Higher Learning with Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay - The End of Medicaid? Plus, the Me Too Movement in 2025

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

Van and Rachel discuss the life and death of Gene Hackman (4:55), before reacting to the GOP budget bill that could cause major cuts to Medicaid and have ripple effects for Medicare (10:13) before welcoming CNN journalist Omar Jimenez to discuss the White House moving to pick the pool reporters who cover Trump (36:42). Plus, Me Too founder Tarana Burke discusses where the movement stands in 2025 (59:47). Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay Guests: Omar Jimenez and Tarana Burke Producers: Donnie Beacham Jr. and Ashleigh Smith Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, yo, yo, thought warriors. What is up? Howellian is on? Is Ivan Laketon Guinea? And it's me, Rachel and Lindsay. So this coffee for the mocha, coffee for the mocha, this cup for the mocha is going to be going away. I got an LSU mug that I'm going to be using.

You thought that was worth an announcement? You could have just did it. Could have just brought it. We would have seen it. You also act like you discovered coffee. What you mean? been drinking coffee this in 2025, you act like you invented it. You make like, you guys, he comes in, sets the stuff down and he's like, I'm going to go get a coffee. As if you're going to go make the coffee,

like roast the beans, make the coffee for yourself. It's, it's really interesting what has developed here. Or at least like you act like you discovered the coffee shop here at Spotify. So shout out to the coffee shop at Spotify. I also had a quarter of a, uh, a base. and put some cream cheese on it. It's just a quarter. I don't need all of that. But I'll say this. I don't really drink coffee except when I'm about the podcast because it sharpens me.

I come in here and it's, I get a little bit more focused. Actually, less wordy when I'm on an Adderall substitute or something. I can't tell. You've been, you've had a lot of energy, which is great. We need that for the podcast. Let's go. But less wordy? You know what's funny

is there's a lot of talk a lot of debate and consternation around how you're treated by me but there's never really any discussion about how I'm treated. You know, I had coffee it's fun for me. I'm into it.

It's a new thing for me. And then I get treated. I get treated for them. It's just an observation. You act like you invented coffee. I didn't say it. I never said anything about inventing coffee. I was talking about

by joy of coffee, why do women do this? Not women. This is why they talk about you. Wait, wait, why can't I? It's like, I'll be honest with you. Sometimes I think... He's in his feelings, y'all. That there's something...

Do y'all not want to see us happy? Because when something makes somebody happy, you always go, you're doing that too much. Like, if I'm playing the game, or if I'm playing basketball, if I'm going out to do something, why does it always bother the women when you're doing something

and you're happy about it and you're into it. I would like for you to rewind the tape, Donnie, where I just said you have a lot of energy, which is great. We love that for the podcast. Just rewind that because I'm so,

I was so critical. Just rewind where I said, where I gave that compliment. He seems to forget about that. I can't tell. You've had a lot of energy, which is great. We need that for the podcast.

Let's go. But let me tell you something in your defense. There is a lot of, like, fodder about the way that you treat me. treat me, I don't have, I have fun. We have fun. We have banter. We have back and forth.

Maybe once or twice, either it went too far for me or it went too far for you. But for the most part, I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. Yeah. Because you have to say that now because the reality is that I'm the one who's treated poorly. And that's really what happens. Okay. but I'll tell you this, it's funny

because I personally think that that comes from people's internalized patriarchy. Maybe. People's internalized patriarchy. What they really want to see is not a brother's sister or cousins dynamic. What they really want to see is a man take care of a woman's.

sometimes. And when a man treats women like an equal and fucks with her like he fucks with his homies or whatever, whatever, it sometimes comes off as not being differential enough. Maybe. I'm not going to push back on that. Because anytime I see it, I'm like, guys, I'm fine. I'm okay. And what you guys don't know is Rachel. It's kind of family I grew up in. Is insulting. She insulting. You guys don't know it. It doesn't. It doesn't. You know what? She's also very like a pro. So it doesn't happen on the podcast as much.

But like Rachel's the type of person to come over to your house and be like, oh, you lost weight. Yeah, your tities were getting out of control. It's so not true. It's so not true. I might be a little shady, but for the most part, we're good. Very sad news to start the podcast. I know. Very sad news.

Gene Hackney and his wife. Betsy, Arakawa, and their dog were found passed away in their home. Different rooms of their Santa Fe home and apparently have been dead for some time. Hackman is 95. He was found dead on Wednesday in a mud room. His 63-year-old wife, Betsy, Arakawa was found dead in a bathroom next to a space heater. This is according to Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office Detectives. They wrote a search warrant.

the New Mexico gas company is working with the County Sheriff's Department in the investigation. They are thinking that it could have been a gas leak that was responsible for killing Jean, his wife, and their pup.

Gene Hackman, of course, legendary actor. Movies such as Superman, French Connection, Hoosiers, Crimson Tide, just omnipresent. and film from the moment I started watching movies

all the way up to the time of his retirement. Really sad. Yeah, first thing I saw this morning. I mean, obviously, with the... First of all, I did not know he was 95. My goodness. Just, you know, obviously thoughts and prayers go out to the family and the friends and everybody impacted.

Like you said, but even me, who's not a huge movie watcher, is obviously familiar with the work of Gene Hackman because he has been so influential in the space. So really sad that an entire family is gone and, you know, hard just goes out to everyone. You know something that's interesting about Gene Hackman is there are a whole generation of actors that were already pretty mature

when we started watching movies. And they freeze in age to us. So true. Right? And so then we don't think when we look, oh my God, look at how old Morgan Freeman is. That's the first one. Look at how old Gene Hackman is. Yeah, these guys are, as I'm 44, so that means Gene Hackman got to be in his 90s. I think that just happens with older people in general. My parents freeze in age to me, aunts, uncles. But you're right. I mean, I feel like when a gladiator came out and people were like, wait, Denzel is 69, almost 70. You know, Samuel Jackson's like 70 was. five, six? Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's hard to grasp. But I definitely didn't realize 95. So, Jay Hagnon. So, look, we're going to have a lot of conversations around the old political sphere. We're going to be talking politics. All right. The House passed the budget resolution. We got to talk about that a little bit because, you know, guys, we don't really get deep into the weeds as far as politics is concerned because let's face it.

It's not like it's fucking, you know. It's not like it's what? It's not like we're fucking, you know, the crossfire over here. Sure, sure, sure. You know, we're politically active and minded people. I think that's why the audience sometimes resonates with us because we are people who are involved with and have maybe more insight or connection to political figures than most. But at the same time, the regular Americans.

Great. Yeah, you know. But we're going to get a little. deep into the weeds on this, because this is kind of important. How are you? How was Aspen? I was there for a week, went to Austin, came back, went again for like 36 hours. It's great. It's great.

We love Aspen. I really want you to come. I don't think I'll get you on skis, but I think you'll enjoy the town. I don't get over that rich stuff. I just think you'll enjoy the quaintness of the town. So I will go there. I won't ski, and I'll tell you why, like at this point, I don't want to chant it.

With bad knees? My knees are fine. You should try. No, it's not happening. But I will get in a hot tub. I'll eat special different types of baked goods, which I'm sure they have there. They do. You go to the spa.

Go to the spa. Yeah, get on the oxygen tank. Like they have a room where you just give you oxygen. You can do all the things that, you know, you do when you're in a high altitude place. I'm into it. Really good for your body. Yeah, we'll do. We'll organize it.

We're going to get into it. We're going to get around there. They don't have a lot of Negroes? No. Of course not. I was the only one on the plane going there. Sometimes the only one in the restaurant is what it is. That's how you like it.

Okay. But One Nigger Nights was a real thing. One Nigger Nights. But I brought Willie into the one nigger nights. So that's like five niggas. So Willie like five niggas. I was like, welcome to one nigger nights. Right, exactly.

I'm glad that's what you're supposed to do. Yeah, yeah. When you're having a one nigger night, you take it upon yourself to add another nigger to the night. You said that was like five. Like, Willie, like five. That's three for it right there. Shout out to my guy. All right.

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with the Senate to reshape the tax code, implement strict new immigration policy, and drill for new energy resources and spend billions on the national. defense. One more thing, the bill also instructs the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid and Medicare. They have to come up with at least $888 billion in cuts. Let's get into the weeds on this. Rachel, what do you think? I want to say it's hard to know where to start, but it's also kind of obvious where to start. They're lying to us, right? The committee that has to oversee this, when you look at the New York Times did a chart of breaking up. breaking down what they oversee and how much of it is Medicare and Medicaid and how much of it is

other. And when you look at that, it is impossible to make an $880 billion cut over the next 10 decades without affecting Medicaid and Medicare. They broke down several options that are possible, but even within those options being the most optimistic, you're still hundreds of billions, of dollars short. The way the Republicans are trying to get around it is they're not saying the words Medicaid. And Trump has come out and said, you know, he won't touch Medicare. He won't touch Social Security.

But he, I think he did come out actually recently in the past week and say Medicaid won't be an issue. But if you look at the history of it, when he was in office before and he tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, it was going to. to cut Medicaid. So history shows that he is not above doing this. The reason they're not saying it right now is because they know how many people it will upset, not just Democrats, but their own base, not just governors in Democratic states, but also in Republican because they receive so much funding for Medicare and Medicaid. So that also will impact them. Also with Republicans,

this is going to affect the country's debt. It's going to add trillions of dollars to it. And the thing, the bottom line is the math isn't mathing. What they're trying to do, it is absolutely impossible for them to not affect health care, which will affect so many individuals, low income, disability, doesn't matter how you vote, doesn't matter, you know, who you have your allegiance to, it will affect so 72 million Americans is what they're predicting. Right. So just so people know, this is a resolution, is a simple resolution, which means that this outlies,

or outlays, should I say, what the Republicans' plan is for the budget, right? We know that Trump wants his tax cuts. We know that several independent agencies have said that Trump's tax cuts, which are set to aspire at the end of 2025, are going to add trillions of dollars to the federal deficit over the next decade,

over the next couple of years, whatever it is. We also know that Trump wants to balance the budget, so he claims. So if you want to free up a whole bunch of money that allows you to have your tax cuts, your tax cuts that will overwhelmingly go to what they call the job creators, which are the corporations and wealthiest people, then you have to find cuts. They have to find cuts. Now, look, this barrens.

passed, and there was one member of the House Thomas Massey that didn't vote for it. So there is an internal struggle between the fiscal conservative wing of the Republican Party, the Freedom Caucus wing of the Republican Party,

and the MAGA Donald Trump Republicans, Freedom Caucus are MAGA Donald Trump Republicans, but the less fiscally responsible Republicans over how they're going to do their budget. What we're talking about is probably not going to get done

until the end of the year. They're going to do what's called reconciliation, which allows them to vote, budget reconciliation, allows them to vote with a simple majority in the House and the Senate on this.

Typically, you need, you know, two-thirds of the House to pass something into law, and then you need 60 in the Senate to beat the filibuster. But when you are doing budget reconciliation, which is how Donald Trump passed his budget,

when he was president in his first term, you only need simple majorities in both the House and in the Senate. So this puts the Republicans in place to get the conversation started about the type of budget, type of fiscal plan that they want for the country now and in their future.

It's important that people are aware of what some of these terms mean. there's going to be a whole different kind of worms that are going to be opened in the Senate. There could be two bills in the Senate. Those two bills are bills that separate some of this budgetary stuff into one trough that is looking specifically at border security and cuts to other places. And then another group of people, you know, the Freedom Caucus doesn't want to get completely on board with some of the more irresponsible aspects of Trump's budget.

So they have their own bill. And then there is another bill that pretty much gives Trump everything he wants, that part of the Senate is going to be in remains to see, which is going to win out. All of that to say, that here's the thing that most people have to understand. Everything that you see Trump and Doge doing is so that they can afford without looking reckless. so that they can afford to do the things that they want to do in terms of some of the programs that exist for Americans right now. When you say cuts to Medicaid,

when you say changes to Medicaid, there are all kinds of things. Like they could institute work requirements on Medicaid. Now, 92% of the people that are on Medicaid that are under 65 already work. But they could use work requirements to limit benefits that they have to pay to people. Right.

Okay? Because some of these people that they're going to require to work are disabled. Some of these people have other situations that don't allow them to maybe work the amount of hours that they would have to work in order to get Medicaid. But this is creating a problem because 92% of people that are on Medicaid, they work. Right. It's also important that people understand the difference between Medicaid and Medicare. Medicare covers people that are 65 and older. Some are 65 and younger with certain disabilities.

Medicaid is for low-income and disabled Americans. It's a joint effort between the federal government and individual states. There are standards that are set at a national level, and there are other eligibility and benefits that vary from state to state. 92% of these people work. When you hear the term waste, fraud, and abuse as it relates to Medicaid, it's a red herring.

What the Republicans are going to try to do is convince Americans that there is tremendous waste fraud and abuse involved in this, which is an overwhelmingly efficient government program that takes care of so many Americans, right? The waste fraud and abuse, that's involved in this has been independently studied.

And there's been found to be some ways fraud and abuse. But as there aren't sure in most programs. It's important where you find it. It's not on behalf of the people receiving the benefits. Tell you what that means. What they would want you to believe is that there are people who are dead that are receiving Medicaid so that somebody else can get double the benefits. That there are people who are not eligible for Medicaid.

that are receiving it, that there are people who are receiving improper benefits, too much money, too much benefits. That's not where typically the waste, fraud, and abuse for Medicaid has been found. Where it's been found is in nursing homes that are jukeying the system. It has been found in ambulances, equipment people, really people in the private sector that are taking advantage. of that. Now, look, there are ways to get at that, but one of the ways that you would get at that wouldn't be to cut Medicaid, would be actually to add money to it so that you could go in there and find out who's actually abusing the system. I give you an example of something before we talk a little bit more about the budget. Joe Biden was talking about the whole defund the police thing. Okay. I want you to think about the difference in the way that this is viewed. When he was talking about, Talking about the defund the police thing, I think one thing that he said that rubbed people the wrong way was he said, I don't want to defund the police. I want to fund the police. And what he said during that, I think it was the State of the Union, was that the way that you get at some of the inefficiency that we see in the police is to provide more resources to them so that they can better train officers so that they can better learn the law.

law so that you could get some of the issues between the officers and the community out of it. Whereas the defund people were saying what we need is less contact with the police, less police officers. We need to demilitarize the police. They don't need tanks. They don't need M16s. They don't need all of that stuff.

Take that money, put it, invest it back into the community. All right. Roundly, you hear no. the way to fix some of the inefficiencies in policing is to add money to it. From the right, which the right agree with Joe Biden there, and they've always agreed with Joe Biden. The police budgets are going to go up, whatever. This isn't to kick Biden or the Democrats in this nuts. It's just to say the way people deal with malfeasance or inefficiency in programs that are budgetary programs that they care about is to add money to them and try to extract the efficiency.

of them when you put in independent investigators and you add training and stuff. This is different. They're taking a different stance here. They're saying, if we see waste fraud and abuse in a place, the way to get at that, this is across the board, is to cut the program.

That right there doesn't make any sense. What makes sense is to, and a lot of the inspector generals that would look into this stuff and try to route the waste fraud and abuse have already been fired. Doge fired a lot of these people going back. The way to do this, if you're going to get at it, if that was even the goal, would be to

invest into it, invest into independent auditors, invest into even more people that can go in there and look at the stuff and try to see where the programs could be more efficient. But fuck all that, because it's working just fine. This is another example, and this budget is another example of Trump. wanting to reward the people that have delivered him his victory, and at the same time, taking that from things that help the American people. Well, yes, helping the rich people who helped him do it, not the actual American people who voted for him. I mean, even Steve Bannon is saying that if you do these cuts to Medicaid,

it will be politically damaging to Trump, to Trump, his administration, and to other Republicans, which could in turn affect. the midterms. I think that now that it's passed in the House, even if it did narrowly, because of what you said about the reconciliation process, they have, they're committed to this. It's going to pass the Senate. It's going to pass the Senate. They're committed to it. And as I said at the beginning, it is impossible for them to not affect health care, whether they take it for Medicare or they take it for Medicaid in order for this to go through the way that they wanted to and to find the 880, billion dollars, they're going to have to take it from there. Otherwise, this whole thing collapses and the tax cuts that he has promised corporations and the rich won't happen. The extension from 2007 won't happen if this bill collapses. So he has to find the money from somewhere. And everything that Trump has shown us is that he will do everything that is possible to feed the rich and the corporations

than he will for the American people. So it is going to happen. And it is going to be interesting to see how the American people respond. What I don't know, and maybe you know the answer to this, is how quickly we will see this impact the American people. It's a budget resolution, which means essentially this resolution is an agreement on terms, basically.

This is not them passing. It's not a bill. What this essentially does is it submits what they are agreeing on to do. And the back and forth, at least in the house, the back and forth negotiations on how they're going to enact Trump's budget, that argument is pretty much dead in the house. We're also cutting money out of the IRS, which, by the way, you cut money out of the IRS,

what ends up happening? If you cut money out of the IRS, the IRS then doesn't have the resources that it needs to audit people who are super rich because those are the audits that are the most costly audits. So the people that are gone from the IRS are the people that are looking into the rich people. And then SNAP benefits are a whole different thing. What they're essentially doing is they're saying, look, we're working under the guise of American waste, fraud, and abuse. And we're saying that there's all of these money and savings. And the way we're going to get that is to fire people and to take life saving and preserving benefits from Americans in any way that we can.

that is going to pay for Trump's tax cuts and then give the Republicans a legacy win of balancing the budget, which is something that I don't think that we've done since the Clinton administration. They are going to say that, hey, we're going to look at waste, fraud, and abuse in the Pentagon, which would be actually the place that you would start this conversation

because the Pentagon has never successfully passed an audit. So if you were looking for waste, fraud, and abuse, you would definitely want to interrogate what was going on with the military industrial complex and things like that. They're obviously not starting there because if you start fucking with Boeing and Raytheon and other places like that, you're going to end up getting a mud in your eye because those are the places that fund your donors and, you know, all those people to a large degree. The people that are on Snap don't have a voice in the federal government besides the Democrats,

who I have to be honest with you are, they seem less than up to the task of fighting back here. Well, with this, I don't know what fighting back entails at the moment. I don't. I don't know what that looks like because of the way the structure of Congress at the moment and obviously how the Trump administration is running things. I guess going back to what I was saying is I understand that they're trying to get to $2 trillion. We understand that they're trying to make these cuts to balance the budget. And we understand that there is a group of people who are benefiting off of this

and there are people who will suffer because of these cuts that they're making. My thing that I'm saying is for the American people who want to understand how they will be impacted, what we've been talking about at the top of this is this bill that narrowly passed, this committee that does oversee health care and that there is no way that they can make the cuts that they are required to do to get these extended 2017 tax cuts for businesses, corporations, and the rich, without slashing. health care. My thing, the question I keep going back to is how and when will it, because it will happen, well, they will affect health care. What, how will it impact people? That's like

the question. What do you mean how will impact people? What you mean? Well, it's going to affect their health care. Well, yeah. Well, what will happen is people will lose benefits. So there'll be two ways. Either your benefits, either your benefits will go down, the amount of money that you're receiving. Remember, the kind of things that Medicaid pays for delivers, I think, 40% of the babies in America. Yes, 41. In Louisiana, where Mike Johnson is from, I think 32% of people are on Medicaid. So it's going to affect people in two ways. Number one, some people who are disabled and actually don't have the ability to work,

the work requirements of Medicaid might force those people into the job market. Some of them might not be able to work, right? Right. And then what you might see overall is the amount of benefits that people get go down. And that's going to affect people both in the amount of coverage that they're able to afford and the decisions that they have to make about their health care and their personal health. Correct. I think the way that it'll happen is,

And I guess like I keep focusing on that because I understand like the numbers. I think for what the American people need to and we're probably preaching to the choir when we talk to thought lawyers. But I think what people need to understand is how it's going to impact them, right? It's how the Trump administration got into office. People were affected, wanted to change the economy and how it was impacting them and they wanted it to be better. Understanding the government process and all of that is is, is, yes, knowledge is power. but what this is passing, this will pass, when will, I guess we don't know when it will take effect, but what does it look like?

Well, there's a resolution. So this is the bill at the end of the year when they come together, when everything, so there's reconciliation in terms of the definition of reconciliation, budget reconciliation that allows them to vote on it. But then the bill still has to be, that's a separate term, the bill still has to be reconciled in the Senate. then the Senate's going to come together and then the final bill

will probably be voted on. The budget right now will be voted on in a continuing resolution I think in a couple of weeks that the Democrats honestly will have to get behind to support the government shutdown.

Well, the number change. It could change, but it won't. And I know it is over 10 years. I want to be clear with that. That's not one year. That is 880 billion over a decade. Yeah. It could change.

Meaning, depending on what the Senate decides to do, like I said, I don't think the military spending will say where it is. You mean the two things. Yeah. Right. What the Senate decides to do in terms of what the Senate puts on the table. I don't think that the military spending there will go, will say where it is. I think it'll go up, right? I think they'll, they're going to want to spend more money on the military, right? So I think that'll go up. But it, it, that's a number that I think the, Trump administration and Republicans, they've essentially agreed to.

They feel good with it. I don't see anyone in the Senate coming along and saying, you know what, we can't cut snap by the amount of money that we're trying to cut SNAP. We can't cut Medicaid. Remember, I want some of those to be said, it doesn't anywhere in this resolution that explicitly say that they're cutting Medicaid. And that's how they're getting around it. Right.

Because it's impossible. And I think that is what people care about the most. They can understand that because that is affecting their reality. They have an issue, a health issue. They go in and they can't get treated in the way that they want to. That is what is so important, I think, to keep honing down. More, to me, that is what I think people care about more than the process of how it's done, more than the country's debt.

Obviously, all that stuff is important. But how they voted is how things are going to affect. me, which is the economy, number one issue. That is what I think we should focus on with this. How is health care going to affect the individual person? And the way things are going and the cuts that have to be made in order to get the things that Trump administration wants to do and what he has promised, the people who got him in office, the rich,

is your health care. The reason why I focus on the process and the only reason why... I'm not saying you're wrong. I get it. I get it. I get a shame. The only reason why I focus on the process is because of two things. Number one.

there is a belief that there's nothing that people can do. What I said earlier was that this is essentially a budgetary proposal, this resolution, that they've agreed on that they celebrate their victories that they were able to get this. It passed very narrowly, right? They had to hold a couple of different votes to get this done. And Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, and think that he had to votes at first, right?

but this is sort of something that was maybe a little unexpected that they would be able to come together and get this done. It's a win for the Trump administration insofar as he was able to get the people in his party to get behind some of this stuff, some of it that people thought was either to spending too much or adding too much to the deficit

or that it was going to put them a political battle with people who don't want the AmeriCare cut. So that's it. But the question would then be like, what can people do? That,

people have to invest into the process there. Because they have to vote on a continuing resolution. And a continuing resolution is essentially when you don't pass a new budget voting to keep the

same budget in action until you actually have to vote on another, on a bill or joint resolution that would enact the new budget. So that means that in a couple of weeks or whatever it is, when they get together and vote on a continuing resolution to continue the previous budget, either that passes, that continuing resolution passes, or there's a government shutdown. Trump doesn't want a government shut down on his watch. Sure. So if you were able to compel the people that your congressmen, your senators or whatever, to not vote for the continuing resolution, you could hold the looming possibility of a government shutdown over the Trump administration's head.

You wouldn't necessarily be able to get them to change this because this has been voted on in a government shutdown. agree to, but there might be other things that people want that they could get them to change. We have to understand, in my opinion, where any type of leverage, and I listen to the majority report in Sam Cedar was talking about the fact that he thinks that impoundment would be one of the things that they could get the Trump administration to move on. And what that essentially is, is saying that the money that Congress has allocated to be spent in specific areas that it is going to be spent, that Trump can't line item veto those things

or just straight up say, I'm not spending the money, which is what he's trying to do. And if he plans to do that, then maybe Hakeem Jeffries and the rest of the guys over there, they don't vote for the continuing resolution and the government shuts down, whatever, whatever, whatever. But for this, this is very unambiguous.

This is a clear demonstration of what the priority of the administration and really House Republicans are. Extending the tax cuts from 2017, implementing new ones, $4.5 trillion over

the next decade, $300 billion for spending on defense and border security, raised a debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years, and add almost $3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. Once again, $180 billion in cuts

spearheaded by the Energy and Commerce Committee. Trump has ruled that cuts to Medicare and Social Security won't happen, but there's no way that it will happen because if you cut that much out of that committee's jurisdiction, you're going to have to touch it a little bit. Well, it's happening. It's happening.

Next up, we got Omar Jimenez joining us to talk about the state of a free press in this country. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows Winter is the MVP and making a mess. You don't need Weather Tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those Weather Tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step in.

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Okay. Lots of stuff happening in the world of politics. Lots of stuff happening in the world of the press. Yeah. Some would say that the free press is under attack. Donald Trump is handpicking, cherry-picking, pool reporters who are going to cover him in the White House. You have Elon Musk, who is kind of using his media apparatus at X to weed out and boost different voices. Then you have, of course, Jeff Bezos over there talking about how the coverage of the Washington Post op-ed page will go.

We have a journalist joining us today, Omar Jimenez, who I met, working. with CNN. I met him over there at CNN. We crossed paths a lot working over there at CNN. And we just wanted to get the purview from Omar. You know, on the position of the media in the Trump White House, how you feel some of these changes are impacting your ability as a journalist. And just overall, what's your feel of the importance of a free press are Omar is joining us today on higher learning. Omar, how you're doing, man? I'm going to ask you the first question right now. Do you think that Donald Trump is trying to suppress fair coverage of his administration and some of the initiatives that they have? I think for the longest time we've known, he does not like coverage that is critical of him.

I think what's different here, and by the way, no president has liked coverage that's critical of them, but of them. But what's different here, I think, is when you look at what's being done to the White House, correspondence association, for example. These are actually concrete moves that are being done that I think does affect the dynamics of, of one, even just the feeling of independence, the feeling that, okay, you know, we have a job to do and we are able to do it. But also knowing that when you look at the people that are chosen to be in the room with him, for example, in a cabinet meeting, it is not the media that typically covers the White House. When you look at media that was kicked out of, say the Pentagon, for example, even though we're still able to cover these beats, the White House

Pentagon, et cetera, just the messaging of kicking someone out of the space that has traditionally been occupied by people that have offered fair coverage. Those are the differences, I think, that we're seeing in just the month that Trump's been in office this time versus other presidents, maybe who have not liked certain coverage of them, but did not necessarily take these concrete moves. Um, Omar, familiar with your work first came on my radar 2020. So nice to have you on the podcast. Loved watching you, boots on the ground. Um, for those, can you explain the importance of White House reporting, the press pool and just the significance of it all for the American people? Yeah. So for people that, that might be hearing White House Correspondents Association for the first time, it basically is a collection, of reporters and why they're necessary is like when the president travels, for example,

when the president goes to an event, you can't have every single person who covers the White House in these events, in these spaces. So what they do is they typically pick one person who's a member of these rotating pools, one person from media. You might have a print, pool reporter, TV pool reporter, et cetera. And what they do is they're in the room and they document what's happening in the room and then they send out what they are saying. to the rest of the press. And so what you rely on the person who is in that room in many cases to sort of get reliable information out.

And so part of the reason why there was such a concern here is if the White House Correspondence Association no longer has a control or a say, we don't fully know what it's going to look like in who gets to be a part of that pool, then you begin to potentially call into question, all right, well, when I received those pool reports of what actually happened, can I rely on that information? And so that is the dynamic, I think, that has some people worried, especially depending on what outlets are chosen to be in a space like that. And I can tell you, I haven't ever been a full reporter, but I have received pool reports. And it really is the only window into what the president might have been doing on the plane ride over or said to someone in a hurricane recovery

line, things of that nature, where you might have a camera on them, but you don't have someone close who can actually hear, at least for all of the press. I've watched a lot of the interviews that you guys have been doing with various Trump of Trump affiliates. I watched one particularly that you did with, I think it was Congressman McDowell. Yeah. Yeah. And where you were talking to you. him a little bit about the budget. And you asked him a very direct question about Medicaid and Medicare and how the House Resolution affects the future of those programs.

And when you asked him about that, whether or not Medicaid and Medicare would be touched, he basically said, specifically Medicaid, he basically said that they're going to do everything that they can to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. That's a lot. Which, yeah, right, which was a way of him lying. Yeah. And skirting the issue about whether or not people's benefits would be affected by some of the proposed cuts in the Republican budget proposal. So he lies on TV to you.

How do you deal with that? I think that there's a portion of the American people who are really frustrated with the double talk, the double speak that they see. from politicians when they're on these shows. I don't want to be long-winded, but I am because that's what I do. I was also watching Meet the Press this past week where you saw the anchor ask very direct questions to a senator about firings that are happening in his home state of Oklahoma, and he just would not answer the question. pivot, pivot, pivot,

obfuscate. How do we get politicians to get off of these talking points and get to the heart of these questions and the truth of them in a period where Americans really, really need their information in a simple and digestible way? In all honesty, it's, I think, doing a better job

at not just, for example, looking at one interview I did with this congressman, but then being able to take a step back on a daily basis and saying, okay, well, he said waste, fraud, and abuse maybe five times in that interview. When you take a step back and you look at all the interviews that Republicans did, well, House Speaker Mike Johnson also said, waste fraud and abuse. Other Republicans also saying that exact same phrasing, waste fraud, and abuse. And now you actually start to see, okay, yes, he was using it as a talking point in this interview. Yes, he was using it to pivot and not answer directly the question over whether Medicaid

would be cut. So I think that was fair to say that was the conclusion, at least some portion of it by the end of that interview. But clearly, it was something that that was distributed or spoken about beforehand. And when these Republicans went out and actually came on our show, on another person's show, that was what they were going to stick to. Now, I believe in one of our other interviews a little bit later on, Speaker Mike Johnson, they tried to pin him down on, you know, whether this would happen, he said, oh, it's not going to be a Medicaid per capita cut. But to your point of what you were saying, when you look at what is being tasked by this committee to root out that, of course, oversees Medicaid, how the question is, how could you not,

how could Medicaid not be affected? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so even though they are not explicitly saying that, it's then, okay, for us, when we write about this, when we sort of try to explain, okay, the overall movement of when the resolution passed, we have to be the ones to say, well, okay, this person said this, that they want to root out waste fraud and abuse,

and that's their only scenario where they affect Medicaid. And yet, even without that, the possibility that wouldn't be affected is very low. because I think part of the, and this is a bigger issue than what you were talking about, is there's so much noise out there, even when you do an interview with V. And let's say we dove all the way into that. Like how could it not be affected? And the minute that this congressperson or whoever puts out on their social media or goes down their algorithm would just clip the part that talks about waste, fraud, and abuse.

and now there is this clip circulating from the same interview that we could have potentially gone down a place where we actually did hash it all out and we got through everything, but that's not what gets circulated in some of the places that would need to see it. You're better than me, because I would be in that interview saying,

you're lying. That's not true. It would be very hard for me to continue to add, much respect to what you do. It would be very hard for me to not give an opinion and say, and let me tell you why, which is why we sit on,

we sit here. What I'm asking is, do you feel like there should be more of that? Well, I don't, you can you? Can you do that? Can you even do that? Yeah. You, I would say,

this is my personal strategy. You pick and choose your moments. This person, if you watch that interview, I mean, I think it was three times in a row. I tried to ask a different portion. Oh, you got to it, but it was still frustrating watching him

dance around it. I'm not, this is not a criticism of your, of the interview. No, no, no. No, no, what I'm saying is like picking and choosing your moments. It's like, okay, we need to get to the bottom of, does this actually include Medicaid? And then after that, to me, I was like, okay, that is a good baseline to start. And then if you're going to keep dodging the questions, it was only, you know, I only had four minutes in the interview.

Okay, that's it. Like, we've clearly gone as far as we can go here. Let's move on. Now, if it was a 10 minute long interview and we still had time left, all right, now let's actually get into what waste front of use actually is. What do you define it as? You know, what is your threshold for actually cutting into Medicaid if that's what you're saying is the reason you want to do it? So I think format also plays a difference. But to your point, Rachel, I do think there's a time in place for it because it is easier and easier to sort of just say something and not be ready to, okay, well, actually,

know it's this and here's X, Y, and Z reason for why it's not what you're saying. But it's hard. It's hard. You know, you've got to be ready with whatever they might come with. Let's talk about the state of freedom of the press. You know, with the way there's a case right now, I think there's a hearing coming up on it with, you know, the AP being, well, I guess it's started with the AP not wanting to say Gulf of America and, you know, and not calling it Gulf of Mexico. I know that they're suing for access to be able to have access into Oval Office and to Air Force One. Can you talk about kind of where you see this going? And I know I'm asking you to assume a little bit, but I guess what is the state of freedom of the press?

We saw when Biden was in office, they were constantly, you know, MAGA and Republicans were constantly talking about the fact that this didn't exist. And now they're trying to pull back on it. So what do you see foresee happening? especially the way that the Trump administration is acting and just kind of unilaterally making these decisions and it doesn't seem like anyone's checking them in any kind of way. Well, I think if you ask me where I see this going, I can't give a full prediction,

but I will say to this point, I mean, the Trump administration has not budged on it. You know, it's been taken to court. I know there's some legal action. I know they're trying to take some legal routes on it too. But the administration hasn't budged. And I don't think they will. Because they've clearly made this, they've taken this position.

And again, I'm not a legal expert, but I think the only way to go around it is to try to get some sort of legal action to say, hey, this is actually a major violation. That said, I don't work at the AP, but I know it's not going to stop them from covering the president. I mean, we deal with journalists with obstacles all the time. People are usually not interested in us covering them. That's not a new dynamic. And I know it talked about it in the beginning, but the new dynamic was sort of those concrete steps of here's what we're going to do to sort of actually physically stop you from doing.

You know, we deal with it even when we're out in the field. You know, you said you started watching me in 2020. We report in front of police officers and protests all the time. And they don't want us there, you know. and it's not like we're going to get up in their face and if they tell us to do something or hear their rules that we're going to break them, but we're still going to cover what we do,

and they can like it or not. And I think with this situation, we've seen the AP sort of stay true to, look, you know, you can call it that. It can be your U.S. designation that this is the Gulf of America, but the AP is read all across the world. And it's not an internationally recognized

label at this point. It's a U.S. designation. And so the AP, again, I don't know what the prediction is. I don't know what their leadership is thinking. But to this point, they've held strong to their reporting, and I don't anticipate them changing and the nature of what they do.

So last question for me. Yeah. And thank you for joining us. You work for CNN. I'm on CNN a fair amount. Rachel has been on CNN. CNN is a legacy media organization. Yeah.

There are those who believe that the legacy media has already bent the need to Donald Trump. Mm-hmm. That places like CBS, institutions like the Washington Post, run by Jeff Bezos, even institutions like the L.A. Times and other places like that, that hemmed and hard about their endorsements during the political season, that of, you know, CBS that has settled a lawsuit with Donald Trump and paid him millions of dollars.

Amazon did a, is doing a documentary on Melania Trump. They paid 40 million bucks for that. There are people that believe that there is, that people don't have faith anymore in legacy media and are turning to independent media creators on YouTube or other places, ground news, places like that, that give them more and different coverage of what's going on.

To people that have lost faith in places like CNN, MSNBC just fired Joy Ann Reid took her show off the air, somebody who was a very, very, very dependable voice for many, many years. What do you say to them? To those people, I say a few things. One, and I can speak for myself as a reporter, someone who works in the quote-unquote legacy media. It's about getting out and meeting people.

I think what some of where, again, some of the criticism is, you know, you're out of touch. You're not in tune with what people are thinking. You're missing the real story. So part of it for my job is, okay, there's only so much I can do it from sitting here at my desk. Let's go out and actually talk to people and let people's issues and worries drive our coverage, drive my story pitching, drive what I am able to get to the air. So that's one. That's where I would start.

Two, I think format, too, is everything. Like I think as people's viewing habits and listening habits change, people don't trust as much maybe a three minute, let's just say three minute on television interview. It's good. It serves a purpose in my opinion. It can get you good information. But what they might trust more is if we sit down for 40 minutes and sit on a couch like you will and actually hash out the discussion. And that to me doesn't have anything. to do with the change in journalistic quality, but the nature of the format allows for the chance of someone to get off their talking points a little bit more, for example. And so maybe there's a little bit more of a trust there. And then lastly, I think it's kind of tied to format,

but it's more of just how we consume news from a social media platform point of view. There is so much out there that if you don't like us or you don't like MSNBC, you don't like New York Times, whatever, go find something else. You can go find something else. Whereas I think before there was a time where you just sort of had to lob your complaints at us and you were kind of stuck with people like us. And so I think people's patience for things that don't live up to their standard is lower than it's ever been because they can go somewhere else quicker and easier than they've ever been

able to. And for someone like me, that's a challenge because that's a challenge. That means when I'm going out and doing a story, my quality of work has to be that much better and that much higher than it has ever been for you to trust me, for you to stay with me, and for me to build an audience in doing what I think is still important work in journalism, whether it's had a legacy media,

a YouTuber on the street, good quality work is good quality work. And so how do I make sure as a reporter that I am at that caliber of just good quality? because I think quality has been democratized. Like, if it's good, if it's good, it's good. And I think it's incumbent upon us to be good to compete for people's eyes, not by name, but with work. Great answer.

Last question for me. And please don't answer it. You don't have to answer it if you feel uncomfortable answering this. But... Uh-oh, oh-oh. Well, no, no, it's kind of building off your question. You about to ask somebody's waves? No, they are popping, though.

They're great. Oh, shit. Omar, don't fucking... I didn't hurt the people. The people just got dizzy, dog. Don't, don't. Don't hit them all, Omar. I know that's what you're hiding under the hat.

I know you're hiding that hunt. Brother, brother, I used to. Omar, don't do this. Omar, don't know. Do it. Do it. No, no, no, I can't. It's been a while since we've seen it.

There's going to be an update. I got some sprouts coming in from the hair transplant. But now, my shit going to look like the Mahavi Desert compared to the Pacific Ocean. With the way this nigga just done it on me. Go ahead, Rachel. All right, Rachel. With the way we're seeing corporations and the government react to DEI,

and with what Van was saying, how we're seeing some of these legacy news organizations just react to the current state of the climate, are you worried about your job? No, and here's why. I'm not worried because part of that last answer too. Good work is good work.

And there are more places to get your work out than ever before. That's not to say I would like to have my job affected. That would not be great. But like, you know, if you went back 15 years and we were in the same situation, but it was that type of media environment, you know, the types of jobs you could have where you'd be able to do media on a large scale would really only be funneled to a few places. And so kind of like what I was talking about

with people's choices in media, you don't like something, it's easier than ever to go check something else out. I feel good right now. Will that always be the case? Who knows? But I'm not worried about what I do because what I do right now, right now, is I think I'm trying to find good stories,

tell them the best way that I possibly can. And that's a practice that's been around since the beginning of time, telling good stories. So I feel like as long as I'm doing that and I have the opportunity to do that, I will feel good. I can't speak for the whole wider industry as a whole

because I think it's fair to say. It's been a tough time for journalism, for media in general. But for me personally, the only thing I can control is trying to tell many stories that I can't as well as I can. My brother, appreciate you join us on higher learning.

You guys, that is Omar Jimenez. You can see him on CNN. He's out there. He's doing his thing. He's wearing suits. Every time I would come in there, I would like have, like... He'd be dressed like that. This is how I would dress.

Omar would pass me. We'd talk. He'd be in a suit. Everybody would be all dressed up at CNN. And I'll be back on CNN, March 10th and 11th, wearing more sweats. They won't change me, Omar. Next time you come on, we need to have.

reveal. That's all I'm saying. Yes. Abby got me to do it the last time. My shit is growing back in. I'm in the ugly duckling stage, Omar. I would appreciate thoughts and prayers. Thank you for joining us on higher learning, my brother. Thank you. Of course. We have Toronto Burke coming on the podcast right now. We'll talk a little bit about Me Too movement,

the legacy of it, where it stands, where it goes. You know, some of the stuff that's going on. What has happened? What have been the wins? Okay. an activist extraordinary. And my friend, Toronto Burke, joins us next on higher learning.

This episode is brought to you by Sweet Green. The day doesn't ask for permission. Lunch window? Gone before you saw it coming. You deserve a break that actually satisfies. Sweet Green's new wraps have got you. Real ingredients? Zero shortcuts.

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spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Where are we right now in terms of the safety of the women that we share our community with? Of the understanding

of what it means to be responsible in terms of safety, in terms of advocacy for women. Now, we could ask this question and try to talk about it amongst our but we have a friend, Tarana Burke,

renowned activist from New York City, who started the Me Too movement. I'm big supporter, Rachel is not. And so we wanted to talk a little bit about where the Me Too movement is now, whether it still even exists,

and what the legacy of that upheed and social change that we saw in the mid to late 2010's means to the safety of not just women, but people everywhere in society. So Toronto Burke joins us today on Higher Learning. Thank you for joining this, sister. Let me ask you the first question.

Is the Me Too movement alive or is it dead? It's very much alive because it was alive before the viral hashtag. So it's not predicated on any type of, you know, media presence or things like that to be alive. So when people ask me, is the Me Too movement a lot? I know that's people who are thinking about, like, I see it in the news or things that. Me Too is about the work that we're doing in communities, the work that we're doing globally.

And it's really about the survivors, right, who are, who are, who's work, who we work on behalf of. I love that you've always said that it's a movement and not a moment, which I think is so powerful because I think it's within our human nature to we get, you know, we get all hyped up about something and then we forget about it and we move on to the next thing. And as you said, this has been, it's something that will keep going on and on and on. So where would you say the movement is now? Because I think we can point to some things that have happened very publicly recently that are directly a result of people having courage,

finding their voice because of the Me Too movement. Absolutely. I think what people forget is they look at these individual cases, but there are all these derivatives of things that wouldn't have happened, even a backlash, if not for that particular moment, right? And so there are all these threads that come from, even if you don't look at my work before 2017, that come directly because that moment.

happened in 2017. So there are the major cases, of course, right? There are all the people who either went to jail or who were convicted or who were called out. But then there are laws that were passed. There were policies that were changed. There's backlash that we are still dealing with because that happened. And so where we are now is those of us whose lives are dedicated to this. And it's not, obviously, it's not just us at MeToo international in our organization. There's a whole plus a lot of us across this field who are working to hold the line, really, right? Who are working to reverse some of those policies, who are working to change to change policies. There are also those of us who are working to shift culture, which is the real big, heavy lift, right,

to get people, to come into spaces like this, to talk to the everyday people to help and understand the language that we use, the way that we move and interact with each other and talk to each other. You talked a little bit about the backlash. I know that there's been some backlash in the Me Too movement. As a matter of fact, I actually saw some of this backlash first hand with Toronto one time. We went to a school. I'm not going to name a school.

Oh, that's a lot of got you with it. Yeah, I'm not going to name the school. I will, but go ahead. We went to a school and I came down there and we were trying to educate and talk a little bit about you know, safety from sexual violence and gender-based violence at this school. Mm-hmm. And they kind of got at us. In what way?

Based on what? Oh, it was, it was, so one of the very first things that I did when this was 2018, 2018, 2019, 2019, something like that, yeah. 2018, maybe, yeah, I think it was 2019, something early, right? Mm-hmm. We did a HBCU, so I got some money donated to me. me and I wanted to, I used to get invited to come to schools all the time. They were always white schools. And so when I went to, I had my people with like, can you get me to some HBCUs?

The HBCU said, we don't have money to bring you. So I was like, bet. I got some money donated. I was like, you don't have to pay me. I'm going to create my own HBCU tour. So I got, I got a bunch of my friends. I said, we're going to create a tour. We went to like seven HBCUs. I paid the HBCUs. Every school we went to, we gave them $10,000. We gave them, and, but in order to get to $10,000, they had to, like, sign an agreement. Now, the agreement said we will essentially do what the federal government says

we're supposed to do at a college to uphold, you know, sexual, you know, keep our students safe from sexual violence on the campus. So we get to this school in Florida. And we get to the school in Florida who we knew that knew we were coming. The other thing we did when we got to the campus is we had two conversations. We had brothers like Van come and talk to the brothers on campus. And we talked to the sisters on campus, right? It was a really lovely setup.

And then we would bring everybody together and have a joint conversation about safety, blah, blah. It was a great day until we had the joint conversation. And we was going to present them to check, the $10,000 check. And then this brother who worked on the campus, who was part of administration, dressed down, comes busting in the thing and cuts off the mic, tells us we got to get off the stage. And we were like, what is going on? And he just was like yelling at us from stage and, nah, no, no, we know.

I told y'all, we're not doing this. We're not signing no pledge. And he was really, his beef supposedly was that we asked on the sign the pledge in order to get the money. I just want to say everything in that pledge, in order to get federal money, every single school has to agree to these Title IX, and I think it's Title VI things in order to get federal money. All we did was state the things that are in an agreement from that. And then we added some things about black, like you want to take care of black children. you're going to take care of queer children. That's it.

They were so livid. But not only that, in front of an audience. Yeah. In front of everybody. In front of everybody. They cut our mics. They were yelling and screaming at us. But it made it even worse.

So we left. We got up the stage, right? Remember what happened when we were leaving? They followed. The woman, they followed us. The woman who was in charge. I was doing the women's sent to sexual violence, and when I had students followed us out.

It was like some real, it was wild. It was a wild scene. All of this because we're coming here to help protect the students and talk about sexual violence. And I would wonder, like, was the, I'm sure the answer's no, but was there any follow-up to understand, okay, you didn't want to sign it, but the purpose for us being here is to protect, well, is that at HBCU?

So black students and you don't have other people coming on to campus doing the same thing. I'm here coming for free, you know, to be a voice that y'all don't necessarily hear. And then this is how you treat it. What are you trying to push back on? What's the problem?

There was no follow-up on any of this. I'll tell you what I believe. I'll tell you what I believe. I'll tell you what I believe. And this is something I saw. They were embarrassed. And let me tell you why they were embarrassed. They were embarrassed because when we had the Q&A,

there were various members of the student body there who stood up and talked about the fact that there was an ongoing cultural problem at the school with how their concerns and their safety were being addressed and dealt with. with. And then this is something that I learned. There's a cloak of shame that exists over these issues in some places where people don't want to come to terms with the reality of these things because they feel like they make them look bad. And so when that was happening, after a while, what they didn't want is for there to be a thought that there was a issue on campus with this, which there are issues on campuses all over the country with sexual violence and gender-based violence. That's right. So they wanted everybody to shut up.

And then they didn't want everybody to sign that pledge. And I remember thinking, I'm going to be real with you. I was there. And I watched Toronto get turned up and I watched that whole thing. But I also was thinking, man, this activist shit is fucked. I remember thinking this is to come down there and really try to protect the women. and the men of that campus and then to have been treated like that,

I was thinking, man, how does she do this all the time? I'm going to be real with you. It highlights the issue. It's like right there, the very thing you're fighting. Well, you know what I'm going to highlights too? It's also, that's a microcosm of what we see inside of our community, right? It's that same shame. I get, the blowback I get from inside of the black community is some of the worst.

And the fact of the matter is I love black people. And I started this work for black folks. I do this work for black folks. I continue to do, and I will always do it for us. And because I love us, I put up with it, I push through it. But it's because of our shame, we think, I say this all the time. I used to get it so badly from black men. It's not as bad anymore.

But I've said from the beginning, there's no special depravity amongst black men, right? You have to put that aside the fact that black women have the second highest rate of sexual violence experience in this country. Right? That's something for us to unpack and talk about. It's not to demonize black men is to say we have to talk about why that is. But instead of talking about why that is, we let the shame take over us and say, you're trying to say black, you know, black men, something wrong, black men and black men.

No, brother, I'm not trying to say that. I'm trying to say these are two truths. Yeah. Two things are true. And we have to grapple with those two truths, right? Yes, black men have been haunted by being hypersexualized, have been haunted by a history of being falsely accused of sexual violence. That has happened alongside of black women being dogged by sexual violence in this country from the time of slavery, right? Those are two truths that we have to hold.

we have to grapple with and we have to unpack. That's what I'm concerned about. That's why I do this work. The fact that it benefits other races, other people, I'm okay with that. I'm here to, I want all survivors to benefit from this work. But at the core of what I do is for us. And the struggle, what we saw in Florida is just a microcosm of what I see every single day and why it's so hard to do this work because our folks,

don't want anything to do with it. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to deal with it because they, like, we got so many other things that do it. We got racism. This is racism. Yeah. Right?

Black women in this country have to deal with police violence, just like black men do. But we also have to deal with the fact that we deal with sexual violence at the hands of law enforcement too. Right? These are the realities of what sexual violence looks like, what racism looks like. what racism looks like in this country for us. It's not just, you know, a one, just a blanket thing, right?

And it's really hard for us to unpack that because it's hard for us to face that because of the shame. And part of what my work is is uncarefully, gingerly, with compassion, with empathy, with love, unpacking that for us and saying, we can deal with this, y'all. We can do hard things together. we don't, this is not a gender war, right? This is not something for us to fight about. This is for us to do as a family and unpacked.

Because if we don't, we can't get to the heart of this, to the worst of this. It's always just going to be sitting there. We can deal with on financial stuff, job. We have all of this stuff to deal with and we try to put sexual violence to the side like it's not a problem, but it's always going to be sitting in. So many questions I want to ask. This kind of piggybacks on what I was. was alluding to with we still see, I think you refer to it as a cultural shift when we saw

what happened with the Adult Survivors Act and how people were coming out at the last minute right before it was about to expire, particularly I'm referencing Cassie and how that really gave voice to so many other people speaking out in regards to Diddy. And this kind of piggybacks on what you're saying, but maybe how frustrating is it for you or Where do we go or what can we do when you see that protection in hip hop? When it comes to, you're shaking your head. I'll stop my question because I'll keep rambling. But yes, when you see how we still continue to protect celebrities, rappers,

whatever it may be in regards to sexual assault against our people. So let me tell you something. When Me Too first went viral and all the white women, came forward with their stories. I was inundated with stories from black women in Hollywood and music, so many whispers, so many DMs, so many calls. And they, not just they wouldn't come forward, they couldn't come forward, because they knew that folks would not protect them.

They knew that if they came forward with their stories of who harmed them and how they were harmed, that the community, that our folks would not embrace them in the same way that people had embraced these white women who came forward. And I don't even just mean the, you know, consumers like regular everyday black people, but that the media wouldn't come forward and embrace them, that they wouldn't get the same stories, they wouldn't get the same coverage. Y'all remember that when all the Weinstein people came forward and then Lupita came forward. Yeah. Right? And Lupita got the backlash. Yeah. When Aurora came forward and then what's that white lady's name?

That funny looking white lady who from HBO, I can't think her name. Which one? She made that story, the girls. Rose McGowan? No. Lena Dunham. No, she makes that. Oh, Lena Dunham.

Lena Dunham. Lena Dunham actually like poked holes in Aurora Parano News story. Yeah. Exactly. Right. She stood by her guy from girls. Exactly. So whenever, when.

never we saw black women try to come forward, right? So like Gabrielle Union could come forward because her story was a, was sort of a straightforward person who was raped by a stranger in a store, and she was young, and she'd gone to a court. So she came forward with her story, but it was not a story of a record producer, you know, somebody inside, one of these other kind of stories that we heard. So she was one of the few black women who could tell her story publicly. But even the black women I know who had been had stories of, you know, sexual violence that didn't happen at the end of hands were really fearful of coming forward to tell because they were so afraid that they would not receive the same support.

It goes back to what I'm saying about the issues we have inside of our community of talking about and embracing sexual violence, which is why it's taken so long in hip-hop. People like Cassie had to wait to, it was a fever pitch. Right? Same thing with R. Kelly. You had to wait until it was a fever pitch, right? And so it was so much evidence and the noise was so loud that people had no choice but to say, oh, wait a minute, you're right. We do. This person is a predator. And then even then you kind of push them out and make them like the single bad actor. It's just, that's just a bad actor. We've been screaming and yell about R. Kelly for like 20 years. And it took Mew R. Kelly and a documentary and da, da, da, da, da. And then people were like, well, yeah, maybe he is whatever. But there's a laundry list of folks. And so it's really difficult inside the black community, largely inside of our community to get people to say to, because we need heroes.

This is my thing about it, and this is my theory. I feel like it's so hard for us to abandon our heroes because our heroes get demonized so often. Right? We saw it around Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby was really, real. It's still hard for a lot of people. Like, it was hard for me.

What do you say to people who it's too hard for them that still listen to Bill Cosby, that still watch Bill Cosby, that still listen to Art Kelly? Like, what do you say to those people that it's too hard for them? I have a small amount of space, if I'm being for honest, right? Because I understand human nature. Like, R. Kelly turns me off. I hear the music, whatever. I'm just like, I can't do it.

Me person, Toronto, as an individual, I can't do it. I have a small amount of space for people who can because I get it. I get, when you hear step in the name of love and it just, it does something for you, it triggers a memory of a barbecue or whatever, and you can separate that it's not our Kelly, or you've been socialized so much. Think about how many of us have been socialized to cheese fast and all the rest of that. we have to be desocialized. We have to unpack all the stuff that we've learned about the, you know, to blame the girls and all the rest of that stuff, right?

I just want us to, there's a re-education and a re-socialization that has to happen before. I just don't tend to throw away any body. Like, it takes a while for me to throw away black folks. I might put you to the side now. I'm a long spoon you, but I'm not going to throw you away. Yeah. So I just know that I'm not, I don't, my judgment is slow. I know that why the person is doing it.

And so I get it. I just know that that person needs a little bit more. Now I'm going to put you in a box over there and I know that you need more. And I understand why they're doing it, especially a Bill Cosby. R. Kelly is like, come on, there's just too many other people. There's a lot more music out there. But like Bill Cosby was just a superhero for us. Yeah.

He was a father to so many people, right? So it was just too difficult to understand and to separate plus hospital from this serial rapist. It was just too difficult. I do the work. I'm in it every day. I'm an actual survivor myself. So it was instantaneous for me.

I saw it. I got it. And I was like, nah, he's out of here. So, but for other people, I understand, we need heroes. We want our heroes desperately. And so it's just really difficult to separate black heroes. You know what I mean? So I get it.

I really do understand, but I want us to love us more. I want us to love each other more than we do these imaginary things that we put in our heads. It's the same thing with our gym teachers and coaches and pastors. It's the same theory, right? These are the people who have made impacts, even small impacts in our lives. And we, black people are so oppressed, so marginalized. and so dumped on in this country that when somebody makes an impression

and the impact in our life, we hold on to every little bit of that. And it's really hard to disconnect from that even when they are bad and they do bad things. So it's just, it's just, but you got to have a lot of love for us to like,

to pick up with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, last question for me. and it is I'm going to ask you to culturally translate something

and tell us what it means because it's become a flashpoint phrase, slogan, whatever that I think a lot of people either misunderstand or willfully misconstrue. When I say the term, believe all women. No. I'm so glad you asked that

because that, first of all, that phrase does not come from me, or the Me Too movement. Okay. I do not subscribe to the phrase believe all women. That has been ascribed to me. I've never said it. I say believe survivors, and I don't even say believe all survivors, right?

I think that in the fervor of Me Too going viral, a lot of language got, you know, got pulled. pushed, you know, got pushed up and got popularized. As a black woman, I would never, in America, I would never say believe all women, ever. It's ridiculous. It's just ridiculous. I say, I think the phrase is actually believe survivors. And I'm so glad you gave me an opportunity to break this down and unpack it.

What we were saying in the beginning is believe survivors. The reason why we say believe survivors, and what that means is start from the premise that survivors are telling the truth. Because for years, when survivors came forward, we would not believe. And if you start with the premise that survivors are telling the truth, that means that you will investigate thoroughly, right? And you will start and you will give them the space that you give a person that you believe, right? That means that you will say, okay, if I believe you, then I'm going to take you seriously. I'm going to go through all the proper channels to make sure you get the resources that you need,

that you get the investigation you need. We didn't get that. If you don't believe me, you're going to dismiss me. You're going to try to undermine my story. You're going to try to bury me, right? All of those things. That's what you do for a person you don't believe. So when people say believe survivors,

it doesn't even mean diminish the other person and demonize the other person. It means take me seriously. believe me and take me seriously. That's what survivors are looking for when they say believe me. It doesn't, and I think when the people hear believe survivors and means, oh, so you're just going to say she's telling the truth and I'm not. No, I believe her, so I'm going to take her serious or them. I'm going to take that person seriously.

Now, believe all women is ridiculous. As a black woman in America, believe in all women means that I believe Emmett Till's white lady, right? I believe all these white women that try to undermine black men. I would never, ever say believe all women. It's just, it's racist. It's so fraught with so many, it's so problematic. So you can't find me saying that anywhere ever in the history of me being a public figure. And I've tried to unpack it for people, but they don't hear it because so many other people have said it and so many other public figures have said it and it's just taken off.

And I wish we could backtrack it and put it in its proper context because it doesn't make sense. Right? But I do want us to hear that we need to believe survivors. And it's not about gender either. Right? When a person comes forward and says they've been harmed, we should start from the premise that they are telling the truth and give them what they need. And what we need are resources and proper investigation. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you so much for breaking that down. Thank you so much for joining us here on higher learning. How can we keep up with what you're doing so we don't ask questions like, does the movement still exist? Yes. And how can we support everything you're doing? No, I'm just messing with you.

Well, let me say this. I forgot something. First, I need to shout out my CEO of Me Too International, Danny, who is, which I'll call your followers? Thought warriors. Thought warriors. She is a thought warrior. and she's going to kill me if I do not.

Shout out out to Danny, the thought warrior who watches y'all religiously. That's number one. Thank you, Dan. Number two, Me Too International is our organization. We are a global organization. We are, so people should follow us on social media at Me Too MVMT.

And, you know, that's a great start. You can follow me, but I don't really be, my social media is not really, popping. So you just follow me to. What else? What did you ask me? Oh, just how we can support what you're doing and where everyone can find me.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, we have, we just started our global network. So we are now, we have a global network of 133 organizations across Latin America, Caribbean, and Africa. And so that's really exciting. You know, I think people think about us as sort of small. We have a network across the U.S. And so we're doing really big things.

Our goal is to disrupt sexual violence everywhere it lives. We want to shift culture and disrupt sexual violence. We are about, you know, healing and action. And the other thing is we are about, on the healing side, people should visit survivor sanctuary. So we have a platform on our website, Me Too and VMT, for folks who are survivors who are looking for healing. Yeah, those are the things I'd like to just promote. Follow us on social media, visit Survivor Sanctuary, check us out, subscribe to our newsletter, just follow our work.

We got a lot of big work. We're not like an organization that promotes ourselves enough, I guess. So those are the ways you can keep up with what's going on. Yeah, we're out here doing big things, though. I'm going to say this and I'm going to let you go. So the brothers out there, the high-profile brothers, the brothers that have questions, do not be afraid of Toronto. You can ask her a hard question.

Don't be afraid to call Tarana and talk to her about the questions that you have even if it's something that you don't agree with, even if the way she communicates with you in such a real way about the way people really act It's so eye-opening.

Y'all just, you guys scared for no reason. I'm just being for real. Y'all scared for no reason. She is ten toes down about what she believes and who she's protecting and what's going on.

But at the same time, she a nigger. Like, she want to, like, she, like, I'm just being for real. Like, she, like, she is, that's my sister. I mean, like, you don't, we, we, like, we, we, like, we, like, we, we,

we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, I, We're on the phone and you're not being preached to. You're not being condescended to. Like, we're talking. Like, we're talking. And you come away with it going like, damn, man. You know, let's all get, anyway, just do not be afraid to, is not somebody looking to cancel you or looking to get you out the paint or just,

we just want to be better for everybody. That's the message. And it's all right there. Anyway, I'm not going to hold you too much longer, sister. I appreciate it. I appreciate you saying that. People don't know me, and so they don't get that.

And so I, you know, I get the church hugs and the what's up, or people don't talk to me at all. So I appreciate that, you know, it's all love. And you're certainly my niggas. Right. All right.

Thank you for joining us, sister. Thank you. I appreciate you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Rachel. I appreciate you. We're out of here. It's over.

No more podcast. It's a good podcast, though. It's a good podcast. It's good. Great guests. Thank you for joining us. Fantastic. We are,

there's some things that we might hold over and get into on Monday. Like, we want to talk about, you know, having sex with your, um, okay. With, with your boyfriend's dad, which is going on at Old Miss University, the school that my family started.

So, um, I never told you my family. Oh, maybe you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the white part of my family started. You did. I think you did. The ventraces. We also know a lot of people wanted us to talk about Jay Z and the dismissal of that case.

So we'll, we'll, we'll bring that back. I know it's old news, but we still. We were off when it happened, and the reality is the JZ case was dismissed. It was dismissed. I think a lot of people want to hear us talk about it. Yeah, we will definitely talk about it. The case was dismissed. And not only was the case dismissed, but it looks like action will be taken against Tony

Busby. Possibly. Because of frivolous lawsuits. And we should say that this was a frivolous lawsuit that was launched against JZ. We'll talk about it next week. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just saying we're talking about it next week. Take a thing else off, but do not stop learning.

I'm barely thinking. I'm Rachel and Lindsay. I'm not saying bye. I'm not saying I totally agree.