#RolandMartinUnfiltered - Dems cave to GOP funding bill, Judge orders thousands of federal workers reinstated, Trump USPS plan

Episode Date: March 15, 2025

3.14.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: Dems cave to GOP funding bill, Judge orders thousands of federal workers reinstated, Trump USPS plan Democrats who caved on the MAGA regime's spending bill exposed. Thousands of people converged on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to protest actions taken by the Trump administration that they claim are unconstitutional. St. Augustine's University alumni are rallying to save the historically Black college and university. We'll speak with two members of the Save SAU coalition about their concerns regarding the factors they believe are causing the school's decline. The quest to force colleges and universities to classify college players as employees continues. I'll talk to the attorney who represented college athletes against the NCAA, drawing upon legal precedents that compare college athletes to unpaid prison labor under the 13th Amendment's "slavery exception." An organization is working to prevent opioid overdose deaths in Black communities. I'll chat with an advocate who says access to lifesaving medications is unequal. And we will show you a disturbing video from California that depicts a Black girl being attacked by a Mexican male student while onlookers, including a substitute teacher, stood by without intervening. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.  This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox  http://www.blackstarnetwork.com The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. you there? No, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. 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 Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. 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. Today is Friday, March 14th, 2025, coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network.

Boy, did Senate Democrats cave in allowing the Republicans' continuing resolution to go through so the government will not shut down. But guess what? A lot of Democrats across the country are ticked off at Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer and the 10 other Democrats that voted with the Republicans. We'll tell you all about it. You'll also hear from House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. At one point, he was asked to the Senate get new leadership. His response?

Next question. Yeah, thousands of people converged in the National Mall in D.C. today. The protest actions taken by the MAGA Trump administration, they claim, are unconstitutional, including lots of alumni. St. Augustine's University alumni are rallying to save a historically black college university in North Carolina will talk with two members of the Save SAU coalition about their concerns regarding the factors they believe are causing the school's decline.

The quest to force colleges and universities to classify college players as employees continues. A talk to attorney representing college athletes against the NCAA who said that, seriously, they drew legal precedents that compare college athletes to unpaid prison labor under the 13th Amendment's slavery exception. Yeah, they sure did. The organization is working to prevent opioid overdose deaths in black communities. We'll chat with an advocate who says access to life-saving medications is unequal. Plus, we'll show you a disturbing video in California that depicts a black girl being brutally attacked by a Mexican-American male student while onlookers, including a substitute teacher, stood by and did nothing.

And the continuing erasure of black people and women continues by MAGA, this time in Arlington National Cemetery. There's lots to unpack, and it's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. And when it breaks, 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 It's Uncle Roro, y'all It's Rolling Martin, yeah

Rolling with rolling now A federal judge in California has ruled that the thousands of probationary workers fired from federal agencies should be reinstated. Judge William Alsop granted a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by the American Federation of Government Employees. This ruling, issued in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, applies to the fired probationary employees at the Department of Defense, Veteran Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior, and Treasury. Now, the White House, who is supposed to be following federal law, hears this idiot, the press secretary, Carolyn Leavitt, where she told reporters when asked if the administration will comply with this court order. Listen.

An update on it. John, your district court rulings about all the fired probationary workers use the same language here just now. It was in a statement about fighting back against that ruling. Do you mean appealing or something else? And does the administration plan to comply with those orders in the meantime? Fighting back by appealing, fighting back by using the full weight of the White House Counsel's Office and our lawyers at the federal government who believe that this injunction is entirely unconstitutional, and it is for anybody who has a basic understanding of the

law. You cannot have a low-level district court judge filing an injunction to usurp the executive authority of the president of the United States. That is completely absurd. And as the executive of the executive branch, the president has the ability to fire or hire. And you have these lower level judges who are trying to block this president's agenda. It's very clear. And as I just cited, I was appalled by the statistic when I saw it this morning. In one month, in February, there have been 15 injunctions of this administration in our agenda. In three years under the Biden administration,

there were 14 injunctions. So it's very clear that there are judicial activists throughout our judicial branch who are trying to block this president's executive authority. We are going to fight back. And as anyone who saw president Trump and his legal team fighting back, they know how to do it. He was indicted nearly 200 times and he's in the oval office now because all of the indictments, all of these injunctions have always been unconstitutional and unfair. They are led by partisan activists who are trying to usurp the will of this president and we're not going to stand for it. Thanks. So you're just going to ignore a federal judge. At least 30,000 probationary federal and government employees were dismissed as part of a government efficiency initiative led by the twice impeached

criminally convicted felon in chief Donald Trump and his co-president Elon Musk. Their effort to slash federal workforce and government expenditures is running face long into facts because they really haven't done it, but it shows you the level of ignorance that they are imposing. My guest this week, Matt Banning, civil rights attorney out of Corpus Christi, Derrick Jackson, state representative out of Georgia, joining us from Atlanta, Michael Imhotep, host of the African History Network show out of Detroit. Bob us from Atlanta, Michael Imhotep, host of the African History Network show out of Detroit.

Bob Lyon here, Derek. These folks doge all the so-called savings. They're a joke. They're lying. They have to keep going back revising. They keep getting busted by people, exposing their lies as well. And so, I mean, but to listen to this fool, Carolyn Leavitt, to act as if you could just ignore a federal judge, oh, one judge shouldn't do this.

Well, I recall that there were numerous times where a federal judge made rulings during the Biden-Harris administration. And guess what? They appealed, but they never said, oh, the judge didn't have the constitutional authority to do so. You know, Roland, it's amazing that we're only 54 days in this administration, just 54 days. And the number of, it just gets so exhausting to say unconstitutional, unprecedented. These words are starting to be worn out in these 54 days. Here's the bottom line, Roland. We have a democracy. We have a system in place. In the judicial branch, they're doing their job. These are not low-level judges. These are individuals who are doing their job and they're going to hold him accountable. I mean, just face it. The other day where a federal court judge told him that he had to bring individuals back that he took over to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unlawfully taking citizens from one country to another country is illegal. And this is the same individual that decided to bring automobiles

in front of the White House in the Rose Garden, which is also illegal. And so we're just going to have to continue to buckle down, fasten our seatbelts, hold them accountable, and shows like yours are going to have to realize, can tell individuals where this president and Elon Musk and everyone else are breaking the law. And what he did today in the Department of Justice for 45 minutes,

ranting and raving and going after lawyers just uncalled for. We're going to get into that. Matt, these are thugs. These people do not care about the rule of law. They believe that they have all authority. And Donald Trump, he acts like there's no such thing as three branches of government. For him, it's only one branch. Other ones get to do what he says do. One of the first cases you learn in law school and constitutional law is a case

called Marbury v. Madison. And that's the case that said the Supreme Court had the right, essentially, the power to look at the constitutionality of the laws. I don't know if it's ever been explicitly construed with executive orders. But the point is, Article III judges have the right, as it's been in our government since 1803, to review the constitutionality of the laws and presumably as well the executive order. So to act as though a judge who had to be nominated by the president and be confirmed by the Senate and go through the entire confirmation process as a, quote, low-level judge, despite

a lifetime appointment in the awesome power of the federal judiciary. It's just a matter of rhetoric over reality, because the reality is federal judges have a lot of power, and it's an august position. So what it is, is that the Trump administration doesn't like the answers that it's getting from the courts. And the thing is, the court doesn't, quote, file an injunction. The court rules on an injunction. So that means that a litigant came in front of the court and said,

look, we are likely to be harmed by this executive order. I'm not sure exactly who filed this, but presumably it was one of the unions or maybe individual federal workers who said we're likely to be harmed by this action. The court looked at that and determined that they were, in fact, likely to be harmed by that action and issued the injunction ruling in their favor. But my understanding is that there was also some dicta or some commentary about how the court believed that the way they were doing this was not only unconstitutional and unlawful, but was dishonest, that they were framing it as people who had never had bad performance reviews before were now being allegedly let go because of their performance.

I think the judge saw that this was a subterfuge. And this is exactly how this is supposed to work, with checks and balances. The judiciary is supposed to be able to look at the constitutionality of laws and actions. That's what they have done here. And I think we're all at risk of the entire house of cards falling, if you will, once the Trump administration starts to just out and out disregard what judges are doing in their rulings. And that's where I think we're heading. I mean, we're already seeing that. They're already kind of messaging in that

regard. But once they start wholesale doing that, I don't really know what the institutional response is going to be, because right now judges are basically the last line of defense to stop a lot of this craziness that's coming out of the White House. Michael, we say what these thugs were going to do, and they're doing exactly what they also said they were going to do. They do not care about judicial rulings except the ones that are in their favor. And a little bit later on the show, we're going to show some of this, that insane, that insane speech he gave at the Department of Justice and what was even more shameful for his attorney general standing right next to him, the same idiot who

spends more time on Fox News than she actually does at the Department of Justice. Yeah, you know, this has been a crazy week, Roland, from the trade war, from tariffs also the federal judge in California, regarding basically the same thing, tens of thousands of people, federal employees being fired under Doge from this government. And the judges are ruling that these people were fired basically illegally. They weren't given advance notice. And in a lot of cases, Matt is

absolutely correct on this. In a lot of cases. 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.

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 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. Never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out.

Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. It's said that they didn't perform well, but their last performance review said that they were doing exceptionally well. And then also Donald Trump this week, he talked about how employees at the Department of Education, how a lot of them don't show up to work, things of this nature. And he's just throwing this stuff out and providing no evidence. And then when we look at the corrections that Doge has had to make, according to Reuters, according to their count, over 1,000 errors have had to be corrected by Doge. So if any of us on

this panel made 1,000 errors at our job, we would have been five months ago. Okay, this is just stupid. So yeah, it's going to get worse. This is what we warned people about. And the problem with Donald Trump, and I said this in the first administration, everything that Trump does, he tells you ahead of time he's going to do it. It's just people for some reason didn't believe him. He told you he was going to do all of this. So this continues. But this shows also the importance of judges, especially federal judges. Indeed, indeed.

So, you know, these folks, they are thugs, pure and simple. They don't care about the law and they just want to do whatever it is they want to do. So a little bit later, we're going to talk about several other things they're doing regarding U.S. Postal Service violating the law. We're going to talk about, of course, that crazy, demented speech that idiot gave today at the Department of Justice. So it's a lot to talk about right now, though I want to go talk about what's happening at St. Augustine's University in North Carolina. Last night we told you about the university which entered into a 90-day arbitration process after its appeal for accreditation was denied.

The SAVE-SAU coalition formed in early 2024 is trying to figure out how to dismantle the school's board of trustees whom they say is the real problem. Save SAU coalition chair Benjamin Johnson and Steve Williams, a national alumni trustee elect for St. Augustine's University, joins me right now. Gentlemen, glad to have you here. I just don't, for the life of me, I don't understand how St. Augustine's continues to be in trouble. I mean, we're now going on at least a decade. And real quick, how many presidents have y'all had in the last decade in in in the last in the last 10 years roland uh we have only had one president six have been interim or acting well that's but but that also counts that's my whole point so you've had seven in 10 years yeah you show you show me any institution, whether it's a

Fortune 500 company, HBCU, a PWI, community college, or you show me just a regular ordinary organization or a church, if you've had seven leaders in 10 years, there's a problem with the people

who are picking the leaders, and that's the board of trustees absolutely yes absolutely no i think the common denominator roland in that has always been the board of trustees they're the only ones that haven't changed and that's been the issue and we brought that up in court or in our court case, and we basically said that several times. That's been the common denominator, has been the Board of Trustees. Exactly. So let me throw this out because I asked this question last night.

So let's put the trustees back up. So there are 14 board members, correct? In that picture, there's 14. We haven't had the customary number of 15 is what we're, by the state statute, is what we're supposed to have. There hasn't been 15 board members in the last three and a half years. And in that picture also, uh, Ms. Bollinger, um, George Brooks and, uh, another person is already gone from the actual board. So they've already resigned.

Okay. So, uh, to your knowledge, do these board members bring in any money? Is there a minimum amount that each board member should bring in? Yes. One of the things that we talked about last night was the structuring of the bylaws. And the bylaws in 2013 stated that board members had to give or get, raise or donate $5,000 per board member. That had been restructured. That's it? Come on, $5,000? That was it. And the bylaws were restructured from a 156-page document to 26 pages. And in those 26 pages, the board members were only required to bring in $500.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. It went from 5,000 500 yes yes they took 125 page document and rolled it into 25 pages their bylaws our bylaws used to be 125 what's that 156 pages 156 pages and they basically reduced it to 25 pages to encapsulate themselves so they can be self-governing. That's what happened. Under that, they changed it. When Dr. Robertson was there, you had to bring in $100,000.

Okay, so here's the next question. thousand dollars. Okay. So, so, okay. Here's the next question. Who picks the board of trustees? The, this,

with the situation that we have now, the board chair has been selecting board members and they are, again hold on hold on hold on so let me just okay so first of all i'm wearing a texas university shirt texas a name is a state university the governor picks the board of regents uh that's how as it happens st augustine's is a private university okay so who so is there a governing entity over the board is there i mean it is so or or does the board just do whatever the hell they want to do and they just self-govern basically that's what they're doing when they reduce the actual when they change the actual bylaws that's what they. They reduced it to the point of them being self-governed and basically them being able to have carte blanche and what they wanted to do with the university has gotten into such a bad state of affairs financially. I detailed last night how St. Augustine's got $35 million from the federal government during COVID.

$19 million in Cap One forgiveness. That means a loan not being paid back and an additional $15 million. So, what the hell happened? Well, Roland, I will say this, is that in the Sachs report, in reviewing that,

in the Sachs report, they showed up that there was $10 million unaccounted for. There were four items that were brought up in regards to financial management, fiscal malfeasance, fiscal misfeasance. And there was a fourth one, all financial. And in this process in the last two years, there were three more that were added in regards to just overall governance. So, as you mentioned, that there was basically a total of almost $50 million that was brought into the school, and it is unaccounted for. Historically, there's always been.

What? Hold on. What the hell is unaccounted for me? Okay, that when there was an audit, they showed that money came in, but couldn't show where it was dispersed that came up in the 2010 2021 audit with bdo where they basically showed and laid out where over i think they said above 10 million dollars shipped out and basically and shipped out mean wire transfers 5 000 in in

increments of 5 000 and the highest being 350 000 were shipped out and that's public record so they were there was no uh authorization done there was no oversight there's no checks and balances and that's historically what has happened with St. Augustine's over the years. There's never been any really true checks and balances, which is why we're in the situation where we are right now. So just put it just put it out there. There's never been any really true checks and balances because in any business, it would have shut down completely by this time. Just not having the right things and the right protocols in place. Right things in place. Yeah.

All right. So the attorney general refused to sign off on this deal, this 99-year lease with this company out of Florida. You have folks who are, you know, like they're trying to figure this $7 million loan, 24% interest charged to it. And what sort of set me off last night was this university statement that,

well, you know, we need unity and positivity. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. There ain't going to be no positivity until somebody can explain where in the hell the money went. And I think that, and what I said is, as leadership, you can't be asking the community and alumni and others to help to save the university if you don't have straightforward answers on what the hell has happened with the money that they got over the last five years exactly roland and one of the things with that is that the same sau coalition we have actually gone to find donors to help us

financially and the next steps in this process. The majority of the donors that we have had relationships with want to give funds, but they will give it with stipulation. One of the stipulations is that the board needs to go. Some of them want the board, well, most, all of them want the board gone. Some want the track coach that was fired unceremoniously to be reinstated. There are a lot of things that the university has done that has been unscrupulous. And we have to show that that behavior, those people that have done that are gone before anybody will come up and put a dollar in our basket. I think the main thing, and Ben is right, the main thing that we're focusing on is why. If you're getting a loan for $7 million or $70 million and you're putting up the entire campus and all the properties, so basically you're talking about $7 million or $70 million, and you're putting up the entire campus and all the properties.

So basically, you're talking about $250 million in properties for a $70 million loan, which makes no sense. And if you take it even a step further, when they took the money from Gothic Ventures, they took first $7 million, then they took another $4 million in November. With that $4 million that you took in November, you did not get the school prepped and ready for the students to even return for the next semester. So what did you do with the money? There's no accountability. So that's what's been happening here. And the fact that they've encapsulated themselves behind the bylaws is what we've been fighting. Because real in truth and merit, they don't have checks and balances.

They don't show any receipts. But they still come back to alumni asking for money. Nobody wants to give to a black hole, period. Exactly. And, Rolla, one piece to talking about the changes in the bylaws. And they made the changes to the bylaws. One of the things that they did is that they created an If they became a member of the executive branch, their four-year terms started over again. So we have board members who have been on there 12 to 16 years. Wow.

And they have a common denominator, and not only a common denominator, but these are staying, they have staying power because they have manipulated the bylaws so that they could stay. And in our lawsuit, we talked about that the Board of Trustees was using the university as its own piggy bank. Absolutely. Questions from our panel. Let me go to Matt Manning first. Yeah, so my first question is, what role, if any, does the North Carolina General Assembly play in the governance of St. Augustine? Is there a possibility that the General Assembly can come in and abdicate some of the board's powers. I know we've seen that

in other states, and frankly, it usually works against the benefit of the university. But I'm wondering if there's any kind of mechanism like that here that y'all are aware of. Well, because we are a private institution, we have to adhere to the 501c3 statutes for an educational institution. So the powers and the enforcement powers all lie with the attorney general's office. Now, we can put pressure on the legislator to have the attorney general, as they would put pressure on the attorney general, to do something. So that's where we are in this process. And I think that was our whole reason for going to court, mainly because to show we knew there was a slight possibility on the technicality that we may not win that case. But the merit of our case was very strong.

So we took that chance. And basically, we lost because of the statute. And the statute is you have to be a sitting board member to bring a case forward. Now, me being the actual trustee-elect, that they haven't seen it. And because they knew once they sat me, then this lawsuit would move forward.

That's how I can safely assume but uh at this point that's what we've been fighting against and even the judge once she saw the merit of the case oh yeah she was definitely saddened because she had to side with the statue but this is what she said openly this is the part that I hate the most. We're losing because of statute, not because of the merit, period. Derek. to Manning's, but since it was asked, let me shift it in a different perspective, because as a legislator here in Atlanta, we had a similar situation with Morris Brown College. Morris Brown College was unaccredited for nearly 20 years due to financial mismanagement of funds. So what are the next steps for you all while this litigation process is underway? Well, the first piece as we, where we are now is we're not able to do anything until

the board is gone. We are still pushing that piece. In the meantime, we have looked at other models of schools like Talladega, Morris Brown, Bennett College, to see what they did in order to get accreditation. And as you mentioned, Morris Brown, it took them 20 years to get their accreditation back. It took Bennett 10. Talladega was able to maneuver and manipulate not to lose this accreditation, but to get a fresh start, which took them three years. So we're looking at those types of things and putting plans and strategies together for when that board does leave as we put some things in place. As Ben stated, we're strengthening our actual strategic plan and we're shoring that up. So as Ben stated that, but additionally, we've already been having conversations with various partners, community partners, other university partners that all say the same thing. Once this board is dissolved, then they will come in and they will be willing participants

in helping restore St. Augustine's to its betterment, basically, and to the future. They know that St. Augustine's is needed in that corridor. Raleigh and North Carolina as a whole is one of the oldest still left HBCUs in the nation. Definitely, we are fighting and we're going to continue fighting. Michael? Hey, gentlemen. I had two quick questions, if I could. Number one, with this being, this university being a 501c3, I know with, generally speaking, with 501c3s, they have to make their financials public. Usually, a lot of times, it's on their website for various organizations. Does that apply also for educational institutions for universities, number one? And number two, how often are audits done?

You may have said it, I may have missed it, but how often are audits done and are those audits made public as well? Okay, can I call you Michael? That's fine. Michael, this is really, for me to answer this is very disappointing, but I'm going to hit you with the

hard facts. One of the reasons that we lost accreditation is because there were no audits done. So they had to, in this process, were manufacturing audits after they were requested. And

in losing the accreditation, we were not able to provide the correct number of audits. There's one supposed to be done every year and as we were on probation, the audits were supposed to be done in a five-year increments. 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. Add 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've 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. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there,

no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. And they were only able to actually produce two or three, half, but not all of the five-year audits for the last five years. And you mentioned about the information being public. Yes, that is a requirement. And that requirement was not met by our board of trustees. Yes, they don't have minutes. They don't share minutes. They don minutes at their meetings. They don't regularly update the Web site when new board members have come. Basically, just put blank pages up and things of that nature.

And it's just been a game of cloak and dagger with this board of trustees, just to be perfectly honest. Wow. All right. Thank you. Last just last question. Where are the students in all of this? You know, we went down to to Florida and we did a special show at Bethune-Cookman. Alumni and students invited us to do that. What are the students saying with all of this drama going on? Let me tell you something, Roland, and I got to take this one. My organization, Falcons Unite, we've been 10 toes down and fighting this board of trustees

for the last 15 years. One of the things that we always pride ourselves on is the connection with the students on that campus. And not only just when they matriculate, when they leave, they go to other businesses, they look for jobs, they always come to us. We've created portals where we can tie them in. Through this process with this administration and this board of trustees, we've had professional therapists that are part of Falcons Unite give free time. It's been hard.

I can tell you it's been nice. We've been fired up, and everybody's on the call, fired up. Students have experienced PTSD, trauma. These students have been basically just beat all over and dragged publicly by this administration, and it's sad. It's sad, and I don't know how anybody can sit up there and say they love the university and doing the best when basically your best and brightest, you're treating like homeless people. You're basically just not even treating them to give one of the actual professors. And I have to say this. They were losing their livelihood, not being paid. One of them almost unalived themselves. And luckily, we had a therapist on call that basically made that call and stayed online with them to we got to the proper help arrived this this is this is traumatic um and we keep saying this we keep making calls you know we know it's an open investigation with

the ag but at some point something has had to happen somebody has to have some form of empathy to see that the common denominator that's being heard in here are the students. You can take alumni out the way. The common denominator that's being heard are the students. And to me, that's most important when you're talking about a university and building it back. Yes. When is the next board meeting? When is the next board meeting? Oh, boy. We don't know if we don't know. The short answer is we don't know because We have made inquiries as to, you know,

when is the next board meeting? And we have been not given an answer. We've asked about the students, how many students are there, what can we do. We don't know the number of students that are currently there on campus. They've gone to virtual learning. The only thing that we, we get more information from SACS than we do from the institution itself. In a normal process, Roland, they were supposed to, on the website, show when their meetings are. That's the transparency that's supposed to happen. None of that is there.

That hasn't happened. That hasn't happened for a while. All right. Well, we hope to get some additional answers from the University of Leadership and this board, and so we'll certainly stay on top of this. Gentlemen, we certainly appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Okay, thank you for having us. Thank you. Folks, going to break. We come back. We're going to talk about attacks, well, the effort by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, to now take over the U.S. Postal Service, even though there's an actual law that says they can't. Lots for us to break down. Also, 11 Senate Democrats vote with Republicans

on the continuing resolution to keep the government open. And man, a lot of people are hot. We'll talk about that. We'll show you who they are. And we'll also show you what House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries had to say was not a resounding, you know, support for his fellow Brooklynite, Senator Chuck Schumer. That's next.

Folks, don't forget to support the work that we do. Join our 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. If you want to support us via Cash App, use the Stripe QR code. This is the QR code right here. Just point your phone to it.

You can click the Cash App Pay button to contribute. If you're listening, go to BlackstarNetwork.com. You can also, of course, send your check and money order. PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 2003-7-0196. PayPal is rmartinunfiltered, Venmo, rmunfiltered, Zelle. Roland at rolandsmartin.com, Roland at rolandmartinunfiltered.com. We'll be right back. We begin tonight with the people who are really running the country right now.

Trump is often wrong and misleading about a lot of things, but especially about history. Donald Trump falling in line with President Elon Musk. In the wake of the unsettling news that MSNBC has canceled Joy Ann Reeve's primetime show, The Readout, Roland Martin and the Black Star Network would like to extend an invitation to all of the fans of Joy Ann Reeve's MSNBC show

to join us every night to watch Roland Martin unfiltered streaming on the Black Star Network for news discussion of the issues that matter to you and the latest updates on the twice impeached criminally convicted felon-in-chief Donald Trump and his unprecedented assault on democracy as well as co-president Elon Musk takeover of the federal government. The Black Star Network stands with Joy Ann Reid and all folks who understand the power of black voices in media. We must come together and never forget that information is power. Be sure to watch Roland Martin Unfiltered weeknights,

6 p.m. Eastern at youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin or download the Black Star Network app. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene. A white nationalist rally that descended into deadly violence. On that soil, you will not be black. White people are losing their damn lives. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance.

We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys guys.

This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear. We'll be right back. Martin than to be unfiltered? Of course he's unfiltered. Would you expect anything less? Watch what happens next. Folks, big changes may be coming to the U.S. Postal Service. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy just signed an agreement with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

Yeah, you heard that right, to help, quote, fix the Postal Service's finances. But let's be clear, this is not about fixing. It's about slashing and taking it over. Since DeJoy took over in 2020, 30,000 jobs have already been cut at the Postal Service, and another 10,000 layoffs are coming next month. Black workers make up nearly 30 percent of the Postal Service employees. And here's a bigger picture. There's talk of privatizing the USPS.

That means fewer jobs, high prices for mail delivery and less service in rural and low income communities. Now, there's a federal law, Michael, that says that was passed to not privatize the Postal Service. A lot of people, a lot of progressives and Democrats are concerned because guess what? If Trump gets his hands on the Postal Service, that impacts ballots and things along those lines. And so this is something that Republicans

have long sought after, but we are seeing that this war is going to be happening there, too. Absolutely. And this is something that was floated during the first Trump administration. And as you have mentioned, the Republicans, conservatives have been talking about privatizing not just Social Security, but also the U.S. Postal Service as well, selling off parts of it. And this was something that came up during the first Trump administration, when you deal with mail-in ballots. And now, if it's privatized, the delay in mail-in ballots being sent to certain areas,

say maybe like, I don't know, Detroit, Atlanta, Philadelphia, something like that. So yeah, this is once again, devastating news. There are going to be lawsuits around this, but this is what we were warning African-Americans about. And the other thing, Roland, is that when you look at the attack on DEI, they're using that all across the federal government now to attack the Department of Education, to shut down various departments, to lay off instance, it's important for people to understand, African-Americans have been working for the U.S. Postal Service going back to the 1840s, going not to 1940s, going back to the 1840s. And this was one of the now and then after slavery and late 1800s, things like this, early 1900s, this is one of the first government jobs that we had. And there are 640,000 employees of the U.S. Postal Service, 29 percent are African-American. So this is more devastating attacks that will gut the African-American middle class. This is one of the ways that

you've gotten to the middle class, federal government jobs, especially the U.S. Postal Service. Again, for the folk, Derek, who can't do math, we're talking about more than 190,000 Black employees in the Postal Service. Not only that 190,000 Black employees' lives will change significantly if this is privatized. The other aspect, Roland, that we tend to take for granted is that a lot of black entrepreneurs, businesses, use the United States Postal Service. And so now you have a government that's anti-DEI, and then you look at someone like Kelly Loeffler. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's be real specific. You have a government that's anti-Black.

Yes. Go ahead. No, no, no, no. Roland, you're exactly right, because I just had a debate yesterday around the Department of Education. And I said they're removing the African-American AP courses. But yet you want to leave the German courses, the French courses and all the other. But, yeah, so you're exactly right there. They are anti-black. So I appreciate that correction. But the point to to your point is that when you look at black businesses that need to use the United States Postal Service,

because the United States Postal Service will be able to move their goods and products, unlike at the expense of companies like FedEx and UPS, where they're going to charge an exuberant amount of money, the United States Postal Service would give you a different kind of break. Even with us who are in the political arena, we use the United States Postal Service when we campaign. And so if you're going to privatize it, now they can determine what literature is processed through the postal service. And then there's one other point that we need to highlight, Roland, is medicine. You're starting to use a lot of senior citizens getting their medicine through the mail, too. And so the mail system touched so many aspects of our lives that we just take for granted.

And if they privatize it, the black community will be severely negatively impacted. Folks, got to recognize, Matt, this is no joke that's going on. And listen, for three years, we said Project 2025 was real when Trump lied. Oh, I don't know anything about it. I don't even want to read it. We knew he was lying. But all these folks who are now crying, hashtag, we tried to tell you. Yeah, I mean, they knew what it was and somehow they thought they would be insulated from the brunt of it.

And you see people crying all over social media because they're getting what they voted for. I will tell you, I think I'm a little bit at a disadvantage with the post office and the economics as it relates to it, because I understand that the post office has operated at a loss for multiple years. It has been a profitability issue. And while I completely am sympathetic and hope that a lot of black people, hundreds of thousands of black people don't lose their jobs, I am wondering what extent to which the economic woes play into what the appropriate thing to do is with the post office. And I'm not in any way advocating for privatization, but not understanding the economics enough. Well, but here's, so, so, right. So, so great point. So, so no of all,

it's also a congressional mandate. So when you talk about the delivery of mail service in the country, you're talking about, I mean, and this is a part that a lot of people just can't accept. It's a lot of land in the United States. And so when you start talking about going out to rural areas, delivering just simple letters and things along those lines, that's a major issue. You got lots of senior citizens who get their medicine through the post office as well. So you have, so in many ways, the post office has operated as a public service, as a public utility. So you have folks who say, well, you know, we need to run it like a business. But see, the problem with running it like a business is when you have a business, so let's just take an airline, an airline goes,

well, this is an unprofitable route. So what then happens is there are a lot of midsize and small towns in the United States that have no air service whatsoever. They may have to drive 30, 60, 90, 100 miles to catch a flight at a major airport. Well, the post office was set up totally different. It was, we're going to deliver mail to these rural parts of the country. So the issue, a huge issue is that it requires a lot of people with the post office. And that's what's played into this economics piece. When you start talking about the number of people who live in rural Georgia and rural Texas and rural Iowa and Illinois and Idaho and Montana and all these states where Congress has said, no, we're going to ensure that people are able to get the mail.

Then you have the folks who say, well, things have changed. We're not electronic, but guess what? Rural areas, a lot of them don't have high speed internet. So, so the folks who say let's modernize and let's, let's cut a lot of these, you know, manual expenses. It's a, it's, it's an additional problem because if people are unable to get online, what do they rely on? The postal service. Now, go ahead. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm not advocating for privatization. I'm just readily admitting I don't know all the economics. I got you. When we talk about the post office, that's a lot of the problem because all you hear is about cost

overruns and issues not making, or at least making a profit. So I think, one, that kind of makes it difficult for people to fully understand why privatization would be a bad thing. I love that you framed it as a public service, because that's exactly what I think of as the post office being. And I think it's a question of how does it need to be reformed, maybe even via congressional mandate or through a congressional law, to make it such that it is not characterized essentially as a quasi-governmental business that's not running a profit, because then it's easy to get the rhetoric around that we need to get rid of it or privatize it because it's a business that's not meeting its financial goals.

But outside of all of that, I would say as it relates to the post office, you see that Louis DeJoy is here. And it's interesting because he's kind of written under the radar through the Biden administration because he was a Trump appointee. But I'm sure that this is something that the Republicans have been looking to do for a long time. And he's just kind of laid in wait. And now, to your point about Project 2025, they're able to enact a plan that they knew was coming.

But I do think that, at least in the political context, for Democrats to edify people like myself and others, they need to explain why the post office is not only a public good, but how it can be reformed to continue to serve that public good, but not be an easy thing on the chopping block as it relates to cost overruns and the financial piece of it.

So here's something here. So in fiscal year 2024, the Postal Service lost $9.5 billion. And they said they don't expect they're going to make a profit. They're going to break even in 2025. Now, this is what the Postal Service said. 80% of the agency's losses come from fixed costs, which include pension contributions for its retirees and workers' compensation claims for employees injured on the job. All right. Now, injured on the job. All right. Now, here's the issue. When all of a sudden, when they try to raise prices, oh, my God, members of Congress lose their minds.

People actually go crazy. So they don't have any plan to set higher prices in 2025, but they're looking at 2027. Now, here's one of the issues that, again, we talk about the post office has. One, you have, obviously, you have competition between UPS, between FedEx. You got that. Also, the amount of mail that we used to get, guess what? That's dropping. What I mean by that is that when you look at the numbers, we don't get as much junk mail because things have also become digital. The last point is Congress mandates, mandates that every place in America be served by the post office. So that goes back to, again, those costs as well. Michael, real quick.

Yeah, so what you just said, that last point, Congress mandates that everyone is served by the post office, that's the difference between a business and the federal government. The federal government has to serve everyone. And this is a debate that takes place a lot of times in business schools. Can we run the federal government like a business? No, you cannot, because the federal government, these different entities are put in place to provide a service. Well, as a business, the number one reason why you go into business is to make a profit. Can I ask one question? Yep. So go ahead. Yeah. So do you know, was the post office intending to front load those pensions and then amortize the cost, I guess going to address the health care piece.

One second. Let me pull this up. Because, again, this is one of the things that it happened a few years ago. So this is a piece right here that it was laid out massive costs on the Postal Service. So the postal, this is 2006, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, it required the Postal Service to create a $72 billion fund. This is a piece from the Institute for Policy Studies. It required the Postal Service to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of his post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future. Okay. They say here this burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation. So as a result, if you're having to pay health for the next 75 years, you're going to be running a deficit.

So it's not like, oh, we can pay for the next 50 years. No, 75 years. So this is what some have described as Congress passing such a law. That is one of the reasons why when you look at the current numbers, why it's as well, they're losing money because. 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 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. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens before you leave the car. Always stop. Look. Lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

They had a set aside $72 billion. And so that's part of the issue here. And so between that, you have pensions as well. All of these things combined that you have to deal with. And look, the reality is when it comes to pensions, these are people who took lower salaries for a number of years based on the promise of having a pension. And now you've got to pay for that.

What happened with a lot of publicly traded companies? You had a lot of these companies that owe a lot of workers pensions. You know what they started doing? Whacking their pensions. And so all of a sudden you start screwing the people who you promised pensions once they retired. So it's a lot of stuff. So Congress, as opposed to complaining in all

these hearings, needs to also learn to accept the role that they played in creating a huge problem. Just let's go to our next story. We'll talk about NCAA. And of course, the NCAA is having some major changes. You've got NIL. You've got court rulings now having to pay players. I mean, it goes on and on and on. So as a result, the NCAA is constantly in court. They are under assault left and right. It's also from their own making, okay? I mean, that's just what they've created this big problem because they were so arrogant and they were taking so much money

and keeping it and paying big salaries. So in July, the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Third Circuit rebuked the NCAA for what they call an offensive race related argument in a case called Johnson versus NCAA, which compared college athletes. Listen to what I'm about to say, y'all. They compared college athletes to fellow students employed in work-study-style programs. The NCAA argues that college athletes should not be treated with the same employee rights and protections as student ticket takers, student seating attendants, and student food concessions workers at NCAA contests. Instead, the NCAA relied upon a legal precedent comparing college athletes to unpaid prison labor under the 13th Amendment's slavery exception. Attorney Paul McDonald joins us right now. Paul, glad to have you on the show.

I'm sorry. They used the slavery exception in the 13th Amendment? So are they saying that athletes are slaves or inmates? Well, you know, for all intents and purposes, they are. I think it's instructive to read exactly what the Third Circuit said. And the Third Circuit said, we disagree with the comparison of college athletes to prisoners and refuse to equate a prisoner's involuntary servitude as authorized by the 13th Amendment to the longstanding tradition of amateurism in college athletics.

So that's exactly what the Third Circuit said about it. So they knew exactly what the NCAA was trying to do. They were using a case called VanSkyke v. Peters. And in the case of VanSkyke v. Peters, I'm sorry if you lost me there for a second. You had federal prisoners. No, we got you. Go ahead. All right. They had federal prisoners who said that under the FLSA, the Federal Labor Standards Act, that they should have employee rights, minimum wage, so on and so forth. But the court in that case, VanSkyke v. Peters, said because of the slavery exception, because as part of your conviction, as part of your sentence, you can be made to do involuntary servitude, then you can't be an

employee. And the NCAA for 10 years has been using that case, VanSkyke v. Peters, to say that athletes should not have employee rights like the kids selling popcorn at their games? Well, first of all, for people who don't even realize, the phrase student athlete wasn't done, wasn't created out of care for the student. That was actually created by an NCAA lawyer to protect them in a lawsuit. So they've always wanted to take advantage of the free labor of athletes and how everyone else gets paid except the athletes. So they've actually treated people as if they were, frankly, slaves under the 13th Amendment. Right. Student-athlete was a term that came about to avoid having to deal with worker compensation.

You know, back in the day, before you had some of the safety equipment that you now have, you had more, even more injuries and even more deaths than you have currently. And so there was an issue of workers' compensation that came up. And so the whole term was created to try to suggest that the athletes were something other than employees. But again, the thing that people have to remember, there are student employees. There have been student employees on college campuses for more than 50 years in work-study style programs. So whether you're talking about someone who's checking IDs in the library, someone who is washing dishes in the dining hall, selling you things at the bookstore, or again, selling you popcorn at the games, all student employees. And all that our

case, our case is called Johnson v. NCAA. All we're saying is that athletes deserve to have at least the same limited student employee status as those fellow students. That's it. And the NCAA's opposition, again, is they know, I mean, they know better. But the only way they can try to get beyond having a legal test applied is to make this offensive, incredibly offensive argument, especially when you consider how many brothers and sisters are responsible for much of what happens in the revenue, the largest revenue generating sports, right? We're about to go into March Madness. A large number of the stars we're going to be watching during the tournament are brothers and sisters.

And they have the audacity to make this argument comparing athletes to prison labor on the slavery section. Again, that's not an allegation. That's what the Third Circuit said in its opinion, in our case, last year. Well, it's interesting you say that. I mean, look, I graduated from Texas A&M University, and I actually worked for two years for the Texas A&M Athletic Department in its video lab. I was paid. I was a student, and I was paid working that. The football players and the basketball players and all the other athletes

in the athletic department, they didn't get paid but I actually got paid for the work that I did. I was a student. Those things actually happen. People also need to understand that the NCAA has been desperately,

look, they've been ripping folks off. And this isn't just opinion. Who actually said that? The guy who used to run the NCAA, Walter Byers. He wrote a book. He was the longest-serving executive director, and he wrote a book laying out how the NCAA has been mistreating athletes since its inception. Yeah, you know, and what's interesting today, so now what they're

trying to do, they're trying to go to Congress and get the Congress to give them some type of an exemption. Well, a couple of exemptions. The one that's really relevant to our case, they're trying to get an exemption to say that athletes can't be employees. Again, you know, they know full well that there are student employees. So that exemption they're trying to get from Congress, frankly, violates the Equal Protection Clause, because you can't have two set students who essentially are at the same. Arguably, athletes meet the criteria much more than the kids selling popcorn at their games, right? There's more control. I mean, I think people sometimes forget athletes are the most controlled students on any college campus. And another way of looking at it, consider this. An athlete has to schedule his or her classes around practice times,

right? Whereas if you're in work study, your supervisor is required to schedule your work assignments around your class choices. It's a completely different situation. One, this work study student still gets academic benefits from the university. The athlete has academic burdens. So the athletes clearly meet the standard more. So if you're going to try to single them out in legislation to say they shouldn't have these same rights, you have an equal protection problem.

But the NCAA is trying to do that. They're also trying to get an antitrust exemption, which makes no sense. I mean, if antitrust exemptions made sense, then big tech, big pharma, big oil would have them. You know, instead, what they ought to do is acknowledge these athletes are student employees and collectively bargain with them, just like anyone does in any other sport in this country. But they refuse to do that, at least so far. That's because they're trying to protect that huge cash cow so they can keep making the huge, huge salaries. I'm glad you brought that up, because one of the things they always say as to why they somehow can't give the athletes or recognize athletes should have the same rights as the students selling popcorn at the games or someone like yourself who worked in the athletic department.

They try to say, oh, we can't afford it. Now, besides the fact they can't afford it is not a legal defense. It also happens to be untrue. Right now, we have people talking about populism in politics, and people have different definitions of what that means, right? But at its core, I look at it in terms of how it's applied here, or should be applied here. You have coaches who are being overpaid. You have extravagant expenditures on facilities you don't need. And then, of course, the NCAA Division I, by their own reporting in fiscal year 2022, made $17.5 billion, billion with a B, second only to the NFL, more than the NBA, more than the Major League Baseball.

And so they have the audacity to come in front of Congress and say, oh, we need you to bail us out because we can't afford to have these athletes making, you know, $15 an hour like they're friends down the hall from in the dormitory because it's going to bankrupt us. No. All you have to do is reallocate some of the money you've been giving to all the adults, reallocate some of the money you've been giving to all the adults, reallocate some of the money you've been spending on laser tag and other things that aren't unnecessary in the athletic department. And then to the extent that you have smaller schools, after they've done all of that, subsidize it, just like the NBA does the WNBA, or you have luxury taxes in some pro sports. And that takes care of the problem. You can do all of this budget neutral, no cost. But they,

to your point, they don't want to give up the big money they've made. Because I'm old enough, and I think you and I are probably comparable in age, I'm old enough to remember when college coaches didn't make all this money. You know, now you're talking about what Kirby Smart making $13 million at Georgia. If you cut his salary, you know, 15%, you can afford to pay almost every athlete on that campus a fair wage that then would not require their parents to send them beer money on the weekends. And the one last thing I'll say about this, just so people understand this, what I'm talking about is not that the athletes

would only be paid hourly wage. We're talking about base salary for everybody. If you still have individual popularity, you would get NIL on top of base salary. If you're in a sport that generates a large amount of revenue, you get revenue sharing going forward. So it's not an either or proposition. It is an and also. Indeed, indeed. Well, Paul, we surely appreciate you joining us. Thank you so very much. And keep us abreast of what happens in this case. Yeah, thank you. And good luck to everyone with your brackets. And just remember, as you're watching these,

these games, you know, that, that obviously are going to captivate us for the next three or four weeks. I guess, you know, just remember that they literally went there and said that the athletes are comparable to prison labor on the 13th amendment slavery exception. They did that.

Thanks. We begin tonight with the people who are really running the country right now. Trump is often wrong and misleading about a lot of things, but especially about history. Donald Trump falling in line with President Elon Musk. In the wake of the unsettling news that MSNBC has canceled Joy Ann Reeves' primetime show, The Readout, Roland Martin and the Black Star Network would like to extend an invitation to all of the fans of Joy Ann Reeves' MSNBC show to join us every night to watch Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming on the Black Star Network, for news, discussion of the issues that matter to you, and the latest updates on the twice-impeached, criminally convicted felon-in-chief Donald Trump Thank you. who understand the power of Black voices in media. We must come together and never forget

that information is power. Be sure to watch Roland Martin Unfiltered weeknights, 6 p.m. Eastern at youtube.com forward slash Roland S. Martin or download the Black Star Network app. This week on the other side of change. We're digging into the immigration crisis that's happening here right now. It can impact each and other side of change. We're digging into the immigration crisis that's happening here right now. It can impact each and every one of us.

We're going to break down the topic of this constitutional crisis that is being led by the Trump administration. And what you as ordinary citizens can do to speak up and speak out to fight back. This is the other side of change only on the Black Star Network. network. We talk about blackness and what happens in black culture. Covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine

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There's a lot of talk about the inevitability of another civil war in this country. But on our next show, we'll talk to a noted author and scholar who says we're actually in the middle of one right now. In fact, Steve Phillips says the first one that started back in 1861, well, it never ended. People carrying the Confederate flag, wearing sweatshirts saying MAGA Civil War, January 6, 2021, stormed the U.S. Capitol, hunted down the country's elected officials, built a gallows for the Vice President of the United States, and to block the peaceful transfer of power within this country. On the next Black Tape, here on the Black Star Network.

This is Tamela Mann. And this is David Mann. And you're watching Roland Martin. I'm here too. Thank you. Folks, today in D.C., thousands of veterans took to the streets, marching in cities across the country and gathering at the National Mall to protest sweeping cuts to the federal workforce under Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The demonstration, organized by Now March, is being called a National Strike Day

in response to thousands of veterans being laid off from government jobs, including nearly 83,000 expected losses at the Department of Veteran Affairs. These cuts are affecting critical health care services, canceling cancer treatments, straining VA therapists, and even shutting down suicide prevention programs, leaving those who serve this country without the care they need. The march is deliberately set for March 14th, referencing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding office. Now, today in the United States Senate, 11 Democrats joined Republicans in advancing

the continuing resolution that would keep the government from shutting down. Senator Chuck Schumer just 48 hours ago claimed that, oh, Democrats were not going to vote for the bill. Well, then they came forward. These are the Democrats who actually stood with Republicans in voting for this. This, of course, has angered Democrats all across the country, and people have been coming after Senator Chuck Schumer because he did not hold the line. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries made it perfectly clear

that House Democrats were not happy at all with what took place by Democrats in the Senate. Listen. House Democrats remain strongly opposed to the partisan Republican spending bill that will hurt families, hurt veterans, hurt seniors, and hurt the American people. It is a false choice that Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and House Republicans have been presenting between their reckless and partisan spending bill and a government shutdown. Why are we here right now in terms of the moment that is in front of us. It's because Donald Trump and House Republicans decided to walk away from the negotiating table when there were bipartisan conversations ongoing between House Democrats, House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and Senate Republicans in a manner consistent with the Bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act that was passed in May of 2023.

Donald Trump ordered House Republicans to walk away from the negotiating table at the end of February. House Republicans then passed a partisan and reckless bill that cuts funding for health care, cuts funding for veterans, and cuts funding for nutritional assistance to children and families. It's an unacceptable, unconscionable, and un-American spending bill. That's why House Democrats remain strongly opposed. Donald Trump orders them to walk away from the negotiating table. Step one. Step two, House Republicans pass a partisan and reckless spending bill. And then step three, House Republicans get out of town. Where are they at right now? House Democrats are here.

We're ready to pass a four-week spending bill that keeps the government open and will allow the House and the Senate to negotiate an actual agreement that meets the needs of the American people. But we do not support a bill that is designed to hurt the American people that Donald Trump and far-right extremist Republicans are trying to jam down the throats of everyday Americans. Folks, it has been quite contentious, again, with what's been happening with this decision

by these Democrats to vote for the bill. A lot of people are actually calling for Democrats to replace Chuck Schumer as the Senate minority leader. Schumer and other Democrats say they were not going to allow the government to shut down. They said it could be a lot easier for Trump and Musk to cherry pick what federal employees to bring back. But there are others like Senator Cory Booker who said point blank that this is giving more power to Trump and Elon Musk. Even had Senator Raphael Warnock said he wouldn't be surprised if there is a new Senate leader for the Democrats in 2026 or 2028. Mike, I want to start with you.

Again, a lot of people are ticked off. They are hot. They're upset at Chuck Schumer saying that he caved. He didn't fight. He gave up. And then, of course, you're one of your home state senators, Gary Peters, who is not even running for reelection. He voted for this as well. Yeah, Gary Peters should not have voted for it. Chuck Schumer definitely caved, because on Wednesday he said he was arguing strongly against the bill, strongly against cloture, strongly against stopping debate. And he was proposing the 30-day continuing resolution, OK, the 30-day bill, so they can continue to negotiate. It's important.

So this is wrong on so many levels. Number one, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is absolutely correct. Donald Trump told House Republicans to stop negotiating with House Democrats, okay? So House Democrats were totally pushed out of this process, and that's why 213 of them voted against this in the House, okay? And this is what they were saying. This is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was talking about last night on Jake Tapper's show on CNN. So, and then in the Senate, there's a disconnect. And you're going to see this really explode.

There's a disconnect in the thought process of many Democratic senators as opposed to those in the House. Now, I understand the rules are different. But last night on The Last Word on MSNBC, Senator Jeff Merkley from Oregon and Senator Tina Smith from Minnesota were on. And Senator Jeff Merkley was saying the only leverage that they really have is leverage in the Senate, not the House. And it's the 60-vote threshold, the filibuster.

He said, if you give that up, then just giving more power to a tyrant, I'm paraphrasing, giving more power to a bully, does not help you. They're going to keep punking you. They're going to keep mistreating you. And this is exactly what's taking place. So I think they need new leadership. Senate Minority Leader Schumer needs to be out. And also CNN reported that you have some Democrats that are privately saying that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should primary Senator Chuck Schumer as well in 2026. I think she should as well. He's not built for this. He's not built for this fight here. This is a weak punk ass move. This is bitch assness. This is what this is. 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. 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 is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. 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. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car

and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. What do you make of what you're seeing in D.C., Derek? You know, I've been disturbed, Roland, since the 10 Democrats voted to censor Brother Al Green. I've been disgusted with some of the Democrats up in Washington, D.C. In fact, those of us here in Georgia started making phone calls and saying it out loud with

our full chest that we need them to stand up. We cannot see the tools of leverage that are available. Because when you do that, and listen, Roland, I mean, I've seen it on your show. Case by case, when you look at who Donald Trump is, we don't need no other evidence, no more empirical data to say that he's going to do exactly what you anticipate for him to do. And so if they were—Chuck Schumer said, well, if we allow for the government to collapse, they're going to blame the Democrats. They're going to do that anyway, Roland. And so what we got to do is come up with a new playbook. We got to, since Republicans are not showing up in their town hall meetings, then we as Democrats need to show up in their town hall meetings and we need

to explain to those Republican voters and say, that's what y'all voted for first off. But number two, this is what we're going to do. And we don't need you to get amnesia come next year because the bottom line is, everybody's going to be negatively impacted. This guy is going after Social Security. He's going after Medicaid. He's going after Medicare. He's going after those third rails that we typically just did not touch. But by Chuck Schumer making a move that he did, and them other Democrats in the Senate that voted along with him, then they need to understand that they're going to be blamed for this because they're going

to say, well, the Democrats believed in our philosophy. They voted with us. And so they understood that we're going to impact Social Security. They understood that we're going to impact Medicaid and Medicare. And we all know the devastation that's going to occur when you do that. I never understood the thought process, Matt. They're going to blame you anyway. So you fight for as much as you can get and you don't give up, especially when you have the power to filibuster. That's right. Exactly. Yeah. You stand 10 toes down. I think Michael said it

beautifully. I don't need to repeat it. We know what this is. This is fear and this is people being bitch made, for lack of a better term. But what I don't understand as well is if you're thinking to the midterms, and if you're thinking right now that a lot of people, a lot of Democrats are really frustrated and feel like the Democrats just look weak, why would you take another opportunity to show how weak you are when you can push it and you cannot cede the control, as Derek just said, or cede the leverage? Because here's the thing that we see Republicans do 100% of the time, exercise whatever point of leverage that they have with no remorse. Why you would not do that here, I don't understand.

Folks, let me tell you how crazy these trump people are more than 50 universities are currently being investigated for alleged racial discrimination as part of their initiative to eliminate diversity equity and inclusion programs they really are anti-black the education department announced these new investigations on friday about a month after issuing a memo warning schools and colleges across the country that they could lose federal funding due to race-based preferences in admissions, scholarships, or other aspects of student life. Education Secretary Linda McMahon stated that students should be evaluated based on their merit and accomplishments, not by their skin color. Quote, we will not yield on this commitment. Most of the new inquiries are centered on colleges' partnerships with the PhD Project,

a nonprofit organization that assists students from underrepresented groups in obtaining degrees. I don't see why that's a big deal, but this is what you have from these idiots. Speaking of money for colleges and universities, many schools have announced layoffs and hiring freezes because of these dumbasses, their threats to cut federal contracts and research grants. Thursday, Johns Hopkins University said it has eliminated more than 2,200 workers because they lost about $800 million in federal funding. Some employees are in Baltimore, but most work in 44 other countries to support the

university's Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school, and an affiliated nonprofit organization. Last month, Trump and his fellow idiots announced deep cuts to the National Institutes of Health grants for research institutions. This shift could reduce the money going to some universities by more than $100 million, actually by more than several billion dollars. Some schools already have shelved projects because of the cuts, which have been delayed temporarily by a court challenge. Now, let's go back to keep telling y'all how anti-black these people are.

They literally are doing some shameful, despicable things at Arlington Cemetery. OK, let me say this again. We're talking about Arlington Cemetery. Okay, let me say this again. We're talking about Arlington Cemetery. Yeah, what they're doing is black, Hispanic, and female service members are being erased from the history. For generations, Arlington Cemetery has stood as the final resting place for more than 400,000 American heroes, a sacred space honoring those who gave everything for the country. But now, the cemetery's website has quietly removed key information, list of notable black and Hispanic service members, lesson plans about their contributions, and even maps marking their grave sites.

Officials say this was done under the orders from Trump and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, part of a broader push to strip race and gender-related history from military records. Some of these erased names belong to Medal of Honor recipients, men who were denied recognition in their time because of racism, only to be honored decades later. And now their stories are vanishing once again. This black erasure, this is what this is all about, Matt. It's black erasure.

They're trying to get rid of environmental justice departments and the EPA. They're trying to get rid of these things in the Department of Education. They want black erasure. All throughout the federal government, this is an absolute all-out attack on blackness. And I keep saying it, where are these Negro Republicans? Senator Tim Scott, quiet. Congressman Byron Donalds. Congressman Wesley Hunt. Congressman Burgess Owens. They're all real quiet.

Yeah, and they kissed every part of that orange butt and don't have any positions in the administration. So, you know, clearly that didn't work out for them on the personal level, which is all that governs most of those people's actions. But this is, you're exactly right. This is about black erasure. And what this is, is about black erasure coded as a meritocracy argument. Because you notice Linda McMahon didn't say a single word about legacy admissions, right? They didn't say a single word about that. It's about anything that looks like a black person is getting a leg up that some white person is not getting. We're seeing that everywhere. And one of the things I thought was pretty just weak is all of these people who kind

of prophylactically have said, well, we know Trump's coming for us, so we're going to go ahead and start changing our DEI or changing how we approach things. But even with the Air Force Academy, or not the Academy, but the Air Force training in San Antonio, they weren't going to teach people about the Tuskegee Airmen because they're afraid that they're going to get in trouble from the Trump administration. I mean, we've reached a level of absurdity that is just unfathomable. But I'm glad you called it what it is, because what we see is a lot of dog whistling. But we know that the truth is that it's about Black erasure, and it's about making Black less than in all metrics, by all metrics, and in all contexts.

Because what they keep saying is merit, merit, merit, but they're making non-meritory synonymous with black for the exact point of that black erasure. So I think you're exactly right. And none of this is surprising because we're seeing it across the federal government. That is all anti-black. They're pure and simple. And that's what they keep attacking. And they don't want folk to know history. This is what they want. This is what they desire. And it's real clear.

And it's real clear, but it's also sad to a level of degree. This hits me personally, Roland. As you know, I'm a retired naval officer, and my first wife that served as well for 27 years is buried in Arlington. She gave her life for 27 years, okay? And so when you think about this erasure, you can't delete the contribution in the history of black Americans, right?

But this other sad part to this, this has precipitated down to the state levels. We have a bill right now that we're fighting in Georgia where it says, get this rolling, it says remove slavery, lynching, all that stuff from the curriculum from K through 12. But then there's this and. It says and contributions. So now you don't even want the mentions of Madam C.J. Walker contributions, Ida B. Wells contribution, Thurgood Marshall contributions. So it's one thing to try to eradicate the hatred and the pain of the past, but you also don't want to include the

contributions. So what will we look like 10 to 15 years from now? Will we even have mention of Dr. Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King? Or will we even have mention of the Tuskegee Airmen in the curriculum? And so that's the reason why we got to reject this and we got to fight back because the future is not only counting on us, Roland, but we also got to deal with this in the present because as much whitewashing they want to do, they can't because that which is cemented is our history because black history is America's history.

Well, what they want, Michael, is they want whiteness to rule, pure and simple. That's what it boils down to. There's no other way to explain this. Yeah, it's white nationalism, white Christian nationalism. This is all laid out in Project 2025. When you read Project 2025,

you don't have to read all 922 pages, just read one chapter. The attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion is all throughout Project 2025, DEI. And for all you dumbasses out there that keep saying black people only got 4% of the DEI jobs, you have no fucking clue about what's taking place, okay? This is a total backlash to the racial reckoning that took place in this country after the death of George Floyd. That's why they're going back eradicating all the progress made, not just the last four years, but also going back to the 1960s. This is why on day one or two,

Donald Trump rescinded Executive Order 11246, which is affirmative action. As racist as Ronald Reagan was, he didn't even do that. So when you look at the attack on the Department of Education, Linda McMahon said that Donald Trump's mandate is to shut down the Department of Education. Well, the Department of Education was created by Congress in 1979, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. And one of the things that it was doing was enforcing the civil rights of students. And it was going after the segregation academies that developed after Brown v. Board of Education. And it was really picking up the fight that the IRS was doing as well.

This is one of the reasons why the right wing are attacking the IRS. You got to go back and study this history. And the religious right movement was formed right around 1979 by Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation, and Jerry Falwell. And what they did was they redirected all the anger that white Southerners had when it came to fighting against desegregation of the schools. They redirected that into the anti-abortion movement.

This is how all this stuff comes together. So this is real. This is what we warn people about. And lastly, the Associated Press has this piece, the first thing that you talked about, about the images being removed. There's 26,000 images that the Pentagon is removing. It's a purge taking place. War heroes and military furs among 26,000 images flagged for removal in Pentagon's DEI purge. They're playing for keeps. This is white nationalism. So we got to figure out, okay, so what are we going to do?

Are we going to fight back or are we going to be punks? This is the time to put up or shut up. Well, this is why we make it perfectly clear what is happening before our very eyes. Going to go to a quick break. We come back, Black and Missing. We'll tell you about this. Black girl was attacked in California. And Tyler Perry has some strong words today at the Atlanta funeral of Angie Stone.

You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Support the work that we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. Goals to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on average 50 bucks each year. That's $4.19 a month, 13 cents a day. Support this show and all the other shows we have on the Black Star Network, plus the new shows we're working on as we speak.

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On the other side of change. We're digging into the immigration crisis that's happening here right now. It can impact each and every one of us. We're going to break down the topic of this constitutional crisis that is being led by the Trump administration and what you as ordinary citizens can do to speak up and speak out to fight back.

This is the other side of change only on the Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table with me, Greg Carr. There's a lot of talk about the inevitability of another civil war in this country. But on our next show, we'll talk to a noted author and scholar who says we're actually in the middle of one right now. In fact, Steve Phillips says the first one that started back in 1861, well, it never ended. People carrying the Confederate flag, wearing sweatshirts saying MAGA Civil War, January 6th, 2021, stormed U.S. Capitol, hunted down the country's elected officials, built a gallows for the vice president of the United States, and to block the peaceful transfer of power within this country. On the next Black Table, here on the Black Star Network.

Hey, what's up? It's Tammy Roman. Hey, it's John Murray, the executive producer of the new Sherri Shepherd talk show. It's me, Sherri Shepherd, and you know what you're watching, Roland Martin Unfiltered. Thank you. Nailah Sylve has been missing from New Orleans since February 8th when the 15-year-old was last seen. Her black hair was dyed blonde. She has brown eyes with her ears and nose pierced. Anyone with information about Nyla Sif should call the New Orleans Police Department at 504-821-2222, 504-821-2222. In California, the parents of a black girl who was violently attacked by a Mexican male student while being subjected to racial slurs are questioning why the substitute teacher did nothing to prevent the incident.

The attack took place at Jehu Middle School in Colton, California. In a now viral video, the boy is seen yanking the girl by her braids as other students laugh, with some of them allegedly using racial slurs. The situation escalated when he slammed her onto a desk, rendering her unconscious. Community leaders and parents are demanding accountability. However, authorities are investigating reports that the girl struck the boy with a metal object before the altercation. Both students have been cited, he for assault with a deadly weapon and she for battery on school grounds. The Colton Police Department says the case has been forwarded to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office for further review. Folks, tonight a former Texas megachurch pastor, once a powerful figure in evangelical circles is facing criminal charges. In fact, an arrest warrant has been issued for Robert

Morris, the founder of Gateway Church. He's been indicted in Oklahoma on five counts of child sexual abuse. The charges date back to the 1980s when Morris, then a traveling preacher, was accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl over a span of four years. Cindy Cleminshire, the woman who came forward with these allegations, says she's waited more than 40 years for this moment, and now she's calling for justice. Morris resigned from Gateway Church last year after these allegations surfaced. His ties to politics, especially his involvement with Donald Trump, as well as a lot of Republicans in Texas, has made him a prominent figure in conservative

Christian circles. 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, But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

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 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 Corps vet. 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. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out.

Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. He, for a long time, was a Trump spiritual advisor. Now, instead of leading a congregation, he could be facing up to 20 years in prison for each charge. Right now, Morris is not in custody. But, again, that warrant has already been issued.

Boy, isn't it amazing, Matt, how so many of these folks on the right have significant history with sexual molestation of young folks? I don't even know what to say, man.

I don't know what to say beyond I'm glad that this victim is seeking justice and that the law allows her to do that, and that he's being held accountable if it's true. Now obviously I don't have any of the evidence, but I'll say, yeah, there are a lot of allegations. And these are not the kind of allegations that, frankly, people don't think where there's smoke, there's fire. We need to have due process. But five counts, he was indicted. He was taken to a grand jury. That means they found probable cause.

We know it's easy for a grand jury to indict somebody. But for them to indict on a 40-year-old allegation means that they thought there was enough evidence there to credibly send out an indictment. So I think that's damning in and of itself, because in the modern era, there's a lot more evidence generally in a case like this, or at least circumstantial evidence. But for them to have a 40-year-old accusation, that means they must have thought there was something there. So I'm interested in seeing how this plays out.

Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Matt, he's actually admitted to this. First of all, he's 63 years old. This happened 43 years ago. He stayed with the family. This took place over a period over four years. Michael, he actually has admitted to, I forgot how he framed it, but he didn't quite frame it as, yeah, you know, I raped a 12-year-old or I sexually abused a 12-year-old, but he's on record admitting something happened.

Yeah. You know, this was supposed to be the party of family values and the Republican Party. When you listen to a lot of them in, it's important to really, really understand them. They weaponized this white Christian nationalism, okay? They weaponized this white Christian nationalism. And a lot of this comes out of the whole religious right movement that I just talked about. And that whole religious right movement was a white supremacist movement. Okay? And then within white supremacy, you have sexual abuse also. So this is disturbing,

but not surprising when you understand the history of these people that you're dealing with. And then when you look at their president of the United States that's had three wives, cheated on all of them them and then was found liable for sexual abuse. I mean, what do you expect? So check this out, Derek. He sent a

statement. He resigned last year as senior pastor of Gateway. He sent a statement to the Christian Post where he admitted engaging in, quote, inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady in a home where I was staying. He said it was kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong. Three days after dropping that statement, he resigned as senior pastor, and the church's board of elders said they had not been aware of the girl's age or the length of the actual abuse. But Cindy Cleminshire was like, no, y'all knew about it. You know, Roland, you know, I agree with Matt and Michael's analysis. But here's the reality, Roland. This is going to be a very public

situation where we're going to see the individual that's occupying the Oval Office that gave 1,500 pardons, just a blanket pardon. You're going to see an individual that's going to say publicly through a tweet to the attorney general of the DOJ, make this go away, much like how he did the civil rights division in the DOJ. He's going to tell Patel, you don't need to waste any FBI resources to investigate it. Hey, he already admitted it. He already confessed. So let's just go ahead and give him a pardon. And

unfortunately, this family, the victim... Well, but here's the problem. But Derek, Derek, here's the problem. Derek, he can't give him a pardon because these are state charges. They're not federal charges. He can't pardon them. Oh, okay. I missed that part. these are state charges. They're not federal charges. He can't pardon them. Oh, okay. I missed that part. These are state charges.

No, the state of Oklahoma. No, the U.S. Attorney's Office didn't. No, the state of Oklahoma has actually indicted him. And again, in the church elders at Gateway said that their understanding that when he said he had an inappropriate relationship with a young lady that they thought that that was marital infidelity with a grown woman, they didn't realize the girl was 12.

And it lasted four years. So yeah, Trump can't do jack. These are state charges. Right, right, right. So I missed that part. But Roland, I am in the state where the orange do have state charges. And so even though these are- Oh, I understand. sad part here that the victim should see justice. Even though this was 20 years ago, they should still see justice.

But I just do not have faith and confidence in the outcome where it should be this guy goes to jail for the crime he committed 20 years ago. Well, I say throw his magap punk ass under the jail. Folks, our last story, just three months into 2025,

the U.S. has already surpassed last year's total measles cases. In Texaco, New Mexico, Oklahoma, they're at the center of this outbreak with nearly 300 confirmed cases, and experts say that number is much likely to go higher. Let's be real, many of us grew up knowing measles as something from the past, a disease our parents or grandparents dealt with. In 2000, the U.S. officially declared measles eliminated. But here we are in 2025 because all these dumbass anti-vaxxers don't want to get their kids vaccinated. Measles is highly contagious, spreading through the air where someone coughs, sneezes, or even just breathes.

While the vaccine has been keeping it in check for decades, gaps in coverage are allowing it to resurface again because of these anti-vaxxers. We've already seen two unvaccinated people die from measles this year, one in Texas and another case under investigation in Washington State. This is all, again,

because of these idiot anti-vaxxers. They have been attacking vaccines when it comes to autism, when it comes to COVID, and now we're seeing measles roar back, and it doesn't help when you got a dumbass like Robert Kennedy Jr.

who doesn't believe in vaccines and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Derek. You know, Roland, I watched this interview live and RFK Jr. said, well, won't you just eat some French fries? And so I'm just appalling that someone is responding that the head of HHS says eat some French fries. But I went to the CDC website, Roland, and it says the resurgence of measles in the United States is a public health crisis that requires swift and coordinated action.

Vaccination is our most effective tool in preventing the spread of this highly contagious disease. Unfortunately, Roland, CDC cannot send information out to the public. It's incredulous that we are dealing with an administration and we're dealing with a crisis that now we're gonna have a self-inflicted pandemic, epidemic, whatever you, how you wanna see this. And that's the sad part. We must launch

a comprehensive vaccination plan to deal with this measles situation because we all know, Roland, that measles kill and especially kills children. Matt? I know this started out in West Texas among the Mennonite population, and I haven't heard much conversation about the religious overtones or religious freedom or whether that's even being really contended by that population. But it's really just abhorrent that in the modern era with modern science, with the understanding of the benefits of vaccinations on the whole, that there's such a large swath of people in that community, I guess outside Lubbock, who have elected not to be vaccinated. And frankly, especially in a state the size of Texas, I know within a week of me hearing

about it out in Lubbock, it had made it to my hometown, Austin, which you know is seven hours down the road. I mean, it's a vast distance, and it jumps quickly. So it's a sad thing that we're seeing, and I do not trust RFK's leadership with HHS and what he's going to do. But God willing, this finds a quick end, but it's a sad thing, especially as people are beginning to die, with something that we know is completely preventable and had been at negligible levels for decades. Michael? Yeah, you know, this reminds me of Trump's mishandling of the coronavirus in his first administration and a lot of the anti-vaccine people, the propaganda, things of this nature that took place. And if you can get Malcolm Nance on the show, Roland, because Malcolm some years ago talked about how a lot of the anti-vaccine information

is coming from other countries that are adversaries of the U.S. And it's a tool to weaken you from the inside also. OK, so now you have RFK Jr., who we know has a history of being against vaccines. You have him as director of HHS. You have the Center for Disease Control. They fired hundreds of people. Then they had to hire them back. And then there's a restriction on them putting out public health information as well. All of that weakens America, OK?

So, you know, we're going to have to rely upon our state health officials and also African-American doctors to protect us as much as we can from this nonsense out here. All right. Gentlemen, I so appreciate it. Thank you so very much for joining us on today's show. Michael, real quick, you're speaking on the panel. Go ahead. What is it about? Yeah. Ninety ninety third Midwestern Regional Convention for Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity. We're doing a panel discussion. Racism is a public health crisis panel session. This is Thursday, March 20th, 2025, 5 p.m. here in Detroit at the Renaissance Center. Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center.

Ambassador Ballroom, free and open to the public. People come on out, especially Sigmas and Zetas. Shout out to Chad King of A5A who invited me to be on this panel. And this information, I put this on my website, AfricanHistoryNetwork.com. So come on out and support. They really want to get this information out to the public. All right. We appreciate it.

Thanks a lot. Again, thanks, Derek. Thanks, Matt, as well. All right, folks, don't forget, support the work that we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club. If you want to give your cash out, use the QR code from Stripe. This is it right here. You see it on your screen.

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Folks, that's it. We almost end the show. We're running the names of our nearly 35,000 contributors. We appreciate every single one of them for contributing to this show, for making it a success. I'll see you guys Monday in D.C. right here, Rolling Mark Unfiltered. Oh, by the way, today we ran

several different things. Today we streamed the Atlanta funeral of Angie Stone. Earlier this week, we streamed the funeral of Roberta Flack. You can go to our Black Star Network app or go to our YouTube channel to see both of those. Tomorrow, we're streaming a couple of things tomorrow.

One, we have the South Carolina funeral of Angie Stone. Matter of fact, guys, I meant to show you this. If we have the Tala Perry eulogy, let me go ahead and do that. So again, tomorrow is going to be the South Carolina funeral of Angie Stone. We're also streaming the funeral from the Church Without Walls in Houston of former Houston mayor and Congressman Sylvester

Turner. And I meant to play this here, but so before we go, kill the music. Let's do this here. Roll the Tyler Perry eulogy of Angie Stone. Man, did he speak some truth. Listen to this. To the family, Bishop Bronner, thank you for having me here.

Thank you for allowing us to do this, to put her to rest in fashion of the queen that she was to the family i want you to know something especially her children my mother died at 64 and uh angie was a year younger than my mother was when she passed but in her song she said in, it gets a little better. So my prayer for you is that time is kind to you. Everybody who came up here talking about Angie, I didn't know her like a lot of other people knew her. My experiences with her would be me going to a show or her talking to her. time we were, she was doing a show at the Civic Center

and I went to see the show and she was telling me some things that were going on. And she's like, would you come on stage when I sing Brother? I was like, yeah, absolutely. So I'm there and she's singing the song, just singing her heart out. 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 One, 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. Add 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 Cor vet. 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 podcast you say you never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos you say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there,

no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop lock brought to you by nitsa and the ad council so got a text from the video from taraji p henson she was saying let me tell you a story about angie then i started hearing all these stories about her taraji said she was just on baby boy wasn't really super famous and she heard that angie was at a club and she went

to see her at the club and angie didn't perform, but she came out, and she was like, whoa, I'm so sorry I came to see you. And she's like, that promoter ain't have my money, so... LAUGHTER I want to go down the street of those promoters and record labels and people not paying folks. But anyway, she told, Taraji said she took her in the corner and she sung a song for her in that club.

That's the heart of a person. That's the soul of a person who cared about her fans, who cared about getting paid. You know, I was being interviewed by this woman once, and she was telling me, she said, Tyler, I just want to tell you, I can always tell when they're going to go left, because their interview starts, all these questions, and then it's like, you know, the black women in your movies, do you portray them in such negativity, and they portray them? It's such negativity. And they're always going through something. And they're always, and just a black woman.

I asked her, I said, you've been through something? She said, my life is great. I have a great husband. My kids are great. Everything's wonderful. I said, God bless you that you can live a perfect life. That's wonderful. Then I turned to her and I asked her, I said, how old are you can live a perfect life. That's wonderful. Then I turned to her and I asked her, I said, how old are you?

She said, 25. I said, baby, keep living. But I look at these young folks who are living these lives and they think that it's supposed to be the way that it is on instagram and they're forgetting about the people who have paved the way for them to be in that situation they're forgetting about the women like angie stone who's been in the business all of these years you're gonna forget about what she did all of the people that she put on and helped so you got to go through something to write a song like $20. Cause then she says, what you know about being Pope? She don't say poor, she says Pope.

What you know about having to borrow from the neighbor next door? These are her words. What you know about bumming rides? What you know about having to swallow your pride? And this is the part of the song that got to me when she said, what do you do when you're through when you're always helping people and nobody is there for you

y'all gotta forgive me because I'm angry at the way she was treated I did not know all the things that she was going through. Recently, I found out, because I'm not on Instagram, I'm not being hooked and manipulated by an algorithm telling me what to think and how to feel. So I don't see everything. But to think that this woman was in the business for all of these years, and there's a difference between performing because you want to and performing

because you have to all of those years all of those songs all of that money that was owed to her where is it it's wrong it is wrong and I'm tired of seeing us struggle and go through things and work hard and not reap the benefits of what we were supposed to reap. But you got to be careful when you start mistreating people, especially children of God, because the Bible says touch not my anointed and do my profit no harm and I'm gonna tell you something this woman was a prophet she prophesied and preached her own eulogy what am I talking about in her song no more rain in this cloud she says my sunshine has come and I'm all cried out there's no

more rain in this cloud and many of you may not know this But I'm the pilot and when you are a pilot the first thing you study is the weather And I learned about clouds and what a cloud is is particles air and particles and when the brain gets in that cloud and the Particles gets too heavy it becomes terrain it drops to the ground it falls It is just like our souls we hold so much in we hold so much pain we hold so much that it has to come out of our eyes as tears but the beauty of what she was talking about is when a cloud has no more tears it dissipates it's gone but if you listen to that song

again there's a part that I want you to really really listen to she said what goes around comes around what goes up must come down the things you do come back to you and then she said y'all And then she said, y'all believe that? She was preaching y'all. I can take you to the word where Galatians it says, be not deceived. God is not mocked. That a man soweth, he shall also reap.

This woman sold good things to people. She sold kindness to people. She sold kindness to people. She sold joy to people. She sold love and her voice to people. So if you are like her and like me, who get tired of helping people and watch them dog you out, if you are like her and like me, I'm going to tell you this. Don't stop doing good. Don't stop being kind.

Be not weary in your well-doing for in due season, you will reap a harvest of blessings. God bless you, family. God bless you, Angie. My heart, my soul is with you. I'm so glad that there's no more rain in your cloud. Thank you. Again, folks, if you missed the Atlanta funeral service of Angie Stone, just simply go to our YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash Relentless Martin. Go to our Blackstone Network app. You can see it there.

She's going to be eulogized tomorrow in South Carolina, her home state. We will carry that live as well. In addition, as I said, the funeral of former Houston mayor, my alpha brother, former Congressman Sylvester Turner, will be tomorrow. The Church Without Walls in Houston will be live streaming that as well. And if you missed the funeral earlier this week, the memorial service for Roberta Flack, you can go to our YouTube channel as well as our app. See, folks, this is the stuff. This is the stuff that we do. Nobody else, no other black-owned media is doing what we're doing, this type of stuff. With this show, additional shows, streaming these

services, the news conferences and events that we carry, all of those things are critically important. So again, your support is always appreciated for all of that. Again, QR code for Cash App. Use the Stripe QR code. It's right here. Go to BlackstarNetwork.com if you don't have it. You can go there as well. Send your check and money. Order at PO Box 57196 Washington, D.C. 2003-710196 PayPal, R. Martin Unfiltered,

Venmo, RM Unfiltered, Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com Folks, I'll see y'all on Monday. Here are all of those names, people who have contributed to our show. We certainly appreciate every single one of you. Y'all take care. Holla! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. More time Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you next time. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown

and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock.

Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. 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. or wherever you get your podcasts. recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.