#RolandMartinUnfiltered - NIH Cuts Impact On Birmingham, Al., RFK Sworn In, U.S. Attys Resigning, 2024 Post-Election Analysis

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

2.13.2025 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: NIH Cuts Impact On Birmingham, Al., RFK Sworn In, U.S. Attys Resigning, 2024 Post-Election Analysis If the National Institutes of Health funding is cut, the University of Alabama at Birmingham could lose $70 million. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin will explain how these cuts threaten jobs and vital research in Alabama. Sports entertainment mogul and longtime MAGA supporter Linda McMahon faced tough questions from Senators on Capitol Hill regarding her leadership of the Department of Education, an agency that Trump has vowed to eliminate. Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. gets sworn in as the nation's health chief. Prosecutors are resigning at an alarming rate.  Former Maryland State's Attorney and current Congressman Glenn Ivey will discuss this concerning trend with us. South Africa is pulling its business and mineral resources out of the U.S. And the Black Voter Project Co-Founder will be here to review their 2024 post-election analysis.  #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. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. I 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. 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 Thursday, February 13, 2025. Coming up on Rolling Mark on Filter, streaming live on the Black Star Network. I told y'all the nonsense that Elon Musk, the co-president, is doing with Donald Trump is going to have an impact on a lot of red states, especially when it comes to the National Institutes of Health. It could have made ramifications in Alabama. I'll talk with Birmingham Mayor

Randall Woodfin about that. Sports entertainment mogul and longtime MAGA supporter Linda McMahon faced lots of tough questions from Democratic senators on Capitol Hill today regarding her leadership of the Department of Education. She vowed though to follow Trump's orders

to destroy the department. Vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services because Republicans are scared to death of Donald Trump. And prosecutors are resigning at an alarming rate in New York City when it comes to the Department of Justice ordering them to drop the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. A mutiny is at hand. We'll talk with Congressman Glenn Ivey, a former Maryland, a former U.S.

prosecutor about what's happening. Plus, South Africa is pulling its business and mineral resources out of the United States. Good. And Black Voter Project co-founder will be here to review their 2024 post-election analysis on the black vote. Folks, it's time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Martin on the filter on the Black Star Network. Let's go. to politics with entertainment just for kicks he's rolling he's funky fresh he's real the best, you know he's rolling, Martin. Martin. Martin.

On Monday, federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administration changes to how the National Institutes of Health funds biomedical research. This decision pauses the proposed cuts to federal research funding. If implemented, these cuts could have resulted in a loss of about $70 million annually for the University of Alabama at Birmingham and millions of cuts all across the country. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin joins us right now. Mayor Woodfin, glad to have you back on the show, frat. This is real simple. Donald Trump and Elon Musk as co-presidents have no idea what the hell they're doing. They're just slashing stuff willy-nilly.

They're not thinking about the consequences of this. And what I kept saying repeatedly to folks, these idiots are going to impact the folks who also voted for them. The reality is Alabama voted for him in huge numbers. And if these cuts go forward, it's going to really jack up medical research there in the state of Alabama. There are three immediate issues of concern. One is the economic impact of not just to the city of Birmingham, but to the state of Alabama. I remind people that UAB is not just the largest employer in the city of Birmingham. It's literally the largest employer in the state of Alabama. So

this has a negative impact for the entire state. Two, we're talking about life-saving medicines at the third largest public hospital in our nation. And so this doesn't just impact jobs. This impacts the ability to save life with this groundbreaking research that UAB Hospital has been at the forefront of. Third, I think people need to consider from a national standpoint. When we talk about advancements in medicine and research and life-saving medicine, we're not competing with states. We're competing with countries like China and countries like Russia. We have to be at the forefront. That requires federal investments, and we should not be cutting that money.

And so, at a small level, these cuts were made before there was even a secretary over HHS, which tells you they didn't even say, do cuts need to be made? They just made a decision without even having leadership at the top of the position. So that makes no sense to me. And what they're doing is they're just like, oh, we see this, cuts. Oh, hey, y'all, we saved a whole bunch of money. No consideration on the impact of those cuts. No consideration on the good being done, none of that. All they're looking at is a spreadsheet.

All they're looking at is just a number going to something, and they're like, yep, cut it. I would say this, Roland. I think all Americans agree that there is wasteful spending in the federal government, and it can be done better as it relates to our taxpaying dollars that come out of our pocket. No one is fighting that. I think what the concern is, is that the question should be asked first, is there wasteful spending? The answer is yes or no.

And then if the answer is yes, please go through a process of identifying it, finding it, and presenting it to us. In this matter of NIH, they did not do that. Again, when they made this decision, there wasn't even a secretary over the actual department. So how could you make a decision? But it's not even a secretary. These people are not forensic auditors. They're not.

They're just sitting here. They're a bunch of tech folk who know nothing about science, nothing about health, and nothing about the specific grants. They just sit there. They see it. Oh, money goes to this. We don't like that. Cut. As opposed to what is the grant's purpose? What does it do? What's the impact, short-term, long-term. There's no analysis given whatsoever. And then they come out, say it in the Oval Office, Trump repeats, people go, hey, you're doing a great job. And there's no backup information. You go to doge.gov, there's no backup that says,

oh, this money is going to UAB. This is what it's for. This is why we think it's bad. It's none of that. No, it's if you're going to make cuts to impactful things that save lives, it should be surgical, pun intended. But they're just taking a swath. They've just taken a large brush and saying this is the percentage everybody can get it.

This has a negative ripple in cities like Baltimore, where there's Johns Hopkins. It has a negative impact in cities like Ann Arbor, where there's the University of Michigan. And you think of all the top research facilities that are attached to universities and medical facilities. We are really talking about cutting the ability to be in advancements of groundbreaking research that will save lives. All right. This is literally a life and death situation. I'm not trying to be an alarmist.

I'm just stating an actual fact. When you cut money and you don't know the repercussions, one of the repercussions will be slowing down and or stopping the advancements in research that leads to groundbreaking medicine that will save lives. Think diabetes, think heart, and think so many other diseases that affect everyday Americans.

Well, they don't care. And then what ends up happening? Oh, your Republican senators from Alabama go, hey, well, I don't know about one of them because he's nuts. But you got one of them who's like, hey, can y'all slow down and look at what you're doing? I will say this. There are two different ways to look at this. I think there's a stick in the form of a lawsuit where we see that it's already happened, asking for a judge to stop or slow this down, filing a lawsuit. But I want to be encouraged by the carrot, right?

I want our U.S. senators, I don't care what party they're in, to say, hey, we control the purse strings. There is a reason why the American government exists of checks and balances. We decide the monies that go out. And, Mr. President, you sign. We want our elected officials, particularly in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives,

to actually step up and lead and protect the decisions they've made with the purse strings that has an impact on their districts related to their places of employment, that have a negative impact on jobs, that have a negative impact on the economy, that have a negative impact on the GDP. These are real life-changing issues that are affecting their districts in a negative way. And so I want to be encouraged that they will fight on our behalf and step up. Well, the reality is they're not. On the Republican side, they literally are, hey, Trump's doing it.

Musk is doing it. Hey, we're good. Well, look, we have to organize. We have to overcommunicate. We have to tell the story of how this will negatively impact families, will negatively impact jobs, will negatively impact the economy, will negatively impact our edge in advancements in research related to competing with other countries such as China and Russia. Do we want to lose that edge, or do we want to continue to make the necessary investments

in research to save lives? I agree with that. And hopefully you can communicate this to your Democratic Party leaders. I'll be perfectly honest. I think how Congress has been responding so far has been lackluster, weak, has been ineffective. The messaging has been all policy wonk. It hasn't been people-oriented. And one of the things that we said a week ago on this show, Ashley Etienne was here,

who ran the war room for Nancy Pelosi. One of the things that we said is that there should be, Ken Martin should have a major war room with the Democratic National Committee. They should be looking at these decisions and then seeing how they're affecting different states, getting that word to their state directors, their state chairs, then getting the word to their county chairs. So you're driving media on how these cuts are going to impact each specific city, town and state. Because and again, I this is not to ignore the federal workers, but I fundamentally believe you have to first talk about the impact of the cuts on people, constituencies first, and then you get to the people who actually do the work or those

federal workers who deliver those things. Then thirdly, the impact on the cuts on these workers impacts. They have families, husbands, wives, children, people in college. And then you have an economic impact because if you're just whacking folks willy-nilly, all of a sudden, you're now going to have people who are filing for bankruptcy, people who are going to be sitting here getting evicted from homes. You have an economic impact as well. And so to me, that's how it should be stacked. And so I hope mayors like you and the African-American Mayor's Association, I hope y'all are telling Democrats in D.C., namely Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, that, hey, what y'all doing right now ain't it.

I will tell you this. You have a powerful point. And there's not much to add, but simply saying this. If there was ever a time to have bipartisan engagement in the form of we are the legislative branch of government. We control the purse strings. We dictate finances. We have rules. We have checks and balances. This is not the way it is. This is the way it should be. We want our leaders to lead. We need our leaders to lead. We need them to step up. That's just bottom line. Yeah, I absolutely agree. So we'll see what happens here. Mayor Whooping, we appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Folks, got to go to break. We'll be right back. I'll talk to this with my panel.

Lots of stuff to talk about, especially the craziness happening in New York City in the Southern District where lawyers are resigning left and right because they are objecting to the thuggish actions of Donald Trump's Department of Justice as it relates to dismissing the indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. Hey, y'all. Welcome to The Other Side of Change, only on the Black Star Network and hosted by myself, Rhea Baker, and my good sis, Jameera Burley. We are just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection

of politics, gender, and pop culture. And we don't just settle for commentary. This is about solution-driven dialogue to get us to the world as it could be and not just as it is. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to The Other Side of Change. What's up, y'all?

Look, Fanbase is more than a platform. It's a movement to empower creators offering a unique opportunity for everyday people to invest in Black-owned tech, infrastructure, and help shape the future of social media. Investing in technology is essential for creating long-term wealth and influence in the digital age. The Black community must not only consume tech, we must own it. Discover how equity crowdfunding can serve as a powerful tool for funding Black businesses, allowing entrepreneurs to raise capital directly through their community, through the jobs ad.

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. All right, folks, let's bring in my panel. Joining me right now, Dr. Greg Carr, Department of Afro-American Studies at Howard University. Joining from D.C., Recy Colbert, host of The Recy Colbert Show and Sirius XM Radio, also out of D.C. And we'll be joined in a moment by Dr. Nola Haynes, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, also out of D.C. You heard me there talk, Reesey, to Mayor Woodfin about

in terms of how Democrats should be responding. The other day, a story was done saying that the House Democrats were whining and complaining, upset, because Indivisible, as well as MoveOn, has been blowing their phone lines up, demanding that they act. I'm sorry, I don't think it's a good idea to shit on your supporters,

the people who stand with you. This is a moment where you should be organizing and mobilizing them and actually listening to them as to how you should be communicating and messaging and having a narrative and storytelling coming out of D.C. when it comes to the actions of these thugs in the Trump administration. Right. I mean, what's all the bitch assness about? You should have known it was going to be a fight as soon as Project 2025 was put in PDF. So before the Trump administration became a thing, there was always the blueprint for all these actions that were going to be taken. Whether Trump was an officer or not, if there was a Republican Senate and Republican Congress,

these are the issues that would have been at the forefront. And so the fact that they've been kind of caught flat-footed and just flailing about is actually really kind of just pathetic on the part of our party. I'm tired of being on the losing team. I really hate that for us. And the way that we just can't get our act together, while there are a lot of people, I will say, in the Democratic Party that are getting it right with their messaging, with their fighting spirit, there still does not seem to be an overarching plan on not just how do we tackle this in terms of moving the needle with how society is viewing these actions, but also what is the plan? Why would anybody want to put you in charge in two years when you don't seem to really have a backbone against what's going on right now.

So I think that there's a lot of work to be done on the Democratic Party. And it is certainly not the base that is the enemy. It's not your supporters that are actually doing more to put a little bit of backlash to some of these things. And they have forced them to kind of retract some of these damaging things that have come out. They're not the enemy. But the reality is, I will say, in terms of what Musk and what Trump and all these people are doing, I don't think that this is a matter.

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 Glod. 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. 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. is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Of them not necessarily knowing the impact of what they're doing. I believe that they absolutely know the impact.

And I think that the impact is to be as destructive as possible, to inflict as much cruelty as possible, and to do as much damage as possible to people who are vulnerable in this country. Because we do not have people in charge, this broligarchy, this autocracy, these billionaires that value the lives of individuals in this country. They believe that we're all put here to be in servitude to their wealth building. That's it. So if there are not advancements in medical technology or in health care and research in the United States, that time, Elon Musk can go catch a flight to China or all these other people.

They are not concerned about the citizens of the United States. They're only concerned about their pocketbook. So once we realize that, this isn't a matter of, well, let's just get them to put a process in place. Let's just get them to be more precise about it. We have to defeat them and their lack of humanity and their approach to governance altogether, not just their individual tactics. Well, I absolutely agree, because this idea that you didn't see it coming is kind of stupid, Greg. I mean, they literally

have been working on this since 2021. And I remember, of course, after the election, it was two or three days later, and somebody hit me up. They text me, and I saw the comments. They say, Roland, I don't understand. How have you moved on? I said, what are you talking about? The election's over. I said, the election's over. She lost. I said, they lost the House, they lost the Senate. I said, now it's time to gear up for a fight. You know what they're going to do. They literally gave you the blueprint. And so I don't understand what the hell,

what the hell Jeffrey's office, Schumer's office, and all of them were doing after November 6th through January 20th, because you knew what was coming. You knew what they were anticipating. You should have had lawyers lined up ready on day one filing lawsuits. You should have been able to, you should have been meeting with labor leaders explaining, hey, they're coming after your federal workers. All these things were happening there, and they're just sitting here like,

I don't know what to do. And not only that, let me also extend this. Let me extend this because I'm going to say this right now. I don't know what the hell black leadership is doing. I don't know what the hell these organizations are doing. OK, because here's what's crazy to me. And you may say, well, you know what? And this is not about being arrogant or cocky.

This is this is truth. Not a single black civil rights organization has actually hit me to say, hey, we want to come on to talk about this here. What's your strategy? What's your plan? What are you doing? Have no idea. So none of those things are happening. And so people are, I hear more black people say, yo, who's doing what? What's the plan? What's the action? Where do we go? What do we do? And folks are like, I hear more black people saying, yo, who's doing what? What's the plan? What's the action? Where do we go? What do we do? And folks are like, well, you know,

we shouldn't, you know, chase every little thing they throw out. Yeah, this is all hands on deck because like I said on this show, they want to completely destroy the civil rights infrastructure, the economic infrastructure. They want to destroy grants. They want to destroy money. They want to completely destroy the civil rights infrastructure, the economic infrastructure. They want to destroy grants.

They want to destroy money. They want to destroy contracts. They're executing their strategy. And we're over here bullshitting. Yes. Unfortunately, I find no pleasure in saying what I'm about to say. It sounds like a broken record, but either people don't understand or simply choose to reject the reality that we live in a white supremacist state called the United States of America that has never yielded anything that benefited African people except that we got into a bloody fight

for it. There is the illusion that we live in a nation. We do not. And by that, I mean, there is no common definition of American. There is no common commitment to a joint project. There is only power, capitalism, and racism. And to the degree that African people have made progress in this criminal enterprise called United States of America, we have done so when we have not only remained true to our values, but when we have acted on those values. You can't name a single historical event that I'm aware of anyway, where that is not the case. And let me just say this. We've been talking a long time about this cold civil war that is heating up. The concept of federalism is deeply rooted in

white supremacy. The fight between the federal government and the states is informed first and foremost, poured into the foundation of the United States Constitution by slavery. This was the compromise. So when you see what we're happening now, fast forward to this situation we're in right now, the white nationalist playbook, you're absolutely right. They told us what they were going to do. We talked about it ad infinitum, and people chose to reject it, or in the case of 90 million or so people in this country, sit the election out so that it could be stolen, either through voter suppression or disinformation or both, as one day we'll wake up and understand as they crow in our faces about how they did it. And as they shut down the DOJ office to stop election interference from foreign actors.

They want to steal further elections. Let's be real clear. All of it, all about it. And of course, as we saw the news this week, that they are now flattening the law that allows them to interfere, foreign governments to interfere in contemporary politics by taking out bribery. I mean, it's like, no, you can do it. But I think the playbook here, though, is also crystal clear.

We're seeing it already. I think the playbook here, though, is also crystal clear. We're seeing it already. Here's the playbook. Trump, Musk, really, and Trump, his signing tool, as, you know, Musk's son, apparently, wiping boogers on the Resolute desk for his employees' consternation. You eviscerate everything. You take

all the money if you can. And the courts, of course, now find a refuge. And then then your white nationalist friends ask you for carve-outs. What I would have asked our good brother, Mayor Wolfman, is that when he was saying, you know, I don't care who it is, Democrat or Republican, I'm sure that's the case because Senator Katie Britt has already approached Robert Francis Kennedy for a carve-out for that $518 million, which includes UAB. What we saw, Jerry Moran in Kansas approached Marco Rubio about the USAID money, because he understands that $713 million of farmers' crops went to Food for Peace.

Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Indian Affairs Committee in Senate, went and said, you know, can you exempt the Native Americans? And so what you see is their plan was take everything and then give it back to the white national states. Twenty-two attorneys general in this country have gone to court, all of them Democrats. The Republicans aren't going to court because they are going to ask for carve-outs. And guess what? They may get those carve-outs. The cold civil war is heating up. Finally, I'm talking now to all the idiots in Ohio who voted for this

car salesman, Bernie Moreno. Bernie Moreno said, Ohio gets a billion dollars. That's Ohio State. It gets a billion dollars in some of this funding. You know what he said? He said, if you're going to do child cancer research, I don't understand why any of that money doesn't go directly to child cancer research, and that's

60% to indirect costs. And I said our indirect costs are 28 percent. And you use car selling. You don't even know what it is. But y'all wanted him and not Sherry Brown. OK, that's fine. Ted Budd in North Carolina, Duke in North Carolina. They get billions in research in age. He's saying, well, you know, I agree that these things need to be right-sized, but guess what? He's also back there saying, can we get a carve-out? But he's in a purple state. This civil war is about white supremacy versus everybody, and these white boys are going to turn around and try to get a carve-out.

Now, if you're the mayor of Birmingham, what do you do? Because if you can get that carve out, do you hold your nose and go for it? But then what does that do to the long range project of black liberation and this funky criminal enterprise? Because you've made a compromise. You saved that billions now, but at what cost? And that's where we are now. Well, we have a white nationalist, Christopher Ruffo, who of course, who attacked critical race theory and all of that. So you're going to love this here. So he's posting stuff regarding the Department of Education. He promised,

oh, I'm going to do all kinds of stuff. So he goes, the Department of Education granted $8 million to this NGO, which argues that America is a racialized structure of power, privilege, and oppression, and suggests that Republicans are violently fighting for the maintenance of white supremacy. It advises public schools in 13 states. I responded to him, no lies told. I didn't see any lies told. That's what you have to do.

That's what you have to do. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, no lies told. That's right. Greg, you talked about people who sat at home on the couch. And the reality is, when we look at the numbers, the fact of the matter is, a lot about people who sat at home on the couch. And the reality is when we look at the numbers, the fact of the matter is a lot of black folks sat at home. Now, we love to talk about percentages. We love to talk about this number and how many voted, black men, black women. But it's important for us to go under the hood and look at the numbers to understand what is going on.

And you have to look at black voters in a totally different way. You cannot look at black voters in the monolith, in terms of in the macro. You must look at them in micro. Y'all have heard me say that African-Americans 65 plus are more likely to identify as Democratic voters. 65 people 65 or older are also going to vote at a higher rate than anybody else. The second group is Gen X. Really, that group is 55 to 64. There was only one demographic that Donald Trump won.

It was Gen Xers. When you get below 55, you begin to see the huge drop-off in participation, in voter registration, and all of that. And so joining us right now is Chris Tolan. Chris, of course, has been working on this with the Black Voter Project. They have been quite busy laying out what the numbers look like. And what was interesting, of course, last year, so many mainstream white media were just ignoring black voters,

ignoring the data. We had Chris on this show a lot, then all of a sudden late in the season, then they started realizing, oh my goodness, we may want to have people like Chris on to talk about the numbers of black voters. He is the project director and co-founder of Black Insights Research, joining us from Sacramento.

So, Chris, y'all have done your analysis. What's the verdict? So we completed a series of longitudinal surveys throughout the election. I talked about the first three waves on your show a number of times. We now have our post-election survey complete. We completed it towards the end of the month of December. Gone through, done the results. I want to highlight a few things. First and foremost, our survey mirrors exit polling showing that Black support in vote choice for Harris did not detract from 2020 numbers. She got pretty much the same amount of support as Biden did in 2020. And we look at the breakdown of men and women, that number remains

for men as well, where she actually, according to our survey, got a bit more support from black men this year around than Biden did in 2020. Hold up. Stop right there. Hold on. Stop right there. According to your research, Vice President Kamala Harris got a higher percentage of the black male vote than Biden did in 2020. Slightly. The exit polls in 2020 have it around 79, 80 percent. Our survey has it around 82 percent. It is within the margin of error, so it is statistically the same, meaning that Black men showed the same amount of support, if not more, for Harris than they did for Biden in 2020. We just really have to move on from this

conversation that Black people are not supporting this conversation that Black people are not supporting Democrats, that Black people are not voting for Harris or Black candidates or Black women in this case moving to Trump. As you mentioned, the real conversation here is about turnout and focusing in on how to get Black people who didn't vote in this election back engaged and back to the polls. Other analysis we've done shows that throughout, across the country, and even in battleground states, the more black a county is, so as the percentage black of a county increases, turnout drops. And the turnout in counties that are less black is much higher than turnout in counties that are more black, suggesting that compared to 2020, right, this is an issue that needs to be dealt with. It needs to be focused on. It's getting people out to the polls, not necessarily focusing on who they're going to vote for. And we asked on the survey about who the Harris campaign contacted.

And we found that of all the people we surveyed, about 41 percent said that Harris did not contact them whatsoever. And sadly, as you mentioned, the 18 to 29, that youngest age group, had 52 percent people saying they were not contacted. And then again, when we look at sort of zoning in on who is likely and who is unlikely to vote, of those that did not vote in 2020, 56 percent said that they were not contacted. And so there is a disconnect here between what I believe needed to happen to get the black community out engaged in voting, not worrying about who they're going to vote for, but worrying about if they're going to get out on the couch and what actually happened. And we're seeing some residue of that in our poll as well. When we look at

the attitudes towards the Democratic Party, as we see the Black attitudes towards how welcoming the Democratic Party is towards Black people were increasing throughout the campaign, shifting from about 28 percent saying the party was extremely welcoming to a high of 42 percent right before the election. Well, that tapered off to back down to 35 percent following the election and likely will continue to fall, meaning that, you know, there was some excitement, some feeling of inclusion in the Democratic Party amongst Black people with Harris at the top of the ticket. Post-election, that's starting to reverse, and Democrats are going to have to work extra hard to get people engaged and involved.

And then lastly, when looking forward, we asked respondents whether or not a second Trump presidency will motivate them to become more committed to politics or whether it has proved and will prove exhausting and they just want to be left alone. And, you know, not surprisingly, only 23 percent of respondents said that they are motivated to participate in politics, where 43 percent said that they are exhausted and just want to be left alone after the election. And when you look at this breakdown amongst men and women, 51 percent of women that we surveyed said that they are exhausted, that they feel like they just want to be left alone after this election, and they're not motivated to continue to be committed to politics during this Trump second term. And so, as you mentioned, there's a lot of work to be done. Democrats, especially black Democrats, have to step up and take the medal here and really motivate voters to get involved and to reengage voters.

Looking forward, right, 2026 campaigns have already started. If Democrats want any chance to take back the House, to fight in the Senate, to win local elections, there has to be some strategy, and it has to start now. So let's talk about the turnout, guys, pull up the county level turnout. And the reason I think that is important, this is what I said directly to Vice President Kamala Harris in November 23. This is what I said to the deputy campaign manager of the Biden-Harris campaign, Quinton Folks, beginning in January. And I sent that message to Cedric Richmond, to Jen O'Malley Dillon, to the leadership of the Biden-Harris campaign, and then in July as well. And what I'm saying here ain't like it's confidential

because I literally said it on this show. And what I said is you cannot wait to July, August, and September to engage black people. Because first and foremost, the mistake that people make is, oh, we got to get out and vote. Okay, throughout early voting, the election is in November. But before I can get you to vote, I got to get you registered. Before I got to get you registered, I got to get you interested and make you aware, enlighten, educate you on the issues to explain to you why you need

to get registered and then why you need to vote. That to me is the process that Democrats keep skipping over. And I said there should have been, I said the Biden-Harris campaign beginning in January, there should have been every single week across this country, town halls being hosted by mayors, city council members, county commissioners, state reps, state senators, governors, members of Congress, educating people on what they accomplish. So if you do that January, February, March, April, May, June, July, then folks can say, you know what? I need to get registered. And then if I'm already registered, I need to focus on then voting and getting other people. That is the process. If you wait, and I kept saying, your runway is running out, your runway is running out,

then Biden has a debate June 27th, okay, totally screws up, drops out July 21st. That completely changed the game. And so now it was all over the place. And that to me, I just keep saying, they got to spend more time and more money speaking to black people for a longer period of time than just how they used to run traditional campaigns. And if you look at this in the sort of timeline of things since pretty much Obama's tenure, the writing was on the wall in 2016. And the only reason things really reversed in 2020, in my opinion, was twofold. One, four years of Trump motivated people in ways that they were not typically motivated through campaigns. And also there was the summer of George Floyd in 2020 that really engaged the black community in politics, unlike anything else.

Also, Chris, I got to throw in 2020 is an aberration because it was COVID. So all of these laws were changed to actually make it easier for people to vote because they could not go in physically. The moment, come 24, they're like, oh, hell no, we're going back to the old way. And so ballot drop boxes, absentee voting. And so we can't, I juste voting. And so that's so we can't I just think

that we can't look at 2020 the same way you look at 24, 16, 12, 8 and 4, because because, again, they changed the way we vote, which made it easier. Absolutely. And so by the time 2024 rolls around, you know, people are looking at 2020 saying, oh, we got this. We're going to have more voters than we did in 2020. We're going to keep motivating people. But that just wasn't the case. And there was no preparation, especially, as you said, no information. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app,

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

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

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine 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 Podcasts.

Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

Investment in the Black community. And if there's a serious want to win elections in 2026 and then the presidency in 2028, the investment needs to start now. And it needs to be a multi-year, sort of continuous and prolonged investment in the Black community to get things going, right? We're still waiting on official turnout data to come out. But in some states where we do have it, such as Georgia, the only group, the only racial ethnic demographic group for which turnout fell was black people. Every other group, especially white Americans, saw a tick upwards in turnout in Georgia. Black Georgians' turnout dropped. And so that's going to be a continued problem, as the post-election Black Voter Project data suggests, as there's even less motivation now to get involved and participate.

And we're only, right, a month in. It's just going to keep getting worse, and people are going to continue to become more disillusioned and apathetic towards politics as more and more chaos ensues. And what we have to recognize, Black voter turnout, again, folks, the numbers do not lie. If you look at the midterm elections, 2014, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, what you have seen is you're actually seeing black voter participation going back to pre-Obama levels. And so that's the other mistake.

I saw somebody, I saw some idiot, and I blasted this dumbass, but, oh, well, blaming Obama for what's going on. Now, there's a lot of blame there for Obama in different areas, but here's the mistake. You have to look at Obama also as an aberration. So when he runs, the numbers go up tremendously. But the question is, do you maintain that level? And what I have been yelling on this show, and I've been saying that if black people vote, if we maximize our numbers, if our target goal is 70 percent, if we try to hit 70 percent of our eligible black voters in the counties that we are in,

we sweep elections. But we will always lose if we're voting at 55, 52, 50, 45. We have to counter the white turnout who came out for Trump and recognize it's a bunch of white people who are not going to vote. But if black turnout is at 70, 75, 80, you can actually counter white turnout in some places like Georgia and North Carolina. Absolutely. And I think, you know, speaking of the Obama era, there's a lot of research, political science research, suggesting that black people are empowered by the first, the first to break

through barriers. And Obama was exactly that. There was some worry. I expressed a lot of worry, actually, prior to the election that when Harris took over the ticket, there was just going to be the same sentiment that black people were going to be excited and fall in line because she's another black candidate. But it's not the same. Research suggests that the empowerment for the second is much different than that ceiling that's already been broken through. And we saw extreme support and excitement, especially from Black women. But there were other segments, the Black men in the community, who supported her. But the excitement wasn't there, right? We already had that ceiling broken with Obama.

And there was a sense that we could just rely upon this black candidate to get out black voters. But no, again, Obama is the exception to the rule. The rule needs to be spending resources, time and money in the community, mobilizing folks. Question from my panel. I'm going to start with Greg first. Greg, there you go. There you go. There you go. Thank you, brother. And thank you, Dr. Tolley. Reading through the executive summary and listening to you, and I'm thinking about the late Martin Kilson, who the last book just came out. He says that somewhere in the 70s and 80s, what he began to track was or think he observed was a shift from black politics organized around power to black politics that began to kind of trend toward culture. He didn't say celebrity, but how about that? How can we, particularly given the results of the survey, your survey, where you see this really radically different worldview coming out? Think about Ron Walters saying the very same thing, you know, pursuant to this idea that we really don't live in a nation. I mean, these people think very differently. We think differently about immigration. We think differently about all of those things, mass deportation. How important is it for us to spend time rebuilding the network of independent Black

institutions, or at least Black-controlled institutions, in between these election cycles? Would that have an impact, rather than trying to build these political coalitions scratch from scratch and spending dollars to go to churches? Since we have collectively a different worldview, how important is it for us to concentrate on these black spaces where we are unapologetically in debate and conversation as a strategy for then building voter participation as the election cycles come. I think that's immensely important. What you said reminds me of Catherine Tate's work from protest to politics,

and really that our contemporary understanding of politics, and Black politics in particular, is really encompassed with voting. When the political sphere and Black political history has defined politics so much more broadly, right, with protests, with boycotts, with resistance, revolts, revolutions. And I think under the Trump administration looking forward, right, there's going to have to be a broader definition of politics, and we're going to need organizations to reengage people, understanding that voting is the ultimate sort of democratic outcome,

but reengage people in participating and engaging politics in a number of different ways. And a lot of focus groups we've ran, we speak to people who are engaged in politics, who are knowledgeable about politics, who know their local representatives and their local politics, but they don't feel like their vote matters. And so these are the people who we need to find a way to talk to and relate to about power in politics that they see, and then help them relate it back to voting with an understanding that there's a long-term goal of bringing up voting numbers, of bringing up turnout so that we can build political power. But it starts first in the community.

And thinking about politics is something much broader and much more historical for black Americans. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Recy? Thank you, Dr. Toller. I'm curious. I looked at the survey, but I didn't see anything about how Black people are getting their news and their information.

Whether it's in this polling or other research that you all did, did you find that there was any impact in the way that Black voters were receiving news or even disinformation and their voter attitudes? Or is that something you might want to look into in the future? So we asked a number of questions in previous waves of the survey about how people receive their information. And there's a dramatic shift, and the shift is conditioned upon different demographics, such as age and geography.

But more and more people are receiving their information online, through the internet, through social media, particularly younger individuals. And even older cohorts of Black Americans, when they use social media, they're on things like Facebook, where younger cohorts are on things like TikTok and Instagram and Twitter. And so the way that the campaign approached this probably was right to emphasize social media, but you have to then tone the message on social media to the different demographics that are engaging with your campaign and with your ads based upon the apps and the internet sources that they use. And so there's a lot of information to pull apart here. We haven't done any type of analysis yet that looks at whether or not different information sources led to different levels of participation or support. But we do know that there is a vast variety of information

people are taking in, but it tends to be far more online and social media driven now than ever before. And the role of black media, right, is hard to find. There's a lot of respondents who know about black media, but they don't say that they use black media or look towards black media for most of their political information. speaks to and has the Black community in mind that is focused on Black issues rather than partnering with media sources and pundits that are just talking heads, trying to send their messages to the Black community, because those don't hit, right? Those messages do not resonate the same as messages that come from media sources and research that has really looked at how to hone in on what's going to resonate and what people are going to hear. Nola? looked at how to hone in on what's going to resonate and what people are going to hear. NOLA. Thank you so much, Dr. Toler. I'm always excited to talk to a fellow political scientist,

and I'm a big fan of the work that you do on JREP. My question is about if you all were able to capture anything that's driving apathy in terms of why voter turnout was what it was in some places. I know that I've—when I talk to my family in Louisiana, one of the first things they'll say to me is, is that, well, Trump's gotten away with everything, so what's the point? You know, there's this level of apathy because there wasn't a level of accountability where—that people were able to see. You know, when he said that he could go and stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and nothing would happen to him, it seems like that might be kind of true. And the fact that he's technically a convicted felon and he's still the president of the

United States, I'm wondering if you all captured anything around accountability and what's driving apathy. Thank you. Yeah, thank you and what's driving apathy. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. For us, we've looked at a whole bunch of things and actually modeled some things driving turnout. One thing that I want to focus on is something that we've been trying to highlight for years now, but absolutely since the start of the campaign is the power of threat and understanding that if a Black voter thinks that there is a threat to their group, to their community, to Black people at large, and ultimately, right, we identified that Donald Trump and MAGA could be

this threat, they were more likely to vote. They took action. And in a lot of our results, especially in the post-election wave, we find that those who were the least likely to vote, those who were not engaged in politics, were those who looked at Donald Trump and said, oh, I don't think he's actually going to do these things. I don't see Donald Trump as much of a threat as other voters who then participated. factors to understanding for us what got people out to vote and what kept people on the couch, what drove this sense of apathy was whether or not they saw that their actual lives and their resources were in jeopardy. Because as we know from a number of these conversations, there's already sort of this built up resistance to thinking that the Democrats are going to do anything for them. And so the other side of that coin is, OK, but are you going to lose something if someone else gets in power?

And if you're able to drive up that appearance of perception of threat, people are more likely to participate and get engaged. And so one thing that was driving apathy was just sort of this sense of this nonchalantness. Nothing's going to happen. Trump won't actually do these things. This is not something that's in danger of happening. And the Democrats absolutely could have done a better job making the case that you need to vote, even if not just for sort of policy outcomes that surround

to protect any policy gains that we've had over the last few decades. Well, that's what, but the only way that happens with what Nola just laid out, it has to be repetitive. It has to be repetitive. It has to be over a period of time. And it has to have a level of specificity that I don't think they did. So let me just go back. And again, I'm gonna go back to June. For the folk who don't know, BET got $11 million

from the Biden-Harris, from the Biden-Harris-Harris-Walls campaign. The most money Wells spent was the money they spent on ads that ran during the BET Awards when Taraji Henson and I've been told point blank

that the Vicon Paramount people BET people were pissed that she did that when she talked about Project 2025, the searches shot up. And what we saw, June, July, August, then you saw at the convention, the focus there,

you saw a three-month period where Project 2025 was top of mind for a lot of people. And then all of a sudden, from the Harris-Walls campaign, it sort of disappeared. It kind of came up, but it sort of was no longer a Citroën. They shifted to a reproductive rights fight for democracy argument, which we now know was reproductive rights fight for democracy argument,

which we now know was stupid, an absolute failure. But if you're going to talk about Project 2025, what you can't do is, here's this nine, almost 1,000 page document, no! What's in it? What are they saying? What are they saying? What are they going to do? Even when they were like, we're attacking

DEI. No, what I keep saying, no, they're attacking black contracts. They're attacking black jobs. They're attacking federal workers. That's the black middle class. You did not have the drilling down that has to be repetitive. Folks go, damn, really? Really? That to me is also how you have to speak to voters.

And to Greg's point, you've got to have black organizers doing that, too. Yeah, absolutely. Brolin, to your last point, all of our research suggests that when we look at the power of threat for Black voters, it is a racialized threat. And so, yeah, these broad attempts to paint Project 2025 as a threat are ineffective. These broad approaches to try and say, you know, Trump is a threat to democracy are ineffective. Even arguments saying Trump is an economic threat are ineffective. The only way that these messages are effective is if you are drilling down, as you said, the way that these threats will affect the black community and will affect people as black Americans in their lives because they are black. That's when it

resonates. That's when they get out to vote. And so, yes, the Taraji message was probably one of the best messages on message that I've seen doing this, but it needed to happen all the time, constantly throughout the campaign, coming from the campaign super PACs and anywhere they could spend money on this, they really needed to. And that just didn't happen. Absolutely. We're going to talk more about this. We're going to have you back, Chris. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Where can people go read the report for themselves? Yeah, the results are online two places at www.blackvoterproject.com and also at www.blackinsightsresearch.com, which also has a number of other research reports related to the election and other issues related to black politics. Thank you again for having me. All right, Chris, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Folks, we'll take a short break.

We come back. We're going to talk to Congressman Glenn Ivey, former U.S. prosecutor, about the absolute craziness happening in the Southern District Office of the U.S. Attorney in New York City. The thuggish behavior that we're seeing from Trump's DOJ is crazy and they're fighting back. And so we're going to do that. We're also fighting back, which is why your support is needed. When you join our Bring the Funk fan club, your resources are going to us to be able to do this show, do other shows, launch other shows.

And I'm going to say it again. All right. We're going to have new episodes of The Black Table. Right, Greg? We're going to get that up and running very quick. We can't afford not to. Thank you. All right. Yes, sir. Just put you on the spot there. No, that's important. Necessary.

I need y'all to support our work. Please join us. Contribute via Cash App. This is the Stripe QR code right here. Click Cash App. Payment to contribute. If you're listening, go to BlackstarNetwork.com. You can also send your check and money order. And if y'all think I'm joking, literally, I am depositing your checks as we speak.

Come on. Hey, guys, come on. Control room. Come on. Thank you. I'm depositing y'all checks as we speak right here on the set. So I need y'all to understand we're actually making it happen. Send check and money over to PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C. 20037-0196. PayPal R. Martin Unfiltered. Venmo R.M. Unfiltered. Zelle. Roland at Roland S. Martin dot com. Roland at Roland Martin Unfiltered dot com.

We'll be right back. Hey, y'all. Welcome to the other side of change. Only on the Black Star Network and hosted by myself, Rhea Baker, and my good sis, Jameera Burley. We are just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics, gender, and pop culture. And we don't just settle for commentary.

This is about solution-driven dialogue to get us to the world as it could be, and not just as it is. Watch us on the Black Star Network, so tune in to the other side of change. Hey, what's up? Keith Turino, place to be. Got kicked out your mama's university.

Creator and executive producer of Fat Tuesdays, an air hip-hop comedy. But right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? Folks, it is an unbelievable thing happening in the Southern District Office of the United States Attorney's Office in New York City. shakeup, three top federal prosecutors have resigned after refusing to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The acting U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, and two senior prosecutors in Washington, D.C., have stepped down after Trump's Justice Department ordered them to dismiss the case.

At the center of the controversy, allegations that Adams, a former police captain and the city's second black mayor, took illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals. The DOJ says keeping the case alive would interfere with Adams' ability to tackle crime and immigration issues, but these attorneys are saying, no, they actually broke the law. Now, it was also crazy. The prosecutor wrote, NBC has obtained a letter

where Danielle Sassoon has said that the Adams legal team was asking for a quid pro quo with the DOJ saying, hey, if y'all want to see y'all drop the charges, I'll follow through when it comes to fighting immigration. Not only that, this is a letter from this is a former law clerk for a Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote this here, who laid out, who said, he said, I do not repeat here the evidence against Adams that proves beyond a reasonable doubt

that he committed federal crimes. Mr. Bowe rightfully has never called into question that the case team conducted this investigation with integrity and that the charges against Adams are serious and supported by fact and law. Mr. Bowe's memo, however, which directs me to dismiss an indictment returned by a duly constituted grand jury for reasons having nothing to do with the strength of the case, raises serious concerns that render the contemplated dismissal inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good faith arguments before the courts.

When I took my oath of office three weeks ago, I vowed to well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I was about to enter. In carrying out that responsibility, I am guided by among other things, the principles of federal prosecution set forth in the Justice Manual and your recent memoranda instructing attorneys for the Department of Justice. 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 one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus

on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-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. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early.

Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Justice to make only good faith arguments and not to use the criminal enforcement authority of the United States to achieve political objectives or other improper aims. This is what he lays out to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Folks, it is unbelievable what is happening there. And joining us right now, former Maryland state's attorney, former federal prosecutor, and now Congressman

Glenn Ivey. Congressman Ivey, glad to have you here. Have you ever—I think the only thing that's comparable to what's happening here is when you had the actions taken by Richard Nixon against the attorney general. And you had other other attorneys saying, I'm not going to follow through with your orders. Yeah, that was the Saturday Night Massacre. And Archie Cox was the attorney that they were trying to have fired. And, you know, they refused to move forward with the firing just because he was

investigating Richard Nixon and they were trying to curtail that investigation and protect Nixon from prosecution. Now, you know, ultimately, they ended up just like they did here. They sort of fired the ones that refused to do it. Cox and Weld, William Weld, who later became the governor of Massachusetts. But, you know, it's the same kind of deal. They'll find somebody to do it, but it's still wrong, it's still unethical, and it still violates basic principles of prosecutorial ethics. The attorney here, I thought, did the right thing. She did it the right way. She submitted something in writing, raising her concerns about it. But as you pointed out, this was not a decision that, you know, Beauvais and Bondi were making on the merits. This was just based on they want to try and essentially reward Eric Adams, apparently, for him taking a position

that was positive with respect to immigration during the campaign and the presidential campaign cycle. And as Hakeem Jeffries has suggested, the fact that they dismissed it, but without prejudice, which means they could bring it back later, means they can hold this over Eric Adams' head as long as he's in office. And basically, as Hakeem said, keep him on a short leash and make sure he continues to do the things that the Biden administration, the Trump administration wants him to do. This right here, this is what she wrote. Rather than be rewarded, Adams advocacy should be called out for what it is, an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case. She says she lays it out right here.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's an improper thing to do because, you know, if you're going to drop a case of this magnitude, you know, you bring federal charges against the mayor of New York City. That means this is a very serious case. It's gone through all of the channels at the Department of Justice, there at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan, but also up to Maine Justice, where the former attorney general, I'm sure, reviewed this case before it was decided upon. And they decided to go forward based on the merits. There's a sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, as she states in her letter there. And in fact, they were about to bring a superseding indictment. Yeah, they were about to hit it with another indictment.

Yeah, they're going to add charges because they found new evidence that indicated additional criminal charges should be brought. They were about to do a superseding indictment. Instead of going in that direction, though, the Trump administration reversed course totally and told him to throw the case out. Not all the way. You've got to keep it over his head, but enough so that the federal charges don't go forward now

unless he carries out the immigration policies that they want. For the people who are at home, explain what a superseding indictment is. Superseding indictment, when a case first goes to a grand jury, the prosecutor presents evidence and asks the grand jury to return charges on particular criminal counts. And let's say they bring, I don't know, four or five counts, and that indictment is returned. That means it's presented in court so the defendant knows what the charges are. And then the case begins moving forward in public. As the case goes forward, if prosecutors find new information or new evidence that more crimes were committed, they can add more charges. And they bring a second indictment, or called the superseding indictment, which adds the new

charges to the old charges. So in this instance, it looks like what happened was the prosecutors in Manhattan found more evidence of more criminal conduct, or they found evidence that sufficiently bolstered charges that they thought about bringing before but didn't think were strong enough yet. But they found strong enough evidence to add more charges to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt against the mayor of New York City. And that's why they were seeking a superseding indictment. So what's crazy here, they found additional charges of him ordering people to destroy evidence.

They have all of this. And go to my iPad. Again, the acting Deputy Attorney General, Emil Bove, sends a letter saying, hey, drop the charges. And these U.S. attorneys are like, wait a minute. We literally have a judge. Like, what are you doing? How are you in D.C. making this call when we're sitting here with the information?

What the hell is going on? This is, then, of course, when he was asked about it, and the Oval Office of Trump goes, oh, I know anything about it. No, Eric Adams has been trying to suck up to Donald Trump since Election Day to do this very thing right here. And these attorneys, multiple attorneys, have now quit saying what the hell y'all doing in D.C. is just wrong and corrupt. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, this was an effort that Adams' lawyers had been working with the Trump administration, apparently for some time,

to try and get this kind of an outcome so that he could avoid criminal prosecution, at least to get through his election, apparently. But I'm sure he's hoping that if he continues to work with them and do what they want him to do on immigration and other things, they just won't bring the charges again. So, you know, we'll have to see how it plays out. But I thought these prosecutors who took a stand and resigned, I thought, you know, it was really profiles in courage. You know, these are young attorneys. She's 38. She's come a long way. She's a Yale Law School grad. As you pointed out, she was a Scalia clerk. Federalist society, so that means she's conservative. This is not some, you know, wild-eyed liberal, you know, trying to buck the Trump administration.

She's one of those ones. They're grooming for higher things. But she decided to give that up, potentially, and take a stand on this in a principled way. I mean, what's crazy is she actually said, stay with the shot here, she says, Mr. Boves admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion.

Yeah, don't leave a paper trail. That's, you know, apparently what Boves was concerned about. But, you know, this stuff's going to come to light, And it did quickly here. And I think she was right to preserve that in writing in the letter that she sent to them. So now it's all on the record. But, you know, this shows the shady stuff that the Trump administration is doing and the way they're trying to convert the Department of Justice to a tool that's totally political and just serves his political ends. And, you know, he's got the retribution list. He's going to go after the J6 prosecutors. He's got the effort

going forward to go after the J6 FBI special agents that investigated those cases. This is part of his total corruption effort of the rule of law and the way the federal prosecution system should work in the United States. And I want folks to understand that, again, typically you have checks and balances when it comes to the FBI, when it comes to the U.S. Marshals. What you have here, especially if he's able to get Kash Patel as his FBI director, he is going to have a team that will not resist him, that will do whatever he wants, that will suck up to him, and then they will ignore judicial orders. I don't trust these people at all. And we've never had a situation, frankly, where you will have the entire Department of Justice, which is the law enforcement mechanism

for the federal government, be completely controlled at the whims of an evil, maniacal individual sitting in the Oval Office who wants to exert retribution against any of his real or perceived enemies, whether they are journalists, whether they are corporate America, whether they are other countries. It will be hell on wheels if Kash Patel is FBI director, Pam Bondi is attorney general, and these sycophants are in control. Yeah, 30 of us in Congress came out. We did a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee two days ago asking Grassley and all of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, we know the Democrats are going to vote against Patel,

but for them to vote against him as well. You know, this guy, he published an enemies list in his book. He's done these, like, children's book calling Donald Trump King Donald, so you know where he's going with that. You had the Trump attorney general, Bill Barr, say this guy over his dead body should even be deputy director of the FBI, much less director of the FBI. It's clear he's not qualified. Oh, I forgot. This guy had to take the Fifth Amendment

to try and avoid grand jury testimony about Trump. Then they immunized him to force him to testify. And then at his confirmation hearing, he refused to talk about what he testified about. I guess it was just so embarrassing and bad for him. So this is the guy they want to lead the FBI? Well, yeah, because he'll do whatever Trump wants. So, you know, it's Bondi, who was, you know, another Trump sycophant. Her staff is going to be Trump's former criminal defense team in the criminal cases that he had going before. Patel's going to be running the FBI. And he got J.D. Vance threatening the federal judges who were coming out with the injunctions against Elon Musk and those efforts. Vance and those guys and Musk are saying, well, you know,

we might have to impeach these guys. That's how he's trying to do a total takeover of the rule of law, the federal prosecution process, and the federal judiciary. All right, then. Congressman Glenn Obvious, certainly appreciate it. Thank you so very much. Thanks for having me. Folks, Democrats, earlier today, a vote was taken to confirm Robert F. Kennedy. You do the same. Thanks for having me. Robert F. Kennedy, Secretary of Health and Human Services. One Republican, one Republican, Mitch McConnell, voted against him. And he lit him up as being

completely unqualified. What the Trump administration did was they threatened Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. They threatened North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis to actually run candidates against them in their primaries next year. What does that tell you? All they care about is holding on to their jobs. Again, what do I keep saying? MAGA and conservatives and Republicans have no honor, no integrity, no decency, no morals, no values, no principles. None of that stuff matters. It's about power. And when you have folks, Republicans, standing up saying that they're going to vote for Kash Patel knowing full well, you have members of Congress saying that privately, privately, Kennedy would not have gotten 10 Republican votes.

But they are scared to death of Donald Trump's retribution, and they are threatening them. They threaten Republicans to vote for Peter Hexeth as Secretary of Defense. He was confirmed. They threatened them to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He was confirmed. They are threatening them to vote for Linda McMahon. They're threatening them to vote for Kash Patel. And do you have a profile in courage of any of these Republicans shockingly other than Mitch McConnell? The answer is no. Not Lisa Murkowski, not Susan Collins, not Tom Tillis. This is right here, Senator Cory Booker in the committee hearing when it came to Kash Patel. This is one of the more perplexing nominees for me personally. I've seen the pendulum swing back and forth in this committee now over 11 years. I've seen my colleagues on the other side of the aisle rightfully take up a

politically charged tweet about a nominee, whether it's for the bench or for significant offenses like this one, as have we. I've seen back and forth, but I've just never seen something like this for a candidate. And I'm surprised that there's not more people who are calling some of this out in the most objective way possible. I do not understand how we're moving forward at this at this point. It seems Booker literally said that Kash Patel lied. He perjured himself. They have a whistleblower who says Kash Patel was involved in the targeting and the firing of various FBI agents. And Chuck Grassley, others are like, oh, you're all just sort of bringing this thing up. He's a perfect example.

This this racist right here, Kash Patel sat in a hearing and said he could not remember who this guy was, even though he went on his show eight times and they have each other's cell phone and they exchanged messages. This man is a known liar. Watch. Fight with Kash came to the aid of Stu Peters and the Stu Peters show because of Kash Patel personally, who personally knew me because of multiple appearances on this program. And then we exchanged contact information and we directly text via personal cell phones constantly. And we're on the phone with each other as fight with cash was hiring a team of attorneys to represent Stu Peters and the Stu Peters network against the Rolling Stone.

So he absolutely knows who I am. If I go on a show eight times, I don't care if I've had 10,000 appearances, if I go on a show eight times, I'm not going to deny knowing the person. Guys, this is a known racist, a man who has praised Adolf Hitler, who goes on his own show and says,

yeah, the dude's lying. We know each other. And if a Republican is like, oh, I don't dude's lying. We know each other. And for Republicans, it's like, I don't see nothing. I don't hear nothing. I don't know what's going on. That's literally what they're saying. Here is Adam Schiff speaking in the hearing. It seems my colleagues are determined to confirm him on the Senate floor. And to all those FBI agents I worked with over the years, to all that are there now that I've not had the privilege of working with, my heart breaks for what you're about to go through with leadership that you cannot respect, who has not earned your respect, who has not earned your respect,

who will not earn your respect. I know you will put your head down and do your jobs because you're professionals. I hope you stay at the FBI. I hope you don't leave because if you're committed to the mission and you leave, then it's going to just leave behind people

who are less committed to the mission. So I hope you'll stay. I hope you'll gut it out. I hope the same is true of the career professionals at the Department of Justice who are the subjects of a similar witch hunt. I spent almost six years in that department. I venerate that department. And we need the career civil servants, public servants, who serve in both those institutions. But it will be a sad day indeed when we confirm the likes of Kash Patel,

knowing what we are getting. The man is an ideologue who is crazy and deranged. There's no other way to put this, Nola. That's who he is. And I was on a Piers Morgan show yesterday and Clay Travis, Nola, he's sitting here praising the diversity of people and ideas in Trump's cabinet. He's like, oh, look at Robert F. Kennedy, who they were talking about should have been in the Obama cabinet. And I was like, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. What am I talking about that?

Then he was like, look at Tulsi Gabbard, who used to be a Democrat congresswoman, and she ran for president, and she's now there. And look at this person. And I said, I'm sorry? You think that level of crazy somehow is great? For the people, Nola, who sat on their couch, for the people who said, oh, no, Trump is not,

he's no threat, he's not going to do these things. These people are about to unleash the FBI, the Department of Justice, the IRS against all of their known and unknown and perceived enemies. And if they think a lot of black people in black organizations don't have a bullseye on their back, they've got to be on crack and meth together. Well, I don't, I don't think they necessarily care about our lives. I mean, they've proven that time and time again, they have very different ideas and definitions of diversity. And I can tell you, you know, I mean, they've proven that time and time again. They have very different ideas and definitions of diversity. And I can tell you, you know, I'm showing up this evening exhausted.

I've been at a space conference all day. And I can tell you, sitting in a room filled with people in the space sector, where we're talking about national security things all day in civil space, it is both—it's daunting. It's daunting. Because what I realized sitting in that room today is that there are people that are pro-burn it all down. There are people that are pro-bringing the chaos. There are people that believe that there's too many regulations and that there must be a jackhammer taken to those regulations. So our lives, targets on our backs, you know, the lives of federal workers, none of that matters for the bottom line. So in terms of them, you know, them caring about the career worker at the FBI or the career worker at USAID or the career worker at Department of State or the career worker at the FBI or the career worker at USAID or the career worker at Department of State or the career worker at Justice, they do not care because we don't fit

into their end goal. And their end goal is to produce some sort of product quickly, cheaply, without regulation. And, you know, many, many folks revere Elon Musk because that's his way of thinking. That's the tech bro way of thinking. If you got to break stuff, break it. As long as you get that product at the end. And so many Americans will suffer, not only because it's about whatever result you need, you need to get that product made. And that's, that's including the legal pipeline and everything else. But it's also, it doesn't matter if you break democracy, if you break this country, if you break the judiciary, it doesn't matter because that

product is going to get made at the end of it. It's about the end use game. And so, you know, sitting in that room today, I really had an education on where a lot of this stuff is heading and the little guy, the cog in the wheel, I mean, that's just collateral damage. And so once you wrap your head around this, then you understand what we are really dealing with. They could care less about the optics in terms of, you know, telling New York to let Eric Adams, you know, to drop the case. They could care less, right? They could care less about the pushback or the people protesting in the streets.

They could care less, because in their minds, they control the whole thing. They have the executive. They have the Supreme Court. They have the legislative. Who going to stop me, boo? That's where we are. REESEY GRIFFIN- Reesey? REESEY GRIFFIN- Yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I really don't give a damn

about Republican senators' feelings, what they would say behind closed doors. What matters is how you exercise your power or how you abdicate it. The reality is that they are all foot soldiers and accomplices. They're not hostages and they're not helpless. A lot of these people would have no problem winning a primary challenge. I'll remind people that a lot of the candidates that Donald Trump supported in the primaries got their asses handed to them, and they did not beat the incumbents. And so I'm not buying this idea that all these people are so scared.

I think that that's good PR for them to try to make them feel like, well, it wasn't me. What do you expect me to do? He won. I have to go with the program. They're part of the program just as much as Donald Trump is. And so the fact that they are willing to see their side of the branch, the legislative branch, neutered to advance these more extremist and expedited, radical, white, crystal nationalist views is an indictment on them. But it certainly does not absolve them from their responsibility for allowing these things to come through. They might believe that, oh, well, like you talked about earlier in the show, we'll get a carve out and we'll get an exception or we'll figure out how to put the pieces back together

just for our little neck of the woods. But the damage that is being done is going to far exceed that. I believe that they're in on it. And in the off chance that they're not, they're going to be in for a rude awakening just right along with the rest of their constituents. And we're all going to be sitting up here saying, we told you so.

You know, Greg, this is the danger of the burn it down folks. And let me walk through this. I look at a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters. I don't think it's a coincidence. There are people who have transitioned from supporting Bernie Sanders to supporting Donald Trump. Because when you look at the language, things along those lines, do I believe there should be massive changes to the system?

Absolutely. 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 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. 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. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game.

We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org,

brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Do I believe that it should be a question of fairness and inclusivity? Absolutely. But the danger is when you sit across from somebody who's a man of love in Second Amendment, you know, when they start talking, like, well, we agree together. Like, every time I hear Cenk Uygur talk, oh, how we got to sit down and talk to these people, I'm like, dude, you getting played.

You're getting played. Well, we both agree. We both agree on cutting the Pentagon budget. If you show me a so-called, if you show me a so-called Republican that is going to advocate for cutting the Pentagon budget, I'm going to show you somebody who's playing your ass like a fiddle. Now, the reason I say we have to be very careful is because when someone argues burn it down. They forget there are some arsonists who know how to burn just that one building.

There are some people who have no regard for the whole block and it would be like, yeah, the whole block got torched. My bad, but I still got that one house. These people, they don't want to torch a house. They don't want to torch a block. They literally want to torch neighborhoods, cities. They actually want to torch every blue state. They want the blue states to suffer.

They want them to beg. They want them to grovel. Donald Trump wants Pritzker. Donald Trump, I believe, prays that a natural disaster hit blue states. So he, like a like a king, can sit there and go beg, beg you peasant, beg, crawl to me, kiss my ring. That's who this man is. And he has now, by having control of the entire apparatus, by having a party that will let him do whatever he wants from the House and the Senate, for at least the next two years, he could literally say to America and the world, get on your knees and beg and kiss my feet

to do what I want, and you have no choice. That's who this man is. He absolutely is, Ronald. And he's the president this country deserves. He is an accurate barometer, I think, of the rapid decay of American politics. He is the second spokesmodel

president after Ronald Reagan. And that should have set off the alarm bells when Reagan won the office. As Gil Scott Herring said, this man is a bad actor from a B movie, and he's the president of the United States. First of all,

Mitch McConnell, you can go to hell. This is all on you, baby. Your little street theater, you can count, too, you old feckless bastard. So you knew that the man was going to get confirmed just because you had polio as a child. Look at me. No sympathy for you. Citizens United, you punk.

Your friend McConnell, Beer Kavanaugh, you did this. No sympathy for you. Citizens United, you punk. Your friend McConnell, Beer Kavanaugh, you did this. And he did it by not voting to convict Trump. Had he voted to convict, he could have never run again. That's exactly right. So if you think this vote is going to keep you out of hell, let's find out together. Anyway, that having been said, Roland, you really put your finger on it. Of course, many voters who voted for Sanders voted for Trump. And, you know, I understand the argument. Bernie Sanders, who was Jesse Jackson's, the leader of the Jackson, the Rainbow Coalition campaign in Vermont when Jackson

ran for president in 84, who has always put class at the center, not ignoring race, but almost always glossing over it. Bernie's an old school socialist, old school democratic socialist with Marxist leanings. And I absolutely understand the argument, have a lot of friends that way. They will argue that if you don't force the crisis, ultimately you can't get to the resolution. And there's a lot to be said for that argument, but they seem to forget that there are people in harm's way. And those people are going to suffer right now. Now, you know, we're Southerners. Nolan know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about out of Texas, Roland. We ain't got to like white people and they ain't got to like us for us to pull

together and do some things together. We all know folks like that. People who would look at us and say, why you talking to so-and-so? I say, Jim ain't going to bother us. He going to vote the same way we... Those are the Jimmy Carter people. Those people are dying now. Most of them did. These people that Jimmy Carter was able

to corral for one last walk in the sun for the possibility of an America. That America died with James Earl Carter, friends. That having been said, what we are faced with now is probably the inevitable. What Mayor Woodfin said about the fact that scientific research in the United States are not competing just with people in the United States, but the world, he's absolutely right. But here's where I think we have a problem. And this is where I think this will ultimately read

the death of the United States of America. And Dr. King talked about this when he said, when America dies, the autopsy part of it will read Vietnam. And he also talked about it when he said that, you know, our friendship with Canada isn't based on us being Americans. Our friendship with Canada is based on us being black people and that being the place where the North Star was. The problem we have is we believe in this patriotic myth-making, so much so that even Cory Booker, good old good brother Cory Booker, will continue to talk about colleagues.

I mean, these people are not your colleagues, my friend, just because of where they came out of their mother's womb. And they're working on birthright citizenship and do not believe for a second that that is safe. You better go read that Kim case from the late 1800s where that Chinese guy came over here. And they are really not aiming at the beginning of where you came out your mother's womb, but the second part of that sentence, which is subject to the authority thereof. They might be able to get birthright citizenship, which would add them to the majority of countries in the world, because only about 20 percent of the countries in the world actually deal with birthright citizenship, much of it is bloodline. We have never been Americans and we will never be Americans, OK? I don't care how clever and how brilliant and how remixing Kendrick Lamar can do a halftime show with Stars and Stripes and Uncle Sam can come out, Samuel L. Jackson.

You're never going to be an American in the eyes of these white nationalists. To pretend that you are, however, works to their advantage, and I'll tell you why. There are people who believe in this country. I believe the young lady that you talked about earlier with Congressman Ivey, Danielle Sassoon, does. She is a dyed-in-the-wool federalist society. She's 38 years old. She has rocketed up to the top of the Southern District of Manhattan—New York, the so-called

independent federal prosecutors. And she did it without compromising any of her rock-solid values, Antonin Scalia. And she was promoted in serial democratically appointed attorneys in New York. She made her advances in AGs who were appointed by the Obama administration, the Biden administration. So this is a kind of ideologue who believes in the rule of law. What you just saw is that these white nassers, as you saidologue who believes in the rule of law. What you just saw is that these white nationalists, as you said, they don't believe in any law.

They're going to purge the very Federalists. This is why John Roberts is probably wearing a diaper to work every day, because he's defecating in his pants, because he realizes with Citizens United, you unleashed this beast. You made the mistake of thinking that they believe in this country.

They do not, which is why Elon Musk ain't gonna have no beef with China, because they just opened a mega battery factory in China this week. Understand. So it comes down to this. If we're gonna fight these people, we have to understand.

And what we just heard Dr. Haynes say, she's gonna chill through everybody. These white boys see the earth as a material resource Dr. Haynes said, say she's going to chill through everybody. These white boys see the earth as a material resource to cannibalize and move forward. Elon Musk sees it as a means to an end. The end is Mars. He's going to leave your ass here. But the bottom line is the only people who believe in the possibilities of America are either naive or so willing to put themselves in harm's way, and that's a lot of people in the Black Power, the Civil Rights Movement, wanting to do it, or

they simply are stupid. And so what we have to do at this point, what we have to do at this point is understand our history so deeply that when we move forward, combined with this fact, and you talked about this every time fact—and you talked about this every time, Roland, you talk about it all the time. Reverend Barber did something today he had never done in public that I've seen in the last few—which is come out on a political side. You know, you don't do that in Repairs of the Breach. We've got to understand we have the numbers.

I'm not just talking about black people, but it's got to come out of a black base. We have the numbers to stop this. And I don't mean to stop it in the short term only. I mean to achieve a type of vision that a Bernie Sanders or a Jesse Jackson or a Nina Turner or for that matter the Congressional Black Caucus actually believe in. But in order to do it,

we got to drop this pretense that we're talking with colleagues and comrades. These people are our open enemies and they are the open enemies of everything except their agenda. They will throw the white people overboard, just like they did with Danielle Sasson today. There was some idiot so-called pastor. He's a part of the Right Wing Project 21. and some other dude posted this clip of him criticizing me, Reverend Al Sharpton,

and I forgot the third person that was on there. I didn't listen to him because I don't listen to stupid people. And all these Negroes were on the Instagram page like, that's right, that's right. But a lot of them were like, he sound like a damn fool. And I was sitting here laughing because I'm going, to all of y'all who agree with this fool,

who's not even worthy of me mentioning his name, I'm going, have y'all even bothered to look at his resume? The dude worked for five years as a corrections officer, put a book out, that was it. Y'all, let me help the people out at home, and this goes back to sort of when we were talking to Chris Toler. somebody who criticizes folk who plan boycotts, who are working to do that, if you hear anybody criticize, oh, you trying to get us to vote Democrat,

you trying to, I want y'all to ask, I want y'all to do a very, I don't want you to do a forensic audit of them. I just want you to do a cursory audit. Have you ever organized anything? See, y'all, I have a very simple rule. When it comes to this show, folks like, you need to have so-and-so on your show. Man, he understands economics.

Has he built anything? Has she built anything? If they're so smart and so genius about economics or education, what have they actually done? What you have out here, this is what the problem with social media and i use this all the time we used to go to the barbershop and was always those two or three loud mouths on out there who would say stupid stuff had no facts but because they could spin a phrase, because they had a silver tongue, we like, yo, man, he making some sense.

One of the greatest things about black people is also the bane of our existence. Is that as we have black people who can talk very well, who can enunciate, who can articulate, who it sounds like they are speaking the truth as if they were handed on two stones like Moses coming down from the mountain. Not Moses. But then if you actually listen and you fact check what they say, they don't know what the hell. Not Moses. But then, if you actually listen

and you fact check what they say, they don't know what the hell they talking about. They just good at talking. And see, back then, that was the barbershop. We can just go home, okay, whatever. Now, now they join together with the other

crazies on YouTube. Now they're on Instagram, now they're on TikTok, now they're on Twitter, they're on Fanbase, they're on Snapchat, they're on Flickr, they're on Tumblr, they're on Facebook, they're on all, they're on Spills, Spoutable, Clubhouse, they're all over the place. And a lot of us are falling for those false prophets. Because all you're actually doing is helping them make a profit. And that's what we're dealing with. So earlier when Greg talked about we've got to go back to what you saw in the 70s and 80s where you had black, true black organizing and

mobilizing around a series of very specific interests. And I love, I love when these simple Simon Negroes, you ain't nothing but a tether, which is crazy because I love how y'all think

that's an insult but if you gonna call me a tether which is a lie then you're calling Stokely Carmichael a tether then you're calling Shirley Chisholm a tether then you're calling Sidney Poitier a tether then you're calling Harry Belafonte a tether. You're calling Marcus Garvey a tether. See, I love all you anti-immigration Negroes who then act like y'all black nationalists with a conscience, but then y'all skipping over all these black folk

who have contributed to the African-American experience who were not born here or whose parents are not from here. Can let me help y'all out. Why y'all at it? Y'all can praise Wes Moore. I guess y'all gonna call him a tether too. Look at his roots. See, this is the stupidity that we're seeing take place across our community. These people don't believe in organizing. These people don't believe in

mobilizing. All they believe in is tearing down somebody who is doing something. And I just want y'all to understand mama and daddy, grandmother and papa and mama fortified Roland Sebastian Martin. I don't give a damn what y'all think. We know what we're doing. We know who we're impacting. We know who we're educating.

And what we are facing right now is an existential threat to the future of black America. And some of y'all think this is a game. It's not. You see, the time that we spend here, this ain't just, hey, let's just what the hell pass two hours. No, it is literally trying to warn people what is coming down the pipe. We try to warn these folk, don't play around in 2016 and let this man appoint some right-wing, crazy, deranged Supreme Court justices. But no, a whole bunch of folks said, ah, man, I saw you dancing with Hillary. You sitting there shilling with the Democrats and guess what? This man

has locked the Supreme Court down with some of the most egregious decisions we've seen in the past decade. Then we give this fool a shot to come back to replace two of the hardcore folk when we could have voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and then if

Alito and Thomas decide to resign, flip the court. It's too many folk who look like us, who don't know shit about politics, who ain't done nothing, who ain't organized nothing, who ain't mobilized nothing, and all they doing is sitting around and some of our folk listen to these charlatans say, you ain't going to get nothing for your vote. I don't know why you're going to sit here and vote. That stuff ain't going to do nothing. When recently you ain't never seen a white person in a so-called leadership position tell white people, y'all need to stay at home. Y'all don't need to vote.

They ain't going to do nothing for you. They ain't gonna do nothing for you. They ain't never done nothing for you. Y'all just need to go ahead and ignore election day. Only loud mouth ignorant Negroes say that bullshit. Clock it. Let them know.

Because the reality is you do not have white people telling white people just stay home. Don't worry about it. Nothing is gonna change. A lot of white people telling white people just stay home don't worry about it nothing is going to change they a lot of white people don't believe anything is going to change but they're not believing that because people are telling them that so the reality is that we have a segment of the population that is all about chaos but the allure of these charlatans as you put it is that they allow people who really don't want to do shit but sit on their ass and be checked out and disengage. They allow them the allure of feeling like they have the moral high ground, that they are the ones who have it all figured out.

And those of us who are actually activated and engaging and trying to do a little something, something to move this place forward and protect the gangs that we've made that have been hard fought, that we're the ones who don't really know what the hell we doing. So that's why it's so attractive. That's why disinformation is so attractive. That's why these people are so popular because we have a lot of people who are lazy fucks, but they don't want to just own it and sit in and be like, well, I don't want to vote because I'm lazy. I don't want to vote because I just don't know shit. And that's just too much work for me to listen to somebody who knows what they're talking

about. And so for those people, yes, let's have somebody come and tell me I'm the one who has all the answers sway and I'm the one who's figured it out. And that's the problem that we have to get over. We have to get over the way that we have been targeted in our community by these chaos agents, which by the way, are funded by right-wingers. If you look at follow the money, okay. As well as target, they benefit, they have profit motives. They sit on YouTube and all these other channels, which they get paid for to get the subscribers and they get, and they get rewarded for this, this, this chaos that they're injecting. And we're the ones who are stuck in these

communities that are not advancing because the census was stacked against us, because of gerrymandering, because of them using DEI as a pretext to get rid of our civil rights infrastructure. We're the ones that are going to suffer for it. But at the end of the day, we're not going to save everybody. We're not going to reach everybody. We just have to try to reach out and touch the people that maybe they like, oh, well, which way should I go? Should I listen to them or should I listen to them? Maybe we can do a little something to try to reach those people. But everybody ain't going to be with the advancement of our community because there are a lot of people who just don't want to lift a finger. And even something as simple as voting

is asking too much of those people. That is the problem that we are consistently faced with. We don't want to fight for enough as a whole community that has the capacity to make change. Let me be clear, Nola. There are a lot of people who, frankly, look, they don't consume information like we do. They don't talk to folks.

They're not following this stuff. It's a lot of people like that. It's a lot of people who were like that growing up in Clinton Park, in that community in Houston. It's a lot of those people. It's a lot of those people. And I say this all the time. Okay, and this is the thing that that because it goes to a Chris Tola was talking about

it goes to a Greg is talking about what I need black folks watching to understand and I need the black folks who are watching to I need you to share this and spread this to folk who are from the age of 12 all the way up to the age of 40 I'm being specific for a reason let me say it again I need everybody you got to spread this from 12 up to the age of 40 here's why Noah and we don't want to think about this. This is February. My dad is 78 in April. My mom is 78 in November.

Amen. My wife turns 60 today. Happy birthday. I'm 56. Happy birthday. I'm 56. Happy birthday. So here's what I need people to understand. My parents' generation, they are tired. They are retiring.

What a lot of us who are in our 50s and 40s and 30s and 20s don't understand is that that generation put in the work. They were the poll watchers. They were the precinct judges. They were the NAACP chapter presidents they were the ones who showed up

with picket signs they were the ones who worked phone banks they were the ones who put signs up in yards they were the ones who started neighborhood clubs civic clubs they were the ones who went down to the city council meeting and the county commissioners ones who went down to the city council meeting and the

county commissioners meeting, who went to the state legislature, who would come to nation's capital calling on the elected representatives to do what was right. They were the ones who went to the committee meetings. They were the ones who were doing the work. These are the people who we don't know, who were not in the newspaper, who were not on television, who were not on radio, who was doing that groundwork. They were the ones who were going door to door in neighborhoods. They were the ones who were raising money for sickle cell anemia when there was a national telethon in the 70s and the 80s.

They were the ones who were putting in all the work. They were the ones who were holding up the black community in the wake of the death of Dr. King in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s. And what we are seeing is the generation after them and the generation after them and the generation after them are not doing their part to hold up the black community because you know what? A lot of us are 26 and 28 and 32 and 40 and 45.

And we're saying today, I'm fucking tired. I'm tired. But you're not tired of going to brunch on Sunday. Oh, come on now. You're not tired of taking multiple vacations a year. That's right. You're not tired of... Tired of taking multiple vacations a year. That's right. You're not tired of... 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 One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. 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. 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. 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. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up.

See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

Of taking from the Bank of Black Justice and constantly making withdrawals from people who were constantly making deposits and now we sit in 2025 and you sit your simple Simon asses going I don't know what's going on. I'm frustrated. I don't get it because all you've done is take and take and take and take. You've made no deposits. You've made no investments. And now you are wondering why the bank account is so low of the black justice fund because your ass didn't make no deposits and deposits are not made with

your money. Deposits are made with your time and with your talent and with your presence. Because it's real easy to be present. But you need to have some presence. Ooh, okay. I got to follow that. All right. So this, to my mind, it is, this is about values, right? You know, I was a guest speaker this week. What's today?

Is today Thursday? My goodness, this felt like a month. I was the guest speaker at AFGE's civil rights luncheon the other day. And I told this story about how my mother and father met at LSU on the satellite campus in New Orleans. And one of the things that drew my mama to my daddy was the fact that he had this Black Panther mystique, like he would wear all black. You know, he had come back from Vietnam and he just had this swag. Right. And so I grew up in a very civil rights SNCC student movement environment, right? I went, I grew up in an all black city. I, I went to private school, but it was a black private school and it was off the hook. You know, like our, our teachers were no joke, you know, pro black history was all day, every day. So in terms of, you know, I agree with you about, I'm gonna use the word apathy again,

in terms of what we're seeing from generations that get younger and younger, but also you got to wonder what was happening in the homes too. It makes me remember this conversation with Obama about this post-racial America. And I remember being one of those people on the other side saying there is no such thing. And as I still sit here, still, you know, having the kind of prophetic eye to be able to see beyond the veneer, at that time, people didn't want to hear that. So we are having the people that, yes, all they want to think about is going to brunch with the grass on the walls. I wish we lived in a country where all we could think about is going to brunch with

the grass on the walls. But that is not the reality of the country in which we live in. So, you know, when I engage with young people, you know, even when I ask my own students, you know, how are you feeling? How are you doing with everything that's going on? We're right in the middle of things. We're in D.C. They don't want to think about it. They don't want to engage in a messy politics. They just kind of want to do their work, put their head down and hope that things will work out. Right. And I think that's kind of like the overall feeling with a certain age group is to put your head down and think and hope that things will work out. Because to your point, Roland, they have always worked out since they've been on the planet

because of the people that came before them, the sweat equity that came before them, the people that were put in jail before them, the people like my father. You know, he had to fight for years to get an honorable discharge from the Air Force because he got into it with a very, very racist commanding officer in the Air Force. And so it's these very real things. You know, my grandfather having to escape rural Louisiana because him and his twin was about to get hanged. People aren't coming from those narratives any longer, and they just want to go to brunch with the grass on the walls. And I'm not going to sit here in front and be like, I don't like doing the same thing. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I wish we lived in the country where that's all we could focus on. I just want people to be engaged and understand what's at stake. And because I do spend a lot of time with young folks, that exhaustion, you know, they're thinking about all the things that they had to go through with school shootings and all these things. And the last thing that I want to do is play oppression, you know, Olympics about the things that I had to go through as a 40-something or the things that parents and grandparents had to go through. For them, they live in a country where they shouldn't have to go through those things. And that's the lens. They are thinking, I should not have to experience any of those things,

because the people that came before me told me that I was living in a post-racial America. My parents told me when they put me in that white private school that I was living in a post-racial America. My parents told me when they put me in that white private school that I was living in a post-racial America. And all I had to do was focus on getting into Harvard or getting into Howard so I can go to brunch with the grass on the walls. I want to say two quick things. I am really worried about this Trump over America moment that we are living in. It is really disheartening to me as, you know, someone—I'm not just a political scientist, you know, just because that's what my degree says. I really am a student of history and politics.

And when I think about those brave Republicans regarding Richard Nixon, you know what I figured out today, Roland and Greg, as the historian here? They weren't brave. You know what it was? The evidence was irrefutable. That has been the problem since day one with Trump. The things in which the multiple crimes that he's committed, it's been too challenging and too difficult to explain to the public. What Nixon did, that man was on tape. It's that. There has not been a situation yet where the case has been brought to the American public that was irrefutable. That's one thing. And the last thing that I will say to Recy's point about misinformation and disinformation, I firmly believe that conspiracy theories is the philosophy for the lazy. It is so easy. It is so seductive to believe in conspiracy

theories is true because it's too hard to know the truth. And that's all I have to say. For the folk who don't understand this, is there an issue with going to brunch? Nope. Tomorrow, I'll be in San Francisco. NBA All-Star weekend. A lot of people were just in New Orleans

Super Bowl weekend. Next week, in Los Angeles, NAACP Image Awards. These things happen. But let me remind people, black folks in the late 1800s, 1900s, Robert Abbott, Chicago, Chicago Defender. No, we did. We went dancing on Friday and Saturday

with the church on Sunday. Black folks during Jim Crow had parties, had get-togethers, had clubs, drank, smoked, ate, had fun. But they also understood that partying doesn't happen seven days a week. Greg, they also understood work still has to be done. Mm-hmm. And what I'm saying right now is not, oh, you're calling out young people. No. I'm calling out anybody who believes that their work is done.

I'm calling out anybody who believes that oh I could just check out I can just rest and let me be real clear rest is good rest is important meditating relaxing although things are critical but it can't happen for three months six months a year two years five years ten years and then go okay let somebody else do all the work great to Nola's point, she's absolutely right. Thank goodness I didn't have parents who said that stupid stuff to me. One, I was calling out that post-racial bullshit when they were saying it. I was like, no, y'all, I was saying white minority resistance is happening

while Will Blitzer was saying that bullshit on CNN. I was on the air saying it. Yes, sir. But the reality is this, Greg, our history says it. There's been no period of black success, ain't been followed by white backlash. kid, their African American kid, their black immigrant kid who will say that the America that used to be is not the America today. Oh, there have been some changes, but don't think for a second that that America has been completely eradicated, erased, because no, it is trying to come back roaring. Fast as all get out.

We cannot be confused by what is happening before our very eyes. And if we are ignorant about history, then we have no way of fighting the present day battle for the future. That's right. It is correct. It's humanity. It is our common humanity versus those who would exploit human beings. If that seems overbroad, it's because it is hard to get our minds around the things we've been socialized to believe are real, that are only real because we give these concepts our power.

One is the concept of the nation state. You know, the region of the country that you all are from, that Gulf region, Louisiana, Texas, every time I go to New Orleans, I'm reminded that that city and that region has more in common with Haiti and Jamaica than it does with Iowa. Because it is a Latin-based city. The Africans who were there, the indigenous people were there.

They didn't speak English. That's one of the reasons why, you know, I kind of depart with my friend and colleague, Nicole Hannah-Jones. This isn't a 1619 project. You're trying to pour our common humanity into a framework that can't hold it. There is no United States of America as a concept. What there

is is a settler crime stitched together with a lot of different people in it who the only way you keep those people together is two basic ways. Force or by committing to a common humanity. Clearly, white nationalism is not interested in common humanity, so they've got to go with force.

The white nationalists love the federal government when they're in charge, and they hate it when they're not. There are no principles holding this country together. There's no rule of law holding it together. There's no set of principles holding any country in the world together, right? As we are sitting here, Narendra Modi just finished meeting with Donald Trump at the White House, and Modi, the only words in English he said at the press conference after the meeting they had was, make India great again, because he is a Hindu nationalist trying to hold together the biggest democracy in the world, through force, that is the case in Central

Africa, where you see the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, backed by all the millionaires necessary and billionaires necessary because they want those precious minerals in eastern Congo, launching forays into eastern Congo, and millions of people are dying. That's what's going on in the Sudan, as the Russians have just signed a deal to develop a port in Sudan, as 12 million people displaced. The biggest genocide going on in the world right now isn't Gaza, it isn't Congo, it's Sudan. What we face is a dilemma that all humans face.

You know, I was at a library the other day, and yeah, I'm not against brunch or any of that either, but I will admit that I trend toward a different kind of thing. I look at life like life is short. We got too much work to do, and maybe I can eat brunch the next time I come right around. And I ain't got no shame for anybody who does. I'm just saying. That's my personal thing, so I would respect that.

Yeah, I respect me. I'm just saying. That's my personal thing. So I would respect. I respect that. Y'all respect me. I'm just going to work. But I was at the library and they have a basketball court, indoor basketball court, and they had set up for indoor soccer. It's cold outside. And I looked at all these children. I guess the youngest may have been seven, eight years old, and the oldest were maybe early teens, if that. And they were in there laughing, probably about 40 or 50 kids in there, just, you know, kicking the ball and the other one standing around watching. All of these children would be classified by a white nationalist or a blackface nativist as immigrants. And I asked myself, who could stand against a child, J.D. Vance. Your own children came out of the womb of a woman who was born and raised, who's from India. Who can stand against a child? I tell you who can stand against a child. A chinless, self-hating, deeply insecure, fear-driven white nationalist like Junior Varsity

Vance or Stephen Miller. A person who has failed at life and continues to try to justify that failure by projecting their self-hatred outward, like, well, I'm not going to name any names. You fill in the blank. But at the end of the day, we have a choice to make. Are we going to stand and say, we are human, and as African people, we have values, we have cultures, the various cultures that have blended together and formed their way into a resistance, into an identity, that while we don't share the same identity exactly, we have a common identity that is global. I'm sorry, you blackface nativists, and you people who really don't study history

as much. You probably ate a little bit too much brunch as you glossed your way over to whatever hot take you just vomited out on social media, thereby proving you haven't studied much at all. When you pick a flag or a place you came at your mother's womb over our common humanity, you have demonstrated that you are incapable as yet of any form of leadership or representation for the rest of us on this ball we call Earth. The Chinese aren't our enemies. The Russians aren't our enemies. And there will be people who say they are, but that's because you're picking a flag and you're picking a territory. And guess what? The people who are in those places who call you their enemies, they aren't

the rank and file people. They're the people who play a game called, I'm going to exploit these lines for my individual benefit, whether it be Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, Donald Trump or anybody else. They are all the same. And in history shows us that they do great damage, but ultimately they fall. And this country ain't no different than any other country in the world. It will dissolve because they come and go. The only question is, how are we going to survive so that we can build something better when whatever comes next comes next? Folks, this is why it is critically important for you to watch this show, to share our videos, to contribute to us, to pass the word on, because the conversations that we have here are not happening. Not just in mainstream white media.

It's not happening in black targeted or black owned media. It is not happening at all at BET. BET got one news show that airs one hour a month. You know what we do? 40 hours a month. Just this show. It's not happening. Ebony, Ebony is basically an Instagram page.

It ain't happening at Essence, at Black Enterprise, at Blavity. It ain't happening. The Griot, they done laid off all they people, everybody except four people. We have to understand that black people got to this point because of the black press. Because of black newspapers and black magazines. That was not social media. That was a Chicago defender, the Pittsburgh Courier.

That was the Memphis Tri-State Defender. There were black papers in Arkansas, in Texas, in Mississippi, in Alabama, in Florida, all over the country, the Pittsburgh Courier. That's how we got here. We are not going to be able to mobilize and organize if we do not have the information first that educates us, that enlightens us, and informs us. And that's why black-owned media is so critical. Yes. For all y'all understanding, and I've had people come to me who, hey, they wanted to buy an equity stake.

Hey, what can we do? You should do a raise. Let me explain to you what then happens. And I'm not against that. But then that means that their business interest may be harmed by what I say. And then they might say, man, do you have to go so hard on that? The reason we can do what we do here, because there is one owner with 100% with freedom and flexibility

to do what we do and to book the people that we do. I've had people say, I don't know why you got that cussing woman, I said, she's going to be back next week. Man, you got that dashiki-wearing brother Greg Carr. I said, he gonna be back here next week.

And even though she can't cook gumbo, Nova gonna be back next week. Point I'm making here is this here. Y'all don't understand. Robert Abbott could not do what he did at the Chicago Defender if black folks didn't buy the paper. Shalotta Bass couldn't do what she did in California black folks didn't buy the paper. Charlotta Bass couldn't do what she did in California

if they didn't buy the paper. John H. Johnson couldn't do what he did with Ebony and Jet if they didn't buy the magazine. We ain't asking you to buy nothing. We are asking you to support, to make sure that we don't have to answer to somebody else telling us what to do. And also, I don not going to call them or their party out, you should get drug tested. Because the philosophy here is the same for everybody.

If you do good, I'm going to talk about you. If you do bad, I'm going to talk about you. At the end of the day, I'm going to talk about you. Reesey, Greg, Nola, I appreciate y'all being on today's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, if y'all want to support the Working Club, your contributions are critically important to our work,

not just this show, but the network. Speaking of that, folks, I want all y'all to stay tuned because coming up next, you're going to see a new show that we are launching. It's called The Other Side of Change. It's Jameer Burley, Brea Baker. We're going to stream that right after I get done here. And so I told y'all we got more new episodes of The Black Table Company.

We got Balance Living with Reverend Dr. Jackie Hood Martin. We've got other shows we're developing. This is about creating a news and information network that covers the things that matter to us so we're not having to sit here and say, I ain't know. I ain't know about that. I wish I knew. I wish somebody would have said something.

Why don't we know about that? Well, guess what? This is what we do every single day, and we're not apologizing to anybody for it. So the goal is very simple. We want to get 20,000 of our members contributing on average 50 bucks each that's four dollars a year that's four dollars and 19 cents a month 13 cents a day if you can't do that we understand it doesn't matter what your contribution level is it doesn't matter if you could contribute more that would be great as well. I'm literally sitting here, and I've got checks in front of me for $50, $25, $10, $5, $100.

Somebody sent us $10, $1,000 cashier's checks, and I appreciate that. I'm literally depositing this right here. So we do electronic. We also do it checking money orders. But, y'all, Gil Scott Heron said the revolution will not be televised, but it will be streamed. And I'm telling you right now, we've got to have information that's factual and correct. Contribute via Cash App using the Stripe QR code. It's right here.

If you're listening, go to the Blackstaretwork.com. If you want to contribute cash or checks and you're checking money, order PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. PayPal, R. Martin Unfiltered, Venmo, RM Unfiltered, Zelle, Roland at RolandSMartin.com, Roland at RolandMartinUnfiltered.com. Be sure to download the Black Star Network app, Apple Phone, Android Phone, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Samsung Smart TV. Be sure to get our gear. Get our shirt. Hashtag, we try to tell you, FAFO 2025. Also, don't blame me.

I voted for the black woman. Get that merchandise and the network merchandise at rolandmartin.creator-spring.com. The QR code there as well. Also, get my book. All proceeds go right back into the show. White Fear, browning of america is making white folks lose their minds get it at bookstores and online you can also get the audio version that i read and don't forget download the app fan base uh absolutely folks uh all sort of great features on it if you want to be one of the investors in the crowdfund go to startengine.com forward slash fan base.

We're going to roll right into our new show with Bria Baker and Jameera Burley. Let me thank all of you folks. We'll have a guest host tomorrow. I'm going to be flying to San Francisco, NBR Star Games celebrating Jackie Martin's 60th birthday. It is today. That's right. This is when we were in Jamaica.

So she is a Delta and the Lynx and all that good stuff. So y'all go on social media. Wish her a happy birthday. Folks, I will see y'all tomorrow. Holla! Welcome to the other side of change only on the Black Star Network. Asada Shakur talks about being weapons of mass construction, something that's only possible when we plan for a world where we actually win. And that's exactly what we do here at The Other Side of Change.

This show moves beyond the world as it is to where it could and should be. I'm Bria Baker here with my brilliant co-host, Jameer Burley. And we're just two millennial women tackling everything at the intersection of politics, gender and pop. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

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

Drugs podcast. 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. 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. Here's the deal.

We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

Culture. We don't settle for commentary. This space is for solution-driven dialogue and reimagining. We hope to activate the next generation of change makers existing in the unbalanced world where profit conflicts with what is best in the next generation of changemakers existing in the unbalanced world where profit conflicts with what is best in the best interest of the community. And later on today, we're going to talk about that in the context of environmental disasters and systemic exploitation, how these disasters are turned into profit opportunities at the expense of the most vulnerable. That's right, Bria, from the wildfires in California to the unexpected snowstorms in the South. Extreme weathers is becoming the norm. But what is even more alarming is how quickly some of those people move to take advantage of those tragedies. Yeah, one million

percent. That's the American way, right? Like taking advantage of. How much will get out of people constantly? It's really obnoxious. Yeah, very much so. Well, let's start with the news because there's been a lot of obnoxious news. What's the craziest headline you've seen this week? I mean, the craziest headline is we've all probably seen information go around regarding the ICE raids. And for those who don't know what ICE means, it's the Immigration and Custom Enforcement. They are, you know, the police of the government to round up folks who are here undocumented. And we've seen raids happen all over the country due to the direction of the president, Donald Trump.

And now he's challenging birthright citizenship, which is beyond crazy to me, but not unexpected. And that's the crazy part, because what you talked about is like ICE is designed to round up undocumented people, which is its own messed up thing anyway. But these recent raids have also been attacking Native Americans. So it's like, how are you making anyone who is indigenous to this country prove their citizenship? But also birthright citizenship affects Black people. That's actually where it was designed, was the 14th Amendment after the Civil War to give Black people citizenship because we were previously property. So it's just dangerous precedent that's come in with this. I mean, it's also a recognition that America would not be where it is today without immigration, without the diversity of folks from all over the world who come to this country with the idea that they want better for their families.

But also a lot of immigrants who come to this country come here because we have decimated their communities elsewhere. And I think that's a reality that people refuse to address. And so whether the reality that we stole this land from the indigenous populations of the Native Americans who were here first, or we forced enslaved folks to build this country and now we're trying to question their citizenship.

It's a prime example that this is an administration of white supremacists who only want a country that looks like them, regardless of those who made this country what it is, which we know are the indigenous and the immigrant population that have come here, as well as the enslaved population. But yes, it definitely impacts Black people. so for black folks who are like this is not our issue girl i've been tussling on facebook all week about it i have been so shocked that people i grew up with who i grew up in new york it's a community that is mostly black and brown and even the black folks are immigrants from the caribbean from west africa from lots of different places so it's just been wild to get on Beyonce's internet and see Black people and particularly Black women.

Like I've really been a comment section warrior lately because I've just been so alarmed at it. And also like what you brought up is they're not in defense of all citizens and saying we're going to protect all citizens from the dangers. Like that's just the excuse they're using to get support. But in reality, Elon Musk is an undoc.

He came over illegally and he also violated his visa. Yes. Here and working during his student visa. And he was an immigrant in South Africa, too. Let's keep it real. Melania. That's the scary part about it all is that people are assuming that this is about the rule of law. And it's not. It is about rounding as many people who do not look white in this country up and letting people get mixed up in the shuffle.

And I mean, there was just a Jamaican American who was just arrested. There was a Native American. I mean, there was an indigenous member of the Navajo nation arrested by ICE. There are people who just speak a different language, speak Spanish, who are being targeted by ICE. This is not about the rule of law. This is about being very much a racist policy that is trying to rob people of color.

Because if it was about dangerous people, we'd be starting with the white supremacists. We'd be starting with the administration, girl. We'd be starting with them. So it's just alarming. Like, oh, great. You're trying to keep us safe and you're going to elementary schools to do it like in Chicago and Georgia. And my father-in-law is a principal. So it's just definitely alarming. And people are really learning. Like we have to be very vigilant. Yeah. And also if we're saying that these folks are coming over here to freeload, then the question is, why are ICE going to workplaces?

Why are they going to schools? Right. These are people who are contributing to our economy. They're contributing to the culture of our society. And I think we can't minimize the impact that they've made, but also how this policy is in the long run. One million percent. And speaking of freeloaders, the actual freeloaders are the damn U.S. military and Pentagon, because the other insane headline from this week is that there was this plane crash with an American Airlines commercial jet and then a Blackhawk, which how much are Blackhawks? There's a military, right? Yeah, I reached I saw that a Blackhawk could cost anywhere between five point nine million dollars to build. That doesn't mean that's the operational cost to actually continue it. So in addition to the life of like the loss of life from the commercial jet and those who are on the Blackhawk, we're also talking about just money that has been thrown down the toilet basically because of the incompetence of the U.S. government.

Right. And Trump has been trying to say that the crash was a, that DE&I is to blame, which it's like mind blowing that they just pulled out DE&I as a boogeyman, but he fired the head of the TSA. He fired the aviation security advisory committee and he froze hiring of air traffic controllers all within his first 48 hours in office. And now is surprised that people are confused on what's going on over there. Like, why was a military plane or helicopter doing a training near a dear Reagan airport? Like, that doesn't make sense. And we have incidents like this, like this is not occurring every other day. I think there has not been a crash of a commercial flight in the, on the U S

soil since 2009. So this is very unusual. And for this to happen a week and a half into the new administration after, to your point, he made all of these extreme cuts and preventing a very prominent tuition from doing its job, especially on on in our nation capital, I think is extremely dangerous. But it just goes to show you that this is an administration that is chaos and confusion. Very unserious, extremely unserious. We're serious. We're just also racist and stupid. So there's that.

That part, that part. Well, speaking of stupid and racist and all of the things, I mean, we've also seen that really play out with a lot of these weather related madness that's going on, right? Ooh, I mean, what a week. I think if we look at the weather related madness, as you mentioned, we'll start really questioning what is happening with our environment, especially with the lack of direction that is coming from the administration all the way down to the state level. One million percent. I'm here in Georgia. We've had two snowfalls already in this year. And I've lived here for five years and this is the most snow I've seen my entire time being here.

It left thousands without power, cars stranded, highways just completely unusable. And then meanwhile, on the other side of the country, on your coast, you've got California still reeling from those devastating wildfires. And like it consumed media attention for a bit. And then people sort of forgot those fires were just contained. And that's even scary. And when they were contained, it was just in time for this huge rainfall that was threatening like floods and mudslides. So it's just been feeling very apocalyptic. Yeah. And it's the same story every single time. Like too often we look at these incidents in very isolated moments, right? The wildfires or the snow storms that are happening in Atlanta. I didn't even know Atlanta could get,

could get snow. So seeing some of the images reminded me of like the nineties in Philadelphia when we had these huge snow storms. So the idea that the South is now experiencing these extreme weather threats, I think is really, really devastating because all of the families that are losing right now, right, because of the lack of government assistance and the lack of government direction that is preventing them from being able

to properly prepare for these type of devastations. Yeah, well, a million percent. Even what you just talked about, because again, growing up in New York, I'm used to big snowstorms, like two plus feet. Atlanta got like three inches both times, but it's the lack of infrastructure. There's no support for actually getting out there, clearing those roads, making sure that people can get around safely, but then you're still mandating that they're coming into work. They're keeping people from working from home. There's no public transportation investment here,

which is also by design. So it's very alarming. And I feel like that's what we're going to unpack today is how these disasters expose those systemic inequalities and lead to what's known as disaster capitalism. And I mean, I don't love to give a white woman credit for coining something, but I do think that naomi klein uh did coin the term disaster capitalism in her book the shock doctrine and so we're going to get into that and this segment is where we're going to pick apart the headlines though what are they getting right where are the gaps in news coverage and jimmy are you and i can yeah mostly what they're getting wrong what they should be right like let's remix some of this and be like, yeah, revise, cross that out, white out, all of that. Yeah, that's so true. I think

the one that really stuck out to me is there's one headline that came up in CBS News that said, for many who lost homes in Los Angeles fires, insurance companies, insurance won't cover entire costs of rebuilding. The reality is those insurance companies have been taking premiums from those families for decades, right? Requiring them to have insurance. And now all of a sudden they are picking up, closing up their wallets and leaving the state without any repercussions. And so that for me just goes to show you that this is a prime example of like, just, you know, the transfer of wealth and the lack of government, um, accountability for those insurance companies who were required to operate. And now all of a sudden are not, you know, fulfilling their end of the bargain. Like I

want my money. I would want my money back if I've been, if I've been playing, paying into these premiums for years, only to be told that actually you're not getting anything or you're not getting my money and I need it now. Like for real, that's exactly where I'm at I think it's just also as you from just I'm aging myself changing um but actually though it's like insane for you to collect the money and then be like what money you rebuilt huh like sorry I'm somewhere on vacation it's also been alarming because there's a death toll and i think there's been a lot of attention on property destruction rightfully so because people are losing everything but there is a death toll that has risen to 29 there are that's dozens of

people who have lost their lives in these fires let alone other people who have lost their primary homes and yet page six ran a piece that said all the celebrities impacted by the Los Angeles fires. And it goes down the list, naming people like Paris Hilton and Bella Hadid. And again, I'm not going to say that anyone, you know, who loses their home doesn't isn't feeling grief around that. But I mean, there are some people losing one of their homes and there are some people who are losing a home that is that is housed multiple generations of black and brown people and we're just centering white celebrities when there are people who who are not going to be able to bounce back who are not going to have some big project next year that's going to make it all up in one sweep like there's real loss here like a black air force vet was just running for his life towards what who knows but like

where are those stories why are are we so focused on, on A-listers? Yeah. And it's also pretty, I mean, it's pretty heartbreaking because a lot of those, we know that one of the ways to build wealth in this country is through home ownership. And we know a lot of folks who lost their homes, particularly in those black and brown communities have had those homes in their families for generations. This might be the only plot of land that they had to their name and to watch them lose their homes and the lack of coverage of that. But then more importantly, seeing all those folks who are trying to come in and sweep in and buy those homes for pennies on the dollar, it's pretty, it sucks, right? Because now not only are you out of your home, you can't even go to work. Right. What is like your your your children's schools may be non-existent.

Right. You're trying to pick up the pieces and you lost all of the memories, the pictures, the photos. I when I was younger, we had a house fire and I don't even have that many baby pictures anymore because of all we lost. Like so I can imagine like so um, so many folks who have, have nothing else, have nothing to call their own. And all they see on the media is celebrities who, to your point are maybe this is their second, third vacation home. Um, and they'll be able to rebuild overnight, right? It's, they're not going to be the ones truly impacted. Um, reminds me of another article that came out regarding the president's visit. Your president, y'all president. Not my president. He visited parts of LA. So LA Times

ran a story talking about how president the president donald trump toward this pacific policy fire devastation but did not go to the predominantly black and brown neighborhoods intentionally um intentionally further marginalizing those communities and not drawing awareness to the fact that they were lacking the resources and tools to be able to rebuild. So, yeah. Yeah, that was really, I mean, I saw a video of Attorney Ben Crump hosting a town hall and there were just Black elders just sobbing and crying like, we are waiting for relief. Who's coming for us? And I've seen an outpouring through like GoFundMes and things of that nature, but we

shouldn't have to crowdsource in this federal government, again, to collecting our premiums. You collect our taxes every year swiftly. Okay. And if you don't, you can get arrested. With haste. And then when it's time to do something, it's like, sorry, I can't go everywhere. I can only visit the rich people, which is really frustrating. So yeah, that headline definitely needs to be shifted. It's not that Altadena residents feel forgotten. They were forgotten. They weren't invisibilized. They were ignored. And you brought up all of the systemic racism that a lot of these Black elders had to survive to even get those homes, the redlining they had to survive, the employment discrimination

they had to survive, all to buy these homes that are their version of the American dream and to have it literally burned to ashes before their eyes and then have to turn around and beg the president to even stop by, even pay attention. To see that they exist, yeah. It's really sad. And then lastly, I know everyone was praying for rain and we got to get some water in here,

which was needed to help contain the fires because the firefighters were working nonstop, 30% of them being incarcerated firefighters. But then it was wild because then the rain came and it was like flooding and mudslides. And so it's just very alarming what is happening in California and that the climate scientists and the climate activists have been sounding the alarm that this is a state that is really in need of deep rehabilitation. Like it's dry, but also cannot handle what water. And it's just it's scary. It's a scary time. It is scary. And we're going to we're going to hold on to that thought and take a quick break.

So the other side of change will be back after this break, only on CEO of Fanbase. And right now we're accepting investors in our $17 million round to revolutionize the future of social media. Today, for just $399, you can own 60 shares of stock in Fanbase at $6.65 a share. Go to startengine.com slash fanbase and invest today. While the big platforms have grown too massive and disconnected from their users, Fanbase is building a platform where creators and users truly come first. We've already raised $8.6 million for everyday investors who believe in this vision, and now you can join them.

This is your chance to invest in a social media tech company with over 1 million users that is disrupting media by allowing anyone to reach all of their following and monetize their content from day one. The market is changing, big platforms are failing to serve their users, and fan base is stepping up to fill the gap. Don't wait until it's too late.

Invest now. Invest for yourself and your future. Go to startengine.com slash fan base and own the future of social media. Hi, everyone. We are back on the other side of change, only on the Black Star Network. You know, before we took a break, we were discussing the L.A. fires, but also the really the climate that is happening all across the country, the extreme weather that we're seeing both in on the West Coast where I'm at, but also on in the southern side of the state and southern side of the country where Bria is. And I want to talk about disaster capitalism, which you brought up earlier in the show. You know, disaster capitalism thrives on crises. Landlords will hike up the prices, corporations will buy out and burn down communities, and longtime residents are now

displaced, right? They have nowhere to go to be able to rebuild, to recuperate what they lost, or even to find a safe place for their families to stay. 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 one, two,

and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-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 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. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early.

Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Many of these folks are either sleeping on their loved ones' couches or finding brief rentals.

Some of them are sleeping outside or in their cars. So it is extremely, extremely dangerous times. And one stark example of this is the hands-off, I don't know why, Altadena. Yeah, Altadena movement that is happening in California where families are fighting back about these predatory investors that are coming in, trying to swoop in and take up their properties. What are you hearing from folks? Yeah, I mean, disaster is big business, unfortunately for us. But yeah, I have a few friends who, you know, my good friend, Kimberly Bolton, her family has lost six homes in that area because she has a lot of aunts,

uncles, parents who are all living in the same community who have done that for safety. Who is saying, let's build community with one another, live close to one another. And now we had to all watch our houses burn with one another. And it's really scary. It's also it's heartbreaking, but it's also inspiring because these communities are resisting their resilience. It's a reminder that resilience is not just about the rebuild, but about making sure that people know Altadena is ours. You can't take what is rightfully ours. And that has been beautiful. Another person is Blair Imani, who is the creator behind Smarter in Seconds. And she is also a beautiful author. Her family lost some homes there as well. And so they have multiple generations, nieces, nephews, uncles, grandparents,

all staying in the same home as they wait for a rebuild, which who knows how long something like that actually takes. It takes years. I mean, if anyone has ever seen anything built anywhere, right, you have to go through all of these like governmental red tapes. You have to, one, be able to hire the staff to be able to do this. And we have this much devastation to your point. We don't know how long it's going to take. I also think it's really important to note that many of the folks, particularly in those black and brown communities that lost homes, these are people, even Blair Imani, these are people who are providing services and resources to other people. Many of them lead organizations and nonprofits that do services to those communities. So those nonprofits and

organizations are also feeling the impact of that. And this is not just about housing, right? This sits at the intersection of race, class, climate justice. What happens when rebuilding efforts excludes those people, those stories in those communities from being able to fully be able to thrive again, especially as they're dealing with like these predatory investors that are like whispering their ear, telling them, hey, you know, if an insurance company leaves your state, maybe you should sell. What? Like that's not how, that's not how they should have never been allowed to leave in the first place. One million percent. And I think the scariest thing is like, if that's how bad it is for people who are homeowners, who own the land that the house sat on,

then imagine for those who are renters who don't own any of their housing, who are at the mercy of the rebuild of the developers and the management buildings who own their spaces, or even for people who depend on these spaces for employment. Like what happens to farm workers who are who are picking and growing our food? And we're doing so with masks on because the smoke is still in the air. I mean, they've been giving out these warnings around what the air quality is going to look like for the next several months, because you're not just, I mean, we think about it. It's like, yes, people's houses are burning, which means

plastic is burning. Steel is burning. Brick is burning. Wood is burning. Um, trash is burning. Chemicals are burning, cars were burning. To have to breathe that in, it's scary to understand like, okay, even after people rebuild their homes and have their schools and community spaces rebuilt, their health is going to be affected for much longer than probably is going to be tracked. And again, I remember this as a New Yorker after 9-11, I mean, people were not breathing right. And there were later suits around the air quality and improper warning for people about like how they should be protecting themselves in a state and in a city that just was banning masking. Literally, I mean, well, in a country that's banning masking, right, as if all of these diseases and viruses have now evaporated into the thin air.

But to your point, we also have to think about Katrina, right? This country continues to never learn its lesson. It never thinks about infrastructure. And it's so frustrating seeing how much money is just being wasted in our federal government, how much money is being sent outside of the United States to do harm elsewhere. But yet we lack the desire and the political will to be able to strengthen our infrastructure for the very citizens who built, who put money into that, those, into the coffees of the American dollar. I mean, government bank, right?

Yeah, no, 1 million percent. I'm glad that you brought up Katrina. This moment feels very reminiscent because even in Katrina, like it was that, yes, you have this flooding and that's's the thing about disaster capitalism, because people are sort of like, why are you bringing up race? Why are you bringing up? It's not political. We're all in this together. And it's like, no, the natural disaster comes and that the natural disaster itself is not racist. It's the response that our government does or does not give that is racist, that is very discriminatory. So in Katrina, it was like, let's break the levees and sacrifice black residents and their communities in their homes, have them be climate refugees in stadiums while white residents are being flown out as long as you can afford to. Right. And like, I think that's what we're seeing here is that when they were evacuating folks,

it was at the mercy of you being able to fly out and have somewhere to go. There was no real coordinated response of here is where you go. And we are, we have planes ready to fly people out to safer spaces and it shouldn't be this way. Like, why are we always the first ones to be deemed collateral damage and the last ones to be protected? Yeah. I I'm trying to stop myself from crying because I just remember the images from Katrina of people like standing on their roofs and on top of cars and like waving signs. And they went days without fresh water, like days, a country that literally has sent people to the moon, right? Like we can't get water and, and food to folks who are suffering. Reminds me of Kanye West saying, you know,

George Bush doesn't like black people. That was some of his best work. The United States government doesn't like Black people. No, truly, truly. We need that Kanye back because we need truth sellers right now. We need people to say it. And I feel like what's frustrating. Yeah, I miss the old Kanye.

It's true. But no, actually, and what's scary is like, we have a million documentaries and books and exposés and investigative articles explaining just how much the government failed Black people during Hurricane Katrina. We're what, like nearly 20 years out from that. And now we're still facing situations where the same thing is happening. And it's like, at what point do we learn? At what point does it not become entertainment that someone gets

to profit off of? It's not a Netflix documentary, but at what point are government officials actually learning how to better protect us? Yeah. Yeah. Especially, let's not forget California, it'd be eating up the paycheck. Okay. They take those taxes out. Like we pay for that infrastructure and the, you know, a lot of things can be true at once, right? Like a lot of things can be true at once. But what we do know is that the devastation also always impacts black people vastly different. Our black and do know is that the devastation also always impacts Black people vastly different, our Black and Brown communities vastly different than it does our white counterparts. You mentioned books. I just finished right before the LA fires. I just, if anyone has ever heard of Octavia Butler,

phenomenal, phenomenal writer. And for years, I was afraid to read Parable of the Sower. I heard so many stories about it. And to be honest, since COVID, I was afraid to read Parable of the Sower. I heard so many stories about it. And to be honest, since COVID, I just haven't been able to, what I think is like trauma porn. I'm not saying that about this book, but a lot of like books where it just, the reality is just too hard. I can't consume it, but I read it right before the fires. And I can't tell you how airy, airy it is to read that book, especially because, you know, Octavia says she's not predicting the future. She is looking at the patterns of the past. Yeah. Conclusions about what we know to be true. Just talked about Katrina patterns of the past and the lack of government infrastructure or the lack of political will to give a damn about these communities.

Right. Stage for it to happen again. Yeah, that's the part. And I really appreciate her saying that. Like, I'm not actually predicting the future. I'm just putting our current problems 30 years into the future and saying, what happens if we let them persist? And so the challenge is like, I mean, if y'all were reading the book back then,

we could have avoided some of this stuff. Like I read the book. I read the book last year because the book begins in July, 2024. And I was like, you know what, let me read it on timeline. And it was so eerie and strange to be like, why is so much of this so spot on down to there being a president running for office talking about making America great again. And she's bringing that up because that's what Reagan was saying. So it's like like we've allowed that to shapeshift and transform and evolve into Donald Trump when we could have nipped it in the bud

and cut it at the knees back then. And so it's just frustrating to realize, like, in an ideal world, Octavia Butler would be considered outdated work. Like, oh, that was before Al Gore. That was before we were serious about climate. But we didn't. We got Bush and everything else that comes after that. And it's like,

this is what happens when you let the problem persist. So as far as I'm concerned, we, we like the pain to the extent that we want to experience it over and over and over and over again, and then look up and be like, well, how did this happen? Yeah, it happened. But hopefully this time is different. I mean, we're seeing communities pull, pull themselves together much faster than our government is acting. And I think that is giving me hope, especially at a time where it feels like so much of our country is divided across political lines because of just the hate

that is running rampant. And right. Like if we're with ourselves at the core of the decisions and the political decisions that people are making, it's, it's, it's rooted in hate. It's rooted in discrimination, rooted in racism, and it's playing out across a multitude of ways, including how our government responds to the climate, um, the climate act. Um, but one thing about climate is that it's eventually going to impact all of us, right? It's no color. It sees social economic class. You might be able to respond differently after it happens, but when that storm hits, when the fire starts, we're all at the mercy of its natural direction. All of us. And so hopefully we learned the lesson that Octavia was trying to teach us, which is that community is the only antidote.

We have to keep one another safe. We have to stop thinking about individualism and actually move to a place where we recognize how interdependent we are. So I'm excited to dig into that. And we have a good guest later who we're going to talk to that about. But before we bring him on, let's go to a break again. What's up, y'all? Look, Fanbase is more than a platform. alone. What's up, y'all? Look, Fanbase is more than a platform. It's a movement to empower creators, offering a unique opportunity for everyday people to invest in Black-owned tech, infrastructure, and help shape the future of social media.

Investing in technology is essential for creating long-term wealth and influence in the digital age. The Black community must not only consume tech, we must own it. Discover how equity crowdfunding can serve as a powerful tool for funding Black businesses, allowing entrepreneurs to raise capital directly through their community, through the Jobs Act. We are back with the other side of change only on the black star network so before we went on break we were talking about the climate implications that are happening all across the country and to help us understand this moment from a bird's-eye view, we have our friend and colleague, Dorian Paul

Blathers, to here to help us really discuss and get into the nitty-gritty of this. Dorian, you know, is not only a handsome man, but he also is very qualified to talk about this issue. He is the former Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations at the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, and entered this role with a decade of experience of electoral and issue-based campaign politics. Dorian previously served as the Public Engagement Program Officer for Climate Action Campaign, and he is now the CEO and founder of Good Rebel. Welcome to the other side of change, Dorian. Thank you for having me. It's good to see you, Jamira and Bria. Thanks for inviting me into this conversation. Yes, I'm so excited. I feel like we got a good freckled light skin sandwich for you, Jamira.

I know. I'm really happy. We appreciate it. Dorian, I was chatting to you during the height of the L.A. fires. I mean, and I say height. It's still going on, unfortunately. But I remember you showing me like the outside of your balcony. Can you tell us a little bit more about like your experience of what is happening? One in LA, but also what is happening regarding climate change in general across the United States, but also the world, right? We just saw the US pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement. So what are those implications that you're seeing? Absolutely. It's fascinating that this all just happened two weeks ago. I remember the night that we had that conversation, I was on my balcony. And at this point, the Palisades Fire had already been burning. The Eaton Fire, where the community of Altadena is was also burning. But we saw with those extreme wind events, those Santa Ana winds that come in off the mountains,

there were literally little fires everywhere all across Los Angeles County. I live in Tytown, which is just on the edge of Hollywood and a very popular hiking destination that some of your favorite influencers hike all the time caught on fire. And that is right here in the heart of Hollywood. We had a fire situation where nearly 100 acres were burning. But for the first time, I had to consider what it would be like to actually leave my house, to have a go bag packed and ready to go.

I could see a small orange glow that began to increase in just a matter of minutes. I was actually hosting friends from other parts of the county that were escaping fire to only have to, you know, evacuate here from Hollywood, you know, and find another place to go for the night. But what I realize is that, coming, it is absolutely here. And it's been here. We're going to see that happen. You know, as you stated earlier, in communities across the country, these extreme weather events are becoming more disastrous. And it's so important to contextualize that it is Black and Brown communities that are often hit first and worst. And I'm not just talking about, you know, physical property in space. I'm talking about the impact of the fallout of these disasters. They are, there's certainly loss of life that we're seeing. The highest number of casualties came from Altadena, another historically Black community. But also when we think about what happens after the fires, there are so many people, thousands of people who are out of work in both the Palisades community and Altadena, right? There are thousands of people who are now displaced

and considering what they can do with the $43,000 that they're eligible to receive if they qualify for it when applying through FEMA. That doesn't go very far in California when you've lost your vehicle, you've lost your home, maybe you've lost your job, right? We your home. Maybe you've lost your job. Right. We're still learning about the stories that are happening. And it's important for us to talk about this in a global context. I'm happy that you you raise that, because when we think about who climate refugees are,

who folks are who are often on the front lines of just the pollution that causes these disasters, but also the fallout from the extreme weather that climate change exacerbates, is people that look like us. It's Black people first, right? It's brown people. We look at island communities who are experiencing hurricanes that are larger than they've ever been. This is something that we're experiencing as a global society. And it's important that we get this right now as we kind of shift from, you know, the long-held conversations on mitigation to adaptation. How do we live while these things are going on? And how do we rebuild and have resilient communities that allow us to still live with dignity in these really scary times?

Yeah, I'm so glad that you said that, because especially that global context, people don't think when they think of the terms climate refugees, that sounds like something in the third world, which I don't even use language like that, but like, that's, we are in a Gucci. That was me two weeks ago. Right. Like we never think it'll be us until it's us. And then you're the one thinking, what do I put in the book bag and what's worth taking and seeing people like making split second decisions of this is the only photo I have of my mother, or this is, you know, my child's memories or whatever. Like I can't imagine. I mean, it made me and my wife get really serious about, we have to get our to-go bags ready because we certainly don't have infrastructure down here if something really hit. And, and people always think, well, I don't live in a community like

that. And, and that's what a lot of people think until it hits your community. So it's definitely so scary. I mean, when you think of this rebuild, what is just and fair when it comes to rebuilding Altadena with Black and Brown residents at the center? What needs to be considered that maybe people are not talking about or are only talking about in little whispers, but not on a mainstream scale?

Yeah, I think, I don't know if you all saw that viral Instagram video that went out. There was a young woman named Shelly Bruce, who happens to be a friend of mine, who grew up. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

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

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. 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. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up.

See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Here in Los Angeles, and she's making, you know, kind of this desperate plea and appeal to all of her followers and everyone who's paying attention around the world on Los Angeles.

That like especially black folks who she's speaking to, she's like, we are going to make these communities whole again. You know, the Altadena wildfires didn't just destroy homes. It put an entire Black community at risk of permanent displacement. And this is a community that was built on the backs of folks who, you know, were seeking home ownership and economic prosperity because of redlining, right? They were pushed to Altadena and made it a safe haven of activists and artists and professionals who had worked very hard to build this community from the ground up. So when I think about making this community whole, I think first, in any context, it's important for us to allow those communities to first speak for themselves.

I was so happy to see, you know, Shelly talk about her family. I was so excited to see, you know, viral, you know, influence and influencers and artists from Altadena. People like the celebrity vocal coach Stevie Mackey, right, who's from Altadena, people like the celebrity vocal coach Stevie Mackey, right, who's from Altadena, talk about, you know, what his family was going through in that over these past few weeks. But first, I think we're going to have to pause and acknowledge that Altadena will never be the same. Altadena as it was, will never be like that again. And it's going to be on us to, you know, to steal from, from a former boss and president to build back better. You know, we're going to have to do that and be mindful of how we first stop the stem. We need to stem the predatory practices that are actively lurking and waiting to pounce on the economic opportunity that is an entire black city that's been erased. The governor has instituted now a three-month

ban or moratorium on developers being able to offer below market value for these properties. We need to question, is three months long enough? People are still trying to find clothes to put on their back. People are still looking to, you know, get back in their doctor's office and to get their kids back into school. To think that they are having to also contend with, you know, the vultures, right, which is capitalism coming to profit off of their pain um is the first thing and there are a number of different things that i think we can do you all talked about katrina earlier this episode um and you know we know that there are a lot of mishaps for how um you know the lower ninth ward you know yeah rebuilt But we need to be asking questions about like, what does a, you know, a buyback program look like, right?

If the state of California or if L.A. County is able to purchase these properties at, you know, market rate, and then to hold these properties for these families to be able to come back when they have the resources, right? Those are the type of questions and conversations we need to be having so that we can retain, you know, that safe haven that they've created over, you know, nearly a century. Yeah. And I think the thing that's being lost in this shuffle right now is this idea that in addition to the fires, there's the economic implications of the moment, right? We know that last year there was an 18% increase in homelessness across the country. We know that unemployment is on the rise. We know that many tech companies have been laying people off all across California. And for this to happen in the midst of that, as well as we see so much is happening with the tariffs and

how that's going to impact more jobs, right? So the fires is one thing, but people's livelihoods across so many different issues are being, like the pressure is being put on them and they're not in a place, to your point, to make decisions about the long-term implications of their property while in the midst of trying to find clothes and food to support their families. It has to be devastating. From what you've seen, I mean, we've talked about this earlier in the show as well, like the community response, like communities are almost showing up much quicker than government agencies and institutions that are supposed to be prepared for devastation,

devastating moments like this. How do we sustain that kind of momentum long term, knowing that there's probably going to be more devastation that will continue to happen because we're not making the right decisions regarding climate change, especially during an administration that seems almost hostile to even talking about climate change, because maybe he thinks it's a part of the DEI strategy. I don't know. That's right. I think that, you know, while this has been just a tragic couple of weeks for L.A. and for the country, I've also, as someone who has been in L.A. for two years now, seen the best of who we are. And it's actually young Black millennials that I've seen step up and lead

on the recovery and restoration efforts that has been so inspiring. So, you know, I mentioned Shelly Bruce. She has an organization called the Heart Department. And this organization is literally taking up space in and around in the surrounding communities in Pasadena and Altadena, you know, so that folks can come in and get things like counseling services so that they can practice in, you know, breathwork and movement, right? They're looking at the whole person that's been impacted by this. And then I think of folks like Etienne Maurice with his organization, Walk Good LA, right? Which also has been providing direct services, but taking that a step further and saying like, we need to make sure that people

are whole mentally, socially, and emotionally in this time, because restoration is not going to happen overnight. And us coming together and taking care of one another, the collective, I think in the immediate term is one of the most important things that we can do. And there's been an outpouring of people who have been volunteering and showing up. But in a disaster, in any disaster, there are a few things that we know that we can do. The first thing is to show up, right? So that's volunteering with organizations like the NAACP, right? We're providing advocacy avenues for folks to show up and speak to our representatives here locally and at the federal level. They're also working with attorneys in the legal community and making sure

that these families and communities have representation. So showing up, right, is one thing that we can do, using our own labor, our bodies to respond to this. The other thing that we can do is fund it. For those of us that do have resources to donate or to contribute to these organizations, be it dollars or other in-kind resources and services that we can offer. Black and brown organizations that have historically been underfunded are going to be under even greater strain during this disaster. The next thing that I would say we can do is what we're doing right now, which is speaking up and utilizing our platforms to talk about these issues and to educate the public. When the president of the United States spends hours on the other side of town talking to residents in the Palisades,

but doesn't mention by name the city of Altadena, which is in L County, we know it's incumbent upon us to take our own platforms and to utilize them to do the work. And I know that folks are tired coming out of November and these last couple of months have felt like a year in and of itself. But for everyone waiting for the Calvary to come in, for the Democrats to come in, for Kamala Harris or Barack Obama or whoever to come in and save the day. My message to folks is that we are the Calvary and it starts with us. The other piece that I think is important for us to do, so it's showing up, right? It's funding it, it's speaking out, and it's also fighting back. There's a lot of misinformation and disinformation percolating online in mainstream media coming out of the White House. We've got to call that out. And we also have to roll up our sleeves and decide what part of this elephant we're going to focus on.

And just be diligent about accountability, about calling out bad actors, and about asking for more, right? So whether that's the governor and extending this moratorium on the offers that can be delivered to these communities for buying their homes, whether it is Congress who hasn't done anything yet. I don't know if folks realize this, but there has been no federal aid bill delivered for the state of California yet. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, said that he thinks that there should be conditions placed on the aid. That, to me, is indicative of where we are and it starts with us. So speak out, fund it, show up and fight back. That's, that's where we're at.

Yeah. Ooh, I mean, we are the Calvary. I want that tattooed on my forehead. That's so real. It's so real. And I think it reminds me too of, to go back to Octavia Butler, but there is a bookstore Octavia's bookshelf in Altadena in very close to Octavia's adult home. And the founder of Octavia's bookshelf, Nikki High has also opened up the bookstore to be a refuge. They've been doing mutual aid. They've been housing people. They've been collecting donations and disseminating. And it just reminds me that we can always come together and do the thing that needs to get done faster than the government with red tape.

And we have to be the ones doing the thing that needs to get done. So I just really love that you said that. But then you brought up something that's making me a bit nervous, which is we have to be wary of the misinformation, the disinformation, which feels like it's going to be even harder to do when all of the tech CEOs are fleeing from the responsibility to field and moderate that on their platforms. I mean, Zuckerberg, obviously Elon Musk. So it's like, do we stay on these platforms and continue to sound the alarms? Do we need to be doing this outside of the context of these digital spaces? Like where does digital strategy and digital spreading of information fall into where you see as this need to be speaking truth to power? That's right. Well, I love, you know, a good newsletter. And there was a period in time, a point in time when I was on my church, my church's listserv, and they would send out information about any sort of boil water

advisory, any public health crisis that was happening in the community, any opportunities, right, for folks to get assistance or resources. I think that we're coming to a point now where we're going to have to give up some of these, the tactics that have like helped us spread our messages through big tech, through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera, and get back to, you know, direct primary source avenues of sharing information. So whether that's email newsletters again, whether that's public meetings and showing up in person, I think that we're going to have to, you know, think about the most basic organizing principles that gave us the freedoms that we have in this country now,

and resorting to those efforts where, you know, the algorithm can't impact, you know, what's being said, where we can't be suppressed. And I think that it's a both and approach. I know that, you know, when I think of my aunts and uncles that are on Facebook, I don't think they're going, you know, anywhere anytime soon. But if they heard from me directly, right, as someone who's on the ground, as someone who's seen the fires, as someone who has worked for the federal agencies that are providing some of the aid and response, right, that carries a lot more weight and value than information that folks can't even trust as being credible or viable anymore. I think we've got to look back to those principles. Yeah, it has to happen on and offline. Like it's the reminder that for many of us millennials who are online, chronically online like I am, we are oftentimes the biggest source of information to our relatives. So anytime we see information, we consume information, we should be asking questions like why, how, when is this true? Should I check another source? Because if we're sharing bad information, especially if we have

like large platforms, we can do more damage than good. And so it's constantly questioning the information we're consuming with the recognition that it's going to be exhausting. Right. One of the reasons why our opposition wins so often is that they want to bombard us with so much tragedy and information at the same time to the point where we don't know how to respond. But you mentioned earlier, Dorian, the idea that, you know, any way to tackle an elephant, we have to each choose a side and eat it bit by bit. We can't do it. There isn't bit. We can't do it all. There isn't the expectation that we can do it all. But in this work, we can definitely, working in collaboration with folks, we can definitely hit our target. So thank you so much, Dorian, for coming on. Tell folks where they can find you and tell us more about Good Rebel as we close out this segment. Yeah, of course. You can find me at goodrebel.co

online. I'm also on Instagram at goodrebel.co and at Dorian Paul. That's Dorian with an E, not an A. But we are working, we work with brands, nonprofits, influencers, and individuals to really effectuate the change that they want to see in the world. I started this work as an environmental justice activist on the campus of Howard University, where I was afforded the opportunity to sharpen my toolkit to be ready for a time like this. And I'm excited that you all have this platform for us to, you know, talk about these issues, for us to really give the resources and point folks in the direction that we see to be, you know, a viable direction for progress. But look forward to staying

connected with you all and all the folks listening as well. Sadly enough, I'm sure there's going to be more climate issues. So we'll definitely have to have you on. But it's been a pleasure. I mean, this episode was clearly very heavy because we know the fires are still happening. People are still devastated and our government lacks the ability to respond accordingly. But thank you for being on and shining light on this devastating issue, not just happening, what's happening in LA, but also what's happening around the country and why we should take climate change a little bit more seriously because it can and will impact

all of us. So pick up Octavia Butler's book, Parable of the Sower. For those who have not read it yet, it will be very enlightening about the current moment that we're in. Yeah. And don't forget to support movements like Hands Off Altadena, Mutual Aid Networks, GoFundMes, and anything grassroots, because again, we keep us safe. Yeah. So until next time, thank you for tuning in for On the Other Side of Change, only on the Black Star Network. You can find both Bria Baker and I, her on Freckles While Black, Freckled While Black on Instagram, Threads and TikTok.

And you can find me on all social media platforms at Jamiro Burley. It's been a pleasure and have a good day. Bye. We'll be right back. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things.

Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP 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 star-studded a little bit, man.

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

you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.