#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Black Political Polls, Miss. Cops Sentenced for Torture, Cowboy Carter, Netfilx's Shirley Premiere

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

3.19.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Examining Black Political Polls, Miss. Cops Sentenced for Torture, Cowboy Carter, Netfilx's Shirley Premiere Live from Los Angeles for the premiere of Netflix's Shirley--the story of Shirley Chisholm, starring Regina King. Here's what's coming Up on Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. We'll examine political polls conducted by black people. Terrance Woodbury, the Founding Partner of HIT Strategies, will discuss a few his company has helped compile.  Two of the six Mississippi deputies of the 'Goon Squad' get yearslong sentences for torturing two Black men.  The Supreme Court clears the way for Texas to arrest anyone local officers suspect of crossing the southern border illegally.  The abortion rate has hit its highest rate in 10 years. Most happened after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  An Arizona lawmaker tells her colleagues how the state's restrictive abortion laws have impacted her personally.  Beyonce has some choice words for those criticizing "Cowboy Carter." And the latest on Haiti. We'll talk to the founder of an organization that seeks to help Haitians develop leaders who can help rebuild the troubled country.  Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #RolandMartinUnfiltered and the #BlackStarNetwork are news reporting platforms 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.See 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. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. 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 the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. 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 podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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, March 19th, 2024, and coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered,

streaming live on the Black Star Network, live from Los Angeles. Later, I will be on the red carpet for the premiere of the Netflix movie, Shirley, directed by John Ridley, starring Regina King. We will be live from the red carpet, so look forward to that. But on today's show, those six racist cops in Mississippi being sentenced today,

one of them already hit with 20 years in prison. We'll tell you how the other ones, how long they are going to spend in prison for the vicious beating and torture of African-Americans. Also, the Supreme Court allows Texas and different law enforcement agencies in Texas to detain anybody who they suspect of being an illegal immigrant while the case winds its way through the federal court system. Also, we'll talk about the various polls being done by hit strategies specific to African-Americans. Terrence Woodbury joins us on the show to talk about that.

Also on the show, the abortion rate has hit its highest rate in 10 years, even with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Plus, an Arizona lawmaker, very emotional in detailing to her colleagues why she is getting an abortion. Plus, Beyonce is going to drop her new country album. Well, she calls it Beyonce album. But let's just say she's not forgetting how she was treated by white folks when she appeared on the Country Music Awards eight years ago. And we'll also talk about the latest in Haiti as well. Folks, it's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered, the Black Star Network.

Let's go. He's got it. Whatever the piss, he's on it. Whatever it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it blinks, he's right on time. And it's rolling. Best believe 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 Gro-Gro-Yo Yeah, yeah It's rolling Martin Yeah, yeah Rolling with Roland now.

He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best. You know he's Roland Martin now. Martin! Over the last couple of weeks, we've shared with you various polling data as it relates to black voters, how they are going to be voting in this year's election. Now, when you watch mainstream media, they're often talking about these mainstream polls where a sliver of African-Americans are being polled. Yet, polls by brilliant coroners and head strategists, two black pollsters, Cornell Belcher, Terrence Whitberry, mainstream media is totally ignoring. We focused on those polls.

Those polls have been done for BlackPak, for Higher Heights, the National Coalition of Black Civic Participation, Black Women's Roundtable, and Essence. And so what do we make of the numbers? Well, Terrence Woodbury leads hit strategies, and he joins us right now on Roland Martin Unfiltered. Terrence, glad to have you back on the show. You have been quite busy out here in the fields. So before we delve into these polls here, just explain to our audience

the problems with the New York Times, CNN poll and these other polls where mainstream media has been running with, oh, 20, 25 percent of African-Americans are going to be voting for Trump. But that's a sliver. When you look at the numbers, that's a sliver of black people they're actually talking to. Yeah, that's exactly right, Roland. Look, I often compare polling to like tasting soup. Coming to America is one of my favorite movies. You remember at the end of the movie, taste the soup. Aha!

You know, you don't have to eat a whole bowl of soup to know what it tastes like, but that's only if you have an equal proportion when you get that sample, that spoonful. And so what we see in a lot of traditional polling is that it's not equally representing the black community. If you have a sample that's only 100 or 200 people, then how do you have enough black rural or black urban or black college and black non-college educated to represent the full diversity of the community. And so that's why the sample size matters, so that we can set what we call quotas. We have enough black men, enough black women, enough black urban, enough black rural to make sure that the community is fully represented. You know, I actually was texting Matt Barreto, who is involved in polling of Latinos and

Hispanics. And I was asking him again about some of these polls. And this is what he said. He said, just terrible polling and samples of black brown are not at all representative. He said, yes, many black brown folks are frustrated, but they are frustrated with everything, including GOP courts, Trump, Biden and more. So it's a misread to assume low Biden approval equals shift to the GOP. He also says that in a lot of these polls, even for Latinos, they're not actually measuring non English speaking Latinos. And so, again, people are making all these assumptions, but what they're not understanding

is that there's underlying data behind these polls that people pay no attention to. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, people ask, they ask polling questions like enthusiasm and motivation. And these are questions that don't often represent the political attitudes of the black community. I'll give you an example. You know, not all black folks vote enthusiastically. And so when we see enthusiasm is low in the black community, I had a black man in Philadelphia tell me in a focus group that he doesn't vote, that he said voting for him is like taking out the trash. If he doesn't do it, then shit starts to stink around here. That doesn't sound like enthusiasm to me, but that doesn't mean that that young man

is not voting. And so we have, at HIT Strategy, started identifying other proxies to determine vote likelihood. One of those proxies that's very, very unique to black people are perceptions of power. We asked this question, Roland, regardless of how often you vote, how much power do you believe your vote has to make a difference? The higher they rate those perceptions of power, the less likely they are to waste that vote. Now, that implies that, you know, we are interested in measuring, improving and sustaining black political power. And that's not always the case with everyone that's conducting polling. So so you don't. So let's talk about the two different polls that you've done.

You've done polls. You've done polls for the last that were released in the last couple of weeks with higher heights, as well as the black women's roundtable. So let's first deal with the higher heights poll. What did that reveal to you? Because both of these obviously are dealing with black women. What did they say to you? Yeah. You know, the biggest takeaway for me from the Higher Heights poll was around the issue that is going to mobilize black women in this election. First thing we saw is that black women were overwhelmingly anxious about the entire slate of issues, right? We asked on a scale of zero to ten how important are the following issues. Well, almost 80 percent of black women rated all of the issues above an eight. That shows a level of concern and anxiety around everything from climate change to abortion

to gun control to healthcare to education costs to the erasure and banning of black history, all of these issues. Almost 90 percent of black women are rated above an eight. But when we got underneath there and started asking open-ended questions, when we started to give them a forced choice, if you had to choose one thing, what would it be? What we see, Roland, is not just economic anxiety, but very, very specifically the cost of things. That could include some of, you know, some of that is included in economy. But what black women are expressing anxiety and pain around are the cost of things, the cost of education, the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, the cost of

health care, cost of prescription drugs. You know, and so this is why we see such strong economic indicators, right, say with air quotes, like black unemployment rate being the lowest it's been in 50 years or the highest job creation of any president in history, that those things are not translating to economic progress for them because when they are saying economy, what they are really saying is the cost is too damn high. So when I was on, when Melanie Campbell was on, and she was talking about the poll that you did for them and she talked about for the first time they saw black women in the persuadables category.

What does that mean? I mean, does that because she said that she said, I mean, are we seeing less intensity among black women? She also talked about the generational divide that exists as well in terms of younger women and voting. So what are you seeing there? Yeah, you know, I offered a couple of slides here. If we can if we could pull them up, I can actually show it to you. The thing about data is that it's often easier if you can visualize it. But what we are seeing, number one, that black women remain the remain the bedrock. Let's go to the next slide here. I'm going to point to a couple of things real quick. So first, we do see a growing dissatisfaction

with the direction of the country. In 2020, in 2022, sorry, I'm having a hard time saying that. In 2022, 45% of black women were satisfied with the direction of the country in 2024 that number has dropped to 35 percent and again when you start to look at those open-ended responses at the bottom there you start to see things like what is making them dissatisfied inflation economy prices cost think, the words that we see repeated over and over there. And on the next slide, you start to see how that's affecting their voting patterns. One more slide.

Right there. All right. And so, look, the total at the top there, I think, is the top line that people run away with. That is, you know, if the election were today, only 55%... I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st. And episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple 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. Five percent of Black women say that they will vote for Joe Biden. But when we get underneath that, when we get underneath that number, one, this is what Melanie's talking about when she says that they're in this persuadable category. It doesn't mean that the other half of the electorate is voting for Donald Trump. It means that you have a considerable amount that are considering third-party candidates.

I keep reminding everyone I talk to that there will not be only two names on this ballot, that there are other options. And so you do see a considerable amount, 13 percent considering voting third party, but you also see 11 percent that just haven't decided yet. Notably, when you look underneath that total, inside those red dotted lines there, you start to see the generational divide. Seventy-one percent of black women over the age of 50 say that they are voting for Joe Biden if the election were today, while only 43 percent of black women under the age of 50. That's where we really start to see the erosion in the electorate, not just because

there's a lot less saying that they'll vote for Joe Biden, but because there's a lot more younger black women saying that they are considering voting for Donald Trump. But most important, Roland, when you look at the bottom of that graph, at the most likely voters, these are the black women who say that they're definitely going to vote and have voted in two of the three last presidential elections. We see 73 percent of black women, likely voters, black women, saying that they're going to vote for Joe Biden. But 12 percent still say they're going to vote for Donald Trump. That is a material increase in Donald Trump's support amongst black women that is registering in public polls. But I think it's overregistering. Obviously, it's not 25 percent. So if that's the case, what do you attribute that 12 percent to?

You also talked about the third party voters. And so depending upon them getting ballot access, you've got Cornel West, you've got Robert Kennedy Jr. And so that's really contingent upon them getting ballot access. Yeah. So listen, there's about 30 percent of the black electorate that's in this cluster that we call the rightfully cynical. That 30 percent are the lowest per capita income, lowest educational attainment, lowest vote likelihood. This is the closest to the pain. These are the voters that tell me that their hood didn't get any better under Obama and it didn't get any worse under Trump. So why does Biden have anything to do with them? Well, that cynical voting bloc, right, they are frustrated not just towards Democrats. They're frustrated towards systems that have seemingly

failed them. And a part of the appeal of Donald Trump is when he begins to run against the system, when he begins to say that everything in Washington is a swamp. In fact, Roland, when he says, what the hell do you have to lose? He is talking to that cynical voter, that rightfully cynical black. But here's the deal, though. He's running against the system, but do they not realize that he ain't talking to them or about them and has no policies that are going to appeal to them? That's exactly right. That's a mirage. Yeah, that's exactly right.

That's why we have to do two things here. One, we have to connect Donald Trump to that system and demonstrate how he is a product of, a beneficiary of, and the sustainer of the system that only benefits the rich and people like him. But we also have to demonstrate to that rightfully cynical voter how this system has made their lives better, how banning the no-knock warrants that would have saved Breonna Taylor's life and banning the chokeholds that would have saved George Floyd's life and putting 100 black women on the federal bench, how these things make our lives materially better. We have to demonstrate the progress over the last four years before we make promises over the next

four years because they simply don't believe us. They don't even believe the politicians that they really like. They really, really like Barack Obama. But if he tells them that if you vote in this next election, Joe Biden is going to solve your problems, they don't believe him either. And so we have to demonstrate the progress that's been made. And we have to start making more of these voters the hero of the story and the messenger to deliver it. So what do you make of, what do you make of, first of all, what are you hearing from black men? Because again, the mainstream people, I believe, are wrong. They're all over the place. And so you have been very much heavily involved in these focus groups in this polling as well. What are you hearing from black men? Yeah, look, there's one more graph there, Roland, if they could put up one more graph

with the lines on it, if they could put that up. I want to show you something here. Because It is true that black support for Democrats has decreased marginally. This is the one that just has the long lines on it. So, guys, that's not the right one. Yeah, keep going. Is that it? Keep going. One more. One more.

Okay, we might not have that slide, but let me just describe what's happening here. Because ever since Joe Biden— Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm just going to describe what's happening here. So ever since Barack Obama has left the political stage, we have seen a marginal decrease in Democratic support in each election cycle. For black men, that has been three or four points. And so we saw black men go from 92 percent support for Barack Obama to about 79, 80 percent support for Joe Biden in this last election. That tells me two things. One, that they are beginning to erode our base.

Republicans are targeting and trying to appeal to our base, but two, that black men are still supporting Democrats at a higher rate than any other group of men in the country. And so I think we've got to be careful here, Roland, especially in the mainstream media, not to wag a finger and ask what is wrong with black men, when fact, voters are the consumers, right? The political parties and their policies and their candidates, those are the products that they're trying to sell to the consumer. And you don't blame the consumer when they start shopping for other products. You make your product more appealing to them. have an opportunity here to demonstrate to black men and to black voters how they have made their lives materially better over the last four years and then start to talk about the agenda for the next four.

Well, I've been saying since 2012, look, that was a nine-point gap between black men and black women for Obama when he ran against Romney. And I kept saying, you better have a very specific plan of action to target black men. Said it in 2016. They were not listening. Said it in 2020. They were not listening. And so what I then said is, look, you better pay attention because if the attitude is, well, you know, those are those are nominal. Well, guess what? Nominal added with nominal added with nominal. All of a sudden begins to increase. Democrats are seeing that with Latinos in South Texas right now, which was a Democratic stronghold. You saw in Milwaukee, there was a 50000 voter drop off in Milwaukee in 2022 from 2018.

If you don't have that drop off, Mandela Barnes is a United States senator. And so, again, and the idea is it can't just be, oh, a barbershop conversation. Black men are not just in barbershops. And so to me, you have to have a robust strategy. You have to have proper messengers. And when I say messengers, I'm not talking about somebody who's a CBC member. You've got to have black men who are not in politics, but who are around politics, sort of talking to, engaging, explaining, and connecting the dots. Your thoughts? That's exactly right, Roland. Look, when you talk about this rightfully cynical voter that

doesn't feel like they've benefited from this political process, from the political system, they are not going to be persuaded by folks that exist in that system. Right. And so I'll give you an example from a focus group where I keep reminding Democrats that there's a right and a wrong way to talk about this progress, right? And when you just come in and start telling them how much money we've spent, you know, a trillion dollars on this and $30 billion on that, I've tried this in focus groups, and I've given them a list of the investments that are being made in affordable housing and community policing. And I've watched a young black man sitting next to me getting pissed off as he read through this list, Roland, because he couldn't access the benefits that I was reading on this list. And when I asked him, why are you getting mad? These are all the things that you said you wanted to see Joe Biden working on, climate change and affordable housing and community policing.

This is a list of what he's actually done. Why is it upsetting you? And he gave me a story about how his sister could not access any of these child tax credits, and his mother couldn't access any of these benefits from infrastructure investments. And there was a young woman across the table, Roland, who stopped him and said, if it wasn't for the child tax credit, during the pandemic, after I had lost my job, the courts were closed and I couldn't get child support for my baby. And if it wasn't for the child tax credit that I spread across three

months, I would have been evicted. That young woman and her personal experience and the personal impact that these policies have had on her life, that was the message, and she was the messenger. He had never met that young woman in her life. He believed her more than he would believe any politician, any member of the CBC, more than he would even believe Barack Obama. And again, he really likes Barack Obama. And so we do have to change the messenger here

and make these voters the hero of the story. It is because we voted that we are forgiven $35 billion. And you just said something right there that this is what Reverend Dr. William Barber does. They do all the time. Whenever they have their rallies, they always let the affected workers speak. And in fact, when they had the rally last year in D.C. So what they did was and so they had big names, they had folks who were speaking. But what they did was they would have four or five affected workers in that area, health care, housing or whatever, speak.

And then a Cornel West or a Sharpton, I can't remember who the speakers were, but their whole deal was we're not having a rally where the big names come and give speeches. They center affected workers. You know, what I said is, I said, if you're Biden, if you're Biden, Harris, and you're traveling anywhere, I'm not giving any speech without having four or five people in the audience who got student loan debt relief. And I'm shouting them out right there. I'm sitting here. There's no event I'm having.

If I'm talking about, as you said, child tax credit, I'm having it. Listen, I don't do ads, but look, I've been in television since I was 14. To me, every single one of these issues, this is the commercial. Person, name, let's say student loan debt relief, how much saved? And they say that's right next person look thanks Joe we don't we don't have next person thanks Joe that's right this ain't that hard even we don't even have to come up with the concept I can point to an example that every one of your your viewers will remember where Donald Trump did exactly what you're describing when a during the Super Bowl in 2020 when when a black woman, Alice Johnson, came on TV.

This was a $3 million ad, the only Super Bowl ad that Donald Trump ran during his 2020 re-election campaign. It wasn't a MAGA ad. It wasn't an ad about building a wall. It was a black woman holding a camera phone. It wasn't a production. There was no lights, camera action. She was coming out of jail, holding a camera phone and talking to the phone saying, I just got released from prison because my president, Donald J. Trump, furloughed my sentence. Thank you, President Trump.

That was the whole ad. I knew at that moment, Roland, that black men were not just a margin. Who do you think that black woman was talking to during the Super Bowl about criminal justice reform? She was talking to men. And here's the thing. And here's the thing. The First Step Act doesn't get passed without Democrats in the House. That's right.

And then when it goes to the Senate, it doesn't get passed until the Democrats, Dick Durbin, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, said, you've got to strengthen the bill. So the reality is Democrats actually made that opportunity possible with the First Step Act. What they did not do was take credit for making it happen. Did not tell people, we did that. We did that. Oh, you love those checks that Donald Trump put his name on it?

We passed the bill that sent those checks to you. What Biden and Harris did when they got in, one of the first things they did, the PPP loan program did not impact a lot of black businesses because the program required full-time workers. They made some adjustments when they came in for W-9. You got to say that. You got to actually say what we did and have the people who were impacted actually tell the story. That's exactly right. Same thing with student loans. You know, $135 billion of student loans have been forgiven, Roland, and 70% of those have been forgiven to Pell Grant recipients.

Well, most Pell Grant recipients are people of color. That was an intentional racial justice equity lens that this administration applies to every policy that they got to figure out how to talk about, but also empower some other folks to talk about it. The progress is getting- Terrence, hold on one second. I'm sorry, go ahead. Say it again.

Look, at the end of the day, Joe Biden made a promise during his acceptance speech, not the inauguration, but when he first won, he made a promise to have black folks back. And as I go through this agenda, 80 percent of the black agenda has either been initiated or accomplished. Black woman on the Supreme Court, along with 100 black women on the federal bench, promise made, promise kept. Student loan forgiveness. No, he hasn't forgiven all of them, but he's forgiven more than every single president before him combined. Promise made, promise we got to continue. And so I do think you're right. They got to start taking credit for some of this, but also remind folks that the job isn't done

because you can't appear to wave a mission accomplished flag while people are still feeling the pain. Absolutely. Terrence Whitbury, always good to go through this data with you. And again, what I keep saying is it ain't that hard. But if you are if you are a general Malley, if you are Anita Dunn, if you are all the people who are on the campaign, Chavez, who's the campaign manager, Quinton folks, all these folks, y'all listen to black people. We know what we're talking about because we talk to these black people every single day. But you have to message properly and you have to have proper messengers. And you've got to do it in a way where everything is not a television commercial.

You also got to be on the ground in the communities, having these forums, having these conversations, because if all of a sudden you're in Milwaukee and you're in rural Georgia and you're in rural North Carolina and you're in Florida and you're in pockets of Arizona and Nevada and you're in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and other places, you're in Michigan and you're walking people through this. Because the last point here, Terrence, you do it. When you show people what has been done, that changes their perception because they go, I didn't know that. It works. In fact, Roland, when I start explaining this to people over a two-hour focus group, the only thing that they're mad at is that it's the first time they're hearing it. Why ain't nobody else talking? This is what they ask me in every focus group. Why ain't nobody else

talking about everything you just told me? It works. The progress works. We have to start delivering it. I know we're not going to have two hours of their undivided attention like I do in focus groups, but that's why we've got to figure out how to deliver it to the palm of their hand. But that doesn't get delivered in a 30-second or a 60-second spot, and that's the point I'm making. You have to create multiple forums to be able to do that and then now disseminate that information. Tash, I appreciate it, man. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Roland. Anytime, brother.

All right, folks. That's Tash Whitbury, hit strategist. Again, one of the top pollsters in the game. I keep telling you, the work that Terrence does, that Cornell Beltra does, Ron Lester does, and others, it's important. Democrats, y'all might want to listen to black people. Just saying. Back in a moment, Roland Martin unfiltered on the Black Star Network live from Los Angeles. Back in a moment. I have something I want to tell you.

I am running for president. Of the United States? Holy. I'm paving the road for a lot of other people looking like me to get elected. Brooklyn's first black representative. You're about to get elected. Brooklyn's first Black representative. You're about to make history. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got Be Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz

Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple 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.

You're going to be president? You ain't no man. Maybe we should find your mother. All you got is your one vote. You sound just like every other politician. i look like every other politician oh truly you can't win and why can't i win i have an opportunity to make a difference what was the what's the topic i'm trying to go through the script this isn't a campaign it's a joke. Alright, well... The only thing anybody's gonna remember is that there were a bunch of black folks... I'm gonna go through the pants.

...who made fools of themselves. I'll kill you! I see too much suffering. And I don't know how to not try. We're living it proud. Step by step. I don't think I'm special. Living it proud. Still right, still right. I don't think I'm special. I just want to remind people what's possible.

We need something that's going to make some noise. The Black Panthers and Shirley Chisholm, it's like thunder and lightning. I'm going to force all the politicians to be held accountable. You're going to do all that? School teacher from Brooklyn. Harriet was just a slave. Rosa was just a domestic.

Go! What is it you do for a living again? Lilliam! Golden! One star, one inch by inch, broken brick by brick. The people of America are watching us. Yeah.

I'm golden. Hello, I'm Marissa Mitchell, a news anchor at Fox 5 DC. Hey, what's up? It's Tammy Roman, and you are watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Let's bring in my panel, Joe Richardson, a civil rights attorney out of Los Angeles. Glad to have you on the show with us, Joe. Randy Bryant, DEI disruptor. She's out of Washington, D.C. Joy Cheney, former executive director of the Washington Bureau and senior VP of policy and advocacy for the National Urban League out of D.C.

Glad to have all three of you here. Joy, I'll start with you. Again, what polling data does, it gives you a snapshot of a moment in time. So what folks may be thinking and stating in February could differ by June, July, could differ by November. And so what's instructive is to be able to learn from that and now begin to build upon that. And so if you are Democrats, you've got some work cut out for you when it comes to black men and black women. They have to compete. They have to do the work. And I have been saying repeatedly over and over and over again, Democrat strategists and campaign managers and consultants, frankly, mostly all white, cannot try to talk to black voters in 2024 like this was not like this was 2004 or 1994.

Matter of fact, you can't even talk to black voters in 2024 like it was 2012 with Obama. It's simply a different electorate. That's right. It's a different electorate. And I think also we need Democrats to not have that you're lucky to be here kind of attitude. Haven't we done enough for you kind of attitude? what else do you have to lose kind of attitude. That is also what people are responding to. Now, look, we know Black voters are overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic Party. We owe no one nothing at all, right, at all. And frankly, it's a good thing to have both parties vying for our vote. And we have to make it clear that when we are vying for it—I'm a Democrat—when we're asking

for the black vote, we are doing it because we respect the black vote. We are willing to change our policies to make ourselves more appealing to the customer, to the black voter. We don't take them for granted. People are tired of being taken for granted. And Donald Trump understands the language and the politics of grievance. Unfortunately for black voters who are voting for him, he will offer you nothing. He will offer you nothing. He is simply engaging in the politics of grievance.

But Democrats, we have to be smarter. We have to talk to Black people. We have to listen to Black people. And we have to do what they say and make ourselves more appealing so we can have their vote. It's just that simple. And frankly, because I've worked in Democratic circles, it's what we do for everyone else. So we know how to do it. We have to apply it to black people. You know, the thing there, Randy, as Joy laid out there, in terms of competing for the vote,

first of all, look, I've always said both parties should compete for the vote. But we also must be operate in reality when it comes to facts. And the bottom line is when you look at the issues that matter to African-Americans, Republicans are dead set against many of those issues. But then you still, if you're Democrats, you still have to offer an agenda for those voters to say, hey, let's put us back in. It's not mission accomplished for Biden-Harris. I dare say they should be saying to Black voters, we have unfinished business. They must articulate those things and explain to people why they should get another four years. They should spend a lot of time highlighting what they have done. As the brother just pointed

out, we don't know this information. We've said it multiple times on this show that the Democrats have not done a great job of advertising and letting people know the good work that has been started. And then they can continue the message that we recognize that and give us the opportunity to do that. They need to stress that message. I do think that it's what's very powerful about us feeling like we've been taken for granted. No one wants to feel easy or the low-hanging fruit or that nobody is paying us any attention. So I thought the most powerful statement was about people really feeling disenfranchised from the system. And what Trump has done well is that he has portrayed that he is not a part of the system, although we all know he is and has been so since

the beginning. But we need to really hit on that and make people clear that Trump is part of the system and has in a lot of ways worked it brilliantly and not to be fooled by his tactics. Joe? Yeah, I mean, I agree with all the foregoing. I appreciated the comment that was said before about us being respected. So you have to respect us, but not expect us, right? So often we are presented as, you know, we can kind of just be this mistress and this extra. We'll always go along anyway. So we'll go along and get everyone

else. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Donald Trump is good at the politics of grievance. And, you know, he was in rap videos, man. He was, you know, he was pop culture for these guys. I mean, there's been a lot of smoke and mirrors for a very, very long time in terms of the things that his family has done, but the things that he's appeared at the front of, the people that he's hung out with, black folks, et cetera. So we can't take, we can't be taken for granted and we have to pay attention and the Democratic Party has to pay attention as if black people could actually vote for someone else. We always consider it this impossibility. And a big part of it is to look on the other side of the coin and to be

honest about the notion is gone are the days where we sit and muse about how crazy and ridiculous and impossible it is that significant numbers of people would vote for Donald Trump. It's already happening. Trump got 91 criminal charges, and he's in front of Biden right now. So throw that out. Throw that this can't be happening. Like a lot of us said in 2015 and 2016, we were so sure he could never be elected. And in fairness, he didn't believe it either, right? He had the plane fired up to fly somewhere, right? But meanwhile, back at the ranch, he surprised himself. And now he expects to win. And so what we have to do is stop acting like it can't go bad. Because in a lot of ways, for us to be having this discussion means that it already has,

and therefore Democrats have to do what they have to do towards us that they do towards everyone else, and that is continue to constantly make the case. Can I add one other thing? Let's not— All right, folks. Yep, go ahead. Donald Trump is a cult leader, andrican americans are just as capable of being taken in by a cult leader as anyone else anyone else we are just as vulnerable to that and

that's why in our families we have to make sure that those of us who are on the fringes those of us who don't feel included and loved, you got to bring those people in. You can't talk down to them. You can't be rude to them. You can't scream at them. He is playing on vulnerability. And we, of course, are just as vulnerable as anyone else.

So there's some politics, but there's also some cultural exclusion that's been happening here. And he taps into those people. You can't deny that. Absolutely. But that's why he has to be completely called out. Before I go to the break real quick, the folks at the Lincoln Project, you know, they are you know, they, they've said it. Their aim is to go after that one to three percent of Republicans and try to speak to them and say, yo, this dude ain't one of us. This new ad that they've dropped sort of speaks to that. It's not our party anymore. The Republican Party that made America safer, stronger.

The party that put our security and American values first. A party born to expand liberty. A party of real free markets and economic growth that starts on Main Street, not rigged giveaways and special favors. Led by men and women of honor and courage, service and sacrifice. Leaders who never talked America down. That party is dead. We know why.

We know who killed it. We're conservatives, not crazies. We believe in responsibility and accountability and following the Constitution and the law, even when we don't like the results. We don't have to agree with Joe Biden on every policy issue. We won't. And when we don't, we'll say so.

But so much is at stake in this election that it's time to put country over party and America over Trump. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA

fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. 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.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple 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. And again, that's what their aim is. And so we'll certainly see how that has an impact, especially in places like Arizona and Nevada. Got to go to break. We come back. We're going to talk about what's happening in Haiti when it comes to humanitarian relief there. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. Support us in what we do. Be sure to join the Bring the Funk fan club. Our goal is to get

20,000 of our fans contributing on average 50 bucks each a year. That's $4.19 a month, 13 cents a day. You can send your check and money order to PO Box 57196 Washington, D.C. 2003 7-0196 Cash App, Dallas-0-1-9-6.

Cash App, Dallas Ad, RM Unfiltered. PayPal, RM Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. We'll be right back. Next on The Black Table, me, Greg Kopp. Democracy in the United States is under siege.

On this list of bad actors, it's easy to point out the Donald Trumps, the Marjorie Taylor Greens, or even the United States Supreme Court as the primary villains. But as David Pepper, author, scholar, and former politician himself says, there's another factor that trumps them all and resides much closer to many of our homes. His book is Laboratories of Autocracy, a wake-up call from behind the lines. So these state houses get hijacked by the far right. Then they gerrymander, they suppress the opposition, and that allows them to legislate in a way that doesn't reflect the people of that state.

David Pepper joins us on the next Black Table, here on the Black Star Network. What's up, everybody? It's your girl Latasha from the A. And you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Violence in Haiti continues. Armed groups broke into a number of places, including electrical stations, destroying equipment that left areas of Port-au-Prince in darkness. On Monday, gangs attacked two upscale neighborhoods in Haiti's capital in a rampage that left at least a dozen people dead in surrounding areas. More than 30 U.S. citizens were able to return stateside on Sunday. A Florida-based nonprofit

rescued almost 40 Americans and allies from Haiti, but still has more than 100 people on the waiting list. The State Department reports that nearly 1,000 Americans have completed a crisis intake form seeking assistance in Haiti. Joining us now is Dr. Bertrude Albert, the founder and CEO of P4H Global. To talk about this here, the nonprofit seeks to give Haitians the tools they need to survive. She splits her time between Fort Lauderdale and a home in Haiti. Glad to have you here. So first and foremost, we're seeing again where gangs are in control.

You have this presidential commission, if you will, that's supposed to, you know, put forth a plan together. But in the meantime, from your perspective, are people just living in a constant state of fear, not knowing what is going to happen next, not knowing what is going to get attacked next? Yeah, first and foremost, thank you so much for inviting me onto your show and for having this dialogue with me. Certainly, Haiti is experiencing incredibly difficult times right now. And ever since the prime minister, Ariel Henry, he said that he announced that he is open to and willing to, and he will resign.

He hasn't yet resigned, but he will resign once the presidential council, this transitional council, is put into place. And so right now, Haiti is kind of a little bit in a limbo, waiting to see who is going to take leadership. A lot of different parties, a lot of different parties, a lot of different people kind of vying for power at this time. But I do want to make a distinction that the intensity that we're seeing, the insecurity that we're seeing is really centralized in our capital, Port-au-Prince. And so that's really important to see, because although all of Haiti—for example, me and my team, we are based in Cap-Haitien in the north, we're feeling it. We're feeling the trauma.

We have family. We have partners. We have friends in the capital. But the direct insecurity that we're seeing, these images that we're seeing, it isn't across the entire nation. That is really centralized in our capital, Port-au-Prince. But the reality is Port-au-Prince is the capital, and that speaks to instability. That's where government leaders are located. And so we also had other folks on last week talking about how roads have been blocked. So other parts of the country are also impacted.

And so where is the light at the end of this tunnel? Is there? I believe, oh, certainly. Certainly there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And kind of to echo what you just mentioned, all of Haiti is feeling it. Because when the gangs block up, when they block up fuel tanks, us in Cap-Haitien, the prices of everything, it quadruples. The price is really—it strikes and it hits us really deeply. So you're certainly correct about the entire nation feeling

the impacts of what's happening in our capital. The light at the end of the tunnel is that now more than ever, a light is being shined on essentially U.S. imperialism in the United States. A light is being shined on really what is happening, because right now when we look at it, we see gang violence. And a lot of scholars are actually calling them paramilitary groups, and they're moving away from this title of gang, but more paramilitary groups, because they are funded and supported by political parties, which are being propped up by the U.S. government. But the light at the end of the tunnel certainly is Haitians seeing and exposing what is truly happening, what has been happening in Haiti since before Jovenel Moise was assassinated, since before

Michel Martelly took political power, since even before Ali Stead, some of these really big pillars that have directly led us to where we are. We are exposing the fact that U.S. control and U.S. puppeteering in the United States has largely impacted where Haiti is today. And so as we expose that, we're able to allow Haitians to have a voice and allow them to say Haitians should determine the future of Haiti. It shouldn't be imperial powers that are upholding, that are propping up governments. Like, for example, a lot of people don't know, Ali El-Anagli, he was not a legitimate prime minister. He was given this position by the U.S. government. He was propped up by the U.S. government. For 30 long months, the Haitian people were protesting. The Haitian people were

crying out against the dangers of his government and the illegitimacy of his government. And finally, when he's locked out of the nation, that's when the entire world is looking up at Haiti. And so it really—I really want to put a lot of emphasis on the fact that the problem we're seeing here in Haiti today—a lot of scholars are really emphasizing this, and I love this emphasis, the problem we're seeing in Haiti isn't just a gang problem. This is a U.S. imperialism problem. This is a foreign diplomacy, foreign policy problem, foreign policy that has really been focused on the destabilization of Haiti by controlling Haiti since, honestly, the birth of the nation in 1804. That was a lot.

Questions from the panel. Randy, you're first. I always think about how Haiti has always, it's almost like Haiti is this abused adult, but was abused all throughout childhood. And everyone just looks at the way that the child is or adult is acting out and doesn't look at what caused it. And I really appreciate you saying it is bringing this all to light. You know, the money is, you know, France. And I mean, just, and I say we, because I feel this connection. I've always felt this connection to Haiti. Do you think that this will spark change? I mean, awareness is one thing, but change is another. And so on a grand scale, do you think that this really will cause some change as people are made aware of how Haiti has been abused?

Beautiful question. I certainly do believe that this is going to lead to change. The question is, what type of change? How long-lasting will this change be? And the change, I think, is on two ends. Certainly in the United States, you're seeing and I'm seeing, my goodness, the Haitian diaspora is rising up. All over social social media there's an exposure of failed foreign diplomacy in Haiti. There's an exposure of what has truly been happening in Haiti. The Haitian diaspora is finding our voice, and we are screaming. We are making known the fact that Haiti must be free. Hashtag free Haiti, free Haiti from what? U.S. imperialism. So there's a movement happening in the United States, but equally there is a movement happening in Haiti. When we see

the destruction, the stripping away of what we believed was democracy in Haiti, certainly there's an element of that that's heartbreaking, because we believe that the people—this country should be run by the people. But at the same time, we have seen that Haiti has played a role of a puppet nation for the United States. And so if we're tearing down a system, perhaps this is an opportunity for us to rebuild a nation for Haitians and by Haitians. And so I am certainly optimistic that it may get darker before the light shines, but the light will come. And ultimately, I'm reminded of 1804, when Haitians, they accomplished

the impossible. They did what the world thought was absolute. They destroyed slavery, becoming the first free Black republic in the world, the first nation to permanently abolish slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. Haitians did the impossible, and they did it with very little resources and with no help from any outside nation. And so if Haitians were able to accomplish this in 1804, oh, certainly today, in 2024, we can accomplish something even greater. So I have hope.

I do, too. I do, too. Joe? I remember in the 90s, in the early 90s, interning with Maxine Waters, and we came back to town for Bill Clinton's inauguration. And that's right around the time there was this call from American politicians, American black politicians, for the return of Prime Minister Aristide. And I remember sitting in the office while he comes through and waves at everyone and goes and waits on the congresswoman, who can be late sometimes, at least all those years ago. Maybe it's changed since.

But I remember it being sold as if this is going to be a solution that's going to help us get where we need to get. So fast forward and they've you know, so much has happened since that time. And I remember and perhaps this is the time maybe that there's been as much attention to it as I remember to to Haiti between that and the earthquake 10, 12 years ago. What can Americans do now, Americans, Black Americans, people that are concerned about the plight of Haiti, people that have folks that have cultural roots there, et cetera, where are we best placed and where do we best sit as it pertains to whether speaking out, whether it's putting money behind something, whether it's calling our people in Congress. What can we do at this time? The reason why I love this question so much is because when you look at Haitian history

and Black American history, you will see that there is a strong tie between Haitians and Black Americans. Ever since, again, we're going back to 1804 when Haiti declared independence, Haiti was fighting in order for us to be recognized as a nation. And the United States didn't recognize us until 1862. But it was Black Americans in the United States who fought courageously for decades in order for Haiti to be recognized. And that story isn't often told, that our recognition, our sovereignty and our independence, U.S.

diplomatic relations being extended to Haiti in large part is due to the courageous efforts of Black Americans in the United States who stood for the Haitian people, because they knew that Black freedom, Haitian freedom was inextricably bound to the freedom of Black Americans. So, again, all that to say is certainly our freedoms are bound together. And that question reminds me of just how interconnected Black Americans and Haitians are. And so to answer your question, pressure must be put on the U.S. government. This year, 2024, it's the perfect year for Haitians and allies of Haitians, Black Americans, to be put—to be putting pressure on the Biden administration, to be putting pressure on the U.S. government in order to really stand by their declaration of wanting Haiti to be sovereign,

wanting Haiti to have peace and stability. You can't claim that with your mouth that you want stability in Haiti, but then with your right hand, you're destabilizing us and propping up puppet governments. So truly, the way that we can come together is calling Congress. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding

of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-up way, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Really putting pressure on Biden and his administration. If you want our vote, you have to really be for Black people. You can't just say it with your mouth. I hope that makes sense. Yeah, it does. All right, Dr. Bertrude Albert.

We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. All right, folks, going to a break. We come back. Racist former cops in Mississippi learned their fate today after the torturing of black men. We'll tell you about that. And Beyonce

makes it perfectly clear. To all you racist country fans, I'm coming. Cowboy Carter, March 29th. You're watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network. I have something I want to tell you. You're watching to make history.

You're going to be president? You ain't no man. Maybe we should find your mother. All you got is your one vote. You sound just like every other politician. Do I look like every other politician? Freedom! Truly, you can't win. And why can't I win?

I have an opportunity to make a difference. Creation! This isn't a campaign. It's a joke. The only thing anybody's gonna remember is that there were a bunch of black folks who made fools of themselves. I'll kill you! I see too much suffering. And I don't know how to not try. We're living it proud.

Still right, still right. I don't think I'm special. I just want to remind people what's possible. We need something that's going to make some noise. The Black Panthers and Shirley Chisholm. It's like thunder and lightning. I'm going to force all the politicians to be held accountable. You're going to do all that?

I'm a schoolteacher from Brooklyn. Harriet was just a slave. Rosa was just a domestic. What is it you do for a living again? Lillium Golden! I can't stop it. Itch by itch, running brick by brick. The people of America are watching us. Lillium Golden! When you golden When you golden Two of the white Mississippi police officers who pled guilty to torturing two black men last year are learning their fates.

They were sentenced today in Mississippi. Hunter Elward, who faced the most severe federal charges against him, he's going to spend 20 years in Mississippi. Hunter Elward, who faced the most severe federal charges against him, he's going to spend 20 years in prison. Elward pled guilty in August to federal charges of discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and obstruction of justice related to the January 2023 attack. The former officer was also ordered to pay $79,500 in restitution to the victims. Jeffrey Middleton, the leader of the so-called Goon Squad, received a 17.5-year sentence.

Elwart Middleton, Brent McAlpin, Christian Detman, Joshua Hartfield, and Daniel Updike called themselves the Goon Squad because they were willing to use excessive force without reporting it. On January 24th of last year, the officers entered a house without a warrant for 90 minutes as officers hurled racial slurs and proceeded to handcuff and viciously assault Michael Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. They planted drugs and a gun, leading to false charges that could have resulted in lengthy prison sentences for the victims. However, their conspiracy unraveled when one of the officers confessed, leading to the confessions of the others involved. The four other former law enforcement officers who admitted to torturing Jenkins and Parker will be sentenced later this week. Joe, again, this shows you why it's important to have a Biden-Harris Department of Justice as opposed to a Trump-Pence-Bill Barr-Jeff Sessions Department of Justice.

No doubt about it. There'd be a difference. You know, the lawlessness here is what's alarming. No warrant. This is not even a situation where they get a warrant falsely or they get it, you know, under false pretenses. No, no warrant. Just fall in, kick the door down, call folks out of their name. No gray area.

Do things continuously. And for a long period of time, you have absolutely no business doing. You know it. And unless one of these guys told, you know, and that's the way it's always been. There's this wall of silence that keeps these things occurring, that keeps these things going on. And there are people that are in these ranks that believe that it's their mission to continue to do these things. And so, you know, it's good when someone does confess. It's good when we do get a conviction here.

But this is a situation where these guys actually gave up the ghost, because one of them did, and then all of them did. But let it serve to remind us all we still have so much work to do. And we know that, you know, consent decrees went away when Trump was president and they would go away again as it pertains to all the police departments as the Justice Department is keeping a rein on because of the things that they've done, or maybe I should say things that they haven't done. And this is one of the key reasons why it's really important that Biden and Harris win, because it's going to make a very, very big difference whose president, when you're talking

about the administration of justice as it pertains to police departments and places where the culture of silence, the culture of brutality, racism is alive and well and very much in the DNA of these organizations. Joy? Joy, so right, keep in mind that Donald Trump encourages these criminals. He tells you to ruffle them up. He tells them, go ahead, do what you're doing. That is not who you want to be president.

You want someone like Joe Biden, who has done as much as he can do in the executive, to try to make policing more equitable, fair, and more accountable. Now, what we must do is pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. That needs to happen. So Senator Booker, Senator Scott, all of the folks who've been working on that bill, we need them to get back to the drawing board. Senator Durbin and the Judiciary Committee get back to the drawing board. And we need that bill before we can even talk about giving more money to cops or anything like that. That's fine. We money to cops or anything like that, that's fine.

We don't have a problem with that, but it has to come with accountability. It has to come with accountability. Why? We just saw why. We just saw why. Most cops are great. But when you have a cop that is very dangerous. But the reality, Randy, that would be a federal bill.

These were local officers. That bill would have no impact on local officers whatsoever. And so, again, that's, I mean, so, I mean, understand, they have pled guilty to state charges and federal charges. They had to, of course, send us to there on federal charges. Part of the problem when it comes to holding cops accountable is that we don't have enough local DAs and state prosecutors who are doing that. This is why you've got to have an aggressive, frankly, Democrat Justice Department led by a strong civil rights division to take up the slack because, unfortunately, we don't see the proper prosecutions on the local level.

Right. And we know that people, unfortunately, don't participate in local politics, which makes it more difficult for us to have good oversight. So we do need a Justice Department that recognizes the disparities of justice in this country when it comes to people of color, particularly Black people. You know, this case makes me so angry because we all know that these weren't the only men that were abused. We all know that this barely scratches the surface. And the cruelty of the how these men were abused that will affect them for the rest of their lives is just overwhelming to me. And so, yes, it was it's good that these six were caught. It may sound wrong. I must say

it because I this is how I feel. I look forward to some rough justice that's probably going to be taken care of when they go to their new homes. And yeah, but we definitely need to have some oversight because this is happening not just in Mississippi, but states all over this country, and it has to stop. Well, I'm glad to see these thugs going to jail, just like I am glad to see that thug Peter Navarro go to jail today. He had to report to a federal prison in Florida, held a news conference where he was whining, complaining about, oh, how unfair this is. But Supreme Court wouldn't even intervene. He's the first former Trump official to go to prison for trying to overthrow the 2020 election. He tried everything in his power, Joey. He tried it all to stay out of prison. And he kept saying how this is just

an infringement on the First Amendment, on executive immunity. Your ass don't have that when you leave. So they tried everything. And so, hey, Peter, don't drop the soap. Don't drop the soap. Four months is a long time for Peter. But I wish we had gotten more, to be honest with you, if I'm being real. It's really a shame that people get more for far less than what these people try to do to our democracy. But we'll take it.

I mean, I just, here's my whole deal. Like, this ain't hard, Randy. If your ass don't break the law, you ain't got to go to jail. Exactly. And they were very clear that they were breaking the law. They just thought that they were going to get away with it because of the power, the power that they felt. And so it is, yeah, four months is nothing compared to, you know, we have brothers and sisters in jail for far less. It doesn't have the impact on the country that this, this man did. But, you know, I hate to celebrate somebody else's tears, but I did today. And, you know.

Oh, hell no. Me too. I absolutely want to go Luther. Having a party. I ain't got no problem. Peter Navarro, take your ass to jail. Joe, I'm sick of these Trump people. Just like I'm sick of Fox News and all the people.

Hey, man, guys, it's unfair that Trump has to put up this bond of $454 million. Guess what? If you don't inflate, if you don't lie about the size of your penthouse, if you do not inflate your assets, guess what? You don't get caught and then got to put the money up. And that's the whole deal. These people don't understand. If you do the crime, you do the time.

And Trump, either he got until March 25th, Joe, to come up with that $454 million in action as interest, or Tiz James is going to be like, hand me the keys. Hand me the keys. I'm a seasoned property. Hand me the keys. You know, it's amazing how precise. I remember seeing Attorney General James in the Congressional Black Caucus, and I'm sitting in the audience, and I'm like, this sister is precise. She's focused. She knows exactly where she's going. And she is

not going to wait and give him a continuance when it's time to collect, okay? And so it's going down. It's going all the way down. And at the end of the day, here's what it is. Here's the good news and there's bad news about America. The good news is that, depending on who you are, it might be bad news, but it's that you can lie. Sometimes you can cheat. Sometimes you can steal. President Trump is in contention to be president again, despite his very, very flawed everything. OK, that's the good news or the bad news, depending on who it is. Now, here's the bad news slash good news, depending on who he is.

You can't do things that are against the law. You can't keep documents you're not supposed to keep, and you don't even know what they are, which is an irony. You can't do things that

will allow an aggressive sister in Atlanta to come after you under RICO violations, which you actually created for mobsters. This is a situation that y'all created where you can put a bunch of things in a box, mix it up, call it soup, and convict somebody because of it. It's not legal to fake your numbers in order to get loans in situations like that. Didn't we just have our dear sister in Baltimore deal with the same thing? So what's good for the goose is good for the gander. And here's my thing. You know, at the risk of sounding a little crass, this is you guys' system. And if it's not working for you, then I really don't know what to tell you, because at the end of the day, you'd have to do a whole lot to get rolled up for things that you did while you were president.

At the end of the day, every time Trump gets in a problem, it's because of something he did. It's cause and effect. And it's not just lying. He's been lying for a long time. That's not legally actionable most of the time, as long as you're not under oath when you do it. It's the other things.

And they're not coming from out of nowhere. This is not happening in a vacuum. The Bible says a curse causeless shall not come. There's a problem and there's a reason all this is happening. And those of us that decide to be connected to Trump like that, to be fruit on the tree, as it were, might end up finding ourselves being rolled up and him not returning our calls. And that's where Mr. Navarro finds himself. That's right. All y'all folk who decide to work for that thug, you are risking your livelihood. Rudy Giuliani has gone broke. He got to pay a whole bunch of settlements. I mean, we can go on and on and on. So, hey, you the fool who chose to go work for him. So that's on you.

So Pete Navarro, I hope you have quite the unpleasant time during your stay in federal prison. All right, y'all. Going to break. We come back. Republicans insisted, oh, that if we get rid of Roe v. Wade, we can stem abortion in America. They've actually increased. And also, an Arizona legislator gives an emotional testimony on the floor about why she had to make the decision to end her pregnancy.

Plus, Beyonce is dropping her, what she said, it ain't a country album, it's a Beyonce album, but she tells a story on why she's doing it, and it harkens back to eight years ago at the Country Music Awards. We'll explain. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Start Network,

broadcasting live from Los Angeles. Support us in what we do. Join the Bring the Funk fan clubs, and you're taking money. Order the P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered, PayPal, or Martin Unfiltered.

Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. And be sure to download the Black Start Network I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real

perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. 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. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava

for Good Plus on Apple 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. President Joe Biden. This was a CBS receipts type of night. He dragged the hell out of the Supreme Court. And he said, y'all don't see the power of women. Trump's brain is melting as we speak. We want to organize from a place of strength.

There's no confusion whatsoever about what they've done and what they plan to do. What Donald Trump is doing is presenting a fallacy. He is convincing them that he's all in it for them when in fact he's all in it for himself. We do not feel Joe Biden. In spite of the success that have taken place during this administration economically, there are too many things where we do not feel like he's had our back. You should also be investing in the barbershops and the beauty salons and the hookah bars and the folks who are going to the club. And there's a way to actually get them registered because we've done it before. But if you don't have folks who understand that dynamic, then you're missing a big opportunity.

We said we just celebrated. For what? Why don't you go to Selma to celebrate rather than recommit yourself to the fight if the bad thing we went to celebrate has been gutted? Republicans did not support a lot of the bills that were necessary to keep the country fluid. You can't only love your country when you win, right? Oh no, you guys don't want another $2 trillion tax cut? This was absolutely the knockdown drag out that we were really grateful for. Black voters are the base. They're the most important base of the Democratic Party. There was very few language in this speech. At the time, we see an attack on black history, an attack on DEI.

The end of the BLM racial reckoning thing has come to a complete end because there was nothing in this speech for that. Our movement has never been grounded in two-party politics in this country. All of our movements ultimately get co-opted by a state that is anti-black. They called the old because they knew the way, and they called the young because they were strong. And I believe there is a good combination of that. But we can have ideas and we can have visions and dreams, but we have to have our young people also working beside us because they are strong and they will run that race and they will run it to the end. Organizers and young people have been pushing this administration

to be on the right side of history and to do something about the issues that they care about. While the Ukraine and Palestine are critical issues, they are not the only global issues. Not a single black person who should ever let it come out their mouth that I'm tired. Because there is somebody else who came before us who didn't stop fighting. Hi, everybody, I'm Kim Cole. Hey, I'm Donnie Simpson. Yo, it's your man Deon Cole from Blackish and you're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. filter. Folks, a new report reveals the number of abortions in America have actually increased since Roe v. Wade was appealed or repealed. The numbers are stark, and this is despite several states implementing severe abortion

restrictions according to the gutmacher institute an organization that aims to improve sexual health and expand reproductive rights worldwide there were more than 1 million abortions in 2023 it's a 10 increase from 2020 states with total bans or with restricted abortion access like arizona and georgia naturally saw a decrease in the number of abortions. However, states where abortion was legal saw significant increases, largely because folks traveling to those places. New Mexico had a 257 percent increase between 2020 and 2023, while Kansas had 114 percent increase. South Carolina saw abortions go up by 67%. Virginia at 76%.

Wyoming had the most significant increase with 271%. The study also showed that the number of people traveling out of state with total abortion bans to bordering states and to all other states in general went up from 9% to 16%. Researchers at the Guttmacher Institute noted that more than 160,000 patients traveled out of state to get an abortion in 2023. Folks, Arizona Democratic State Senator Ava Birch decided to let her colleagues know exactly what it's like when a woman has to make the decision to end a pregnancy.

This is what she said. I rise today because I think it's important to acknowledge how this body has impacted my family and our journey, along with many others who are just like me. I don't know how many of you know this, but a few weeks ago I learned that against all odds, I am pregnant. Many of you know that I've had kind of a rough journey with fertility. I had my first miscarriage more than 13 years ago, and I have been pregnant many times since then. Twice I was lucky enough to successfully carry to term, and I have two beautiful, healthy little boys.

But two years ago, while I was campaigning for this Senate seat, I became pregnant with what we later determined was a non-viable pregnancy. It was a pregnancy that we had been trying for, and we were heartbroken over it. But now, I wish I could tell you otherwise, but after numerous ultrasounds and blood draws, we have determined that my pregnancy is once again not progressing and is not viable. And once again, I have scheduled an appointment to terminate my pregnancy. I don't think people should have to justify their abortions, but I'm choosing to talk about why I made this decision because I want us to be able to have meaningful conversations about the reality of how the work that we do in this body impacts people in the

real world. For the last 12 years, I have worked both as an ER nurse and a nurse practitioner in a women's health clinic, and that experience informs the understanding that I have of my situation. Pregnancy, intended or otherwise, increase your risk for just about every health problem that a person can have, and that includes diabetes and high blood pressure and blood clots, anxiety, depression, arrhythmias, ischemic stroke and I could I could go on. Pregnancy is not a health-neutral condition. Certainly pregnancy carries more risk than abortion which is a very low risk procedure and I say this not to try to discourage people from pregnancy. I'm so glad that I accepted those risks and carried my children. I just recognize them because

I think we have to be honest about the balance of risk and reward and why abortion can often be the right healthcare choice. I don't know how many of you have been unfortunate enough to experience a miscarriage before, but I am not interested in going through it unnecessarily. And right now, the safest and most appropriate treatment for me and the treatment that I choose is abortion. But the laws that this legislature has passed has interfered with my ability to do that along with countless others. And I want to explain what I mean and why I'm still pregnant as I address all of you today, despite having known about the unavoidable demise of my pregnancy

and despite having been to the abortion clinic on Friday where they were equipped and prepared to perform my abortion. First, I was required to have another ultrasound at the abortion clinic, as all patients seeking abortion are required to do in Arizona, an ultrasound that I absolutely did not need to have. I didn't have an ultrasound because my doctor thought I needed one. I had one because legislation has forced me to do that. An invasive transvaginal ultrasound that I didn't want or need to have performed by someone who didn't want to have to do it. I am safe and loved and protected in my marriage, but I cannot imagine how inappropriate

that would be for a victim of sexual assault or for someone who has an abusive or coercive relationship with their partner. Another unwanted vaginal penetration, but this time by the state, by the people who are commissioned to protect us. Then I got to sit through an exhaustive list

of absolute disinformation that was read off to me. I was told that there were alternatives to abortion, parenting or adoption among them, as if delivering a healthy baby is an option for me. It is not. My medical provider was forced to tell me multiple things that don't apply to my situation and some that are just transparently, factually false. And they do this because of laws passed by this legislature in opposition to medical expert testimony and advice. From where I sat, the only reason I had to hear those things was in a cruel and really uninformed

attempt by outside forces to shame and coerce and frighten me into making a different decision other than the one that I knew was right for me. There's no one-size-fits-all script for people seeking abortion care, and the legislature doesn't have any right to assign one. I'm a perfect example of why this relationship should be between patients and providers. All that the legislature has done

is to nurture distrust and confusion in the relationship between patients and providers for people who are vulnerable enough. It's not the job of the medical provider to try to talk a patient out of a decision that they feel comfortable with. Providers want patients to be informed, but not coerced. At no point in either of my experiences at abortion clinics did I feel pressure from the provider to get an abortion. I felt compassion and kindness and empathy and understanding. The only guilt that I felt was for the providers who was forced to say things that they shouldn't have to say because of us.

After the mandatory ultrasound and the mandatory disinformation, I'm then going to have to wait at least another 24 hours after my appointment before I can have a procedure. The last time that I had an abortion, I started to miscarry the night before it was scheduled to take place, and I was denied a procedure in the hospital because I was deemed not critical enough. In spite of the fact that my embryo had died and that my miscarriage had stalled, which left me with retained products of conception. The clauses for

emergencies aren't good enough. These laws can serve to intimidate doctors, and it muddies the waters when they're trying to make complex decisions in situations that are really volatile. I had been bleeding and passing huge clots for hours, but I wasn't bleeding out, and I was still pregnant. So I was offered medication to make me start bleeding again and told that I could have a procedure when I had bled enough. A waiting period is often totally inappropriate and potentially dangerous. Doctors and patients should be making those determinations, not legislators, who don't have to suffer through the consequences themselves. The next day, I went to the abortion clinic where I was able to get the care that I needed.

And two weeks later, abortion clinics shut down in the wake of Roe. And I wouldn't have been able to get my procedure. Arizonans really agree that decisions should be between providers and patients and that the legislature should stay out of it. We know what happens to patients who seek abortion for any reason and aren't able to get one. We have lots of data on the subject and notably Dr. Foster's turn away study, but there's others. Those individuals who are denied abortion are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, more likely to be evicted, more likely to file for bankruptcy, and their living children are more likely to have developmental delays. They have more long-term health consequences, and they're less likely to be able to afford the basic needs for their households.

And that's a short and incomplete list of the poor outcomes that families face when their choices are taken away from them. Generally speaking, people seek abortion for the same reason that I did. I'm choosing abortion because I'm pregnant and for reasons that I should not have to explain to you or to the church or to the state of Arizona. I need to not be pregnant anymore. That's the best outcome for me. I understand that there are a lot of sensitive feelings surrounding pregnancy and that there are philosophical questions that people cannot agree on. But leaders and experts have been talking about those things for years in this country.

And if doctors and political leaders and advocacy organizations and religious organizations and faith groups and scientists have not been able to come to any consensus about the answers to these complicated questions, then I think we can all agree that the right people for that job are not here in the Arizona legislature. Arizonans deserve the freedom and the liberty to make those decisions for themselves. I will never try to force someone to have an abortion. Nobody should ever try to prevent me from having mine. My experiences in this space, both as a provider and as a patient, have led me to believe that this legislature has failed the people of Arizona

in the laws that restrict and dictate abortion and in the resources that it cuts and strangles and denies at every opportunity. I'm really grateful that I am privileged to be able to make the right decision for myself and my family. I caught my pregnancy early. I can afford all those doctor visits. I can take time off work when I need to. But I call on this legislative body to pass laws that make sure every Arizonan has the opportunity

to make decisions that are right for them. Our decision-making should be grounded in expert testimony and in consensus from both the medical community and from constituents and free from political posturing and partisan bias, but that's not what I see happening. So I truly hope that Arizonans have the opportunity to weigh in on abortion on the ballot in November. We know that the majority of Arizonans support the right to abortion. And if we can't operate in that reality in this chamber, then it is critical that everyone have the opportunity for their voices to be heard elsewhere. I stand with those who have had to grapple with and navigate Arizona's restrictive laws surrounding abortion in a time when the decisions being made were complicated enough.

I'm with them. Wow. Randy, this goes to show you what we're dealing with, where here is somebody who is explaining exactly what the consequences are and what they personally went through. And you got Yahoo's mostly white conservative men who know nothing what she's talking about making these legislative decisions. Not only do they not know, I dare say they do not care because there have there's been

a lot of research and information provided about the reasons why some people choose to terminate a pregnancy. That case that this policymaker, that this senator came and presented, I admire her for being so courageous. But I promise you it's not the first time that they've heard a story like this, and yet they still will vote on behalf of ensuring, in my opinion, ensuring that white babies are brought to term because they are scared of the changing demographics of America. And so they don't care. And that's just my absolute firm opinion about it. They know they don't care. And that's just my absolute firm opinion about it. They know they don't. I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-stud on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. 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.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves or up away. You got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication.

Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. And they certainly should not have the right to be making decisions about what a woman does with her body and what a family decides to do that's best for them. But they do. And they do it, like, again, I will say, knowing what the consequences were, are, but they don't care. What they care about right now, they desperately, so these laws are coming into play, they desperately

want to change the tide of the browning of America. Joy, look, we've had some some panels where you've had doctors who are legislators who these folks won't listen to. And they're like, I'm sorry, I'm the expert. Right. Yeah, I think you I might have missed it. I think you—I might have missed it. I think you called me, but I will tell you this. I think part of it is, we need white women, who predominantly it's their husbands—some of it's them, but for the most part it's white men, you're correct, who are making these outrageous decisions.

And they're not realizing that the people that they are hurting look like them. They're their wives. They're their daughters. We have to tell our stories. So to my white girlfriends out there, especially white Republican women who, to their credit, are in many state legislatures starting to tell their story, we need you, if you are married to one of these men, we need you to, or you're dating, it's your brother, whoever, tell your story. Tell the truth about when you terminated your pregnancy, when you had a miscarriage, when you and your partner wanted to use IVF. You must be honest with them about what is really happening here and who is really being implicated. And to the first part of this segment, where we talked about the increase in abortions, there is no surprise there. And if you were unable to travel.

And so who did not have legal abortions, they went and had off-to-the-side abortions. And so inherently increasing their risk. It's a safe procedure when done properly. But when not done properly, it can be a dangerous one. So those numbers are not being reflected. It also reflects the fact that bans do not stop abortions. There is nothing you can do to stop abortions beyond educating people, beyond giving them the economic resources, the educational resources to believe that they have something better to offer and to make sure that they have sex education. Many of our children do not know about their bodies. And so there's that, too. And making sure that maternal health and prenatal care are things that we discuss in this nation.

That's how you reduce the amount of abortions in the country. You do not do it by creating bans. The Guttmacher numbers make that very clear. Joe? Most of the states that have banned abortion have little to no parental leave. And so what that lets you know is that it's not about actually creating an environment that makes a difficult

decision a little bit easier for a woman. It's actually about power and control. Just another thing to be powerful about and to control at the risk of oversimplifying and cutting across the field. Listen, these white sisters that got these cats that aren't doing what they're supposed to, just cut them off. Let them know. Listen, you know, this ain't going down. Go get on the couch. You ain't got no business weighing in on this issue.

And what she said, of course, was powerful. I joke, but it was powerful not only from the standpoint of a pregnant person but from a health care provider because she was a nurse. And they've got nothing to say in response to that. And so this shouldn't be a political issue, right? We shouldn't be having a discussion about what a woman does with her body. It's her, her doctor, her family, her God, her pastor, as it were. And that's about it. And interestingly, the women in this whole thing are the ones that are dealing with the punishment.

We're not talking about these sometimes no-count men that aren't where they need to be or whatever else. But interestingly, if you want to involve politics, I will say this. The Republicans might mess around and make this the issue that helps them lose the election.

Well, and they've been losing a lot of special elections. Kansas, Ohio, it's on the ballot in Florida. And so, yeah, they don't want this to be an issue come November, which is why they're trying to shift all the conversation to the migrants. All right, folks, hold on one second. We come back. Beyonce lets them know. I'm dropping my country album. Matter of fact, she said this ain't even a country album. It's a Beyonce album.

But she references something that happened a few years ago. We're going to tell y'all exactly what it was. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network live from Los Angeles. Back in a moment. I have something I want to tell you. I am running for president. Of the United States?

Holy. I'm paving the road for a lot of other people looking like me to get elected. Brooklyn's first black representative. You're about to make history. You want to be president? You ain't no man. Maybe we should find your mother. All you got is your one vote. You sound just like every other politician.

Do I look like every other politician? Freedom! Truly, you can't win. And why can't I win? I have an opportunity to make a difference. Creation! This isn't a campaign. It's a joke.

The only thing anybody's gonna remember is that there were a bunch of black folks who made fools of themselves. I'll kill you! Ha! Ha! See, too much suffering. And I don't know how to not try. We're living it proud. Still right, still right.

I don't think I'm special. I just want to remind people what's possible. We need something that's going to make some noise. The Black Panthers and Shirley Chisholm. It's like thunder and lightning. I'm going to force all the politicians to be held accountable. You're gonna do all that?

School teacher from Brooklyn. Harriet was just a slave. Rosa was just a domestic. What is it you do for a living again? Lilliam Golden! The people of America are watching us! Lilliam Golden! Yeah. Baby, I'm golden. representing the J-O-D-E-C-I, that's Jodeci, right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered. All right, before I go to our next story,

all of y'all folks who are watching on YouTube, while y'all being slackers, hit the damn like button, okay? Y'all commenting like crazy, so why don't y'all hit the like button? We really appreciate that. That impacts the algorithm. So it would be nice of y'all. The Supreme Court has ruled to allow Texas to continue arresting people they suspect of being illegally entered in the United States from Mexico. The court have been blocking the controversial statute called SB4 on Monday. It issued an indefinite stay, which was wiped away by today's order.

In December, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed the bill into law, immediately raising concerns among immigration advocates. They say the law will increase racial profiling as well as detentions and attempted deportations by state authorities in Texas, where Latinos represent 40 percent of the population. Three liberal justices publicly descended from the court's order, as is often the case in emergency applications. The court did not explain its reasoning. The White House says allowing Texas state police to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally will end up in border security. They also say allowing Texas state police to arrest people suspected of another country is, frankly, racial profiling.

Now, Mexico has just announced that they will not be accepting anybody who is being deported under this particular law. Joe, this goes to show you the madness of Texas Governor Greg Abbott that, I mean, this is basically a show your papers law similar to South Africa and apartheid. I mean, so they're literally like, oh, you look like you're illegal, so we can arrest you. They could actually be American citizens. Yeah, and to hell with the Constitution. We have a situation where certain folks, be it Donald Trump or certain governors, aren't believing in the Constitution.

They're going to be pragmatic about throwing it out. And so, you know, everybody knows that the federal government is who's supposed to deal with immigration. That's where the jurisdiction lies. And so if Greg Abbott doesn't like what they're doing or saying that they're not doing enough, then that's a problem that has a political—i.e., voting—solution. You don't get to rearrange or throw out the Constitution. Of course, I'm not surprised that the Supreme Court has came out the way that it did, even

though it had done the opposite just recently before, letting something go and be implemented, which could very well be unconstitutional while this winds its way through the courts. But meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are people in Washington, including Donald Trump himself, that benefit from this being a political issue. Again, you know, there are, it's not the first time this law that was proposed recently that Biden would agree to

that Democrats weren't crazy about. Okay, let's solve it. Let's deal with this issue. They didn't want to do that because they wanted to keep it as a political issue. A year or two ago, Pete Aguilar and Will Herr

got together and did a bill that had the potential to deal with the issue, but they didn't want to deal with it. There hasn't been an appetite for it. But just to use it as a political issue, and now to the point of, again, throwing out the Constitution so people can effectively say, show me your papers, or I've decided that

basically the way the sun is shining or how I feel or this or that and the other, that you're going to be in this box and I'm going to put you in. And so I'm basically going to be able to detain you because I feel like it. And that's not constitutional. But again, here we are. And and this court is complicit. And Joy, what they're doing is they're allowing this to move forward as the case makes its way through the courts. That's right. I mean, you know, you've got to imagine what if you are a person living in these areas, living in this state, how vulnerable you must feel, how the residual effects of this law, there are people who will weaponize that, right? Making people who are already vulnerable be more vulnerable.

So I don't think, sometimes I don't think the Supreme Court understands how this impacts real people. And it goes to the notion that when you see brown bodies that you just, or black bodies, that you just don't care as much. And I think people of color are saying that's no longer acceptable. And these types of things, unfortunately, have an impact on our election where people can somehow end up blaming the Biden administration for things that are not their fault. This is the Supreme Court. Democrats have tried to address the immigration problems in this country. Republicans, the Supreme Court, Texas, they are the problem. We are trying to resolve the problems here at the border.

And so just keeping that in mind, but it's heartbreaking. And when you put that over, that overlay with the compassion that people have for folks in the Ukraine, which I do as well, you can't help but feel a little cynical that if those people were not looking like us on this call, were looking like some of the Texas state legislature, that the outcome would be different. There's a real gap here. And some people who really need to consult their Bible, they need to consult their religious leaders and make sure that they're doing and they're living up to who they say they are, because there's a gap here. We love our neighbors, and we take in those who are suffering.

We don't throw them out. Well, Randy, we know they don't pay any attention to that Bible, so we know how that goes. They only like to hold it up, but not actually read it or apply what's inside of it right and sometimes upside down you remember well but trump remember trump does like two corinthians though he likes two corinthians not second corinthians two corinthians people that ain't been to church knows it's second Corinthians. Second Corinthians, right.

Absolutely. Randy, go ahead. You know, because, you know, of my field, and I'm so into DEI, it's always interesting to me that when people start, you know, cutting the rights or holding back the rights or coming down on black people, it seems that everyone else feels safe for some reason. And I always say it starts with us, but it does not end with us. And so now every brown person, those who were born here, have families here, have paid their taxes for years, are at risk of being stopped. They must always be looking over their shoulders now. And so people need to realize that it's never just us. I believe

that people are comfortable when they think it's just us, like, OK, we're Black people. But I always try to say this is everyone's battle. When powerful white men start making decisions about who is and is not American and who should have full rights exercise in this country, it applies to everybody. And so it would be very interesting to me, you know, when you look at the polls and who has did participate in voting Trump in. You know, we talk about the 53 and 54 percent of white women respectfully, and some because of the abortion issue. You have many Latinos who voted for Trump.

I don't think they realize that when people are discriminating, they don't discriminate when it comes to discriminating. It's always going to trickle down. And so we're seeing what we're seeing. And it's unfortunate and it's sad. And I hope people pay attention to it. All right, then. All right, let's go to our final story, folks. Beyonce is in the news.

She dropped today on Instagram that come March 29th, she is going to be releasing Cowboy Carter. Not a country album, but actually it is a country album. This is what she actually posted on Instagram. Do y'all have a larger? That's still too small, y'all. We should have blown. Why do we do our graphics package?

Okay, all right, I got to read it. It's too small for y'all watching. So let me go ahead and read this. Today marks a 10-day countdown until the release of Act 2. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. We can roll the Beyonce B-roll, y'all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of the supporters of Texas Hold'em and 16 Carriages. I feel honored to be the first black woman with the number one single on the Hot Country Songs chart. That would not have happened without the outpouring of support from each and every one of you.

My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist's race as it relates to releasing genres of music will be irrelevant. This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had a few years ago where I did not feel welcomed. It was very clear that I wasn't. But because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history. The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. That, too, is a result of challenging myself and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.

I have a few surprises on the album and have collaborated with some brilliant artists who I deeply respect. I hope that you can hear my heart and soul and all the love and passion that I poured into every detail and every sound. I focus on this album as a continuation of Renaissance. I hope this music is an experience, creating another journey where you can close your eyes, start from the beginning, and never stop. This ain't a country album. This is a Beyonce album. This is Act II, Cowboy Carter, and I'm proud to share it with you. And folks, y'all,

it's got some 84,000 comments and 2.6 million likes on Instagram. Now, when she talks about an incident, she's talking about the 2016 Country Music Awards, where she appeared with the Dixie Chicks to sing one of her songs from her Lemonade album. One of the Dixie Chicks was on the Howard Stern show, and she talked about what happened that night. ...formed with Beyonce.

I don't know whether it was because of your country fans who felt you had betrayed them, or she wasn't country. I remember it was just a... I know a lot of cops, and 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. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1.

Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott.

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. 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.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. Big fucking brouhaha that you showed up with Beyonce.

Like, criticized for that, right? You know, it was just a weird vibe in that building. We hadn't done anything, country award shows or anything since the controversy. Let me just say, the week we worked with Beyonce is the single greatest working week of my professional life. It was awesome to watch her world, to see how she does stuff. It's she's a perfectionist and to see the power she has as a female and a black female is incredible. And I guess they can rate those shows now by the 15 minutes. It's the highest rate at 15 minutes in CMA history. And then they start getting, you know, racist assholes bombarding their website with comments and emails and whatever. And so they take her down.

They took our performance down and caved to that bullshit. And then they, I guess, got so much bad press for doing that. Within 24 hours, they put it back up again. Just cowards. It's just crazy. She just gave you your greatest ratings that you've ever gotten. How dare you take her song off? It was ridiculous.

You're fucking kidding me. I knew none of that. Would you ever perform at the Country Music Awards again? Or have you just had it? No, I mean, I said I would never after 2003, but then when Beyonce calls, you're like, okay, maybe just this one time. One last time.

Do you get nervous when... No, I'll only do it with Beyonce. Do you get nervous when you have to perform with someone like Beyonce, or are you just so seasoned at all of this that, like, nothing kind of throws you? I mean, I don't know about nervous i was all right folks now um this is the country music awards um a video so play that and

let me explain to y'all what happened so when you look at ratings they do it on a half on the um every 15 minutes this was the highest rated 15 minute segment of the country music awards in their history. There were so many racists who responded to her appearance. The country of music awards took this presentation down from their social media and their Web site. Then they got such a backlash. They had to then put it back up. There was one social, there was one guy who was on social media earlier today who talked about, who talked about being in the room that night. And he said a person in front of him literally said, get that black bitch off the stage. And so, so when Beyonce references this incident, this is what she's talking about.

And so it shows you. Remember when John Schneider, of course, you know, Dukes of Hazzard, John Schneider, who made a lot of money with Tyler Pierre on the have and the have nots, when he came out blasting her for having the audacity to bring wokeness to country music and comparing it to a dog, that's what you see. What you have here, Randy, you have white people in America who believe that country music is theirs. Many of them are MAGA people, and their whole deal is this ours. Forget the fact, Rosetta Tharpe.

Forget the fact that you've got Darius Rucker, Charlie Pryor, Lionel Richie. Forget the fact that black music, black artists have been at the heart of country music. These white folks believe that country music is theirs, and they were pissed off at Beyonce. And guess what? When she dropped Texas Hold'em, shot to number one on the hot country charts. And there was some, the country station, I think it was in Oklahoma,

where they made it clear they were not going to play Beyonce's album. Oh, when that got posted on social media, they got their asses lit up. And they were like, okay, okay, we're going to be playing her in the next hour. We got it. We got it. I hope this album blows the charts up

and when she goes to the CMAs next year and she takes all the awards, then just sit there and say, see what happens when y'all mess with a black girl from Houston. Or if she doesn't go, that would be powerful too. Mail me my award.

Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no, no. She'll go. Oh, hell no. Hell no. No, you return to the scene and you look your enemy in the eye and you tell him, mm-hmm, you're going to see my cute ass walk up and down them stairs over and over and over again.

Well, you know, I you know, Beyonce is an activist. I don't think people recognize. But I'll talk about this particular incident. What kills me is that you say some white people think that they own country music. Some white people think they own everything. And the level of cultural appropriation is quite disgusting. Oh, I got some white MAGA person in the chat saying right now, cultural appropriation. No. We can't appropriate something we created. Let me educate him.

The banjo. The banjo. Yes, the banjo. Yes. It is our instrument that we created. We came over, and when we were enslaved people, we would sit and play the banjo, sometimes forced to play it for our enslavers' parties, but they would hear us with the banjo, sometimes forced to play it for our enslavers parties, but they would hear us with the banjo. Then white people came over and, you know, they tried to take over the music as they do at first to make fun of us in minstrel strokes.

That's why they were using the music. But country music has always been founded by us. And white people took it over or tried to take it over. They really never did. So no, it is white people as always who have culturally appropriated us. And Beyonce said, yeah, I'm going to take that back. Right. Let me educate you. But it's always been ours. I mean, it is amazing to me that people will steal from you, literally steal your culture and then claim it as their own and then be offended. In the genre that's ours. I cannot.

Joy, Joy, Joy, I can't wait till it drop I can't wait and trust me it's gonna be some mad folk on social media and I'm sitting here saying Joy I'm gonna say cry me your white tears cry me your white racist

tears Taylor Swift and a lot of white country music fans who are going to eat up Beyonce's album. Eat it up. So she's going to get everybody. Us, them, and everyone in between. The other thing is this just goes to show the lacking in the American educational system. When you try to limit education for other people,

you're limiting for yourselves. Anyone who knows anything about music history knows that Black people had a significant role in the origins of country music. They sound ignorant. It's ahistorical. You know, you just can't—hey, they need to invest in some critical race theory and Black history in their schools, infuse it in American history where it belongs, and then they wouldn't make these types of mistakes. But that's okay. Beyonce is going to school them. Class is in session. Yes, it is. Well, and I think, Joe, I mean, again, once we see who's actually collaborating with,

I'll tell you this here, we'll see exactly who won the party with Beyonce. But I remember talking to Lionel Richie when he did, when he dropped Tuskegee. And we were talking one night and he said that a friend reminded him that he was a member of the Country Music Academy. And a lot of Lionel Richie's songs were embraced by country artists. I mean, Stuck on You, Deep River, maybe you can go on and on and on. And so when he decided to do it, and he used to share this, Ken Cragen was his manager, was also the manager of Kenny Rogers. Well, when he decided to do Tuskegee, which is all of his hits as duets,

nearly every major country artist wanted to be on that album. Lionel Richie told me, he said, Frat, he said, Frat, I could have done three albums with the number of artists who wanted to join me on this album. He dropped Tuskegee, boom, shut up the charts, number one on the country charts. And this is Lionel Richie from Tuskegee, Alabama. So the reality is, black folk, we from the country, we rule. I mean, listen, when I'm listening to King George, I love people in L.A. Like, man, what you listening to?

I'm like, y'all black people in L.A. need to learn the rest of the country. Because King George is from South Carolina. And it's a mix of blues, country, R&B. And again, when you're black and Southern soul in many ways, I mean, it has country roots. When you listen to, when you listen to, so like even in Louisiana,

you got two types of music. You got Zydeco and then you got your second line music. Well, your second line music typically is New Orleans. Zydeco is rural Louisiana. So Buckwheat, Zydeco, Clifton Chenier. And so we've always taken that living in these other parts of the country and redefine the music. And so Beyonce, what? Daddy from Alabama, mama from Texas, mama from Louisiana. She's in, she's Texas.

That's the reality. So it's some folk and I, and I know what she's going to do. She's in Texas. That's the reality. So it's some folk, and I know what she's going to do. She's about to give a lot of white folks a history lesson on black and country. Yeah, and Lionel did Lady for Kenny Rogers. And all the guys in the Commodores historically were songwriters, but his stuff is the stuff that was really smashed, that really smashed. Why? Because he had the country twang.

Because it was crossover. Because it was easily convertible. That's why songs like ones that he's done can be country songs just as easily because effectively they already are. So it's, you know, what's old is what's new this is all ours okay by the way btw ijs we've been doing it we'd have forgot more about it that a lot of these folks actually know and beyonce is going to this is why musicians are important she's going to cross barriers she's going to cause conversations in people's houses. That's what they're concerned about. It's not just the sisters just singing a song.

The problem is the consumption and her presentation is going to make a suggestion that goes against everything that they tend to represent, particularly those that have a short view of history where they start in the middle of the story. What they might end up finding out is that at the end of the day, this is a return. This is not a departure. The world is round. So we come back to where we were and we were always here. And so now those of your kids that don't have their classes set up in a certain way because you've taken away things in the library, they'll just listen to the Beyonce album. Bam! And so, folks, so I

just posted it, but I'll do this here. If you actually go to TikTok, Beyonce actually dropped, she put together a compilation of all the different people, black, white, Latino, Asian American, Native American, all responding to her Texas Hold'em. It's about a minute and 45 second video.

At the end, she says, she says, thank you. And so all those white races oh i'm gonna enjoy your tears so please by all means continue to be upset because we're gonna laugh at you while beyonce makes it rain with country music all right y'all that's it while you're joy randy Joe, I appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thanks a lot, folks.

Listen up, folks. In 90 minutes, we're going to be live on the red carpet here in Los Angeles from the Egyptian theaters right around the corner. And we'll be talking to Regina King, John Ridley, and others involved with the movie Shirley. It's on Netflix. It airs on Netflix, drops on Netflix on March 22nd. Regina King plays Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm. And so I can't wait to see the movie, tell you all about it. But we're going to be on the red carpet broadcasting live.

And so that's going to be at 6.30 p.m. L.A. time, 9.30 p.m. Eastern, 8.30 p.m. Central. So I'm about to get dressed and jet out of here and then run to the theater. I will see y'all in, let's see here, about an hour and 20 minutes from the Shirley Chisholm, from the Shirley Red Carpet. And so we appreciate that. Hey, folks, don't forget, support us in what we do. The dollars that you provide for us allow us to do the kind of coverage that you're not seeing anywhere else. And so please join our Bring the Funk fan club.

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You dig? 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.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. 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 podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. 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.

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