#RolandMartinUnfiltered - 3.26 RMU: Senate OKs $2T stimulus package; HBCUs impacted by outbreak; Coronavirus fact vs. fiction

Episode Date: March 29, 2020

3.26.20 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Senate OKs $2T stimulus package; HBCUs impacted by outbreak; Will the coronavirus outbreak hurt Black voter turnout? Fact Vs. Fiction: Coronavirus; In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, how are you handling anxiety? #RolandMartinUnfiltered is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a set game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save

up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Brought to you by AARP and the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. We'll be right back. Today is Thursday, March 26, 2020, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Why is a Florida congressman trashing Howard University for getting $13 million in the $2 trillion stimulus package?

We'll talk with the university president, Wayne Frederick, also about that, also about how HBCUs are responding to this crisis. Also, how could the virus impact black voter turnout in the primaries as well as in the November election? And, hmm, people keep thinking black people can't get coronavirus. A number of African Americans have died from it. We're still dispelling more myths floating around out there.

Also, folks, are you paying attention to your mental health? Things you need to know about coping with stress and anxiety in these trying times. Jam-packed show for you. It's time for us to keep it real, keep it black, and bring the funk on Roller Martin Unfiltered. Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the mess, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine

And when it breaks, he's right on time And it's rolling Best belief he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks He's rolling Yeah, yeah It's Uncle Roro, y'all

Yeah, yeah It's Uncle Roro, y'all It's Rollin' Martin Rollin' with Rollin' now He's funky, he's fresh, he's real The best you know, he's Rollin' Martin Now Martin Folks, as of today, there are 7,139 new cases of COVID-19. Pull the graphic up, please. In the United States, at least more.

First of all, we crossed the 1,000-point threshold. 1,119 patients have died. Again, the number of cases is 78,139. As I said, 1,119 people have died as a result of the coronavirus. It is overwhelming hospitals all across the country, from Atlanta to New York to Louisiana, especially in New Orleans. And so it is causing tremendous problems. Hospitals are in need of masks, of gowns as well. I was actually texting with a doctor earlier today and she talked about the struggles that many of these hospitals are having all across the country. And one of the things that she said to me about that was, just give me one second, I'm going to pull that up just to understand how significant this is.

She said it's bad at the hospitals. Really bad. We need face masks. I know some clinicians with a private practice, but they need face masks, too. Also, there are nurses and doctors afraid to go home, some of them sleeping in their cars. Today, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo talked about one of the country's most pressing needs. Ventilators, ventilators, ventilators. I didn't know what they were a few weeks ago. Besides the cursory knowledge, I know too much about ventilators now. We're still shopping for ventilators all across the country.

We need more. We have approved a technology that allows one ventilator to serve two patients, what they call splitting, which is where you add a second set of tubes to a ventilator to do two patients. It's not ideal, but we believe it's workable. We're also converting anesthesia machines to ventilators. We have a couple of thousand anesthesia machines in our hospitals, and we're converting them to work as ventilators. Why is there such a demand on ventilators, and where did this come from? It's a respiratory illness for a large number of people. So they all need ventilators. Also,

non-COVID patients are normally on ventilators for three to four days. COVID patients are on ventilators for 11 to 21 days. Think about that. So you don't have the same turnaround in the number of ventilators. If somebody's on a ventilator for three or four days, that's one level of ventilators you need. If somebody's on for 11 to 21 days, that's a totally different equation. And that's what we're dealing with. The high number of COVID patients and the long period of time that they actually need a ventilator. We're also working on equalizing and distributing the load of patients. Right now, the number of cases is highest downstate New York. So we're working on a collaboration where we distribute the load between downstate hospitals and upstate hospitals. And we're also working on increasing the capacity for upstate hospitals. Well, folks, California,

they now have more than 3,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases. New Orleans is quickly becoming a coronavirus epicenter in the U.S. as the outbreak there continues, but not just there as well. We're seeing an increasing number of cases taking place in Mississippi

where the governor, Tate Reeves, overrode decisions by local mayors. We discussed that yesterday with Moss Point, Mississippi Mayor Mario King, where they were closing down businesses with keeping people at distances. Well, he chose to nearly grant every business in Mississippi. Listen to this. Tate Reeves basically said nearly every business in the state is an essential business. Yet the cases in Mississippi are increasing as we continue. A few moments ago, of course, first is still going on right now at the White House. They have their daily news conference, of course, where they're giving their Corona virus update.

Trump has already talked. He said a whole bunch of nonsense, especially even criticizing governors. Just to show you how crass and simple it is. But right now, Vice President Mike Pence is talking. Let's see what he has to say. I'm prepared to introduce Dr. Birx to talk about the data that we're monitoring on a regular basis and Dr. Fauci to talk about mitigation. Let me conclude by saying how inspiring it is to see the way America and the american people are responding to this moment we all were awakened this morning with uh record unemployment numbers all right folks okay he's just saying the same old same though so when fauci uh dr burke's actually come to the microphone we'll take them because frankly we don't want to hear the same

nonsense uh just all slapping uh on the back and the praise. And no, we actually want to hear facts and want to hear from the actual experts. And so we're not wasting our time playing any of that nonsense that he just said there. But it was a few moments ago, Trump was speaking. And again, here's an example of just how silly and trifling of a man that we have. There's a brother who was a reporter for Bloomberg. And this is how this child of a man operates. Check this out. Hey, you. Did you speak with me? I'm with Bloomberg.

Yeah. Bloomberg is Mario Park. How's Michael doing? Good? Mr. on Monday. Who are you with? Did you speak with me? I mean, how is Michael doing? I mean, again, he's always trying to rub something in somebody's face. That's what he does.

Now, of course, he also talked about the stimulus bill, the impact it is going to have. There's been all kind of discussion about that as well. And so I want to talk about that. It was a portion of $2 trillion passed by the United States Senate senate last night uh the house is gonna be taking up as well they expected it to pass on friday steny hoyer the number two official democrat in the house has already told members if they're self-quarantined do not travel to dc because it is expected to pass by a big number uh here is speaker nancy pelosi today talking about that particular bill. Last night, as you know, the Senate passed important legislation. We're very proud of the product.

We think it is, we did jujitsu on it, that it went from a corporate first proposal that the Republicans put forth in the Senate to a workers first, Democratic workers first legislation. This is a pandemic that we haven't even seen since for over 100 years in our country. It's really such a tragedy. So we had to take important action. We had to take action, though, that puts families first and workers first. And that's what we did when we did our first legislation. The first two bills were about addressing the emergency directly. $8.3 billion for research, for vaccine, for a cure. And that's, of course, the light at the end of the tunnel. But funding for testing, testing, testing, very important so that we know we can take inventory of the challenge that we face. And more importantly, that we can address each family's concerns about this.

The next bill was about masks, masks, masks, so that we can test, test, test, among other things. Emergency. test, test, among other things, emergency. The bill that was passed in the Senate last night and that we will take up tomorrow is about mitigation, mitigation for all the loss that we have in our economy while still addressing the emergency health needs that we have in our country. Again, I'm Speaker Nancy Pelosi. As I said, the House is expected to take up this bill tomorrow.

And, Stephanie Hoyer, the majority has already been telling members that, look, it is going to pass by huge numbers. And so if there's self-quarantine, no need to actually travel into the United States. Dr. Birx is now speaking at the White House. Let's hear what she has to say, please. It increased when you look at Wayne County in Michigan and you look at Cook County in Chicago. So we have integrated all of our information to not only look at where the cases are today, but how they're moving so we can alert FEMA to where we think the next potential hotspot is. All of the counties that I've mentioned, the hotspots are in urban areas or in the communities that serve that urban area.

And I think that's something very important to remember as we move forward. Because of the innovations within our private sector, we continue to have these new platforms added for laboratory testing. And these become critical platforms for states that have very low rates and very low rates needed to test. Why is that important? Some of these machines have wells and plastic plates that in order to be effective, you have to put on about almost 96 samples. And others are made for four samples or 24 samples at a time. So what's critical for us to be able to do is to match the need to the county and state. And that's the role that we can provide advice on because we get to see across the

whole country and where those items are needed most. And so this is allowing us to adapt and adopt really allocation of tests or recommendations to state of what piece of equipment they may need. Of the 550,000 tests, you can do the math, but we're still running somewhere about 14% overall. That means 86% of the people with significant symptoms, because remember you had to have a fever and symptoms to get tested at this point. So still 86% are negative. These are really important facts for the American people. I'm sure many of you saw the recent report out of the U.K. about them adjusting completely their needs.

This is really quite important. If you remember, that was the report that said there would be 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They've adjusted that number in the U.K. to 20,000 deaths in the UK and 2.2 million deaths in the United States. They've adjusted that number in the UK to 20,000. So half a million to 20,000. We're looking into this in great detail to understand that adjustment. I'm going to say something that's a little bit complicated, but I'm going to try to do it in a way that we can all understand it together. In the model, either you have to have a large group of people who are asymptomatic,

who have never presented for any test, in order to have the kind of numbers that were predicted, to get to 60 million people infected or of 6 million people infected. You have to have a large group of asymptomatic because in no country to date have we seen an attack rate over one in a thousand. So either we're only measuring the tip of the iceberg of the symptomatic cases and underneath it are a large group of people.

So we're working very hard to get that antibody test because that's a good way to figure out who are all these people under here and do they exist. Or we have the transmission completely wrong. So these are the things we're looking at because the predictions of the models don't match the reality on the ground in either China, South Korea, or Italy. We are about five times the size of Italy. So if we were Italy and you did all those divisions, Italy should have close to 400,000 deaths. They're not close to achieving that. So these are the kinds of things we're trying to understand. Models are models. We're adapting now to the re... There's enough data now of the real experience

with the coronavirus on the ground to really make these predictions much more sound. So when people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it's very scary. But we don't have data that matches that based on the experience. And then finally, the situation about ventilators. We were reassured... So she's talking about ventilators. But we don't have data that matches that based on the experience. So she's talking about ventilators. That was what Andrew Cuomo talked about.

and there's still significant over 1,000 or 2,000 ventilators of people around the world, to wake up this morning and look at people talking about creating DNR situations. Do not resuscitate situations for patients. There is no situation in the United States right now that warrants that kind of discussion. You can be thinking about it in a hospital. Certainly many be thinking about it in a hospital, certainly many hospitals talk about this on a daily basis, but to say that to the American people, to make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it's

not going to be there, or when they need that ventilator it's not going to be there, we don't have an evidence of that right now. And it's our job collectively to assure the American people that it's our job collectively to assure the American people that it's our collective job to make sure that doesn't happen. Right now, you can see these state these cases are concentrated in highly urban areas. There are other parts of the states that have lots

of ventilators and other parts of New York State that don't have any infections right now. So we can be creative. We can meet the need by being responsive. But there's no model right now. I mean, no reality on the ground where we can see that 60 to 70 percent of Americans are going to get infected in the next 8 to 12 weeks.

I just want to be clear about that. So we're adapting to the reality on the ground. We're looking at the models of how they can inform, but we also are learning very clearly from South Korea and from Italy and from Spain. Just a final, because I know many of you will look up my numbers, the only people who are over really one in a thousand cases are people that have very small populations like Monaco and Liechtenstein. So you will see a different number coming from when your population is really tiny. One case can put you over 1 to 1,000 or 2 to 1,000.

Thank you. Good. We'll do questions in a moment. All right, folks. Oh, actually, I thought Dr. Fauci actually spoke a little bit earlier. He actually is now speaking. Now let's go back. On a couple of media interactions regarding the interventions that we're talking about. And it's important because it's about something that I said yesterday about what we would likely see.

Whenever you put the clamps down and shut things down, you do it for two reasons. You do it to prevent the further spread, as we call mitigation, but you also do it to buy yourself time to get better prepared for what might be a rebound. It may be a rebound that we get things really under control, and then you pull back, which ultimately we're going to have to do. Everybody in the world is going to have to do that. You're either going to get a rebound or it might cycle into the next season. So what are we going to do to prepare ourselves for that? One of the most important things is one that I mentioned several times from this podium, and that is to clarify a bit about the timeline for vaccines. And would that have any real impact on what we would call a rebound or what we would call a

cycling in the season. Certainly, for sure, a vaccine is not going to help us now, next month, the month after. But as I mentioned to you, we went into a phase one trial. And I keep referring to one vaccine. There's more than one. There's a couple of handfuls of vaccines at different stages of development. But they're all following the same course. And the course is you first go in to a phase one trial to see if it's safe, and you have very few people, 45 people within a certain age group, all healthy, none at really any great risk of getting infected. The reason you do that, because you want to make sure that it's safe. Then the next thing you do, and that takes about three months, easily, maybe

more. So that's going to bring us into the beginning or middle of the summer. Then you go to a phase two trial, or what we say two, three, which means we're going to put a lot of people in there. Now, we hope that there aren't a lot of people getting infected, but it is likely there will be somewhere in the world where that's going on. So it's likely that we will get what's called an efficacy signal, and we will know whether or not it actually works. If, in fact, it does, we hope to rush it to be able to have some impact on recycling in the next season. And like I said, that could be a year to a year and a half. I'm not changing any of the dates that I mentioned. But one of the things that we are going to do that you need to understand that has been a stumbling block for previous development of vaccines, and that is even before you know something works, at risk,

you have to start producing it. Because once you know it works, you can't say, great, it works. Now, give me another six months to produce it. So we're working with a variety of companies to take that risk. We didn't take it with Zika. That's why, you know, we have a nice Zika vaccine, but we don't have enough to do it because there's no Zika around. Same with SARS. So that's one of the things we're really going to push on, is to be able to have it ready if, in fact, it works. Now, the issue of safety, something that I want to make sure the American public understand, it's not only safety when you inject somebody and they get maybe an idiosyncratic reaction, they get a little allergic reaction,

they get pain. There's safety associated. Does the vaccine make you worse? And there are diseases in which you vaccinate someone. They get infected with what you're trying to protect them with, and you actually enhance the infection. You can get a good feel for that in animal models. So that's going to be interspersed at the same time that we're testing. We're going to try and make sure we don't have enhancement. So the worst possible thing you could do is vaccinate somebody to prevent infection and actually make them worse. Next and finally, with regard, I'll get you to your question. Finally, with regard to therapies, I mean, we keep getting asked about therapies.

There's a whole menu of therapies that are going into clinical trial. As I've told you all, and I'll repeat it again, the best way to get the best drug as quickly as possible is to do a randomized controlled trial so that you know, is it safe and is it effective? If it's not effective, get it off the board and go to the next thing. If it is effective, get it out to the people that need it. So you're going to be hearing over the next month or more about different drugs that are going to go into these randomized controlled trials. And I feel confident, knowing about what this virus is and what we can do with it, that we will have some sort of therapy that give at least a

partial, if not a very good, protection in preventing progression of disease. And we'll be back here talking about that a lot, I'm sure. Thank you. The Press Thank you. Tony, you can take a question. The Press If I could just get back to what you're

saying about this idea of risk in drug manufacture. Are you saying that at some point in the phase two trials, that if you're seeing some form of efficacy, that you may try to convince a laboratory to spool up production at that point so that there's a risk? The President Even before. Even before. When I go into phase two, I'm going to find somebody that you may try to convince a laboratory to school up production at that point? Even before. Even before. When I go into phase two, I'm going to find somebody that's going to make it. Partially the federal government, I think in some respects to de-risk it,

but also investments by the companies. A lot of companies are not shy now about doing that. Usually when you do that at risk, John, you got to give some backup for them. And we've done that. We've put hundreds of millions of dollars into companies to try and make vaccines. I wouldn't hesitate to do that for a moment now. The Presser 2. Have you heard any conversations about that

on the county issue? The Presser 3. You talk about having low-risk, medium-risk, and high-risk counties. The Press 3. The Press 3. Yeah, I wrote for Dr. Birx. But there's no domestic travel restrictions.

What's to prevent somebody from a high-risk county going to a low-risk county? Don't you risk creating a patchwork system, allowing more cases to slip through the cracks and the virus to spread in other areas of the country? Ms. I think this is a very important concept, and it's why we've really worked on messaging to the American people about these 15 days to stop the spread.

Because part of this will be the need to have highly responsible behavior between counties. And I think the American people can understand that, that they will understand where the virus is, because we'll have the testing data, and where it isn't, and make sure that they're taking appropriate precautions as they move in and out of spaces. I think this will be critical for our future as we work together to

really understand where the virus is and where it isn't in real time. Dr. Birx, can I just follow up on sort of your modeling? Everyone's talking about this Neil Ferguson study out of Imperial and how the modelings change. You last week said, or it was on Monday, that you talked about a serology test, something promising coming out of Singapore. Where are we on a serology test? The President said very quickly. And then, is that what you need to do, some sort of community survey,

so you can get to some of these X and Zs, so you can figure this all out? Ms. So, we're talking to CDC right now. They are extraordinary in outbreaks and contact tracing. So, they are going in outbreaks and contact tracing so they are going to be the workforce behind any new strategy that looks at counties that need to completely move into containment and surveillance and contact tracing but part of what they're looking at now is where are these antibody assays to be

clear there is antibody assays available right now, but they're by ELISA. And what we're trying to do is not just do ELISA's, because they can use that now, but to be able to have point-of-care rapid diagnostics like we have with HIV, where you just get a drop of blood, you put it on a little cassette, and it tells you if you're positive or negative. So that's what companies are working on. That's the IgG to measure. Yes, correct. That's the IgG to measure. Now, remember, that's what companies are working on. The Presser 2, Is that the IGG that I'm talking about? Ms. Yes, correct. That's the IGG to measure.

Now, remember, that's not going to be helpful in diagnosis. That's going to be helpful for us to know how many asymptomatic cases there are that or were. The Presser 2, How close are we to figuring out what the asymptomatic rates are? Because that seems to be the big question here, how aware we are on the iceberg.

Ms. It is a big question. It is a very big question. And so we have people, the FDA is working on that around the clock. They do have applications that are coming in. We put out a call for applications. I've been talking about it from this podium. If you have an IgG assay, rapid test, not an ELISA.

I mean, you could do the ELISA today because the SARS, the original SARS antigens. All right, folks, let's talk about the impact on the economy. Unemployment claims have skyrocketed, more than three million as a result of the coronavirus. That is a huge part of that $2 trillion stimulus bill. Joining us right now is Benjia Agyelore, senior economist at the Center for American Progress.

Glad to have you, Benjia. First and foremost, this bill that was passed. We heard lots of people talking about it's filled with stuff for corporations, $500 billion. Let's do it with small businesses. Small businesses is the engine that drives America. Are small businesses actually being helped

in this $2 trillion bill? So there's a provision, about $350 billion, that's going to go directly to small businesses and that's supposed to help them um there could be more and it could be more stuff that could help out small businesses but there is something in that two trillion dollar bill to help out small businesses so 350 billion going to small businesses what's the 500 billion going to major corporations so that's for industries and try to help them out. So you think about the airline industry, cruise industry, hotel industries.

One of the things about the original Senate bill is that it was a no-strings-attacked, a lot of people like to call it a slush fund, but the Democrats had pushed to make sure that there was some sort of independent oversight over where that money's going to go. But that was stuck in the bill. And so, okay, so we have that. Break this bill apart. You talk about $2 trillion. So that's $500 billion going to industries, $350 billion going to small businesses. That's $850 billion. All right. So let's talk about the other $1,150,000,000.

So what is the other things that's outside of businesses is looking at workers and families. So one of the biggest things is direct payment assistance. So that's $1,200 that goes to every individual and then $500 for any dependents or any children that you have. So that's something that kind of help like provide a base for individuals

for when they go through a layoff. Then the other important thing is unemployment insurance. One of the things that's supposed to happen when you have a recession is that unemployment insurance kicks in and to help tide people over to kind of ease their burden. Now, over the last couple of years, about since the great recession,

the unemployment insurance has become more restrictive. Less people are eligible for it. The amount of money given to people has gone down. And so what this bill, one of the good things that this bill does is that it shores up, it strengthens and expands unemployment insurance. And it adds also what's called pandemic unemployment insurance. So people who lose their jobs specifically because of the COVID-19 virus are going to get help. And so people who are, say, like gig workers, self-employed, that's going to help those people out. And then we also have another factor

called short-term compensation. So people who don't lose their job but have their hours reduced, who were normally not eligible for unemployment insurance, are now going to get some benefits to help tide them over. That's going to help us weather the storm. When you had all this nonsense that was being said by various people,

Lindsey Graham and others, they were complaining about people who are gonna make more money on... um, on, uh, unemployment. And it was strange listening to the logic of Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham talk about that. It just didn't make much sense to me. I'm trying to find this clip I posted earlier

from Tim Scott talking about that. The only black Republican, obviously, in the United States Senate. And it was just, again, it's sort of weird to me that here you have a bill and you're trying to help people and they're complaining by saying, well, because somebody might get a few extra hundred dollars one time that, oh my God, let's shut this whole thing down.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. You know, that was strange to me. It was strange. Now, granted, they finally backed off. Scott backed off. Graham backed off. Both still voted for the bill. In fact, here's a soundbite. Go to my iPad, Henry. As fast as possible. I am in support of the legislation. This drafting error made me pause for a moment. The key to understanding the drafting error is kind of simple. We cannot encourage people to make more money in unemployment than they do in employment. As an example, in South Carolina, the average unemployment or the maximum unemployment is

about $326 a week. The way we understand the legislation, the $326 on top of that would be $600 a week. Said differently, someone can make about $926 a week. The way that the legislation is written, the person who makes less than that would make that anyways. So you would be able, a person who makes $20 an hour times four, $800 a week, could get about half of their income up to $3.26 for South Carolina. And then on top of that, they would get an additional $600. So the legislation doesn't envision the ability to have someone pick $10 an hour or $15 an hour or $20 an hour, getting a maximum of 100% of their income. This legislation would not stop at 100% of your income. This legislation would allow you in unemployment to make more than you do in employment.

We know that that is a drafting error, and we are simply providing an amendment to fix that so that you do not make more in unemployment than you do when you're working. Well, Benja, one of the problems here is that, like in South Carolina, folks are being underpaid. You're Republicans who have been at against $15 an hour. And so to stand there and to hear them whine about this when you when you're literally setting aside $500 billion for cruise industries that are not based here in the United States, for airline industries, and for companies that engage in stock buybacks who are sitting on tons of cash.

So you used the word before the clip, weird and strange. I would use the word offensive. Because what you're saying is that people don't want to work and they'd rather be unemployment. And it goes into this whole trope about people who are poor, which is, it's just offensive. And so the problem is, this is not a drafting error. This is, and this also misunderstands the whole problem

and why we have this crisis. This is a public health crisis. To stop the spread of this virus, people have to stay home, which means they can't go to work. If they can't go to work and can't earn, what are they going to do? So this is what this whole purpose of that extra $600 is specifically for people who lose their jobs because of this virus. And people are staying home so that we don't spread and that we don't kill other people. And so the whole purpose is this is not a drafting error. This is something to get people to stay home like they should. And then that way we're able to combat this virus.

And so what that $600 does is that helps people to continue paying their bills, pay their mortgage or utilities, take care of that stuff. And then once this public health crisis ends, they get to go back to work because people don't want to go back to work. And the other thing is what they're saying is that, oh, these people are going to want to make more money

on unemployment, so they're not going to want to work. If you quit your job, you don't get any unemployment insurance, so it's moot. So it was just the fact that this came up and it became a talking point throughout yesterday was just really upsetting and offensive. Anything else in this bill that, first of all, let's talk about the education piece. Again, you had Republican Matt Goetz bitching and moaning about Howard University getting $13 million. But there are dollars in here for a number of education institutions. Right. So, I mean, funny thing about Representative Goetz that he picked out on Howard is that Gallaudet University also got it.

And he didn't mention anything. Yep, yep. I tweeted that last night. He didn't respond to that at all. And Gallaudet is one of the other universities that's chartered by the federal government. Right. And the thing about Howard is that it has a hospital, and it's actually, they've taken care

of COVID-19 patients, so that's where that money goes to. We're also talking about $13 million. That's chump change. We're talking about $2 trillion. And you're going to pick out one institution and focus on them, as opposed to any of the other kind of the slush fund. And so it's just kind of ridiculous. But what's important is that, you know, you think about distance learning and that how some people are, don't have the access to broadband, don't have the access to do distance learning, but yet everyone has to go home,

stay home, and still do school. And so some of that money is going to help with that and help get people to be able to continue telework, maybe even telemedicine, or even distance learning education. So all that money is very important. And there's still more that needs to be done. So hopefully the House will pass this tomorrow, get the money into the economy, get money to help people out, also to help combat this public health crisis, but there's more that we can do. Last thing, is there anything else in this bill that people need to be aware of

that you think is really good for the everyday person who's watching us? I think the important thing is, what I like about this bill is that it's not one silver bullet. That, you know, they talked about there's a big discussion about those payments. So the $1,200, everyone said that's not enough. And it's right. It isn't enough.

But you put that on top of the unemployment insurance. You have the short-term compensation program. You have the pandemic unemployment assistance. And so you add all that together, you have the $350 billion to real small businesses that help out with loans and grants. They can take care of things because they're losing out because of this public health crisis. And so a lot of the stuff we need to talk about in our policy discussions can't be either or. It has to be both and. And so keep doing more, keep putting stuff on top and helping out workers and small businesses. All right, then. Benja Ajilore, senior economist at the Center for American Progress. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, folks, let's go to our pound.

Dr. Greg Carr, he's the chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies, Howard University. He's got a couple of books in his library. And Recy Colbert, Black Women's Views. Glad to have both of you here. Is Erica there? Let me know if she's there. Is she there? Okay, got it. Okay. So I want to start with you first, Greg.

It's very interesting when you look at all the conversation around this bill. And this is also why it's important to have black economists and to have shows that put folks out there because, again, I've been the since this whole thing started you ain't seeing black economists black doctors black nurses you ain't seeing none of that that's why that's why we're here but to hear that breakdown greg to have an economist to talk about why this bill is important just your thoughts brother as you said this is the space for black people

to get their news. You had one of my former students on yesterday, a very important Fatou Sal. You got a direct black report from Italy. That's exactly right. And so again, support Roland Martin unfiltered. But Brother Adjilori really broke it down. Unfortunately, with Senator Scott, the drafting era is his time in the United States Senate, brother, because you're right. They pay such a low wage in South Carolina, which was Bernie Sanders' point the other day, that it looks like $600 is a lot of money. But as he said, let's just go through the numbers. The average American worker makes about $1,000 a month.

If my colleague Bill Spriggs were here, you've had him on many times. I anticipate you're going to have him on again talking about this. You know, it's about $1,000 a month. Unemployment runs about 40% to 45% of that if you're on unemployment. You can run for as long as 26 weeks. Let's run the numbers. In Alabama, you can get only up to $275 a week in unemployment. In California, $450.

In New Jersey, $713. So when you add $600 to these numbers, ultimately that means in Alabama, you're getting far less. Now you have other provisions. If you are living in a federally owned facility or federally financed facility, in other words, if you're fearing that you're going to get put out because you can't pay your rent, if the feds hold the mortgage, there's something in the bill that says they cannot evict you. That's very important. If you owe a student loan, they suspended those payments and they suspended interest accruing. That's very important. If you're if you're thinking you're going to get loan forgiveness because you're involved in public service,

they have said that while they're suspending your payments, they're going to still count the months that you're not paying toward that forgiveness. That's important. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Val Demings did, I think, a very good job in terms of tweeting some of this stuff out earlier. But in terms of the black perspective and where this really comes together, I think what we heard from our brother, Ajilori, is very important. These states are wildly unequal in terms of the things that they provide to their citizens. When you see this fool Tate Reeves in Mississippi, I'm reminded of something a man you've had on this show many times, Adam Server for The Atlantic. He says, you know,

white supremacy is a suicide pact. This man is going to take a whole state down for him. And meanwhile, the governor of Florida is saying, if you come from New York, we're going want to be in competition with other states trying to outbid them for ventilators. And he said, when this thing breaks and passes us, we're gonna send some of these ventilators to the other states that need them. Meanwhile, the White House with their daily Trump rallies is sending mixed messages and increasingly the public

led by the media that's not under the thrall of Trump is beginning to turn away from the White House and towards state and state and local government. Bracey, when you look at these responses, when you when you hear Dr. Burke say, oh, we don't have a shortage and they keep saying what they hear from on the ground. I'm sorry. I'm looking at videos of nurses and doctors talking about the difficulties they're having. I mean, I was engaging with a doctor earlier who was talking about the problems when it comes to masks, things along those lines. In fact, I'm going to play a video in a moment where Jamal Bryant, their church had gotten some 1,000 coronavirus tests, but they had to partner with the hospital. They couldn't find anybody to partner with.

Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, at this point, Dr. Briggs is simply a propagandist. I don't think that she's trustworthy with looking at things that she's saying. I mean, she's talking about this rosy scenario that involves testing that on a level that we're clearly not doing. The restrictions on who gets tested is so, so restricted that we can't even trust that we have any kind of pulse on how many people are truly infected. She's touting the fact

that 86% of the people that are tested are testing negative. Okay, but you're testing such a small portion of people. New York is doing the most testing throughout the country, and we see astronomical numbers coming out of New York. California is doing such a small fraction of the testing, and yet they are still seeing increases in their infections. People have said New Orleans is the new epicenter of the outbreak. And so I just don't trust what Dr. Birx is saying. And I really hate to say that, but she's just I just don't consider her trustworthy because she's talking about scenarios in other countries where they have places like Italy, who has done extreme social distancing, who has locked down the country completely,

and they are on people's ass about staying at home. And meanwhile, we have Trump talking about a beautiful Easter with packed churches, and we have this disparate responses between different governors, these red state governors that are like Mississippi, the governor who is overriding local ordinances and things like that. And so I just, I don't trust what she's saying. And what's really frustrating actually is seeing

the to me, the increasing disconnects we're seeing from even what some of the governors are saying. Reverend McCormick today in his press conference said that they have enough PPE for now. And yet what we're seeing from actual reports from hospitals is a completely different picture. And so at this point, it's hard to understand who to trust, what to trust, or should we trust the things that we're seeing on social media, the direct reports from the hospitals? Should we trust what the governors are saying? We definitely shouldn't trust what the Trump administration is saying, but the cases are growing, the mortality is growing, and I'm just at a loss as to

what is actually really happening. All right, folks, one of the issues that we've been, we were just talking about, this $2 trillion stimulus bill and the amount of money that's in it for educational institutions. HBCUs, like many universities and colleges, have been greatly impacted

as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Universities have shut down. My niece, who's a freshman, had to pack her up, move her out of her dorm. She's back home in Houston. And so how are they faring? You also, of course, know about Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida, who's been getting his ass kicked on social media because he dared have the audacity to question why Howard University was getting $13 million in the bill that was passed by the Senate last night. Go to

my iPad, Henry. This is what he tweeted. $13 million in taxpayer funds could be going to families across the nation struggling to put food on the table in the midst of COVID-19. Instead, it's going to Howard University. Education is important, but a $13 million check to Howard does not belong in COVID-19 relief. Now, of course, he's talked about in here, in the bill, it says for an additional amount for Howard University, $13 million

to remain available through September 30th, 2021 to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus domestically or internationally, including to help defray the expenses directly caused by coronavirus and to enable grants to students for expenses directly related to coronavirus and the disruption of university operations,

provided that such amount is designated by Congress as being for an emergency requirement pursuant to Section 251, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Joining us right now is Wayne A.I. Frederick, who is the Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, who is the president of Howard University. He's also a medical doctor. Dr. Frederick, glad to have you here. All right. Thanks for having me. All right. So for the folks out there, first of all, folks have been kicking Matt Gaetz's butt. Congresswoman, excuse me, Senator Kamala Harris, a Howard University graduate, she fired back at him. I hit him back by saying he said nothing to Gallaudet University, which is a university for the deaf here in D.C. They also are getting funds in here, but he chose to single out Howard University.

So explain to people out there why Howard is getting the $13 million. What could it be used for? Is it used for university operations or the hospital? Go right ahead. Sure. So a couple of things. One is that Howard and Gallaudet are two non-military institutions that are in the federal budget. And so there's a separate line item in the appropriations that goes to both institutions. Both universities federally chartered under President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. And Howard in 1867.

Yes, go ahead. Signed by President Johnson, ironically the first president to be impeached. But the point was that when those institutions were when both institutions were founded and supported by congress as we go forward into the 1920s where the congressional act that started that that funding when there's a bill like this we do not participate in title three funds at howard as the other hbUs do. So in order to make sure that whatever unusual expenses we may have in an emergency like this, you actually have to write a line item or

else Howard would not participate. That's one. Two, the return on investment the country has been getting from a Howard University is critical. And especially in this particular crisis, Howard University is responsible for sending more African-Americans to medical school than any single institution in this country. And then when you talk about the research side, as you look for a vaccine, you talk about the neighborhoods that will be disproportionately affected. And you talk about the economists, you talk about the sociologists in this country, where they're coming from, where those PhD folks are going to come from. Howard is at the forefront of doing that. 49% of my students are Pell Grants eligible, although we have a private institution.

And so this displacement that has occurred as a result of this pandemic will adversely affect them and their families. The chance that these students will be able to come back is going to be adversely affected. And yes, we do want a hospital, which is a division of the university. So it means that when I look at the entire enterprise that I'm running, I have to make decisions between resources that go to the university as opposed to the hospital. We have four COVID positive patients that we have admitted to the hospital today. We have five in-house

that are suspicious, meaning that we've tested them, but we don't have results back. And so those numbers are going to begin to grow. We're not even on that upswing yet, as you see in New York. So those resources come out of everything that we do for our students and the entire population and our faculty and staff as well. So it is a complicated situation. I'm not sure everybody understood that Howard does not participate in the $1.05 billion part of that bill that was assigned for HBCUs and MSIs. But also, again, so explain to people also the role that Howard University, the hospital is playing in D.C.

One, it's a trauma center, but also explain to people the role it's playing when it comes to COVID-19. It's a level one trauma center. We are a COVID-19 institution in terms of providing acute care. And we are beginning to see people coming in with symptoms. So we have to rule those people out. And you have to remember, until you know whether or not somebody is positive, you have to treat them like they're positive when they come in with a pneumonia. You know, we had a gentleman come in recently as well who basically had symptoms of a bilateral pneumonia, was tested positive for COVID at another institution, was told to go home, and worsened and came into the ED. We have to, all of those patients,

you're using medical equipment to guard against your employees getting ill. And so it is a significant amount of resources that have to go into this. I think one of the things that people keep missing here is that this is a very highly contagious virus. And so you have to take that much more precaution as you interact with these patients, even if you just suspect. And then also we have to make sure that our healthcare workers on the front line do not contract this disease. Because once we start losing people on the front line you then have really stretched resources we've been talking about ventilators and all of those things for some time but the reality is everybody that you put on a ventilator you now need a respiratory therapist

to help you manage that ventilator doctors and nurses while they may understand the settings and can change the settings on a ventilator they are also doing so many other things in giving the care to that patient. You need respiratory therapists. And so all of those things, all of these areas that I think are being overlooked in terms of our healthcare system, and quite frankly, Howard has been a pipeline for that. If you look at all the African-American physicians

in this country, Howard still is responsible for training more African-American physicians in the history of medicine in this country than any other institution. Just want to be clear. You said that there are four positive coronavirus patients at Howard University Hospital. That's correct.

Last question for you, Dr. Frederick. Actually, a couple more. First, how has this virus impacted university? Obviously, classes have been canceled. Are they canceled for the, excuse me, not canceled, have you gone to online for the rest of the semester, meaning students will not be returning to Howard University for the spring semester? That's correct. We are completely online. They will not be returning for the rest of the spring semester. At some point, we'll also have to assess the summer session. But it has affected everyone significantly. You have faculty who were teaching courses face-to-face, and they had to quickly adapt to online. And I'm

very grateful for the faculty that we have because they've done a great job of doing that, of making that switch. Administration staff as well has really supported us getting that done. The students are significantly affected. You have students in different time zones. So you may have a student in Nigeria who is taking a class at a very odd hour and is getting up at a very odd hour. So all of those things are inconveniences. We had to also mobilize funds to get students who were displaced to get them home, buy them plane tickets in some cases, gas cards. And we still had to house some students who could not get home.

And so we're paying those leases for some of those students to stay at a place in Maryland. So there's several things that are infected. We have research that's been taking place. We can't draw down on those dollars. So that's going to be a major revenue hit on the university as well. And we are finalizing a policy around providing refunds to students, and appropriately so, for room and board that charges they incurred. So that's revenue that we're going to give back to the students. So all of those things are going to affect us on the bottom line. And then there's the psychological impact. A lot of these students did not plan for having this as well, and nor did

the faculty. You have faculty with responsibilities at home in terms of child care, et cetera, who are trying to teach, but at the same time trying to homeschool and provide and take care of their family. And then we do have members who actually have now lost a family member to the COVID epidemic, pandemic as well. And so there's a lot of impact, I think. And I think in the long term, as the economy begins to deteriorate further, you're gonna see even more impact.

And usually that in fact impacts the lower part of the socioeconomic bracket. And when you have 49 percent program students, we know we're going to have retention issues. We're going to have issues with students who want to come back. And when you look at the entire landscape of the HBCUs, we all are going to be affected, especially the smaller HBCUs. So my brother and sister schools, we have to look out for them as well. And we stand up several programs in the summer to act as a pipeline, to get them into med school, law school, grad school, dental school.

And now we may have to do that in a virtual setting, but I'm also very worried about our brother and sister HBCUs as well. Last question for you, you are a medical doctor. What are you hearing from your medical friends who are being impacted at hospitals and private practices by coronavirus? Well, I don't even have to tell you what I'm hearing from my friends. I can tell you what I'm seeing. I'm still a practicing surgical oncologist. I was in the hospital on Monday to see a couple of patients with new cancer diagnoses, one with a liver cancer and another patient with a stomach cancer. And I tell you, it's difficult. You don't want to use too many of the resources in an elective setting. So I had to

have tough conversations with both patients as to when we will schedule their tests and their operations, because I'm not sure when the surge may occur. And we want to be careful that we don't necessarily bring people into the hospital who may end up on a ventilator when we need a ventilator for someone else, or for that matter, somebody who may be immunocompromised. And although we're all taking all the precautions, you don't want to spread that coronavirus from one patient who comes in to another patient who's having an elective procedure. So it's a very complicated situation. It's putting a lot of stress on the system. We also are having physicians and other healthcare workers contract the virus. And once that happens and that workforce begins to thin out, it is going to add a lot of strain and stress on the system as well. So right now, in my opinion, things are really stretched.

I kind of heard parts of the conversation before in which there's some conversation as to whether or not we're hearing the right things. And yes, there may be more ventilators than are being used, but the fact of the matter is we have to be prepared for a surge. And we are using a lot of resources to get there as well. At the same time, we're not doing elective operations. So our hospitals are not bringing in the types of revenue, et cetera. All of those things are gonna have a long-term impact,

and the stimulus bill certainly does try to address some of those things. All right. Dr. Wayne Frederick, president of Howard University. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. All right, I just wanna go back to my panel here.

Greg, look, you were a professor there at Howard University, chair of the department. Again, we have seen HBCUs, but also other universities, as well as high schools and middle schools and elementary schools, having to on the fly figure out how to teach folks when they were not set up for online learning. Absolutely. And again, this is why Roland Martin and unfiltered is so important. Wayne Frederick's not only the president

of Howard University, as he said, he's a practicing physician. One of the few in the country, maybe the only one who's also a college president. And it's very important to hear from our brother talk about the on-the-line challenges because I'm hearing from friends who are on the faculty

at Morehouse School of Medicine, for example, and Bahari in Nashville, and who have admitting privileges, who now have their students who are on the front line of this. And one thing is for sure, through these Black institutions, what you're hearing from the people on the front line, as Dr. Frederick has said, those front line people, they're hearing that, you know, there's an under report even now. We still don't know who all is sick and who is tested positive. As it relates to the faculty, absolutely, man, you're talking about, look, I'm a classroom teacher and have been for 30 years. For me, I've had to move my, what they call synchronous instruction, meaning real-time face-to-face instruction. I'm listening and I'm getting reports from all over the country, just from my students. I have 240 students in one class, 100 in another. And they're telling me,

I heard about what was going on in New Orleans from the students in LA. You got people still going to the beaches. My students are like, what the hell is wrong with them? In New York state, you're hearing these stories. So that's one thing. But the faculty's real challenge, finally, and this is not just faculty at HBCUs, but all over the country, but specifically at HBCUs, when you don't have an infrastructure that's set up to go online immediately, and let's be clear, you're not talking about online instruction for classes that were designed to be online. You're talking about an emergency short-term measure

to get us through the end of the semester. You're talking about a heroic act. And I'm not just talking now about college professors. I'm talking about all of our K-12 colleagues who have been slammed with something that seems like it's almost impossible. A nation that is now about to engage in social promotion for the entire K-12 student body

in this country. They're going to, they suspended standardized tests. These professors are asked, not, not college, these high school, middle school, elementary school teachers are asked to do online learning when many of them have students who don't have computers or access. And so I guess in summary, what we're faced with is a nation of educators that are now front and center in what should be a deep reminder of the importance of teachers in this country. So when we're past this, don't anybody screw up their face and say, you know, why are we paying these teachers? Why are we talking to this union? Why am I paying this? No, you better thank a teacher because everybody's finding out what teachers do now.

That is definitely the case, Recy. It's a whole bunch of parents who are like, oh lord, teachers, can y'all please take these kids off my hands? Yeah, I think we absolutely have to salute the teachers, Dr. Carr, people like your professors, like yourself. They're doing a phenomenal job

and I mean, like Dr. Carr said, they're having to adapt on the fly. The parents are having to adapt, the students are having to adapt. And we can't forget the students that are being left behind because they don't have access to the resources. You know, rural broadband is an issue that people have throughout the country.

Black communities don't necessarily have the same access to these resources in order to adapt to this online learning situation. But going back to what Congressman Matt Gaetz did, you know, it's really interesting, you know, that the Republicans are always looking for a boogeyman. You know, China is the boogeyman with Secretary Pompeo insisting on having the Wuhan virus or the coronavirus being called the Wuhan virus in the G7 statement. Now they've moved on to black people,

or now they're adding black people onto the book. The fact that an elite institution like Howard University and Howard Hospital, Howard University Hospital are the targets of people like Congressman Matt Gates. It's also on Fox news and it's permeating social media. The fact that people think that black institutions are not worthy of literally anything because what Howard got was 0.04% of the monies allocated to hospitals and universities.

And even that was, you know, too much for some people to take. So I'm just really sick of the fact that we're supposed to be united as a country. And yet the black folks always have to somehow be the boogeyman or the target in these situations. All right, folks, we've been hearing a whole bunch of stuff when it's rolling around all just just mess on social media, all kind of different nonsense myths dealing with COVID-19. And so you know what? We got to deal with those. And so joining us right now is Dr. Christy McDowell. She's a microbiologist and the CEO and founder of Baby Scientist, Inc. Dr. McDowell, glad to have you here. What has been

the craziest thing you've heard, these myths surrounding coronavirus? Thank you, Roland, for having me today. The craziest one that I've heard recently is blowing, uh, your face with a hair dryer. Oh, my God, we played that dude the other day, and it was just idiotic. Yeah. Yeah, it's nuts. The only thing that's gonna happen for you by blowing a blow dryer in your face is that you're gonna burn your skin

and you're gonna get chapped lips. Okay? So, um, viruses don't just chill in the respiratory system doing the cabbage patch and bankhead bounce, you know? And like, no, when they enter your nose or your mouth, they initially, I mean, immediately bind to the cells in your respiratory system and enter those cells and start doing what they do by infecting them. All right, what about cold weather and snow

will kill the coronavirus? No, that doesn't work either. No, there's no research out there that shows that cold temperatures or very hot temperatures kill the virus. It's not that simple. It's not that easy. And that's not how viruses work.

All right, how about this one? Taking a hot bath will actually prevent you from getting the coronavirus. Well, you know what, Roland? I say do take that bath to stay clean. However, it is not going to kill the coronavirus. The viruses,

when they enter our mucosal systems, they look for receptors on our epithelial cells that line the mucosal systems, they look for receptors on our epithelial cells that line the mucosal tract and they immediately bind in nanoseconds. They don't stand around in our throats. They don't chill up in there. They're not walking around looking for their homie or whatever. They are getting busy. They're getting busy infecting. And what the cells do is the viruses, once they enter, they hijack our cells, replicate themselves and then lyse those cells, kill those cells. And so up to 100 to 200 virans can be produced from one cell.

And just imagine if you have 100000 cells in your body infected by a virus times 200 new virans, you know, that is a lot of virus in your body infected by a virus. Times 200 new virans, you know, that is a lot of virus in your body. How about this one here? The virus can be transmitted through mosquito bites. No. That is also false. There's nothing that shows or has been researched

that this virus is in the blood. The only thing in the blood that can be detected are your antibodies, um, to the virus. So, no, that is untrue as well. Okay, we saw all these fools spraying their kids with, I don't know what, Lysol and stuff. Also, people are spraying alcohol and chlorine all over their body to kill the coronavirus.

Yeah. No. No, Roland. That, too, is crazy. And that, too, is true. I mean, untrue. So don't spray your kids. Spray your counters.

You know, spray something else. Don't spray your bodies. And definitely don't spray it in your face or your throat. I've also heard of people gargling with bleach. Now, come on, my people. Gargling with bleach?! Yes, yes. I saw that today, that pe- on-on social media, that some people were gargling with bleach.

Oh, and another thing that's very false that I've heard is that people will, uh, put lemon peels and orange peels in hot water, and they want you to breathe in the steam, and that'll kill the virus. No, the virus is-is not just floating around in your in your body, in your mucosal system like that. The viruses don't work like that. So the only thing that steam is going to do is just provide some nice moisture to your nostril tract. Lord have mercy. You know, help with your facials. Lord have mercy. Dr. Christy

McDowell, we certainly appreciate you joining us. Thank you so very much for giving us the facts about the coronavirus and what not to do. So people, please stop sending that crap on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram because we don't need your grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles and nephews and cousins and nieces doing some of this stupid stuff. That is very true. That is very true. Keep bringing the funk, Roland. Keep bringing the funk. I appreciate it.

Thanks a lot. All right, thank you. Folks, this morning I was on Instagram and I came across this video by Pastor Jamal Bryant of New Birth Baptist Church in Atlanta dealing with the whole issue of testing. Check this out. I've been on three conference calls this morning,

one of which with Elder Stokes. And in order for us to administer it, we need a local hospital and clinic to partner with us. As of two minutes before this call, we've had the third hospital decline us because their staff is far grossly overstretched and they don't have the capacity, one doctor even lamenting that they're having to sleep in their cars outside of the hospital. So really want to charge and challenge you to lift up the prayers of our health care providers as well as I pray that God will give to us a ram in the bush so that we might be able to better serve the greater DeKalb community. I'm working tirelessly to try to fill in the blanks and to connect the dots,

believing that God's going to provide us with who and what it is that we need so that we can minister to the larger community. But this is really a pronounced time for us for prayer and supplication to really reach out to God for his intervention, because if this is where we are at the closure of week one, by the time we get to week four, it's going to be a dizzying reality for all of us. And so I ask that we would all keep not just washing our hands, but that we'll keep our hearts pure and that we don't become contaminated with the stains of bad news that we're being inundated with every day on television and social media, but that you would consecrate yourselves in seasons of prayer and supplication and hearing that you would really commit yourself

to the intermittent fasting journey that the church is on on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I appreciate all of you and I'm grateful that God has kept us together and looking forward to building even in these dire times. Joining us live right now is Pastor Jamal Bryant. You talked about receiving those 1,000 tests. Have you been able to connect with any local hospitals to help administer these tests? Roland, like most of your viewers, I've been watching the news

and really didn't understand how dire the circumstance is until I started seeking out partnership. All of your doctors would support that it really impacts those who have a compromised immune system. But what nobody is putting together is Atlanta leads the nation in HIV and AIDS. And so our numbers are through the roof, but they're not being shown because we don't have the testing. I've got a thousand approved covid testing. But in order to seal the chain, I need a hospital or a clinic to partner with us. We've now talked to four hospitals and all of them are stretched way beyond capacity.

And so there's a whole lot going on that's not being reported or shown in black and brown communities. Where did the test come from? Say it again? The test you received, where did they come from? Yes, it came from a private clinic in Kissimmee, Florida. I donated for the last two, last week, Roland,

I opened up a food pantry in Atlanta for people to just pull in their cars, pop their Trump, we put groceries in it, and usually we did it for 300 a month. Since the coronavirus, we've been having to do it almost 300 people a day.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. So somebody saw, like you on Instagram, us doing the work and said, we want to partner with you because we see you in the community and believe that you'll be a blessing. When you talk about the situation in Atlanta, of course, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted the other day

that Atlanta hospitals were almost at their capacity when it came to ICUs. When you talk about, again, HIV there in Atlanta, the issue that is still here is the fact that, again, that your church getting these 1,000 tests is that this nation has been lagging behind in testing. You got Donald Trump at the White House patting himself on the back every day, saying how great things are and how we're leading everybody else in testing. But if you look at per 1 million, we're way behind South Korea and other countries when it comes to testing the citizens.

While you were talking to President Howard, a flash just came on CNN that we've had over 284 deaths just in one day, catapulting us to being the first in the world in terms of deaths. And the way that this president is not leading is only going to get more dire as the days go by. So if you can imagine that all of the beds in Atlanta are filled and rolling, we haven't even reached the peak. They're suggesting that the peak isn't even going to come to the third or fourth week of April. But if this is where we are, where people don't have food, record number of unemployment filings, the hospitals are already at full capacity. The mayor of Stonecrest, which is a suburb of Atlanta where my church is located, has offered up a full warehouse to hold hospital beds. I think America is really in for a tremendously bad time. When you talk about, my last question to you, impact on churches, obviously they cannot

congregate. And we're talking about what's happening with restaurants and other businesses, but many of these churches are also being impacted as well because, like it or not, tithes and offerings, people are having to move to digital media as well. What have been the conversations like with some of your fellow pastors around the country on how they are now adjusting? We talk about how Howard University and HBCUs have had to quickly adjust to online education. Same thing for a whole bunch of churches that are not megachurches, not large churches. They don't really have television media.

A whole lot of things are going to happen, Roland. If you would consider that if it takes 30 days to make a habit, if 60, 90 days, I'm not used to going to church, I'm watching online, by the time we get to the summer, we're going to have reverse missionaries trying to get saints to come back to church because they're used to just watching it mobily. So that's in one compartment. The other one is

if culture changes every four years, Roland, church culture changes every 15 years. So most churches are 10 years behind. You text me from time to time with concern about churches you see randomly streaming and how the camera's off, the lighting is off, or they're doing it wrong. So imagine those who don't even have that level of equipment are really suffering. And nobody is thinking about these full-time pastors who are really finding themselves in dire straits. Well, look, we certainly send our hearts and prayers out to them. And one of the things that we'll be doing tomorrow. So let all the church folks know tomorrow on tomorrow's show, I'm bringing in a lot of my stuff.

And we're going to do it, go through and explain to folks how they could actually stream church, how pastors could learn how to actually do Bible study right from the house. And so we're going to take them through the low end to the high end. That's going to be on tomorrow's show. Roland, if you do this, you don't even know you're going to be a bishop by Sunday. A whole lot of teachers are going to be under you. Thank you for helping the church. I appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Thanks a bunch, Pastor Jamal Bryant. Thanks a lot. I want to quickly go back to my panel here, Recy. I mean, to hear that you get 1,000 tests, but they can't even use them because the hospitals are so swamped. Yet we saw Donald Trump stand in Rose Garden

with CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, all those folks tout, oh, wegreens, all those folks tout, oh, we're going to have parking lot testing, drive-through testing. Ain't a damn thing happened since that news conference. It's bullshit. It's nothing but propaganda. It goes back to what I was just saying. We can't trust anything that this administration is saying,

and it really makes me wonder, is this something that's intentional? I mean, I understand the fact that the hospitals are stretched, but also, you know, there are hospitals that are actually conducting tests that CDC is refusing to even process. And so how the hell are we supposed to get to a solution that involves testing and surveillance and antibodies and all this other kind of stuff if the administration, if the CDC won't test people, if the hospitals do not have the capacity to test people.

And at the same time, we have Dr. Briggs and Donald Trump and Mike Pence sitting up there saying everything is going along swimmingly well. It's so infuriating. And I have to salute Pastor Jamal Bryant. I mean, it's heartbreaking to just hear these on the ground reports, which, again, is such a disconnect between what is being reported out of the White House. And like I said, even from some of these governors to go from 300 people a month to 300 people a day is staggering. And salute to, like I said, Pastor Bryant and the churches and the organizations that are stepping up to the plate to really help those in need. But we have to start

getting to a point where we really understand what's going on on the ground. And I have to echo what Dr. Carr says all the time. That is the importance of rolling bar and unfiltered, what you do here, Roland, so that we can really get the truth of what's happening, particularly in our communities, because right now we're not getting it. Greg. And as well, we can't help if we don't get what the truth is. We can't prepare ourselves. We cannot fight this if we're not getting the truth.

Greg, I just got a tweet from this sister who follows me. Henry, go to my iPad. Veronica T. Williams goes by Devotologist. This is what she tweeted. I'm an RN at one of D.C.'s biggest hospitals. I work on a surgical floor that is now taking COVID-19 patients. We are scared. Supplies are limited.

We have positive patients on our unit. I'm home coughing. My manager said I won't be tested for COVID-19. Brother, look, Wayne was being, he's always upbeat. His Jegna, his mentor used to talk about equanimity under duress. He was being,

he told the truth, but he was being most upbeat. This is what we're hearing from all the healthcare providers. I'm telling you, man, in Atlanta, my friends who teach at Morehouse School of Medicine, they're seeing the same thing. The hospitals, we really don't know where we are with this. And as you led at the top of the show, the United States today passed China and passed Italy as the most infected nation.

And as Jamal Bryant said, Brother Bryant, we're not even near the top of this curve. Now, let me just pause here for a moment, though, brother, because I love that outfit you got on there, black and gold. I was going to say that, but in terms of injecting a little levity, when you said you were going to bring all the stuff in to help show people how to watch church, I finally, for the first time, found out how they make bishops

in the modern black church. But at any rate, that hasn't been said. To the point, brother, this is really showing federalism. All you high school teachers teaching civics out there, here's the lesson for your young people who are at home. Tell them to watch Roland Martin and Filch. Tell them to read the newspaper if they can get it online or to watch television and find out the relationship between local, state, and federal government. The federal government is not working right now. This $2 trillion piece of legislation is the first thing that's going to intervene in your local life. There is no president of the United States coordinating anything. The man is obsessed, and then he brings on Mike Pence to put a white enamel varnish over

his rotting brain. At the state level, you've got governors lining up, trying to intervene for the people who live in their state borders, but they're being forced in some ways to fight each other. The headline of today's New York Times, state versus state as governors limit visitors. If wherever you are, the reason New Orleans is skyrocketing now is because that black leadership in that black city is taking charge and saying we got to test these people. But what is it going to do? It's going to overwhelm the hospitals in the city of New Orleans. We have to now pull together and make real demands on elected leadership.

This is why it's important to participate in politics and to organize at wherever you are. If you're worried about being evicted and your landlord is a private owner of the building, organize with the other people in your building and send that landlord a letter and say, look, we can't pay and it does no good for you to put us out. Everybody can do something. It's very important to understand this is not the time to turn inward and just isolate, not just physically, but intellectually, culturally, socially. Even though we're apart from each other physically, it's time to pull together socially. And that doesn't start with Donald John Trump, who's wandered off into his own fever dream. It starts with the people watching

this and the people who are going to talk to the other people. We've got to organize and it begins with you. All right. Amen. Also, that's a fly shirt you got on, too. So don't don't act like it's not good. All right, y'all. We're going to break. Panelists, hold tight one second. I got to go to a break. All y'all who are watching, don't turn away. Mental health for African-Americans is critically important dealing with coronavirus. We'll talk to an expert next discussing that. And also, y'all see that viral video of the brother from Baltimore who's a reporter in Montana? And that was a herd of bison that was coming his way. And it was not a group of Howard University women. And homeboy booked out of there. We're going to talk to him right here in Rollerball.

All right, folks, got to go to a break. You're watching the live is the black is the most unapologetic show on the digital spectrum. This is what we do every single day because we're about speaking to you. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered back in a moment. You want to check out Roland Martin Unfiltered? YouTube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin.

And subscribe to our YouTube channel. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. It's Roland Martin Unfiltered. See that name right there? Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's YouTube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. And don't forget to turn on your notifications so when we go live, you'll know it.

All right, so a lot of y'all always asking me about some of the pocket squares that I wear. Now, I don't know. Robby don't have one on. Now, I don't particularly like the white pocket squares. I don't like even the silk ones. And so I was reading GQ magazine a number of years ago, and I saw this guy who had this pocket square here, and it looks like a flower. This is called a shibori pocket square. This is how the Japanese manipulate the fabric to create this sort of flower effect.

So I'm going to take it out and then place it in my hand so you see what it looks like. And I said, man, this is pretty cool. And so I tracked down. It took me a year to find a company that did it. And so they make these about 47 different colors. And so I love them because, again, as men, we don't have many accessories to wear so we don't have many many options and so this is really a pretty cool pocket screen and what I love about this here is you saw when it's in in the pocket you know it gives

you that flower effect like that but if I wanted to also unlike other because if I flip it and turn it over it actually gives me a different type of texture. And so, therefore, it gives me a different look. So, there you go. So, if you actually want to get one of these Shibori pocket squares, we have them in 47 different colors. All you got to do is go to rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So, it's rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. So it's rolandsmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. All you got to do is go to my website and you can actually get this. Now, for those of you

who are members of our Bring the Funk fan club, there's a discount for you to get our pocket squares. That's why you also got to be a part of our Bring the Funk fan club. And so that's what we want you to do. And so it's pretty cool. So if you want to jazz your look up, you can do that. In addition, y'all see me with some of the feather pocket squares. My sister was a designer. She actually makes these. They're all custom made. So when you also go to the website, you can also order one of the customized feather pocket squares right there at RolandSMartin.com forward slash pocket squares.

So please do so. And, of course, that goes to support the show. And again, if you're a Bring the Funk fan club member, you get a discount. This is why you should join the fan club. You want to support Roland Martin Unfiltered? Be sure to join our Bring the Funk fan club. Every dollar that you give to us

supports our daily digital show. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. As Roland Martin Unfiltered support the Roland Martin Unfil one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. As Roland Martin Unfiltered support the Roland Martin Unfiltered Daily Digital Show by going to RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Our goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing 50 bucks each for the whole year.

You can make this possible. RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. You wanna check out Roland Martin Unfiltered? YouTube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. There's only one daily digital show out here that keeps it black and keep it real. It's Roland Martin Unfiltered. See that name right there?

Roland Martin Unfiltered. Like, share, subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin. And don't forget to turn on your notifications so when we go live, you'll know it. All right, folks. A lot of people are dealing with anxiety, loneliness, and depression as a result of this coronavirus pandemic taking place across the country. How do we deal with that, including social distancing?

Well, joining us right now is mental health therapist Suzette Clark. Suzette, glad to have you on Roller Martin Unfiltered. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. This is a huge, just dramatic shift for a whole bunch of people. There are people, of course, who are used to going to work,

going to school. Now, all of a sudden, they're at home. Now, they are around their spouses, their partners, 24 hours a day, their children. I saw a video the other day where Sherri Shepherd was just in tears having to deal with the fact that she got to deal with her son every single day for the next two months. I mean, this thing... And so a lot of people really don't understand that, look, you're used to only being around, frankly, friends and loved ones a few hours. Now, all of a sudden, it's constant.

Right. And so what we're facing now is something that was so sudden that it completely changed our lives. I'm having some issues. Our lives. There we go. So we naturally. All right. So here's the deal. I'm having some issues. I'm having some issues with your Skype.

Yeah, I'm having some issues with your Skype. So, guys'm having some issues with your Skype. So guys, let's do this here. Let's drop the Skype. Let's just bring her up on audio and then we'll just go with audio so we can at least hear her and not have it break up. So let me know when we have it there. Okay? So I actually want to do that.

So let me know when we have her straight there when it comes to that. I want to go to Reesey and Greg, short-term Reesey. Again, for a lot of people, and Greg, short-term Recy. Again, for a lot of people, I mean, this is a dramatic shift and they're seeing a whole lot of their loved ones more than they ever thought they ever would. Yeah, I mean, it's an adjustment. You have some people that are stuck together and you have other people who are very isolated um you know i don't know maybe i sound a little optimistic here but my social life has been pretty robust recently with all of the virtual happy hours i've been doing with my friends you have the concerts that

these artists have been putting on you have the um the d the live dj sets from dj d nice and kate capri plus i'm always So, I mean, there are ways. Obviously, I'm not, you know, touching on the seriousness of the mental health part that, you know, your guest was going to talk about. But I still think that there are ways that we can still stay connected with our social media. And that's how I'm coping with it. My husband and I are together. I work upstairs during the day. He works downstairs. So we still how I'm coping with it. My husband and I are together. I work upstairs during the day. He works downstairs. So we still get some of our me time. But I think there are a

lot of ways that you can kind of keep yourself occupied, even while staying at home and saving lives. Greg? No, I agree. I mean, I think about the most vulnerable people in our society, those who don't have a place to sleep tonight, who are already always on that margin. What are they going through? The elders and the folks who are isolated, maybe by themselves. And you talked about Mark Lamont Hill, our dear brother's father, who was in this facility and they won't even let anybody see him. He let his son see him, you know, obviously for health reasons. I just read something from one of our colleagues who teaches in high school, Nubia Garima-Rogers, who directs the Carter G. Woodson Black Studies

Academy over at Dunbar High School here in D.C. And she said in her online interaction with her students, she and her teachers are fielding mental health issues and challenges around this isolation from teenagers. And certainly I heard a lot of that dealing with my college students as well. Not that they're having mental health challenges in the bad sense, but this isolation is a new thing, as is this being in proximity. The only other thing I would say is this. All the administrators out there and all the folks who think that perhaps it's good to fill up the schedule now with virtual meetings and Zoom meetings and conference calls, let's slow our roll.

Because one of the things that isolation does, for those of us who are safe, who are fed, who are healthy, for those of us who are in spaces where we don't have to worry about that, it gives us an opportunity for reflection. For those of you who are into it, prayer. For those of you who are into it, meditation. For me, y'all know what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be reading until my eyeballs foul out. And I know my brother, Roland Martin, who has been tweeting about this the whole time, don't know what to do because he's on the road all the damn time. Roland,

tell them, brother, what's the value of you being able to sit at home? Well, you know, that is the case. And some people got led to, and I posted that on my Instagram page. Suzette Clark is back with us. And Suzette, again, you heard what Recy and Greg said there, how different people at

different stages in their lives and frankly, in their mental state are coping with this coronavirus pandemic. That's right. It can be very difficult because everyone had a daily routine prior to two weeks ago, and all of a

sudden, routine was halted. And so we have now, if you were working, if you were an adult with children who are school-age, they're all home, you're home. And what if they have a spouse or significant other who goes to work? You're worried about that person being out and possibly contracting the virus. So we have so many natural reactions of fear and anxiety. Uncertainty is what we're afraid of. Afraid of the future. What will happen to my family? What will happen to me? We have a fear of mortality. Is this going to take someone out in my family? Will it be me in physical health? So all justifiable natural responses to this situation, but we have to find a way to combat the thoughts that may turn into more of a ruminating thought where it's persistent.

It's daily thinking what's going to happen. What do I need? What do I not not have what will i not receive again so we have to kind of manage those thoughts so um i would say starting off plan plan your day that's the most important thing especially with the children roland i don't know if you see all of the memes with the parents standing over the kids with the belts and everything. Right, right. It's hilarious. Yes, it is. I had those parents.

My parents have been on the daycare most of my childhood. But, yeah, I had those parents. saw an article about maybe last week that the cases of child abuse, the reported cases now from the hospital and from the mental health professionals, had almost doubled just a week. So you can't take the frustration and anger out on our children. You know, I know my nieces and nephews came home with tons of work. It's okay. Do what you can do. Plan your day. Take advantage as the adult. Take advantage of this time. Take advantage of it. Maybe went into some things that you like and love and have wanted to do for some time, but you could not because you were working. So now's the time. Find a way to combat the negative thoughts and try to replace them with

positive behaviors and thoughts? Obviously, again, people are at different points. Those people who economically are not as bad as other folks. I mean, look, that is a whole different deal. Totally understand that. But I think also people need to understand that we're all not the same, that we all have different stations in life. The other day, last night I was on Instagram Live,

and Aisha Curry went live because Stephen Curry, her husband, was setting up a drum set, and he always would learn how to play drums, so it was kind of like, well, I can use the opportunity to play drums. Greg was talking about someone like me who's an avid reader, and I think a lot of people also don't understand

that, like, what's your life is your life. You know, Suzette, I posted something on my Instagram page and Facebook and Twitter page. And, you know, a whole bunch of people got upset. And I'm going to read that. Here, go to my iPad. This is what I posted. I really don't get why folks are tripping about having to stay at home. Since I travel so much, it's great to be home for a full week,

have unpacked suitcases, and not planning multiple trips every month. I've never slept this much, and this is not bothering me one bit. Trust me, I know this has been mighty disruptive to a lot of folks. And yes, I still drive in to do Roland Martin Unfiltered,

but I think we often get so busy with our lives that we don't get to just slow it all down, think, relax, read, spend QT with family, use this time wisely. Then I had all these people losing their damn mind on my page. You don't know what people are going through. This is insensitive.

This is arrogant. You're showing you're an elitist and you're privileged. And I said, I'm sorry. My perspective is my damn perspective. Everybody, and I said, I'm sorry. My perspective is my damn perspective. Everybody, and I said, I don't have to take into account the entire world situation.

I'm simply sharing this moment and how I'm dealing with this here. Just like I'm not going to tell somebody else, well, you shouldn't share what you're doing or how you're experiencing it. And this to me is the silliness that I think some people have when people can't step back and say, wait a minute, that's your experience,

but here's mine and here's somebody else's. Right, and I think it can also be attributed to, again, the fears. Because to see someone post that everything is together, happy, and I'm in a world where I'm not happy, my house is a mess, the children are on my nerve, what do I do? You know, then I will lash out. But again, it goes back to taking advantage of this time personally, you know, make a personal, do some personal reflection. Make the most of it because it's a situation that we have lost control of. You know, we were thrown into it. So what do humans do?

We adapt. We have to adjust and, you know, still comfort our loved ones, still check on our parents, all of the elder people in our family. Make the most of it. They're going to be there either way most they're going to be there either way they're going to be there so again self-reflection hone into some of the things that you have looks like we're losing

if you wanted to walk daily that's the time to do it alright Suzette Clark we we still appreciate it. Thanks a lot. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, then, folks.

And so, again, look, we all, look, the reality is this here. People are going through different things and different experiences when it comes to this. The reality is it's happening. It's impacting everybody. And we have to understand that. Folks, also, don't forget, it's an election year, and now all of a sudden you've got candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, trying to figure out do they still participate in debates?

Do they participate in dealing with campaigning? You've got states deciding whether or not they're going to be holding primaries. All these different things that have been going on. And you still have the election in November. We have no idea if we're going to have mail-in by ballot and what's going on in that stimulus bill. That was some money with the states to help them

when it comes to elections. So how do we deal with that? What do we do? Do we even care? Joining us is Gilda Daniels. She's an associate professor at the Baltimore School of Law. We're going to have her on just a second. Let me know what she's on, folks. She's also the author of The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America. What's interesting, Greg, is I blasted this conservative this morning

who was whining. Mark Davis, he's a radio talk show host out of Texas. And he was whining about mail-in ballot. And Kristen Clark, Laws Committee for Civil Rights and the Law, she's talked before about mail-in ballot has not necessarily the one thing that black folks do. We like going to the polls. But what's quite interesting when when he started complaining about this whole deal by saying that this is just simply going to be, let me find the tweet here, how it's going to be encouraging massive voter fraud when you have states like Oregon and Washington State that are completely mail-in balloting and they have some of the highest voting numbers every single election, Greg.

Yeah, in fact, I think it was the governor in Washington said that's what saved it with the impending coronavirus. You know, there was $400 million in this bill. But according to The New York Times, they just did an article on this. You know, that's about 20 percent of the $2 billion that voting experts would say was needed to do mail-in. Could this country vote completely by mail-in? Absolutely, they could. If you go back to the 1918 epidemic, you find that the

voting tanked. It went under 40% in national election that came up. If you look at the years before that, it was up over 50%. But I guarantee you this, if this country went to mail-in voting, in some states, it isn't even an option to come in.

You have to mail, as you said. You would see a rise in voter participation, and that's what the GOP does not want to happen. The other thing I say when you get your guest on, this is one of the challenges of not being here. If she was in the studio, I would pull her copy, my copy of her book that just came out, one of these stacks, and get her to sign it. So i can't wait to hear what she has to say on this and joining us right now is gilda daniels again author of the book the crisis of voter suppression in america gilda mark david i was just saying mark david's a radio talk show host uh in uh texas uh he tweeted this i would far rather postpone primaries than invite the monstrous fraud of hashtag voting by mail

notice which side is all in for this disaster you'll know all you need to know really i mean obviously he is a he's a conservative talk show big time trump supporter and the monstrous fraud no evidence no nothing just whining about voting by mail. Which, what else are you going to do if you still have coronavirus impacting the nation? Right. And this just highlights the crisis that we certainly have in our country and how we undervalue the voting process and the democratic process. And what we need to know is that we have states, entire states that only use voting by mail. The only way people vote is to actually mail in their ballots. So there's certainly some

advantages to it. And we certainly need to prepare now to ensure that we are ready for November should we have this similar crisis or pandemic in the future. In your book, you talk about, again, this crisis. And look, this thing was exacerbated by Shelby v. Holder. Republicans went crazy with it because, let's just cut to the chase, they freaked the hell out when they saw a black turnout for Obama in 2008 and then 2012. Yes. Yes. And so Shelby County beholder certainly has made it more difficult to cast ballots. We've certainly seen since 2013 when the Shelby County versus Holder decision came out that states have actually been doing more in regards to voter suppression. Prior to Shelby, they would have had to, certain states would have had to go on through the federal government and get approval before they could implement changes like polling place closures or changing poll hours or eliminating or shortening the early voting period.

But now, since they don't have to get that approval from the federal government, they are doing it without having any vetting whatsoever whether or not these changes are impacting voters of color. And they are. We've certainly seen since Shelby that we've had massive voter polling place closures, also voter purges. I think you saw in the span of a week in January, Wisconsin and Georgia purged about 300,000 voters. And without Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and certainly since Shelby County v. Holder, we don't have the ability to, A, know when those changes are going to happen before they happen, because before Shelby, we would know before they were going to happen and be able to stop them and review them and to determine that they would impact voters of color.

So certainly when I was at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division as a deputy chief, those were the kinds of things that we would review to make it so that we could certainly provide assurances to communities of color that the election laws that were being implemented would not put them in a worse position than what they currently were. Greg, you got a question? You know, Prof, I really think as you're analyzing the bill, and first of all, thank you for your work. It's very important.

Y'all got some real serious folks up there at UB. We'll talk about that another time. You know, what do you think it would take to jailbreak this House and this Senate to push them to expand the amount of dollars? Because we know this is just the first of many bills. We got $400 million this time.

How could you – what is your recommendation for us? What can we do to push them to maybe even expand that number in the next round of intervention funding? Well, we have to keep pushing. We have to certainly keep pushing in regards to the House and the Senate. We were able, we have a number of organizations and also the litigation director for Advancement Project National Office. And we certainly joined with other organizations in arguing that we needed the money in this COVID-19 bill to certainly get states up and ready,

certainly to begin the process to update their machinery, as well as having to print these vote by mail ballots, because they're very important and we need all the states at least to have that as an option and to loosen the requirements for absentee ballot. And we need a whole lot of money for public education because people, although people have the can can have access to the ballots. It's different from every state. What is needed in order to actually obtain the ballot and then to return the ballot. So we need money for public education and we need money for the machines. They're going to need an increased number of personnel who are actually going to review the ballots as well. Reese, Reese, you got a question?

Yeah. So with absentee ballot, I think that's one way that sometimes it seems like Republicans have manipulated the vote, at least by the way I perceive it, because in a lot of times black communities, there's a higher rejection rate of vote by mail. What can be done to ensure that if we do move to an entirely vote by mail system or a much more robust vote by mail system, that we don't see that black voters know, black voters who would typically just go to the ballot and cast regular ballots aren't experiencing higher levels of voter

suppression through these rejected absentee ballots. That is a very real problem. We certainly saw in Georgia during the 2018 election, candidate Stacey Abrams was actually encouraging people to use absentee ballots and to vote by mail. But we saw a very high rejection rate for voters of color. We saw in counties throughout the state of Georgia that people were being rejected under their exact match law, that if there was a hyphen missing or a period after Mrs. or something of that sort, something very minor, saying that their signature didn't match. Those kinds of things were used as a basis to reject ballots.

And you saw them rejecting about 50,000 ballots. And it's interesting to note that the Republican candidate only won by about 50,000 ballots. ballots, right? So how these, voting by mail has a higher rejection percentage than voting in person. And for particularly for communities of color, voting by mail, we actually have to have a culture shift because we don't do absentee balloting in large numbers. Referring to my book, I use my grandmother as a timeline in my, as I lovingly called her, my dear for mother dear. So my dear would not be somebody who would actually vote by mail because, you know, it was voting.

This was an act of dignity, certainly for older African-Americans, right? It is an act of dignity, certainly for older African Americans. It was an act of dignity. That's why you see them in white college shirts and ties and you see the black women with their hats and pocketbooks. She would still go vote with her pocketbook and her hair pressed. To say she could not have that opportunity

that she would only be allowed to vote by mail would certainly cause a complete culture shift in the black community, particularly for older African-Americans. So I think voting by mail can be one of several options, but we certainly have to have that as the primary option should we have a similar situation as we do now for the primary. Right. And the bottom line is, look, with the primary situation, this may be your only way of getting it done because you want to keep people safe. Because, look, you don't want these

older voters going to the polls in crowds and then all of a sudden contracting coronavirus. And can I tell you, Roland, that in Florida, I told you I'm the litigation director for Advancement Project. We filed a lawsuit in Florida to get them to expand voting opportunities for the March 17th primary. They did not. And one of the things one of the one thing that came out today in the news was that there were poll workers who have now tested positive for the coronavirus. So people who went to those polls were now certainly could have could have contracted as well. So there are a number of things that the CDC says that we need to do in polling places. If we're going to have in-person voting, the CDC has actually told polling places what they need to do. But we again, we have this just demonstrates how we don't pay enough attention and certainly don't have don't don't pay enough money to ensure that our election system can withstand these kinds of challenges.

Folks, the book is called The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America. The author is Gilda Daniels, associate professor at the Baltimore School of Law. Gilda, we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, sir. All right, then. So it is. I mean, look, great. These are the things. This is what I keep saying to people. What we are so used to doing is going to change. You look at what's happening right now, whether or not things open up,

the NFL just announced they're going to go forward with the NFL draft April 23rd through 25th. Look, we don't know if the virus is still going to be, if we're going to be on that downward slope, where's testing? Are we going to actually see mass testing? Are we still going to see cases? And so bottom line is these things are going to happen. And so there are things that we are used to doing that are likely going to have to change.

And look, we should just be getting our folks prepared that, all right, double check those addresses. Make sure make sure that it's drive or lane or not. It's NW, not NE. All of those different things that are critically important because we want to make sure our votes are counted. Absolutely, brother. And let's start with you. Those of you watching this understand that Roland and not just Roland, but the crew broadcasting Roland Martin Unfiltered is in the building. Understand that that makes them essential personnel. Understand what that means in terms of sacrifice. So as we think about those who are providing information for us, please keep them in mind and in prayer and keep them lifted up. That's number one.

Everything has to change. Everything is going to change. What are we finding out? Of course, the NFL is saying that. Why? Because baseball is gone. The NBA is gone. March Madness is gone. And people have turned away from watching ESPN and all these things because guess what they're finding out? If it ain't live sports, I'm not watching reruns so they are terrified this is a billions of dollar industry people are now turning off reality shows people are now saying I'm saturated binge watching stuff like Netflix maybe it'll drive them back to doing some absolute study but the point is that everything is about to change as I said dr. Frederick was being gentle with it,

but he still made the point, we're not even near the peak. These hospitals are getting ready to get overrun. Now, does that mean to panic? No, but what it does mean is that we now have to prepare the world past the world we used to live in. And that means that as these institutions reform, whether it be a black church that can't get online, that's now going to have to look to something else,

whether it's going to be an educator like me and all my colleagues at black schools who can now think about jailbreaking their classes and going into the cyber universe. And now when you say Harvard, what does that mean? I Googled and I saw somebody from Claflin College who knows more about it than anybody on the Harvard faculty. We now have to realize as black people finally that this is not even close

to the greatest challenge we ever faced. Remember, we were brought here naked and in chains, taken from our homes. So when we take a different kind of attitude, I was on a call Sunday with Paul Coates and Keturah Hudson and a bunch of the black booksellers in this country, Sankofa Books here in the city with Holly and Shreek Garima. They are now saying, you know what?

Don't look at this as something that's going to put us out of business. Let's go online and make all these black books available to the world. If we look at it differently, realizing we're not going back to that world we were in, we might mess around and get free, brother. Darice? Yeah, I mean, I agree. I think that we're all going to have to adapt. I think that we have to start preparing.

Now, if you look at what First Lady Michelle Obama did, partnering with D-Nice, who had his club quarantine, which has gone viral, and it's been a huge thing. And she said, look, let's partner up. Let's do a one-we-all vote, and let's been a huge thing. And she said, look, let's partner up. Let's do, uh, when we all vote and let's register voters. We have to, like you said, um, 300, 300,000, 300,000 signed up. Yes. And this is in March. And so some people might feel like, well, that's too early. We have to get registered. We have to stay registered. We have so much education we're going to have to do

in terms of understanding how we're going to have to do in terms of understanding how we're going to do this new vote by mail thing. So there is the new landscape that we have to understand in terms of our civic participation, where people thought it was too much work to show up to the polls. Well, now you're going to have to learn how to absentee vote potentially. And so, yeah, and I also agree with Dr. Carr that this does present entrepreneurial opportunities. I mean, I heard some people, for instance, complain about Erykah Badu and the fact that she charged a dollar for her concert. Well, I think people are going to, you know, be thankful that Erykah Badu is one of the few people

that said, no, I'm not going to give you something for free. I'm going to charge you a dollar and set up that business model for other artists who aren't going to be able to tour for months on end. And so I think we are entering a new landscape. I think black people are naturally entrepreneurial. Black people are in an adaptive situation. And businesses are forced to adapt. There is so much adapting that we're going to have to do because we don't know how long this is going to last.

So we have to hunker down, but we have to figure out new ways for some people to have revenue streams, to maintain their their livelihood. And I think it's going to birth a lot of innovation for all of the heartache and all of the trials and tribulations it's going to cause. We are going to come out with a lot more and a lot more new ways of doing business and living in our society. All right, folks. Look, coronavirus is often heavy, but there's still those moments where we have to have some levity.

And so Montana reporter Dion Broxton from Baltimore, y'all, he provided this here. This video, he posted this video yesterday. It's already gotten 9 million views on Twitter. Check this out. Montana, three. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. It's already gotten 9 million views on Twitter. Check this out. Montech 3.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, no, I ain't messing with you. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no, I'm not messing with you. Montech 3. All right, y'all. So, folks

that are talking about this, Dion is a reporter with the NBC affiliate there in Montana, KTVM. He joins us right now. Dion, I'm playing right now. So, Henry, go to my iPad. After you got in the car, you then shot

this video of the bison. And people were like, well, where's the bison? So how far away were the bison from you? I would say probably when I first got to the spot, they were probably about 40 yards or so, maybe 40 yards, 30 yards. But as I was doing my stand up in front of the sign, they were slowly inching closer to me. And then the one that was in front of the pack or the herd, I should say, made eye contact with me and kept kind of walking towards me. And I've covered probably 20 stories in Yellowstone

since I've been here in Montana. And the rule is, if you see a bear or a wolf, you need to be 100 yards away. And then for all other animals, you need to be 25 yards away. And I'm pretty sure this bison broke that 25-yard barrier because I felt like if he would have charged me, I couldn't get into my car in time and save myself.

So you were like, damn this stand up. Exactly. Some people applauded me for taking a camera, but thinking back on it, I probably should have left the camera too. Now, you were also shooting, so you were shooting your own stand up. Yep. So you're a one man band reporter. Yep. All right. So you were born and, so you were shooting your own stand-up. Yep. So you're a one-man band reporter. Yep.

All right, so you were born and raised in Baltimore, right? Yes, sir. Is it Towson? Where did you graduate from and when? I graduated from Towson in 2015. All right, and so you're a one-man band, and you were like, no, no, no, no, no. I take it you didn't see many Bison other than Howard University graduates in Baltimore. Yeah, I've been telling everyone I'm used to rats the size of puppies, not bison.

Damn, rats the size of puppies. Yeah, have you been in Baltimore long enough? Hell no. I ain't trying to see no rats the size of puppies. Uh-uh no so again this thing has got nine million views on twitter alone uh it's all about youtube and facebook what was the response of your colleagues at the stevie tv station um they were happy i mean you know how tv stations are whatever can promote their brand and they posted the video separately on, you know,

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So it helped their numbers. And I'm pretty sure a bunch of people followed the TV station since seeing my video. So they're all for it. So how do you now feel being a meme? Henry, go to my iPad. So all of a sudden now, the look that you gave is going to be used for all sorts of purposes on social media. I like memes. I use memes all the time. I look at them all the time. So the fact that I am one now is kind of funny, but I don't know. It puts a smile on people's faces. I'm wondering, you know

when Michael Jordan spoke at Kobe Bryant's funeral, he didn't want to cry again because he didn't want to be a meme again. So I think I feel the same way. I'm cool with being a meme once, but I don't want my life to be defined by a meme. Okay, but I guess, so we got to ask this question

because people were asking it point blank. How the hell did a black man get to Montana to be a reporter? Damn! So, look, so when I was getting, you know, sending my reel out on YouTube to different places, I didn't send it to Montana. They found me.

Yeah, Montana was not on your list. No. I bet Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho didn't make the cut. Nope. And I was talking to places in the Midwest, places in the South. But when I was talking to my bosses,

when they reached out to me, they'd been here for a long time. And what was attractive to me was if you're in a community for a long time, you pretty much get the gist of the land. And the other places I talked to, I think the news directors and the people working there were there for maybe like a year or two versus here. People there for like 15 years 10 years five years so i'm thinking these people

must know what they're doing and honestly they put in the most effort talking to me you know sometimes people make you feel like family and others make it feel like business and here they made it feel like family and i thought to myself there's no way in hell I'm going to white Montana and after a few phone conversations I think my boss said you know you passed a drug test your background check came back clear so if you want to move forward I can send you the contract and I said okay and I thought to myself I said oh my god I'm going to Montana and I've been here for a I thought to myself, I said, oh my God, I'm going to Montana. And I've been here for a year and 10 months now.

Year and 10 months. And so, but I'm quite sure with approaching 10 million views, there may be some news directors in other stations around the country who say, hey, get that brother a call and see if he wants to get out of Montana. I saw one lady, I think she posted on Twitter, she said somebody get that man out of Montana and get him a job in Atlanta, so I wouldn't complain about that.

Well, Deion, we certainly appreciate it, man. Thanks for responding to my email. It is, yeah, look, Bob Linus, we've all done those videos where people want to make fun of, but it was certainly a hilarious video, but you were not playing with those bison. And a lot of people have been telling me, you know, with the coronavirus outbreak, it cheered them up because a lot of people are home and sad. And one lady, she sent me an email.

She said, this is the first time I smiled in five days. So to know that I'm putting a smile on people's faces makes me happy. All right, then. Deanna Broxton, man, we appreciate it. Thanks for joining us. Good luck. Thank you. I appreciate it.

All right. I want to thank everybody who watched today's show. Jam-packed show. Lots of guests. Hope you got so much out of this. I want to thank Greg Carr. I want to thank Reesey as well. And again, this is why we do what we do.

Black, the brother in Montana, that's right, happened yesterday, sent him an email, got him on today's show. And so I want to thank Pastor Jamal Bryant, want to thank Wayne Frederick, Howard University. Folks, we want y'all to support what we do. Look, bottom line is, as Greg said, we are essential being the media outlet.

We didn't want to leave y'all hanging. We're here to provide you black experts because you're not seeing them on these other networks. So please support us by going to rollermarkunfiltered.com. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. We're on YouTube. There's more than 3,000 of y'all watching right now. We broke our record earlier

this week. We never had. There was almost 4,500 people watching simultaneously at the same time on YouTube. And so y'all can give on YouTube. Y'all can support us with Cash App, Dollar Sign RM Unfiltered, Square, PayPal as well. And so we want you to help us continue

being, again, completely unfiltered, being independent, not corporate owned, to be able to say what we want, cover what we want, and do what we want. We appreciate it. Reesey, thanks a bunch. Greg, thanks a bunch. Folks, thanks a bunch. Folks, I'm going to see y'all tomorrow. And absolutely, yeah, I'm rocking the black and gold kente that I got from Accra, Ghana.

And y'all to see, I actually have A5A embedded in the kente. There's a whole bunch of alphas going to really want this outfit. All right, I'm going to see y'all tomorrow. We got to go. Holla! I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend.

At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from foster care. Visit AdoptUSKids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.