts deported her. There was wild, massive outcry. You know, the concept of birthright citizenship predates the United States. Constitution. It predates the creation of the United States. It's something that colonists, you know, carried with them across the Atlantic as they came to the United States from the British. In many

senses, the 14th Amendment is a codification, a constitutionalization, I guess, of ideas that Americans already understood to be sort of natural, you're a citizen of a place in which you were born. So the revisionist history surrounding the majority opinion, which is like almost the shortest part of the sort of the entire thing, it's troubling. And I think it points to policy that will continue to attack naturalized citizens, continue to sort of try to strip citizenship rights from people who should have them. And even more, the 14th Amendment was, you know, it was enacted to take out of politics. this idea that, you know, the wins of politics can determine whether you're a citizen or not. That is something that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not want to happen. They wanted to take it out of legislative hands.

And so, yeah, I guess it's a win. Yet we should celebrate. We should be happy, you know. But there's something troubling underneath it all. Yeah, it's, it's, I feel like a lot with this court in particular, when you look at the dissents, I'll say, from the conservative right-leaning side, you, get a lot of insight into how they really feel and almost as if it feels like a roadmap for other people to say, okay, we lost here. Now I'm going to challenge for this reason because this

is what the court is thinking. Like Kavanaugh kind of like talks about the 14th Amendment one way, but then talks about it. And maybe you can explain this a little bit, almost as if like, well, Congress could make policy. You kind of touched on it a little bit. He alludes to Congress could make policy to change some of that. And then also this this this call out from um about uh clearance Thomas in regards to um justice brown uh tanger brown jackson where she's saying he uses race when he's always talked about a colorblind constitution but in his dissent he uses race in order to talk against the 14th amendment and the protections that it provides. Can you talk a little bit about that and the contradiction in that? Yeah, I mean,

I think Justice Thomas wants to have it both ways. If you recall the students were Fair Admissions decision, he wrote something that was really vying to be the main dissent in which he argued that the Civil Rights Act, the Freedman's Bureau acts, they were all actually race neutral. And they were race neutral because they promised, you know, the formerly enslaved, they promised black Americans, the same rights that white Americans had at the time. And for that reason, it applied to everyone equally. And even more, there were white refugees who benefited from the Freedman's Bureau Acts, et cetera, et cetera. Three years later, we're reading a different history from Justice Thomas. So, you know, it's really confounding. It almost points to a sort of

conclusion-driven law office politics, right? Like, is it that the Reconstitutional, construction statutes were race conscious or were they race neutral? The vast majority of academics argue that they were raised conscious. So perhaps in this sense, Justice Thomas got it right in arguing that it's raised conscious, but it's very troubling the way in which he contradicts himself and his position on the particular statutes in the reconstruction era that were really drafted and aimed to help the formerly enslaved. Do you read this as the court leaving it open for Congress, the president, whomever, to make policies surrounding birthright citizenship that then they can rule if constitutionally challenged doesn't violate the 14th Amendment?

Like was there almost some instruction given that, hey, we're saying that this is, ironclad in this regard, but there are things that you could do to still stem the tide or restrict citizenship that wouldn't be in violation of this amendment. Is that too cynical? It's not too cynical. And in fact, I was just listening to something earlier this morning from moderates regarding the fact that, you know, there are maybe some open questions regarding whether Congress could pass a law that says, you know, to obtain birthright citizenship, you must be, you know, domoiled with the intention to stay here, like adding some sort of definition to what it means to be a natural born citizen so far as the parent's status. How would they do that?

And, you know, even, oh, man, I mean, perhaps they would just write legislation, right? But also, you know, going back to elementary school, Congress can't really override the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that time and time again. So, you know, perhaps it's really a battle between, um, the Supreme Court and Congress, like we saw with the Voting Rights Act and what Section 2 means, perhaps like that's the next iteration of this. But ultimately, the final arbiter of the Constitution is the Supreme Court. It's not, you know, the Republicans in the House of Representatives in the Senate. And if the founders wanted to add a domicile restriction to the citizenship clause, they would have

done that, right? They had every opportunity. They were really smart people. The Republicans love talking about the founders. Immigration was a thing at the time. that the Constitution was being written, certainly that were the Reconstruction Amendments. And so it would be interesting to see how the court would deal with legislation like that. But it seems to me that at least symbolically, like we probably will see attempts at legislation to cabin the meaning of what birthright citizenship means. Can you explain, you mentioned, you mentioned domicile. Can you explain a little bit of what, because Justice Alito kind of talks about this subject,

to the jurisdiction of versus domicile in his dissent and almost saying how, well, he says that this is a serious mistake on behalf of the court and talks about this versus this. Can you talk a little bit about and explain that because that's kind of an argument that's being used and towards people having dual citizenship or even birth tourism as we've seen the far right use as well? Can you speak to the difference between the subject of jurisdiction of and domicile?

Yeah, I mean, so the concept of birthright citizenship comes from like a Latin term, meaning the Latin term is use solely, meaning the right of the soil. So if you are born in a certain place and there's a certain person in charge of the place that you are born, a certain nation, you are a citizen of that nation, regardless of if you want to leave, stay, whatever. Justice Alito is really trying to play some semantic games as well. well as some make legal arguments that that suggests that, you know, if you come here on a temporary visa, a visitor's visa, and you're pregnant and you just so happen to have a child, but, you know, you got a plane ticket back. Like, in what sense, you know, are you subject to the jurisdiction

of the United States necessarily? I think it's a weak argument, and I'm now in sort of trying to explain it, sort of helping me understand how weak it is. But there is something to this idea that if you don't have the intention to stay, right? If you don't have any kind of like legal recognition in the United States, perhaps it's appropriate using the words of the Constitution to render the child you have here, the citizen of the place you came from because you had an intent to go back. But again, that's a really weak argument.

It's an argument that goes against common law. It's an argument that goes against the understandings in the history and tradition and practice of people in the United States going back to colonization. It's an argument that, you know, the British crown would have rejected. It's not a strong argument. The words domicile, legal permanent resident, parent, whatever. That's not in the 14th Amendment.

Again, the people who wrote it were relatively smart. So if they intended for that to be the meaning of the 14th Amendment, it would have been. But it's not. So, I mean, before we get to some broader questions about the Supreme Court, what else happened that was of note that you feel like people aren't paying enough attention to. So the birthright citizenship thing was the headline, but there were other decisions rendered as well that felt like losses in terms of a progressive culture or society. Where are some of the other decisions that you feel like people need to be paying attention to? Yeah, I think the campaign

finance decision is something that people should pay attention to. I mean, we're all having this conversation about the two-party system, how inadequate it is, how Democrats don't feel like the party's listening to them, how people are experiencing representational misalignment, which is this idea that the person who represents, he was not acting in your favor. They're not voting in your favor. You do not feel represented by them. And even more, I don't know if you all have seen, you know, this graphic from the Pew Research Center going around that lists, you know, all of the political typologies. And you see, like, there's not even a plurality on the left or on the right. You've got like the tuned out right. You've got the religious right. You have the unconventional

right. You have the pedophile right. Right. You've got so many offshoots of both parties. And so going back to the campaign finance decision, what it does is emboldened political parties to take a lot of money from billionaires that can't donate directly to candidates because of existing candidate contribution limits that are very low. They're $3,500, as opposed to $44,000 that you can donate. to a party. So would you eliminate the coordination limits, which allows the party to coordinate with the candidate in terms of directing where the money will be spent, you know, the ads, the neighborhoods you're going to, like, leaflet and all of that stuff, when a billionaire can circumvent the candidate contribution limit. You're effectively creating a system where the Democrats

and the Republicans will solicit funds from billionaires and trillionaires. And those billionaires and trillionaires will say, hey, I just wrote you a really nice $44,000 check. Like, can we get coffee to talk about it? And maybe in the copy, they'll say, I really like Tala Rico. I really, really like Tala Rico. Can you carry that message to, you know, the leader of the DNC? And so, you know, that money will then be spent towards that candidate. And that candidate will then likely feel some sort of obligation towards the interests of the corporation or the billionaire. So the Supreme Court is emboldening political parties against a backtrue. in which people do not believe in them.

People do not align with the main tenets of either party. And increasingly, we're supporting fringed candidates from fringe parties that don't necessarily have platforms. So it's deeply troubling in that respect. And, you know, another thing I'll say about this is the campaign finance case actually started with a challenge by J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance challenged the coordinated spending limits

between the party and the candidate. And in recent news cycles, as Shady Vance has said, you know, Watergate wouldn't have lasted two hours, you know, in today's news cycle. Yeah. Well, campaign finance laws came from Watergate. They came from Watergate because in the course of the investigation, Congress found that Nixon said to the dairy lobby, to the dairy manufacturers, um, basically that

unless you give money to my reelection campaign, I will not support increased subsidies for subsidies for dairy. In discovering that, you know, Congress said we can have this kind of quid pro quo, this kind of pay to play. You know, we should criminalize this. And that's the origin of coordinated spending limits. And so there is great irony in, you know, the, in JD Vance making those remarks and the Supreme Court emboldening political parties in the way that they have now. I guess like one last thing I'll say about that is my initial thought on the campaign finance campaign, case was who cares if the party coordinates with the candidate. You know what I mean? They're doing it already. It's not a big deal. Perhaps this will just make it easier for parties to support the

candidates that they like and that they want. But I thought of Todd Aiken, right? Like, I don't know if you all remember Todd Aiken, the candidate from Mississippi. The Mississippi setting. He made a crazy comment about like legitimate rape. And that did a lot of damage to the Republicans brand. And many leaders wanted him to drop out of the race, withdraw from the race. Those sorts of controversies raise, I think, very legitimate questions about whether parties ought to have more control over their candidates and whether campaign finance laws should support greater control such that candidates can't necessarily go rogue with party money like Todd Aiken did. But there's also a flip side of that that's really troubling. So I think people should think really carefully about that decision and perhaps

read it themselves instead of sort of like falling into the camp of. of, oh, I like, support the Republican side. I support the Democratic side. There's so much nuance here. And I think the bottom line is we are emboldening corporate interests, emboldening millionaires and billionaires, like Peter Thiel, for example, to bankroll candidates who will not do what the voters in their jurisdiction want. And it won't matter because they'll win reelection anyway, likely,

based on the money that's being spent on the campaign. The Supreme Court upholds the bans on transgender. athletes in girls and women's sports. Not shocking coming from this court, especially from other cases that have been in front of them and how they've responded in their opinions. I saw some talk about that these cases should not have even been brought. And I think one of the, not think I know, one of the athletes tried to get her case dismissed because she didn't want it hurt in front of the court because of a decision like this. What does, even though it's not shocking that this is the court ruled and they voted along the party lines. What does this say? And I guess in the bigger

message, how important is it now that since it's up to the states to decide if they're going to ban transgender athletes and girls and women's sports, the voting is on a state level since they'll be making those decisions? Yeah, I don't know a lot about the statutory Title IX law behind the court's decision. I also did read the particular decision, but I will say that this sort of trend of leaving it up to the states to decide the scope of our fundamental rights and our protections under the law for discrimination that is based on, you know, what protected statuses, that's troubling to me. That in one state, you'll be allowed to do X, but the neighboring state, you won't be allowed to do X. You know, one thing about the Constitution is that for

identities that are sort of inherent that are, that can't be changed. And I understand there's some debate about the nature of transgenderness. But, you know, there are factors that courts use to determine whether someone should have heightened protection under the law. And a number of those factors, if you apply them to transgender people, sort of point towards giving them heightened protection under the law. So allowing states to discriminate in certain ways, it's ultimately troubling. And I think that trans people have been scapegoats for so much, and they have been used as a political wedge tool. And much of the court's opinions around them prior to the case, just, decided, like, have not been great.

I just, I'm troubled by this idea that we will allow vulnerable people to be subject to the whims of political majorities. I think it's anti-American and I just think it's wrong. Last question for me, I have a comment, and this comment is about you later. But last question for me is how fragile is settled case law? Like, settled constitutional law. How fragile is that? Like, it seems that we are going to be reasserting and fighting for laws that, like, Kavanaugh and all of these people when he was being confirmed, the confirmation hearings, they asked him directly about Roe, settle case law.

Settled case law is the stuff that they would say. Just lied. Biding their time until they fundamentally reshaped what people like myself believe is a very important. freedom for the women they share their communities with. Everything seems to be up for grabs for the court at all times. What rights constitutionally are settled? Are we going to fight for not just procuring more rights, expanding rights? Are we going to fight for our basic rights every single generation based upon the whims of the court?

I think the latter, you're going to have to fight for your rights that aren't specifically articulated in the Bill of Rights is probably what Justice Thomas would tell you, which is crazy, right? Like this idea that, you know, the court in the 1970s, which established many of the rights that we think of when we think of the Constitution, the right to abortion, the right to privacy, the right to being equally represented, the right to not have your vote diminished, all of those rights. They're being chipped away at because the conservative right doesn't believe they're textualist or originalist, meaning that they're not articulated in the Constitution. with any specificity. They were not intended to be in the Constitution with any specificity.

And unless the history and tradition of the United States supports a right, clearly supports a right, you're just not going to have it. So at this point, we have effectively a constitution that is frozen in time, which is actually what many people want, and to enlarge in, you know, the rights that people think that they should have, that prior courts thought we should have, we have to just amend the Constitution. which, like, by the way, it's the oldest constitution of any, you know, modern democracy and the average length of a constitution is 19 years. So in many senses, we're at a very existential point where prior precedent is completely

being threatened. And I don't believe anyone should feel certain about anything with the court that we have right now. How does it feel to be a constitutional law professor right now or even just someone who's dedicated their life to the law and, you know, taking an oath and respect, respected the system when it seems like the, not seems like, the highest court in the land is just, it just seems like a free for all. Yeah. It's, it's honestly really tough. It's tough to explain to students the Dobbs decision in a method, like a methodological manner, you know, because you want to teach students to

believe in the court, to believe that the people where judges are doing the right thing. But at the same token, you know, they swore with the right hands up, you know, that Dobbs has settled precedent, that it wouldn't, or not Dobbs, excuse me, Roe was settled precedent, that it, you know, was going to be upheld. And as soon as they were confirmed and they got through, they lied, right, they overturned precedent. So it's hard to have faith in the court right now. But one thing that I do, try to tell students is that the Supreme Court to Supreme Court, it's a political body. They are not above politics. We all know and have seen that since probably the 1980s. But one thing that gives me faith is lower courts. Lower court judges are speaking out. They are writing letters. They are writing

decisions blasting the Supreme Court. They are disagreeing with Supreme Court precedent. They're changing Supreme Court tests because they don't believe that they're workable. And so long as we have integrity in that process and also integrity in state courts, you know, not everything is lost, right? But it is hard to say that it's not all just politics when in many senses it is, at least for SCOTUS. Yeah. Got to abolish it. Listen, I want to say something. So in Washington Lee, in the, I guess there was an article last year where you were asked about a book, podcast TV show recommendation. And for podcasts, you said, still processing, hosted by Wesley Morris and,

Jennifer Wortham, I first want to say, shout out to Wesley Morris, a friend of mine, great guy. You said, though it's no longer airing, it offers a granular and academic perspective on culture, television, film, books, music, etc. Then you say, higher learning with Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay is also great. is also great. Still processing, Wesley Morris and Jenna, those are brilliant people,

offers a granular and academic perspective on culture, television, film, books, music, etc. There's the smartest niggas out there, is basically what you said about them. Higher learning with Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay is also great. You care to address this, explain yourself? You know what? Yes, actually. Because still processing is no longer on air. And, you know, things have changed in the podcast sphere. I do believe that this podcast is getting increasingly academic, increasingly political, increasingly like touching. It's an, this podcast is an octopus. You touch culture. You touch politics. You touch on religion. You touch on, you know, the gender wars. Like everything is culture, TV. Like everything is fair game.

And so if I were to answer that question today, I would answer it differently. I appreciate being in the same sentence is still processing, but thank you. That's the difference between you and I. I'm not also great. No, I'm just kidding. Marine. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us on higher learning. Thank you. We'll continue to bring you back as we monitor the court. I don't have any faith in the institution anymore. I want to have a completely separate conversation with you about packing the court. and about reforms and checks that can be made on the court because I tend to believe now that the court is actually an enemy of the people and an enemy of progress.

But I think that's for a more robust and bigger conversation with you so you can maybe tell somebody like me that's a skeptic what the worth and utility of the Supreme Court is now. Oh, my gosh. Imagine if you didn't have it. But over time, hey, look, once again, I could argue that besides the Warren court, they've consistently ruled with power against the American people.

I could argue that. I could argue that. But I would love to have you back to have that conversation. You game for that? I'm absolutely game. I've got so many thoughts. See? She's game for it.

All right. Marini, thank you for joining us on how I learned today. Thank you. Thank you. Donnie, what should we do? What did you say? You have a question. You have a question.

Oh, I have a question. I have a question. And it's kind of on the backs. of the Barack Obama thing. America 250 is coming up. This is coming out on Friday, I think 4th of July, Saturday, right? Saturday.

Are you proud to be an American? Right now? No, because of what America represents. Try to do this just for this exercise. In general, are you proud to be? It feels embarrassing almost to say that right now. In general, are you proud to be an American? You're asking me to speak of it right now.

I'm giving you my answer. Okay. It feels embarrassing almost because of, I mean, like, we're just coming off a conversation of talking to Professor Etibor about decisions that are being made by the judicial branch that are personally and politically motivated. And those decisions affect the rights of people in this very country and want to shoe them out like their garbage and like they're trash when that isn't how I felt, like, the country that I felt like I grew up in. or was raised in, maybe it was, but I just didn't realize it at the point. So right now it feels embarrassing to say that.

You guys, proud to be in America. How about this? Better question. Do you guys love America? Forget about, because you're right. Proud to be in America. Everybody, do you love America? Do you love the country?

That is such a loaded question. Yeah, I feel like it's, because like it's nuanced because I've only ever experienced living in America. And I think there have been times, especially growing up as a kid, I enjoyed it. And I will say, as a kid, I would have said that I was proud. But understanding that being a proud American, especially in the context that it's spoken on today is very much, and probably was before based in white supremacy. So I don't think, but loving being, do I love being in America or do I love, what was the question?

Do I love America? I do think, I would say no in my current space that I'm in, but I do think it's a nuanced question. I think it's hard to have a complete answer. on that, or I think there's levels to the answer. There's levels to it, right? Because I'm proud to be black and I'm proud to be a black American because we're from here. I'm born here. And there's culture here and there's things that we represent and that we have contributed to society, whether they want to give that to us or not. And I'm proud of that.

Like I'm proud of, you know, my lineage. I'm proud of, you know, what it means for me to be a, to be a black American, despite the way that we are treated and recognizing this country, it doesn't take away my pride in being black and from America. So I understand the loaded part of it. I don't want to take away from that. But as a country and what our country represents, why would I love that? So it's hard.

What's your answer, Van? I'm really, what's your answer? Wow. Whoa, look at that. Because I want to see if you can just like answer it. No, everybody. Because I'm not trying to both side it.

No, I get it. Donnie, are you proud, love America? Yeah, that's what I was, I was about to say a little bit of what Rachel just said. Like, I'm proud and I love my experience, my personal experience as an American. Like, I love the, my experience having a rich, fish fries and barbecues. I love somebody. So we ain't trying to hear that shit, yeah. Well, what happened?

I'm muted. My audio went away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Somebody said, uh-uh. America loving. One of your ancestors. What I was saying is I love my experience. Like, when I think of my experience being American, I do think about my experience with

uncles and arts listening to like Mays and Frickie Beverly on the holidays. I take pride in the accomplishments of people that I personally admire in my life or outside of my life. I think my personal experience as an American I am proud of and I love. But if I'm talking about more like granularly, or like no, no, no, looking at it from like an exterior, like a 20, 30,000 foot level of being an American, like, of course there's shame. and discuss with our history and our interactions with other nations and countries. Like, yeah, of course. But when I'm thinking about myself, my experience, yes, very proud. Bernard?

I guess like Rachel said, like J.D. and Donnie. I mean, yes, it's pros and cons. I guess my experience, damn, that is hard. Now, I guess when you actually, Mike. Appreciate you, Bernard. Jesus. Swing the mic, my nigga.

I know Bernard's about to cry. Like Bernard. Bernard like Bernard like he just But no I feel like America we have we're on one place

one country that has like a lot of opportunity so we do have that we do have a lot of that but that's straight that's awesome dog that's great

that's good shit dog I know it's a tough question for black people right you can think about it so you know what you know why I say yes though why

I say yes to because of I think obviously it's the clue you guys have all answered the question that's not binary. The reason why I say yes though is because like the people that raise me up just like you, same people, they put their salvation in America. Yeah. Like they, I was actually raised to be a patriot, which is an interesting thing about a Southern black boy, is that, and by the way, I'm calling myself a boy at that time. Don't call me a boy from no pictures, mouths, or nowhere else. The interesting thing about Southern Black Boy is the people that raise you up,

they put America, they make America superior to whiteness. They actually make America the antidote to whiteness. They think that the people that raised me thinks that the more American the country gets, the better off they'll be. Like they felt like the things that were holding them back was America actually not being the America that it says that it is. So in this idea is actually their salvation. So the reason why rather than tear things apart from the end,

inside which black Americans have never done. The reason why black Americans have been revolutionaries and reformers is because there's obviously huge, huge arguments and disagreements here with inside the black intelligentsia.

But I'll just talk to people I know. They believed that if their dreams were realized that they would be better off. And they also believe something else that I could realize them. They would look progressively at their lot

and they would be like every generation comes along and they're a little smarter than us like Van good with the words look at him he hasn't experienced the same things we've experienced

he never experienced anyone being drug out of their home lynched in front of their family he's never really experienced going to the store and having someone said black people can't shop here they believed

that my life would be a realization of theirs. And that realization was America. And they believed in it in a way that it seeped off in them. They served, right? Like my family, they went into the military. Like, my family went and became police officers.

My family was like went in open stores and did their part economically. I come from small business people. We have a cement finishing business as a family business. Right. They believed in a lot of those things, right? They believed in all of them, all of them.

They believed in it. They believed in it. And over time, they saw it bear fruit. Yeah. Then I think when I got out there, I think I dug a little deeper and in digging deeper, I not only challenged the country, but I challenged those people. And especially when I was a younger man, I would sit down when I was talking to them and I would tell them why their dreams were wrong.

I was sitting in front of people who are dead now. And I would look at them like they were weak. And I would tell them why their dreams were wrong, why the shit that they bled for and the shit that they like went through hell and high water, why that was wrong. Mm-hmm. Just getting emotional because all those people are dead now. But I wish I didn't have to do that.

You know what I'm saying? I wish that like even at that point, I would have understood that their dream of America is not wrong. Like their want and their wish and even their existence inside of it, that that's not wrong. But for me, now it feels like casting off the country is casting off them. So interesting. Clean it up when I was crying.

I'm not crying on podcasts. No, no, no, no. Keep it in there because when I listen to you say it, it's like I wouldn't have told them their dreams are wrong and you're so right in what you're saying because and I also think of it as they had to be that way as a means of survival and because of their sacrifice and what they gave to this country what they gave of themselves in order to provide a better life for us we can now we have the freedom to question the systems that they had to walk through and survive through

in order to give us the liberty to recognize what was wrong. So I understand what you're saying. That's why it's like it's so hard to answer the question because I am proud of where I come from. I'm proud of whose shoulders I stand on. I'm proud of what they built. And because of them, I'm able to exist the way that I do in this society.

Now, that doesn't take away from the institution, like the institutionalized racism that exists within this country and how it was built and all of that. And we'll never going to love that. But I love the people that I come from that are from this country. Yeah. And it's like, it's like for me is they are so American. This is the biggest thing.

They have to believe in it. This is the last thing I say. man these people they are everything that made them right they are like the people that I'm talking about that I feel connected to that I visit when I go back to like to Louisiana even like you know man they are I listen to all of these white people and I'm going to say white people and not white supremacy because a lot of people that talk like this are white and they're like you'll be listening to somebody I'll give an example Mike Johnson I'll give an example Mike Johnson goes He's talking about like, you know, his experience here.

And he goes, I'm the grandson of a guy that came over from Italy and started a small thing about you're the grandson? You're the grandson. You, speaker to the house, you're the grandson. Your grandfather immigrated here. I go to the back of Ventures, like I go to the back of Ventures Memorial. Where my father is buried, he's in the front. Recent addition to the club, I go to the back and there's slaves there.

Who are you talking to? If you want to play that game, if you want to play the legacy American, if you want to play the people who, like, you can't fuck with me. Like, you can't. Like, you can't. And those people, they had to believe.

Like, they're lying. went through so much trauma and turmoil. And they were telling me around. They were telling me what I was entitled to as an American. They were telling me how my life should be. And they were making sure that I could stand up. And they were making sure that I understood. And then at a part, I would just look at them and be like,

y'all kind of stupid. I'd just be honest with you. I'd be like, you know, you go off and you go to college and you visit a couple and you go like, hey, man, the shit that y'all are talking about, This is not the actual shit like have you read this have you been this and they would just be like keep on living And now I'm in this situation where I no longer have grand designs of like what America could be and what is going to be I just want what they wanted I just want what they want it and I think that want

Is like the thing that orientes my identity as an American I think that? I? I think that want and that deference, like, is what orients it because they never got it. Yeah. That's so true. Like, they never got it. And so, I don't know.

I've been looking at the America 250 thing and all of this different stuff because I've been watching people like, the more I learn about these stories, I've been watching people talk about this stuff and they talk about like, what is an American, like what is what is an American?

nobody to me I don't even want to do that because I don't want to put hierarchy to it but like the people that are them people from Maryland Louisiana then people from Bachelor from Watson

from Bunky from New Iberia all of them people them black people that's American like them motherfuckers that's American they tilt the soil

they fought for it they die for it they invest into it They believed in it. They fucking earned it. They was fighting Revolutionary Wars in 1915 and 1925 and 1935 and 1935. Like, that's the shit that I'm talking about. So when I think about the country and my identity,

I don't think about that flag or none of that other shit. I think about them. But still, though, we're just into some fuck shit right now. I was going to say, so you're going to be decked out in your red, white, and blue, your sparklers, rep, Repping your $2.50. No, no, no. I'm not, I'm not going to do that.

But I just, it's almost a search for patriotism as a black America is a, that's one of them fucking things. It's different for everybody, which says a lot, which is so crazy to even say that on the hills of some of these Supreme Court decisions that came out. Patriotism is not a monolith, I guess, as we like to. It's nuance. I think everybody here expressed a different version of it besides Bernard. I just think I think everybody here was able to kind of give us. We said it all for him. We took the words out of his mouth.

Was like was able to kind of give us this really interesting treaties. Donnie talked about Frankie Beverly and Mays and all of that shit and Jade and obviously you. And then Bernard was like, shit, man. He said it's already been said. Bernard was like I know everybody said it, man Bernard was like, nigger, I love to play video games

You said he loved what? Play video games Oh I think Bernard I came through like shit, nigga I like streaming apps All right

All right We got to get out of here You guys go You know Go explore Where are you going For the thing I'm going to Texas

Tejas Texas Dallas right outside of Dallas, hanging with friends. I take mushrooms every morning. You took one today? That's why you cried. You know, but you know, the tearfulness is because I'm off to Lexapro.

Oh, yeah, a lot of people can't cry on Lexapro. Most people cannot cry on Lexopro. Lexopro made me into a fucking savage. I feel like Lexopro made me into like, it really made me into my dad. So how many gummies did you take today? I say I took like three. When did you feel it? How long did you feel it?

How long many hours does it take? So I took the gummies and then, so I took the gummies and then like in the middle, in the first 15 minutes of the midnight boys we did before this, I started to kind of feel it. Yeah, empty stomach. Empty stomach. I say this about the gummies, about the mushrooms.

Matt, it doesn't cut down on the amount that I talk, which I would like. No, so not going to do that. Well, it does help me pay attention better. Really? Yeah. I'm not going to lie. It helps me because, like, it used to be before.

I don't know if people could tell on the podcast. Like, people would be talking. And I would be like, okay, okay. They could tell. Okay. We all could tell. See, for me, why? I'm able to sit in the moment a little bit better.

I'd move, but Vivance helps me stay still. You still on the V Vance. Right. Sorry, I just saw somebody put this. Not J. Why? Wait, did you see President Trump talking to the AI version of Teddy Roosevelt? No, what happened?

Did you see, please, just watch it. I've thrown this in last minute. Every day, a president faces storms most people never see. Keep your nerve and remember the nation comes first. You get rid. I know you. Well, I appreciate those words. Oh, nigger.

Bro, hold on, bro. Bro, what? See, this the type of shit. I saw this. I saw this. Br, bro, y'all. He's what. said thank you for those words. Why

did they publish that? Why would you post that? I'll tell you why. Probably because he asked them to. The reason why they he has no idea who's talking to. Any sane person if you ever watch Superman before

Superman would be talking to his dead daddy right. His daddy Jorrell comes down and it's like Superman having a whole because his daddy whatever. Is Superman going nuts sometimes before socials? No sane person would be like We need to put this up of you talking to the AI, except for the fact that Trump went,

I tell you what, Roosevelt really likes me. I could just tell, like, Rosevelt loves me. Apparently they cut the video short because he, I guess it went on. Like, he continued. I bet it did.

He continued to talk. He must be talking to this nigga all the time. He probably asked him a question, and when he didn't answer back, they were like, we got to go. Bro. We got to go. You guys.

We got to go. You guys, guaranteed within two months, a strike inside of Iran, and Trump will say Teddy Roosevelt told me Teddy Roosevelt told me to speak softly

and walk with a big stick and this is our big stick he's about to be talking to this motherfucker oh he's gonna call Teddy a friend at this point he's going to be like me I was talking to Teddy the other day who really gave me some good advice you know this guy named Teddy Teddy Teddy you guys know Teddy

Teddy Roosevelt they're strong guys having him join the administration In the military on Mount Rushmore, this is a guy, this is a class guy, the Teddy meme coin, all of this stuff. By the way, do you have crypto? Any of you guys have crypto? No, I don't do it. Fault. I don't do what I don't understand.

You don't do what you understand. Yeah, you have crypto? Shit, you did white people. Colombian. There's a culture there. There's a culture. That's all I'll say. There's a culture.

I did quite enjoy going to Colombia. Okay, wait, before we get out of here. That teddy shit fries me. I can't believe you just... I put it in the chat. I was like, we have to talk about this. Thank you for putting it in the rundown. Before we get out of here,

Donnie couldn't find the words. But as Van brought up the great question, asking us, are you proud? What does it mean to you? It's 250 years. And I think that personally for me, when I have a birthday, I reflect. Like, I think about the last year.

I think about other birthdays. I think about where I am now. I think about where I want to go. It's a time of reflection. So as we're coming up on this 250 years, I think that we should all do that. We should reflect on where we are, what it means to us,

where we want to go. Just like just the current state of everything, like how things are affecting you, whether it be the economy, whether it be foreign relations, whether it be, you know, certain institution, education, health care, all those things.

And I want you to go out on these words. Republican Congressman Neil, Neals, I believe, is how you say it? Texas, from Texas, my home state. He was asked about Fourth of July and, you know, of course was asked about the state of Americans and where they are right now and saying some Americans will experience a fourth

at the 250th year mark in one way, and they asked him what he thought about it and how he would celebrate. And I want to go out on these encouraging words as we reflect on 250. This is where we are. Congressman, real quick, how do House Republicans make the case

that you're fighting for affordability when you go back to your districts? Affordability, what are you talking about? Well, affordability is the big... I'm going to go to tomorrow. I'm going to, well, over the fourth. I'm going to give me a couple of lobster tales. going to get me some nice rib eyes. I'm going to sit in my backyard with my family, my neighbors.

And we're going to be enjoying the fourth, celebrating 250 years, the birthday. We're going to be celebrating the greatest president of my lifetime, Donald J. Trump, maybe watching fireworks. Won't be up here. It's going to be too hot, right? And I'm in bed at 11 o'clock. I heard the fireworks ain't going off to 11 o'clock Eastern on the 4th of July. I probably have to sleep through that. But listen, everybody understands. You're going to see a little increase in energy prices because of Iran. I mean, come on. People aren't stupid.

You realize that when you have a conflict that ran. But I think in the end, the short-term increase in some of the costs of energy, you know, gasoline and stuff is temporary. But President Trump has made it very clear to these companies. Don't be gouging. No price gouging. Cut it off. I mean, energy, what? Oil is it.

He said, fuck y'all. Happy Fourth. Take 10 caps off Do not stop learning What the fuck You have got to say She's right Go

What the fuck If you vote for that You're a fucking idiot I'm sorry She's right Yeah he did Yeah I cut it off

But he's asked about Americans living paycheck to paycheck And he's like He's like you know what They don't work as hard as me He said fuck y'all Happy fourth Happy fourth

Don't stop learning Ben Lathen Rachel Lindsay Bye guys.