#RolandMartinUnfiltered - N.J. Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. Dies, Tenn. Voting Rights, Christian Nationalism & Trump's Bible

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

4.24.2024 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: N.J. Rep. Donald Payne, Jr. Dies, Tenn. Voting Rights, Christian Nationalism & Trump's Bible #BlackStarNetwork partners:Fanbase 👉🏾 https://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase It's Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Here's what's coming Up on Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. Six-term New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne Jr. has died.  The Supreme Court heard contrasting views on Idaho's near-total abortion ban and a federal law requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions if needed to protect the health of the mother.  We'll hear some of those arguments.  A federal judge says Tennessee cannot make it hard for formerly incarcerated people to vote.  The  Senior Legal Counsel and Executive Director of Free Hearts, an organization led by formerly incarcerated women, will be here to discuss this victory.  Changes to Louisiana's indigent defense could stretch an already underfunded system and erode the quality of representation for poor people across the state.  Advocate Gary Chambers will discuss how the changes will impact poor black people.  A North Carolina pastor rebukes the church over politics and the 'God bless the USA Bible."   In our Tech Talk segment, Isaac Hayes III, the Founder of Fanbase, will discuss the integration of artificial intelligence in music production.  https://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 (link) and Risks (link) related to this offering before investing. It's Time to Bring the funk on Roland Martin Unfiltered streaming live on the Black Star Network. Let's go. Download the #BlackStarNetwork app on iOS, AppleTV, Android, Android TV, Roku, FireTV, SamsungTV and XBox 👉🏾 http://www.blackstarnetwork.com #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.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Today is Wednesday, April 24th, 2024. Coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. The Russian Black Caucus is mourning the loss of one of its own. Congressman Donald Payne Jr. of New Jersey died at the age of 65. We'll talk about his life and legacy following in the footsteps of his father, Congressman Payne, as well. Also, the Supreme Court today, folks heard oral arguments with regards to an abortion case out of Idaho. Folks were asking lots of questions, such as these justices, especially the male justices.

What in the hell are they talking about? We're going to share some of that with you as well. A federal judge says Tennessee cannot make it harder for formerly incarcerated folks to vote. We will talk to some advocates about that very issue and also changes to Louisiana's indigent legal system is literally saying that if lawyers actually lead to more convictions, public defenders, they can get paid more money. That's not their job. We're going to talk about that as well.

Plus, a white North Carolina pastor rebukes conservative Christians when it comes to politics and the Bible. We're going to play that for you as well. Plus, in our TikTok segment, Isaac Hayes III will join us talking about Congress banning, potentially banning TikTok. All that and more. It's time to breathe the funk on Roller Barton Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Let's go. He's right on time and he's rolling Best believe he's knowing Putting it down from sports to news to politics With entertainment just for kicks

He's rolling It's Uncle Roro, yo It's Rolling Martin, yeah Rolling with rolling now He's funky, he's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Our town. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Folks, members of Congress today, of course, expressed sadness at the death of Congressman Donald Payne Jr. He was a six-term congressman out of New Jersey. He followed in the footsteps of his father, Congressman Donald Payne Sr., serving in Congress. As you saw in the photos there, he was someone who was quite colorful, if you will, when it came to his attire. He, of course, served the president there in Newark when he won a special election to replace his father after he passed away.

Congressman Donald Payne Sr. was the first African-American lawmaker to represent New Jersey in Congress. And, of course, his son followed in his footsteps. He was 65 years old. He had been hospitalized earlier this month. He had long fought diabetes and he suffered a heart attack. He also had failing kidneys as well. So Congressman Donald Payne passes away at the age of 65. The White House has ordered flags to be lowered to have staff in honor of Congressman Donald Payne Jr. Once we get information with regards to information regarding his services, we will certainly let you know that. But again, sad news out of out of New Jersey today with the news that Congressman Donald Payne Jr.

has passed away at the age of 65. Folks, today in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court heard oral arguments with regards to an abortion case out of Idaho. And the mail justices had a lot of folks scratching their heads with the type of questions they were asking this general. Check this out. Imagine a patient who goes to the ER with pre-prompt 14 weeks. Again, abortion is accepted.

She's up. She was in and out of the hospital up to 27 weeks. This particular patient, they tried, had to deliver her baby. The baby died. She had a hysterectomy. And she can no longer have children. All right? You're telling me the doctor there couldn't have done the abortion earlier?

Again, it goes back to whether a doctor can, in good faith, medical judgment. That's a lot for the doctor to risk. Well, I think it's protective of doctor judgment. When Idaho law changed to make the issue whether she's going to die or not or whether she's going to have a serious medical condition, there's a big daylight by your standards, correct? It is very case-by-case.

The examples from— I'm kind of shocked, actually, because I thought your own expert had said below that these kinds of cases were covered, and you're now saying they're not? No, I'm not saying that. That's just my point, Your Honor, is that... Well, you're hedging. I mean, Justice Sotomayor is asking you, would this be covered or not? And it was my understanding that the legislature's witnesses said that these would be covered. Yeah, and those doctors said if they were exercising their medical judgment, they could in good faith determine that life-saving care was necessary.

And that's my point, is this a subjective standard. But some doctors couldn't. Some doctors might reach a contrary conclusion, I think, as well as Sotomayor is asking you. We've now heard, let's see, an hour and a half of argument on this case. And one potentially very important phrase in EMTALA has hardly been mentioned. Maybe it hasn't even been mentioned at all. And that is EMTALA's reference to the woman's quote, unquote, unborn child. Isn't that an odd phrase to put in a statute that imposes a mandate to perform abortions?

Have you ever seen an abortion statute that uses the phrase unborn child? It's not an odd phrase when you look at what Congress was doing in 1989. There were well-publicized cases where women were experiencing conditions, their own health and life were not in danger, but the fetus was in grave distress and hospitals weren't treating them. So what Congress did is that— Have you seen abortion statutes that use the phrase unborn child? Doesn't that tell us something? It tells us that Congress wanted to expand the protection for pregnant women so that they could get the same duties to screen and stabilize when they have a condition that's threatening the health and well-being of the unborn child. But what it doesn't suggest is that Congress simultaneously displaced the independent pre-existing obligation to treat a woman who herself is facing grave life and health consequences.

I want to bring in my panel right now to welcome them to the show. So glad to have them here. First off, Robert Petillo, host of People, Passion, and Politics, 1380 W.A.O.K., out of Atlanta, running for judicial position there in Atlanta. Glad to have him on the show. Also, folks, joining us on the panel is Rebecca Carruthers, vice president for Election Center out of D.C. and Tyler McMillan, social justice leader and movement strategist. Rebecca, I'll start with you. Ellie Mistel had me cracking up laughing today with some of his posts. And one that really got my attention is when he said with regard to these justices, he's how they were just flat out just driving him crazy.

He won, said, let me find it here, because I just hollered. He said, how are the men on SCOTUS allowed to be this ignorant about basic women's health? How have they gotten through their whole lives being this stupid? Effing read a book, watch an educational video, talk to a GYN for five entire minutes. I don't think Ellie was too happy with the line of questioning coming from the conservative justices. You know, it was really interesting even listening to Justice Amy Coney Barrett and even with her take and how she was actually trying to support Sonia Sotomayor. So it was interesting seeing that even across ideology that the women definitely have their viewpoints versus the men. But you know what? Let's even expand it beyond what Ellie's tweet is, is that there are many Americans who don't understand basic anatomy, especially basic anatomy of women, or even understanding the entire reproductive cycle or even during gestation. So it's really unfortunate that this has become a political issue, even within the

court system, rather than a medical issue, a science issue. That's the proper arena in which to have these types of debate, even as legislation that's being proposed, that impacts women, but also impacts people, period, with whether or not it's a planned pregnancy, an unplanned pregnancy, or, you know, even in making the decision to bring the pregnancy to term. You know, Robert, when you look at the question, it also goes to show you what the problem is when you have Supreme Court justices, again, who are trying to make medical decisions when that is not what their expertise is. You know, this is part of the reason why we look at the Roe decision.

It wasn't a decision approving or disapproving the concept of women's reproductive health. It was a question of privacy rights, that under Roe, a woman and her doctor had the right to privacy so they could make their own medical decisions between the two of them without the intercedents of the government or the Congress or the Supreme Court or anybody else. And the problem that you run into is that once you break that, once you abrogate this right to privacy as it's between a person and their doctor, well, now you are inserting the legislature. Now you are inserting courts to kind of parse these medical decisions. And as the great judicial historian Chris Rock once said,

I wouldn't want a bunch of women making decisions about men's reproductive health. He didn't say it in those words. But at the same time, we need to lead these decisions up to medical professionals and to the individuals. And for people who claim to be conservative, who believe in small government, who say the government should have nothing to do with your life, nothing to do with your speech, nothing to do with your business, we shouldn't have any governmental regulations, it's very odd that the place that they draw that line is when it comes to women's health, because as has been mentioned, as my wife tells me every time I have this conversation, men do not understand the conceptualization of what women have to go

through on a daily, if not hourly, if not minute-by-minute basis. She articulated to me a few days ago, imagine having to sit in a meeting and keep a smile on your face and talk to people while your uterine lining is literally tearing up the middle of your body and working its way through your system. Most men will go home with a stubbed toe, let alone go through that. So maybe we should just shut the hell up and stay out of people's business and let them handle things as they see fit. See, Todd, the point that Robert makes there, that it is one about privacy and what you're dealing with here. I mean, we are seeing examples right now where doctors in emergency rooms are like, we don't know what the hell to do. We don't we don't know if we could treat somebody. We don't know if we're going to be charged with something.

And so, you know, this is what this thing is all over the place as a result of the Supreme Court's dive decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Exactly. I will echo the same words as that my panelists said before of leaving it to professionals and leaving it to folks who are professionals of their own body to make the choices of what happens with their body. Yet we have men and yet white men telling women what to do with their body, and yet there's no piece of legislation that tells men what to do with their bodies. I would echo those same points of leaving that autonomy up to those who can make the decision about their own health. And also, as looking at the consequences of who's at the back end of

this conversation, black women continue to be at the brunt of the end of this conversation, who are two to three times more likely to die from complications and infant infant mortality. And so we must continue to echo and urge, um, uh, the courts and the legislatures to, to allow women to have control over their own body, uh, and to keep the legislature out of it and allow doctors and patients to have that conversation and that decision on their own. I've got to have a show one more of these Ellie Mister tweets. Ellie tweeted this, which I cracked up laughing when I saw it.

He said the SCOTUS men would literally know more about reproductive health if all they did was actually read the articles in Playboy. Who's reading the articles? I mean, and so, and the thing here, Rebecca, is that, I mean, the reality is the conservatives, they've got a 64, 63 majority. And unless an Amy Coney Barrett, who is extremely anti-abortion, unless she chooses to potentially side with a John Roberts, if he's going to side with the liberal justices, they likely are allow the Idaho law to stand. You know, I'm really, so, you know, I've been talking about Roe v. Wade with a lot of folks around the country, and I've actually been spending a lot

of time talking to men about the reproductive rights issue to even hear from them, like, some of their perspectives on this, or even, you know, whether it's a planned pregnancy, unplanned pregnancy, you know, there's still, you know, men are also involved with this as well. So it's curious. So one of the things I keep having people push out to me is, you know, we still live in capitalism in this country. Let's follow the money. What is the money behind this? You know, what is the economic incentive enforcing people to carry to term in this country? And I think when we start following the money, we'll understand some of these political appointments on the federal bench. We will

also understand why certain people in Congress have the particular political stance that they have when we start to follow the money. So I thought that that is an interesting thread in this conversation, because clearly this is not a decision that's made off of public health policy, because if it was a public health policy decision, we would not see these draconian laws in Texas, in Idaho, and in some of the other states. So it's interesting to figure out, you know, exactly what is the economic incentive in these draconian laws. And Roland, also on that point, I think— Oh, Robert, I was—yeah, go ahead.

Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say, just piggybacking off that point, we also have to talk to some of these feminist organizations, these white women's organizations, because despite the fact that they will show up at the march, they'll put on the pink hat, they'll say, I'm with her, all that stuff, 66 percent of white women still voted for Trump. And these people are the ones who are raiding school boards. They are the people who are pushing these extremely conservative policies across the

finish line. And we have to hold them to account, because often when things go bad, they say, well, black men are the reason that it didn't work out. Meanwhile, we went from 89 to 87 percent supporting the progressive candidate. But if white women go from 66 to 68 percent voting for fascists, they don't get that same blame electorally. So it's important that we spread the weight around and make sure everybody's handling their own weight, because in reality, if you listen to conservative media—you know, I

listen to a lot of conservative media—this is no longer even about money, to Rebecca's point. This is about tribalism. This is, as you wrote in your book, White Fear. This is about white American males believing that they are being outreproduced and they are going to go extinct. We have a 1.6 reproduction rate in this country. You need to have 2.0 just to replace yourself. Two adults need two children in order to replace themselves in the population.

Right now, every two adults are producing about 1.6 children. And if you limit that down to middle-class white people, because that's what they're really talking about, we're looking at about 0.8 when it comes to educated middle-class white people and the number of children they have. So these are about creating laws that will force white women into being brood mayors in order to repopulate the earth with a white majority. This doesn't mean making up things. This is what they say. This is Project 2025. So as long as we are talking about the next election and what has to happen, we need to ensure that our sisters on the other side that may be voting on national security,

maybe voting on the border, maybe voting on trans women and women and girls sports, et cetera, understand that there is a plot out here to turn you back into a 1950s broodmare in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, to help repopulate the earth. And you can either be on the right side of history or you can get that frying pan. Well, and that's also why I was highly critical of a lot of those white women standing out in front of the Supreme Court with the Dobbs decision. When you had largely black groups, other than most racially diverse group was the one led by Reverend Barbara in a previous campaign who was getting arrested in the United States Senate or Senate over voting rights. They all those white women were not out there. And I'm like, yeah, but y'all came out there with Dobbs. But it's also was a voting issue. And so if you're going to if you're going to, you know, question that, then you need to also be dealing with voter suppression in this country,

dealing with the removal of the changing of voting laws, switching of locations. All these shenanigans Republicans are involved in. You might want to be involved in that, too. All right, folks, going to go to break. We come back. We're going to talk about federal judge making it clear. Tennessee cannot stop folks from registering to vote who were formerly incarcerated. We'll discuss that next right here on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network. Be sure to support us in what we do. Join our Bring the Funk fan club.

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voice of Sugar Mama on Disney's Louder and Prouder Disney+. And I'm with Roland Martin on Unfiltered. In a victory for voting rights in Tennessee, a federal judge has affirmed that state election officials cannot deny voter requirements for voting after they have received a felony conviction. Tennessee has the second largest disenfranchisement in population in the country. More than four hundred and seventy thousand people. Florida, in comparison, 20 percent of its black citizens, they have the highest rate of black and disenfranchisement in the country. Keita Haynes is senior legal counsel for Free

Hearts and executive director Don Harrington. Both of them join us right now. Glad to have both of you here. I mean, this is significant. There's the constant battle, the constant fight over voting rights. And we have seen these red states really target incarcerated folks. And because we know how the prison population is, that significantly impacts African-Americans. Keita, you first. Yes, it absolutely does significantly impact African-Americans here. Actually, Tennessee is number one when it comes to the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the entire country. And so, you know, that really speaks volumes to the voter suppression that is really going on here in the state of Tennessee. And it also directly impacts,

you know, us being able to have the political power that we need in order for us to influence the change that we all want to see here happening in the state of Tennessee. I'm sure people have seen all of the things that they're doing here, you know, in the state of Tennessee, in the legislature. And the fact that we are number one in the country for disenfranchisement of Black people, and because we're number two in the country with disenfranchisement, period, that's why we have what we have. That's why we have that supermajority Republican-led legislature that is just running roughshod over everyone in the state of Tennessee against all of our wishes. Dawn? Yes.

Yeah, to what you said, you're absolutely right. And, you know, we have 20% of African-Americans disenfranchised in our state. Both Keita and myself are previously disenfranchised and, you know, we're able to get our voting rights back. However, you know, for example, in my situation, I was only able to get my voting rights back because a national news story featured my story. But we know so many people that are not going to be able to have a national news story that features their story to get their voting rights back. And even from the point of us following this lawsuit, things have gotten considerably worse. And we know these are voter suppression tactics that are actually targeted at the African-American vote as well. So if we're talking about so we look at this decision, first of all, is there any indication that Tennessee plans to appeal this decision? And obviously, the election is November, so they're going to have to really get aggressive in notifying people of their eligibility.

And any idea how many people could very well be eligible to actually vote of this 470,000? No, there's really no indication of how many folks would be able to vote. And that's also a problem here in the state of Tennessee, because the elections division is not required to keep any data regarding the number of folks that are disenfranchised, where they're where they're living. You know how many folks would be impacted by this judge's ruling and stuff. So, you know, we really cannot say, but as Don said, you know, we just want to make it clear that this is just a small, small step, right? A very small victory because, as Don mentioned, things have gotten so much worse here in the state of Tennessee. And so even with this judge's ruling, you know, there's still other barriers that people would have to even, you know, cross and all these hurdles just in order for them to be able to get their voting rights

back. So while we, you know, applaud the judge and, you know, are celebrating this ruling, there is still so much work that has to be done in this state around rights restoration work. Yeah, absolutely. We see what's happening. We see what's happening every single day with Republicans in the legislature.

I mean, they're getting crazier every day with laws that are passed there. Dawn, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, when this lawsuit was filed, we already had the most complex law of any state,

the process that they make you to go through. We already had it to where, you know, we were an outlier before, you know, we filed this lawsuit. That's part of the reason why this lawsuit was filed. We were seeing that from county to county, it was a roll of the dice if you were going to get the right information. From clerk to clerk, whoever comes to that, you might get the right information or you may get misinformation. And since then, they've actually made it even harder. Ever since our efforts of freeing the vote, they actually made it even harder.

Ever since our efforts of freeing the vote, they've made it even harder. So while we celebrate this victory, we want to also use it as an opportunity to say really the process of what people have to do. You have to pay in order to file because you have to restore your, restore your citizenship rights unless you can get a pardon, which is very rare. And the restoration of citizenship rights is a complex legal process that involves, you know, paying a filing fee that's, you know, $159 to in excess of $212 that, you know, really you technically need an attorney to do because there's complex things that involve legalese. You have to—we've seen court cases on this that are super dehumanizing.

You have to basically prove your rights to get your voting rights back. And even when that is all still said and done, you still have to go through the initial process that existed before all of this that got us to the point of, number one, for African-American being disenf to go into mediation over the other counts. We just want to recognize that we have a long way to go and that even our efforts have been met with even more barriers. And, you know, it just seems like the finish line just keeps getting pushed further and further away from us. Questions from the panel. I'll start with you, Talik. Yeah, I would just say, I don't thank you all for your work in the community.

I would just say this message of in a country that goes around the world promoting democracy, we fight every day for that basic right for folks to be able to cast their ballot. You know, my father being incarcerated and, you know, I understand the gravity of being able to restore those rights to folks. And I think this is a major win for folks not only in the state, but assigned to folks outside the state of what is possible if organizers, if we organize in the streets, organize in the courts of what can actually be changed. What can this tell to other folks who are, you know, disenfranchised voters,

especially those who have come home from being incarcerated in other states, to really check in to see their voter registration and what, you know, processes is available to check into to get their rights restored. I can start, and Keita, you can add to it. So thank you so much for that question. Basically, just like, you know, ourselves, there's other organizations that are working depending on what the state is. And in fact, if somebody wants to contact us, we can try to see which ones of our sister organizations or sibling organizations may be able to help in some of the other states. And our email is info at freeheartsorg.com.

And so we would definitely be willing to kind of, you know, connect them with another organization. But I would just say, you know, I'm not sure if many, I know not many of the states are as difficult as ours. But with ours, it's very difficult to just like look online and see, for example, what you need to do to get your voting rights back because for example some of the things that they've changed in addition to restoring citizenship rights you also have to uh restore gun rights they never issued that in a memorandum they never said that except for to a reporter but we know people that are being denied if they're unable to get your voting right and get your gun rights back. So people with felony drug convictions,

people with violent felony convictions, they cannot get their gun rights back. They can't get their voting rights back. And that's not said anywhere online. And so that's why I say to get with an organization that does this work there locally would be my suggestion. Rebecca? I'm Donna Nikita. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing.

I lead a national voting rights organization. We do litigation, and this is one of the issues that we've litigated on a federal level. One thing that I will say, just from watching what Florida is doing, is that in 2018, when we saw that there was a rights restoration amendment that passed in Florida, we immediately saw the Florida legislature pass, in essence, what is a poll tax, which a lot of advocates, a lot of groups sued the state. So my guess in Tennessee, the Tennessee Republicans are going to pick up from what the Florida Republicans did, especially with this scheme of not making it easy to understand who is eligible and then making it a multi-step process in order for people to then assert their eligibility.

So my question for you all, my guess is this is going to be a 10-year fight in order to have true rights restoration in the state of Tennessee. So what actions are you all's organizations doing in order to set up a legal fund, because this is going to end up being a long slog. Yeah, I mean, this is this has already been, you know, a multi-year fight. Right. You know, Free Hearts has been doing rights restoration work for years, introducing legislation for years. And, you know, and to your point, just this year, we actually had legislation where we would expand the electorate. Right. And that bill actually, you know, got killed in subcommittee. Then there were two other bills that two Democrats had the committee understood the law because legal did not. And so we we put a lot of work into that for one bill.

We brought in several people to testify to talk about how this was impacting them. And both bills were able to get out of the subcommittee, but then when it got to full committee, then they sent them to what, you know, they call summer study, which essentially is where bills go to die, right? And so, you know, the Republicans had an opportunity to fix this, you know, just this session, and they chose to send the bill to summer study. And so, you know, what we're going to do is that we're going to say on the committee chair and, you know, and demand that we have a summer study around, you know, these two pieces of legislation just so that it will help with the process again, because I want to make it clear that this process now, it is extremely difficult.

I mean, like we can just, we cannot say that enough with what this process is, with people having to go to court, with folks having to get their full citizenship rights restored and what all of that entails, right? I mean, like, you know, again, like you're going back into a courtroom in front of a judge. You have a DA that can also oppose this, right? So people are literally being put back on trial again for their entire lives just to be able to get their voting rights back, right? You know, and I saw this quote earlier this week, and it says, why should I have to show you my blood for you to realize that I'm human, right? You know, and so that's where we are with this, because it's just like, you know, people have to come here and people like Don said, it's a dehumanizing process with having to go back in front of the court, having to go back in front of the judge, having to have your case relitigated all over again.

You know, and again, just to be able to vote. Right. You know, like that's what we're talking about is just to be able to vote. This is what folks are having to do. And so, you know, we are prepared to fight this thing to the end. We know that this is going to be a to vote, this is what folks are having to do. And so, you know, we are prepared, you know, to fight this thing to the end. We know that this is going to be a multi-year fight. You know, we do have a Free the Vote Fund that was set up a few years ago where, you know, folks can donate. We have called on all kinds of national organizations to come in to try to help us with this fight because what we always hear is that, you know, it takes a lot of manpower, right? Which we know that being here and doing the work that we do on the ground, we do know that it takes a lot of manpower. And so we are just really pulling

resources from everywhere that we can, from people that want to donate, from lawyers that want to help do this pro bono, you know, to national organizations that may have the capacity to come in to help. I mean, we are literally like shaking all the trees that we can in every shape or fashion, because we do understand that, you know, not only is this going to be a multi-year fight, but it's also going to be an uphill battle. But it's one, you know, that we are ready for and that we are determined and committed to the cause. If I may do a quick follow-up here. So with this particular issue, this is happening in many other states as well. And one thing that we're seeing is that when there are these super majorities or are overwhelming

majorities in these state houses, such as Tennessee. One thing that we've seen from Republicans on this issue is that their own willingness to actually do something. So everything dies in committee. And so that's one of the reasons why many national organizations doing this in multiple states. You know, it's understanding that there is going to be a long term litigation strategy around this in order to move the needle. Because otherwise, like you said, each time someone wants to assert their rights, they're going to be thrown into court. Or in certain states, we've now seen it's made a—it is basically a felony in some states if you're registering to vote and it is unlawful for you to register to vote, i.e. you're still on papers. So that's one of the reasons why I'm asking the question about the litigation strategy, because in effect, the Tennessee legislature in this current form

with gerrymandering, it's not going to be pro-rights restoration. Right. And so, you know, speaking to the litigation strategy, so we have the current lawsuit right now. And as Don mentioned, that lawsuit was filed before, you know, the summer when... 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.

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

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

fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the LA fires, they moved mountains to

launch a new emergency relief program providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to ascensivehome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. They changed the process and again, it moved that needle. And while some of those issues could be incorporated in that lawsuit, also, you know, these are also different issues, right? And so, you know, that's the thing. And so because this is just so new with what they have done, particularly with saying that in addition to getting your full rights of citizenship back, and that includes gun rights. That was just something that the elections coordinator said back in January. And so we are just now moving through the process because I will tell you, the way that

this has to be done, I spoke with a probation officer who has to fill out what we call the certificate of restoration after a person goes to court. And I spoke with her two weeks ago. And what she had told me is that since the one person that we know who filled out his certificate of restoration, who was denied, by the way, she says she's had none, none, zero. Right. And so essentially what what the elections commission has done with their new policy is that it has completely frozen the rights restoration process for folks here in Tennessee. And so in order for us to be able to use this legal strategy in court, we've got to be able to get people into court to first file these petitions. And again, it's traumatizing for people to have to go back into court and have to experience all of this again.

And some people are just like, hey, like, I don't want to do it. And then also some people who cannot get their gun rights back because they have a violent felony or a felony drug offense, they are just like, well, I'm not going to get my voting rights back anyway. So I'm not, I'm not even going to go through this process. Right. So we're just in the beginning stages of this second piece. But, you know, we do have one case that we are working on right now where someone was denied because they did not could not get their rights back. And so, like I said, you know, this is in the very, very infant stages because it's just been something that's so new. And, you know, we have been educating the public on what this new process is and encouraging people that even if you cannot get your gun rights back, let's still file this, because we can't change this until we file something in court

and folks are denied, and then we can start filing these lawsuits. So, yeah, so we're in the beginning stages of this. We're educating the community, making sure that we are filing petitions in court all across the state of Tennessee. There's a law that's being passed all across the state of Tennessee. So we're definitely gearing up for the fight, for sure. But feel free to come and join us. Look, federal voting rights, too. We'll talk. Look, federal voting rights, too.

Robert, your question. Certainly. And this is going to be a bit of a piggyback off of Rebecca's question, because we saw earlier this year in the Trump case against Colorado, when Colorado removed President Trump from the ballot based upon the 14th Amendment for participation in insurrection, that the Supreme Court

ruled that that shouldn't apply to him in this situation, primarily because that was intended to apply to former Confederate soldiers who had served in the insurrection against the United States government during the Civil War. Why do I bring this up? Well, because the 14th Amendment was also the basis for felony disenfranchisement laws, because those same laws were meant to stop former Confederate soldiers from then going back and joining Congress, running for election, voting and elected, etc. It was disbanded by the Gonzales decision in, I think, 73, which applied it directly

to the states. Has there been any national effort to challenge this before the challenge, felony disenfranchisement writ large before the Supreme Court? Because it seems inconsistent to say that President Trump cannot be held liable under the 14th Amendment because he didn't participate in an insurrection against the United States as contemplated during the Civil War. But say that regular felons are regular people who have been convicted of felony, that they are not that felony, that they can't vote based on the same law. So I will say that currently no one has brought that up. But again, we are open to any and all challenges around felony disenfranchisement here in the state of Tennessee. I do know when you, you know, you talk about the Supreme Court, I do want to say that, you know, sometimes national organizations can be hesitant just because of the makeup of our

Supreme Court here in Tennessee, which is, you know, kind of part of the reason why we are even here today because of the Supreme Court ruling back in July, right? No one ever thought that the Supreme Court would say what they said and that the elections division would interpret it the way that they had interpreted. And so, you know, so that's kind of where we are because, again, like I said, we've talked with several folks and they were just like, well, I think, you know, we could possibly win in the lower courts, but this is going to go to the Supreme Court. And, you know, do we want to take the chance of the Supreme Court, you know, doing the same thing that they did back in the summer? And now it's going to impact everyone that's trying to get their voting rights back.

So, you know, that's kind of where we are. But again, like I said, we are we are open to to every conversation that we could possibly have about how we can challenge felony disenfranchisement here in the state of Tennessee. All right, folks, we certainly appreciate it. Keep up the good work and we'll stay on top of this as well. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thank you for having us. All right. Take care. All right, folks. Gotta go to break. We'll be right back. Rolling Mark Unfiltered right here on the Black Star Network. I was just in my backyard. I just said I was manifesting about life. I said, I would love to come back because it was a great time and these kids need that right now. They need that male role model

in the schools, I think. Even on TV. People are scared of going to the high schools. You know, the high school, you know what I mean? I would love to bring it back and I think we can bring it back. You know, what do you think? I think we'll just ask the people. We'll ask your people. We'll do a poll. Y'all want to hang a Mr. Cooper? Yeah, I say let's go. We all look good. You know, what do you think? I think we'll just ask the people. We'll ask your people. We'll do a poll. Y'all want to hang a Mr. Cooper?

Yeah, I say let's go. We all look good. You know, Ali look good. You know, Raven look the same. Marquise. Don Lewis. It'd be funnier than half the bullshit you see out there on TV now. God damn.

What the fuck? What happened to TV? Yeah, yeah. It's some... I'm like, oh, my God. Fanbase is pioneering a new era of social media for the creator economy. This next generation social media app with over 600,000 users is raising $17 million and now is your chance to invest.

For details on how to invest, visit startengine.com slash fanbase or scan the QR code. Another way we're giving you the freedom to be you without limits. or scan the QR code. Another way we're giving you the freedom to be you without limits. This is Essence Atkins. Mr. Love King of R.B. Raheem Duvall. It's me, Sherri Sheppard, and you know what you watch. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered. Welcome back to Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Black Star Network.

All right, let's go Louisiana. Tennessee is nuts. Tennessee is nuts Tennessee is nuts 100% but there's little doubt that Louisiana is doing its best to play catch up in Louisiana take this out they passed a bill

in March giving Republican Governor Jeff Landry more command over the state's public defender system. Now, district defenders were told about potential pay cuts, also reversing raises. Now, mind you, this is the same state where they had a massive backlog in public defenders and already little pay for folks who have been arrested. The state literally is encouraging public defenders to open private practice. Now, check this out. The plan also ties public defender pay to fees that their clients must pay their office whenever they're convicted.

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 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 Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

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

misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the LA fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to asenseofhome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us.

Louisiana is basically saying, we don't want anybody who's arrested who needs a public defender to get any help whatsoever. Gary Chambers, activist in Louisiana, Joseph Baton Rouge. I mean, Gary, you know, I said, hashtag, we tried to tell you,

all these folks who sat their ass at home, who didn't show up, guess what? We see what the real deal is now when it comes to Republicans and this legislature under Governor Jeff Landry. This is outrageous. Roland, it is indicative of what Jeff has done since the day that he got in office. He started with a special session on crime. In that special session, he rolled back the rights of juveniles and said that we're going to start executions again in Louisiana. He has, since he's got into this session, gone after the public defender's office. He's cut the, there's right now a cut to the stipend

for teacher pay increases. They are taking away probation and parole. If you get arrested in the state of Louisiana after August 1st, there you get arrested in the state of Louisiana after August 1st, there is no, uh, parole in the state of Louisiana. Uh, anything Jeff Landry can do to take us backwards, he's doing so. And he's even attempted to convene a constitutional convention and he has not told a single person what he aims to change in the state's constitution. I mean, I sit here and I was reading a story earlier where they potentially will pay them more if they plead out cases. that right? So the objective is once convictions are made, that the prosecutors are going to make more money when convictions are made on the case. So the sooner you get it off the books, the sooner you can make more money. And they're taking money away from the public defenders, which, you know, you go to school, you get a law degree, and you go to the public defender's

office. You're not expecting to become a millionaire from the public defender's office, but you do want to be able to pay your bills. It's absolutely crazy and stunning. Robert, your thoughts? So on all this is that point, I think this is crucial for people to understand why 90 percent of cases in the U.S. court system end in plea deals, that when you're talking about this, the public defender system, which is already underfunded, already understaffed, already overstressed, you're giving—you're basically greasing the slide to force these people to take these pleas because you don't have the manpower, the money, or the energy necessary to take all these cases to trial. Can you talk a little bit about the

dangers that exist when people are really pushed both from the public defender and from the prosecution and from the judge to take plea deals as opposed to exercising their constitutional rights and actually going to trial on some of these cases? Well, we know firsthand that over and over people are exonerated for crimes that they did not commit, right? And so if you don't have the ability to have fair representation or a representation that actually wants to try to find out your innocence or prove your innocence, you're at a disadvantage. The other thing is, over the last eight years, Louisiana had John Bel Edwards, who was a Democrat as governor, which a lot of the policies that he put in place was to help us address some of the criminal justice issues we have or the inequities within the criminal justice

system. This governor is rolling those things back immediately. And I think that the consequence is he was an attorney general who is a former sheriff's deputy who is tough on crime and believes that the only way to fix crime is to lock people up. And there is no redemptive power for these people in incarceration under Jeff Landry. There is no path forward for these people. There is a belief that you are your worst decision and we're going to penalize you for it, even kill you in the state of Louisiana, based on Jeff Landry's policies and the policies that are coming out of the state legislature right now.

Rebecca. Hey, Gary, I used to live and work in Louisiana, and I'm thinking about some of my experiences there, including during prison visits. And one of the things that I've been thinking about with this issue is follow the money, because really this is ultimately about money, because there are for-profit prisons in Louisiana. Under Bell's leadership with some of the criminal legal system reform, there was a decrease in the prison population, which hurt the bottom line of the for-profit prisons. So one of the things I'm not sure if viewers are aware, even when I was there post-Katrina Arita with some of the prison visits I did, it turns out that some of the people that I was doing Know Your Rights presentations for

were people who were being detained by ICE. Because at the time, and I don't know if this is still the case, in other states it costs about $150 a day to incarcerate someone, versus in Louisiana, at the time, it costs about $47 a day. Louisiana figured out a way to make it cheaper because they don't provide air conditioning in some of the prisons in Dango, Louisiana. So one of the questions I have is, can you talk more about the money that the state is making from these private contracts? Like, for instance, we know at Angola, like the first nine months you're in chain gain and you're picking cotton in the fields outside of Angola. So we know there's a lot of craziness and there is extreme

reliance on prison labor as a revenue generator in Louisiana. So can you talk about that and the economic implications of why this particular policy is probably being pushed? Well, I think that when you look at Jeff Landry's history as attorney general, he attacked the rights of people consistently. And so his effort to put more people in jail is certainly to take care of the people who take care of his campaign accounts, right, take care of the people who are funding the initiatives that are important to him, as well as the people who think like him, right? You've got sheriff's officers who benefit from

people being in their jail and the contracts and the work that those prisons provide to those businesses in those communities. We even had a sheriff in North Louisiana once say that the folks that are in jail, they wash their cars the best. You can't put them out and let them out. We need them to wash the cars and clean up, right? And so as if this is the 1800s and these folks are still on the plantation. Furthermore, there are people who work in the Capitol while they are prisoners that

have to step on the side of the wall when a woman walks by the same way you would if you were a slave and a white woman walked by in the 1800s or the early 1900s, that today, right now, if you go to the Louisiana State Capitol while session is in today, there are black people in chains that are walking around there cleaning the building. Well, excuse me, they're not in chains, but they're walking around the building in a uniform that indicates that they are prisoners cleaning the state capitol. And if a woman walks by, they got to step on the side. That's Louisiana today, 2024. OK, they just passed a piece of legislation in the crime session that said that if you're a juvenile and you committed certain crimes five years ago,

a few years ago, they rolled it back and said that 17-year-olds wouldn't be charged as adults with certain crime. Jeff Landry has not been governor six months, and we are now charging 17-year-olds as adults again. And we just moved them from juvenile correctional facilities last week. Kids in East Baton Rouge Parish went from East Baton Rouge Parish Juvenile Detention Center to a correctional facility in Jonesboro, Louisiana, with adults. That was last week. Wow. Absolutely unbelievable. Tyler. Yeah. Gary Chambers, I want to thank you for your leadership and your voice. You have inspired generations since I have watched you.

And so thank you for your service and your voice. I would say I will echo those same words as it was mentioned before. Following the numbers, as we look at it, over 68 or 65 percent of Louisiana's prisons are populated by people of color, in particular black people. And over $625 million, Louisiana spent every year in corrections, and over 40 percent of those crimes are nonviolent as it relates to drug or property crimes. What are—like, what is the community saying in regards to the money that's being spent out and the targeting of, you know, communities of color, in particular black folks, where their money is going to this system.

But yet the governor is saying throw more people in jail. I think that the community is stunned today. I think that folks who didn't vote, that's always in the comments section talking. They didn't believe that he'd hit them this fast, this hard. And now that he is, people are trying to figure out which way they're going to go. The truth is, the only way you're going to go is to vote in the next few years, because I hope you're holding on and finding some lawyers so that we can sue, because the only way we're going to stop some of this is litigation. Also, hopefully, Judge Shelly Dick is going to give us a map that's a fair

map and call for new elections in Louisiana. If we get new legislative elections, then they won't have a supermajority in the Senate and the House. We'll pick up more seats in the Senate and the House for black representation, and that will impede some of what they have. But we still have to get people in the attitude and disposition of understanding that you have to vote in every election, even when there are people on the ballot that you're not excited about because we don't vote to get excited. We vote to get the job done because we're paying taxes into a system where people are abusing our resources rather than using our resources to help our communities. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

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

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

all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We 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. they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds. You can go to asenseofhome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our L.A. community rebuild.

It takes all of us. Actually, what I said to people was, you know, we're going to keep our eyes on Louisiana, Gary, but I kept telling people it's going to be a long four years. And when you sit out, when you choose the couch over the ballot box, I don't want to hear a damn thing. That's right. That's right. Thank you always, Roland, for illuminating what's happening down here. It's going to be a rough ride, but I got my cowboy boots on. I'm ready, bro.

All right, then. I appreciate it, bro. Thanks a lot. Beware. All right, folks. Thanks a lot. About to go to a break. Hey, folks, before I do so, though, I said this on yesterday.

Of course, there are a lot of people who wanted to get kill the music, please. A lot of people who wanted to who have been asking me a couple of book signings about my book, which covered the Obama election. And I said, you know what? I said I said, look, we got some. So there are only about 500 copies left. I probably got about 200 over that I've already signed, autographed. I'm going to be mailing those out. And so if you are interested in getting this, actually, I cut the price. When it initially came out, the book was selling for $20. I cut the price.

And so it's $10, $, 599 for shipping and handling. And again, we only got 500 when we're out. We're out. I'm not not printing it again. So if you want to actually get an autographed copy of this 10 bucks, dollars plus 599 shipping and handling, I'm going to personally autograph it. And as I said, it's my coverage of the election. There are some wonderful photos in here of the time, stuff that I shot as well. In addition to this, there is a DVD with my interviews with Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, which won TV once. It's first to end the image award. You want to get a copy of this book? Go now to Roland S. Martin dot com forward slash the first Roland S. Martin dot com forward slash the first. Like I said, only 500 copies, folks.

When I sign and ship all of them, that's it. Not going to reprint them again. And so if you want to get that, go to Roland S. Martin dot com forward slash the first. All right. Back in a moment. Fan base is pioneering a new era of social media for the creator economy. This next generation social media app with over 600,000 users is raising $17 million, and now is your chance to invest. For details on how to invest, visit startengine.com slash fanbase or scan the QR code. Another way we're giving you the freedom to be you without limits. On the next Get Wealthy with me, Deborah Owens, America's Wealth Coach. Have you ever had that million dollar idea and wondered how you could make it a reality? On the next Get Wealthy,

you're going to meet Liska Askalise, the inventress, someone who made her own idea a reality and now is showing others how they can do it too. Positive, focusing in on the thing that you want to do, writing it down and not speaking to naysayers or anybody about your product until you've taken some steps to at least execute. Least got, ask a lease. On the next Get Wealthy, right here, only on Blackstar Network. I'm Faraji Muhammad, live from L.A., and this is The Culture. The Culture is a two-way conversation, you and me. We talk about the stories, politics, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. So join our community every day at 3 p. 3pm Eastern and let your voice be heard.

Hey, we're all in this together, so let's talk about it and see what kind of trouble we can get into. It's the culture. Weekdays at 3 only on the Blackstar Network. Hi, I am Tommy Davidson. I play Oscar on Proud Family, Louder and Prouder. I don't play Sammy, but I couldder. I don't play Sammy, but I could.

Or I don't play Obama, but I could. I don't do Stallone, but I could do all that. And I am here with Roland Martin on Unfiltered. Today, a war has been missing from Albany, Georgia, since March 12th. The 26-year-old is 5 feet 2 inches tall tall, weighs 92 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information about Sadie Ward should call the Albany, Georgia Police Department at 229-431-2132. 229-431-2132. All right, folks. A couple of weeks ago, that idiot Donald Trump joined Lee Greenwood to announce his own U.S. Bible that also has a U.S. Constitution in it. And, oh, Lord, these crazy white conservative evangelicals, Trump and MAGA-loving people just lost their mind.

Didn't sit quite well with a North Carolina pastor. Lauren Livingston of Central Church in Charlotte is going viral after he issued a scathing rebuke. Did not mention Trump by name, but in his support, we damn sure knew who he was talking about. People that don't read and pray will get politics mixed up with church. They start mixing and meshing together. That's why some of you bring politics into the church.

You think that politics is spiritual stuff. Politics is of this world. You think it's your duty to be political about this, that, and the other. No, your duty is to serve the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, body, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

Don't be talking to me about my spiritual responsibility to vote. I don't have a spiritual responsibility to vote. I have a civic privilege. Don't be telling me that voting is spiritual. See, that's what happens when you don't read and pray. When you don't read and pray, you say, wow, there's a Bible out now that includes the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Isn't that wonderful?

No. No, it's disgusting. It's blasphemous. It's a ploy. Are you kidding me? Some of you are so encouraged by that. Let me tell you something. The gospel is not an American gospel. It is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. But pastor, I bought the Bible. Really? You're telling me that you're encouraged because someone took a government U.S. constitution, a document that says we are of the people, by the people, and for the people, the people, the people, the people, and you have put it right beside the Word of God, which is eternal, unchanging, which says of Him, by Him, through Him, to Him, from Him are all things. And you're going to put those together and be happy about it? God forbid. Now, you can get mad if you want to, but I'm going to tell you something.

If you glory in that kind of thing, you don't have a prayer life. If you glory in that kind of mess, political mess, you do not know what the Word of God says. I'm going to rear back and tell you something. This is not my home. This world is not my home. I've been sent out just like the 70 were sent out. You've been put here and sent out just like the 70 were sent out. We've been put here as strangers and pilgrims and we are passing through. I am just walking through. I'm just renting an apartment for a little while in this strange and foreign land no sir my real citizenship

is in heaven from which we look for the lord jesus christ who's gonna change our vile body that it may be made like under his glorious body. As I said, he did not name any one by name, but he laid it out there, Robert. He did indeed. And I think it's an important position to lay out for the religious community, because we've had a lot of push in the last 40 years or so, since you had kind of a merging of the conservative movement and the Republican Party during the Reagan administration. If you remember Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, the Christian Coalition, the Moral Majority,

etc. You know, the Sunday morning programming that many of us grew up with, we understood that they began to merge and become one political group, one political force. But that group has long ago frayed and moved asunder. And this conceptualization that we are going to continue to conflate Christianity with conservatism, with conservatives in this country, is anachronistic at best. The same person who just put out the Lee Greenwood Bible that will remain unnamed also may or may not be on trial for paying off a porn star currently. So when we start conflating our political beliefs with our religious beliefs, eventually, as the pastor says, you have to confront the fact that you are taking divine documents and entangling them with the imaginations of man.

And as long as you do that, you are not being true to either side of that discussion and either side of your belief system. And we have to begin moving those—we even need to move those things apart, our whole—the political parties and our political dynamics into the standard laid out there. If you're going to talk about being a Christian party or a party that believes in the Bible, well, you're going to have to let those immigrants in, because that's what it says in the book. You're going to have to feed those homeless people and clothe those homeless people. You're going to have to provide housing for the people who don't have access to such.

The reason that there is a separation between church and state in America is just to avoid those sorts of dynamics that exist. And then the conflicts that exist when you start saying that one particular religion is the one that is a granted favor by our political process, because the only thing that comes out of that is death and warfare. So I want more pastors to take this position. I want more people in the community to take this position and understand that you're not doing a service either to your congregation

or to the God that you report to believe in once you start conflating that with your Christian beliefs. Rebecca, these folks ain't godly. These folks are not godly. They do not vote upon their Christian principles at all. They are religious frauds. I mean, maybe they're godly with the God that they believe in, but it's not the God I believe in. I mean, I believe in black Jesus. No, they ain't godly.

No, they ain't godly. They ain't godly. Nope. No, they're not godly. I mean, these are the same people who turn their backs on immigrants and turned their backs on people of color. And Jesus was not blonde hair and blue eyed. So, I mean, clearly, I don't think that my religious beliefs are these people's religious beliefs that are who are part of the cult, the cult of white nationalism. And right now, their God appears to be Trump.

But that said, and on a serious note, you know, good for him. You know, especially hearing this coming out of North Carolina, I was actually trying to look up and figure out what denomination that Pastor Livingston is affiliated with, because I was trying to figure out if he was part of the Southern Baptist Convention, but I couldn't find that information on him. But, you know, at some point there has to be daylight with those who are saying that they believe in a merciful God. There has to be some type of daylight between what these people are pushing out to their

congregation and what they're hearing from Trump. Because at the end of the day, I don't know how you stand with someone who has 91 indictments pending, who says all the crazy stuff that he's saying, and then say that you're a follower of Christ. And it's not even just—and my issue with this on faith isn't even because Trump has these indictments, But from the actions and things that Trump actually says, I don't understand how that's consistent with a gospel of peace. So, you know, good for him. I don't know anything else about him. Maybe people would dig.

Hopefully there isn't crazy stuff about that particular pastor. But at least on this thing, you know, I think he's right. Tyler? I would agree. I think Trump has shown himself to play in folks' faces, and yet here he is, you know, playing in the faces of folks in religion. And we saw that when he walked out in the middle of the protest and cleared out the way and put his Bible up in front of, during the George Floyd, you know, protest eruption. And so I think, and as much as we, as they talk about religion, as mentioned before by my fellow panelists, it has to coincide with that belief. You know, the Bible talks about Matthew and as

much as you have done unto me, you have done unto others. So as much as you have kept food off the table of others, you have kept the food off the table of him. And so, and as much as, you know, he, you have kept the people from being able to access housing and folks to be able to access, you know, things for their health, you have done it unto him. And so that has to coincide with one another. And I think clearly here they're serving. I don't know who they're serving, but as mentioned before, they ain't serving the God that I pray to every night. But they're playing games and playing games with the wrong one.

Well, but that's exactly who they are. And again, we see how fraudulent they are in their decisions. I'm looking for this tweet from the always pretty ignorant Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. I take no direction. I would never follow Billy Graham anywhere. I wouldn't follow him around a grocery store with the crap that he says, because all he does is carry the water of Donald Trump. And, you know, the excuses that they make for this thug are always quite interesting, Robert, because that's what they do. In fact, yeah, look at this. And this is the same fool who had the audacity to question the faith of President Barack Obama.

Well, I mean, he's a Christian. He says he's a Christian. Yet he will defend Trump at at any point. So check this out. Look at this tweet right here. This is this fool here. Pray for former President Donald Trump. His enemies want to do everything they can to destroy him, to put him in jail or to drag out this trial to prevent him from campaigning. I'm not telling you to vote for him.

I'm asking you to pray for him. At nowhere in there did you see Franklin Graham say, hold the thug accountable if he did the things he's accused of. That's what you got going on here. He is a flat out fraud himself. And that's why I'm sick and tired of these mainstream networks continue to put Franklin Graham on the air to speak for Christians. He ain't even a real, he ain't even a pastor, Robert. And in fact,

I'll go ahead and say this, Robert, I go ahead and say this here. The only reason he took over his daddy's ministry is because of his genitalia. The reality is the real preacher in the family. The real preacher is his sister. She can out preach this fool any day, and it's only because she's a woman that she was not put in charge of the family ministry.

She's much smarter and a better preacher than this idiot Franklin Graham. Wasn't it like a picture a few years ago of Franklin Graham with like a drunk woman with his belt undone and all kinds of other things? Look. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's Jerry. No, no, no. That's that other son of a preacher man, which is the Read the Wrangler song. That was Jerry Falwell Jr. That fool.

That was it. He screwed up. Remember, his wife was allegedly having an affair with the pool boy. And so that boy, he was so messed up, they kicked his ass out of Liberty University. Well, the point that I'm making is this is the reason we have a crisis of faith in this country. You have an entire generation, two generations, three generations at this point in time that have rejected the church and the church's teaching primarily because of the hypocrisy of the people leading the church. Because the church is no longer what it was when many of us were growing up, this moral paradigm of the community where you could trust in the word of the pastor, where you

could trust that the money you were donating was going to the community and to its causes, where you could trust that what you were being fed on Sunday was true fruit for your soul that could sustain you throughout the week. Because these churches have become theatrical performances in large part, because they've been sold out to politics, because they've been sold out to corporations where they will come in on Sunday and be selling you Coca-Cola and cell phones and everything else right there in the sanctuary of the church, many people have left religion altogether and just have moved towards spirituality. And when you see these churches co-signing a Bible that has been molested and adulterated

to put American documents in it, as if when they were writing it in Arimathea 2,000 years ago, they were considering what George Washington and Thomas Jefferson wanted to have in it. This is why you're having the people going to church falling and the religion dying around itself, because we've allowed so many hypocrites and so many blasphemers to take over leadership roles and to take over the church. We need to understand that the true word, you don't have to go to anyone for interpretation. It's written right down there for you. You can go peel back the onion all the way back to the original verses and learn for interpretation. It's written right down there for you. You can go peel back the onion all the way back to the original verses and learn for yourself. And we're seeing more and more people

deciding, I don't need some man in a robe and a choir and everyone else to tell me what the book says. I can just read it for myself and live my life to those dictates. Well, look, we have preachers and leaders, but this fool is a fraudulent Christian as as ever. We can think about it. And as I was sitting here, Rebecca, I just I'm petty. I'm petty. I ain't got no problem saying I ain't got no problem saying I'm petty. And let me show my pettiness when it comes to this fake Christian so-called God-fearing fool. He really is a demon. He really is a disciple of the devil. That's Donald Trump. This right here explains all you need to know. I'm wondering what one or two of your most favorite Bible verses are.

I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal. So I don't want to get into verses. I don't want to get into it. There's no verse that means a lot to you that you think about or cite? The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics. Even to cite a verse that you like? No, I don't want to do that. An Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy? Probably equal. I think it's just an incredible, the whole Bible is an incredible, I joke very

much so. They always hold up the art of the day. I say my second favorite book of all time, but I just think the Bible is just something very special. I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored Bible verses. You know, Roland, my daddy used to pastor. And at one point, at one point, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 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.

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I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored Bible verses are. I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal. So I don't want to get into verses. I don't want to get into it. There's no verse that means a lot to you that you think about or cite? The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics. Even to cite a verse that you like?

No, I don't want to do that. An Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy? Probably equal. It's just an incredible, the whole Bible is an incredible, I joke very much so. They always hold up the art of the day. I say my second favorite book of all time. But I just think the Bible is just something very special. I'm wondering what one or two of your most favorite Bible verses are. I wouldn't want to get into it. Rebecca, go ahead. So at one point, I had four sets of aunts and uncles who were pastoring Kojic churches.

So definitely grew up in church. And I think I might have been a teenager, and my dad was asking me my favorite scripture. And you know what I told him? I said, my favorite passage is when Jesus showed up to the temple and whooped those people's behinds. I said, that's my inspiration of Jesus. I said, the mink and mouse stuff, y'all can keep it. But right here, that's my favorite. But here's the bottom line.

The Bible also says, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, i.e., pay your taxes. If some of these churches had to pay taxes, I don't think some of these churches would exist anymore. And what's unfortunate is that we're seeing with the rise of white nationalism in this country, it has happened because of the Christian right, which really isn't using the Bible, but it's pushing the spirituality of whiteness and the superiority of whiteness. Where the spirit of the Lord. Two Corinthians. I got more petty. I got more petty. I just got to be petty.

Here we go. But two Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians, 317. That's the whole ballgame. Where the spirit of the Lord, right? Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And here there is Liberty College, but Liberty University. but it is so true but two corinthians right two corinthians 317 that's the whole ball game them foes them fools at liberty actually clap for that and that that's the funny part that they actually clap for it in there continue to stroke his ego and something that he has no idea about yet. He has a Bible out, but with the greatest commandment in that Bible says, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. But yet he can't even say his favorite Bible verse.

And so I think, you know, he's just literally playing in our faces and playing in the faces of religion. And it's hilarious. Sometimes it's hilarious to laugh at and look at, but it's sad at the same time that people are actually believing and following this man who has absolutely no idea. He probably doesn't know where his left arm is from his right. Too good?

That's the whole ballgame. All right. Let me go to a break I'll be back Folks, supporters I can't I mean, my head hurt with the two Corinthians And no, I just think the Bible is very personal It's personal

I don't really want to get into it. Yeah. Old Testament, New Testament. Oh, they're equal. I wish they had said, can you name the first book of the Bible? He probably would have been like, oh, I don't know. Luke. I don't know. No, that's personal. That's personal. I don't know. Luke? I don't know.

No, that's personal. That's personal. I don't really talk about this personal. Told y'all, man, he's a devil. All right. We'll be back. Rolling by the Unfiltered on the Black Star Network, where we know Second Corinthians is called 2 Corinthians. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol.

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And you're tuned in to... Roland Martin Unfiltered. whoa nelly guess what arizona's handed out down indictments regarding the fake electric scheme tied to the 2020 election among those folks folks who have been indicted, Rudy Giuliani, Boris Epstein, Mark Meadows. Here is Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays with the announcement of the indictment. Hi, I'm Arizona Attorney General Chris Mays. Let me start by thanking everyone for your patience as we conducted a thorough and professional investigation over the past 13 months into the fake elector scheme in our state. I understand for some of you today didn't come fast enough, and I know I'll be criticized by others for conducting this investigation at all. But as I have stated before and will say here again today, I will not allow

American democracy to be undermined. It's too important. The investigators and attorneys assigned to this case took the necessary time to thoroughly piece together the details of the events that began nearly four years ago. They followed the facts where they led, and I'm very proud of the work they've done to date. We're here because justice demands an answer to the efforts that the defendants and other unindicted co-conspirators allegedly took to undermine the will of Arizona's voters during the 2020 presidential election. Arizona's election was free and fair. The people of Arizona elected President Biden. Unwilling to accept this fact, the defendants

charged by the state grand jury allegedly schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency. Whatever their reasoning was, the plot to violate the law must be answered for, and I was elected to uphold the law of this state. The scheme, had it succeeded, would have deprived Arizona's voters of their right to have their votes counted for their chosen president. It effectively would have made their right to vote meaningless. Now, 11 people have been indicted. Seven others have been indicted. Seven others have been indicted. And the 11 folks who were indicted, let me read this here, were 11 Republicans who participated in the certificate signing.

Now, remember, in Michigan, the attorney general there filed felony charges against 16 Republicans who were involved, who they classified as fake electors. The Washington Post is giving me one second. I want to pull this story up because the Washington Post is reporting because the seven other names were redacted in the in the in the news here. But give me one second. I'm pulling up the post right now. So let me pull this story up. I'm just going to go through it with you right here. Let me pull it up here. And so their headline says Meadows, Giuliani and other Trump allies charged in Arizona 2020 election probe. This is a huge development. Rebecca. This absolutely is a huge development. What's really interesting, especially for this to happen in the state of Arizona, is that we know Arizona is one of the top swing states, and this is definitely going to have a ripple effect within even what we expect at the national level with the electoral college,

with seeing where those numbers are going to lie. You know, so what's also interesting, this is on the heels of now being of abortion and reproductive rights being a major issue in the state of Arizona, especially with the ruling that said that the courts, that the state is able to go back to, I believe, 1864, 1863 particular laws around reproductive. Thank you, 1864 around reproductive laws. So this is going to be a one-two punch that's going to really energize what we're going to see happening over the next few months. I'll be interested to see what the organizers on the ground that's trying to register more people to vote, but also get people to understand, even if you're not completely

enthused about who's on the top of the ticket, Trump versus Biden. This now elevates this issue in a way of, hey, this is beyond Trump versus Biden, but this is about which type of administration do you want to see holding the White House come November 6th. So what's really interesting is that this is going to be a real opportunity for folks to be able to mobilize people and actually not convince people who are undecided. It's really that people aren't undecided about who they want to vote for, but they're undecided with whether or not they're going to vote. So I think this is actually going to be positive with getting some of those folks who are undecided if they were going to go and vote November 6th and actually convert them to actually vote on November 6th.

Robert, keep in mind the Biden won Arizona by 10,000 votes. This is what The Washington Post says. Here we go to my iPad. Those indicted include former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, attorneys Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman and Christina Bobb, top campaign adviser Boris Epstein and former campaign aide Mike Roman. They are accused of allegedly aiding an unsuccessful strategy to warp the state's electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden after the 2020 election. Also charged are the Republicans who signed paperwork on December 14th, 2020, that falsely purported Trump was the rightful winner, including former state party chair Kelly Ward, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Tyler Bauer, a GOP national committee man and chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the campaign arm of the pro-Trump conservative group Turning Point USA.

Trump was not charged, but he is described in the indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator. Robert, your thoughts? You know, this is interesting because it follows along with many of the other cases where similar issues were charged, such as in Fulton County and Michigan, as was said previously. But this one, you have an added wrinkle because many of the people who are indicted in this case have already taken plea deals in other cases. For example, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Eastman, those sorts of individuals. So it's going to be interesting to see how exactly those other plea deals play into these charges in other jurisdictions around the country, because if they're accused of many

of the same actions under many of the same statutes, we could see these people basically just parading around the country taking plea deals to these cases. I also think it's very interesting they chose not to indict Trump in the case, because in other similar cases, they have decided to indict the former president, and primarily because the way that it's done in other states is to try to get plea deals out of the lower-tier individuals who are involved in the conspiracy in order to get the bigger fish. In Arizona, they didn't charge it that way. They charged it as individual crimes as opposed to being part of larger conspiracies.

So we're going to have a nice exercise over the course of the next 18 months to two years since these cases get litigated. But what's a more effective prosecutorial strategy charging individuals in these large RICO cases, these large organized crime cases, as they would be conspiracy cases, or these individual charges against defendants when it comes to getting these things done. But I would love for our conservative friends to just simply mount the defense of, I didn't do it. We're going to be exonerated by the court system. We understand the concerns by the state. Everything we did was consistent with the Constitution and statutory laws. Instead of these, the courts against us is a conspiracy.

Everyone's coming down. The Legion of Doom, Darth Vader, the Sith Lords, all coming against me at one time, as opposed to simply saying we'll be exonerated by the court system, because that's what you say when you're actually innocent. You only talk about conspiracies when you don't have any other defense. Tyleek, this is the, you see right here, this is the, this is the post story. This is the second round of charters for Meadows, Giuliani, Ellis, Eastman, and Roman, who were all indicted alongside Trump in Georgia last year. Ellis pleaded guilty in October to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump's 2020 election

loss in Georgia and has been cooperating with prosecutors. This is the first time Epstein, now a top 2024 campaign aide who frequently talks with the foreign president, has been charged for his alleged actions after the 2020 election. That right there, again, shows you what happens. And keep in mind, this is also about voting matters, because that attorney general, she barely won election there in Arizona to be the attorney general. Yeah, I will echo that same thing. You know, voting has consequences.

And who you put in office determines the level of their work. And as we see here, clearly, this is an administration that will hold, as mentioned by my panelists mentioned, will hold any White House accountable. But as I think about giving out indictments, I can't help but think about Oprah when she was giving out them cards and saying, you get an indictment, you get an indictment, you get an indictment. So I'm just hoping that this accountability will continue to roll. And I'm just hoping that, you know, that this accountability will continue to roll. And I'm eager to see, you know, how this will translate to other states. And as we're seeing in the case in New York. Last point for everybody who said that the case in Georgia, that really didn't mean anything. Check this out. Arizona prosecutors, investigators met in December with Kenneth Chesbrough, an attorney and architect of the Elector Strategy, who pleaded guilty in Georgia in October to a single felony count of participating in a conspiracy to fall to file false documents. some that had been previously unseen that revealed more information about those involved in the Arizona effort,

according to two people familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity to talk about the incident of conversations. After that, they said the Arizona investigation widened. That to me, Rebecca, sounds like somebody named Kenneth Chesbrough who's like I am not trying to lose more money with legal fees. I ain't trying to get an indictment. Hey, I'm going to snitch on everybody. Here y'all go. Here's a phone. Here's a text.

All kinds of stuff. Just leave my ass out of this. Even continue with connecting the dots on what Robert was saying is that once we have these other people have started to take plea deals at this point, we probably have some of those same folks who are helping to turn states evidence. So there is actually credible reasons with why these people are being indicted and why these people are more than likely going to be convicted. I still find it interesting that even in this, I wonder if it was a political calculation with not charging Trump on this as well, because it seems like there is enough information here, especially with him being labeled as an unindicted co-conspirator.

They are saying in their charging documents that he is still a co-conspirator. So I'm wondering if it is a political calculation not to charge him here, or is there something else that's coming down the pipeline in Arizona where there's a possibility of Trump being charged with additional crimes? But bottom line, this is going to definitely rock what we're going to see happening in Arizona. Robert, I would surmise that by not charging him, being a co-conspirator is different than having a direct engagement in the legal activity. The reason he was indicted in Georgia was because of the phone calls that he made. Those were explicit involvement as opposed to maybe being aware of these things and not saying anything as opposed to being an architect of trying to actually make it happen. Well, I think we can think about this along the lines of has not been indicted yet, to Rebecca's point, because what could happen in this case is that as more and more of the people who are charged decide to start taking plea agreements, that becomes the basis for additional charges that are filed later against President Trump. As you said, in Arizona, you don't have the smoking gun that you had in Michigan and Georgia, the direct phone call in Georgia from President Trump to the secretary

of state in Michigan, from President Trump and Ronald McDowell to the campaign workers there talking about the efforts to overturn the election. Because of that, it may be a situation where prosecutors are looking for additional evidence to come through the plea bargain process. Thereby they can build a case that they can run up the ladder and then have a superseding indictment to bring in more defendants later on, whether that be Trump or other people involved in the campaign. I think what's crucial, however, is to ensure that the entire process is done in such a

way that the American people can have faith in the outcome of these hearings and these proceedings, because right now what we're having is very much a siloing of information. If Judge Cannon in Florida does something that people disagree with, the entire system is rigged to the Trump judge. You can't trust anything coming out of it. If the judge in New York does something, though the entire system is rigged, that is a liberal Obama judge. And you can't have a system that operates in such a way where people only believe in the decisions that come down in their favor.

And that's why it's important to have the legitimacy of the court be paramount in these judges' eyes when it comes to making these determinations. Again, folks, breaking news out of Arizona. Eleven Republicans have been charged for their participation in the fake electric scheme. There are seven other people whose names have not been released. They were redacted from the indictment because they have not been served the indictment. But according to The Washington Post, they include Mark Meadows, former Donald Trump chief of staff, Rudy Giuliani. He had one of his attorneys, Jenna Ellis, one of his attorneys, John Eastman, one of his attorneys, and Boris Epstein, who worked on his campaign. We'll surely provide, bring you more details as they come forth. Got to go to break. We come back. TikTok could very

well be banned by Congress after a bill passed the Senate. It's now on its way to be signed by President Joe Biden. What does that mean for the hugely popular app? We'll discuss it next in Tech Talk with Isaac Hayes III, founder of Fanbase. Folks, back on Roland Martin Unfiltered on the Blackstar Network in a moment. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1.

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

Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. 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 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. Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the L.A. fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program, providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer to volunteer donate furniture or even donate funds

you can go to a sense of home.org to find out more information together we can help our la community rebuild it takes all of us we talk about blackness and what happens in black culture we're about covering these things that matter to us, speaking to our issues and concerns. This is a genuine people-powered movement. There's a lot of stuff that we're not getting. You get it. And you spread the word. We wish to plead our own cause to long have others spoken for us. We cannot tell our own story if we can't pay for it.

This is about covering us. Invest in Black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep. This is about covering us. Invest in Black-owned media. Your dollars matter. We don't have to keep asking them to cover our stuff. So please support us in what we do, folks. We want to hit 2,000 people. $50 this month. Rates $100,000.

We're behind $100,000. So we want to hit that. Y'all money makes this possible. Checks and money orders go to P.O. Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. The Cash app is DollarSignRMUnfiltered. PayPal is RMartinUnfiltered. Venmo is RMUnfiltered. Zelle is Roland at RolandSMartin.com. Hello, I'm Paula J. Parker. Trudy Proud on The Proud Family. Louder and Prouder on Disney+, and you're watching Roland Martin, Unfiltered. Folks, you're not to say Senate passed the bill, which includes aid to Ukraine in that particular bill is a potential ban on the tick tock app unless they are sold. This has been a huge concern for a number of members of Congress because they say that the Chinese government actually controls TikTok. And they don't like the fact that they would have access to the data of millions of people all across the globe.

Joining us right now is Isaac Hayes, the third. He is the founder of Fanbase. Glad to have you on the show, Isaac. Before I get to that, just give us an update on the raise that fan base has embarked on. Yeah, we're almost at $1 million. We're at $928,000 raised for our equity crowdfund, Reggae Equity Crowdfund on StartEngine. It's amazing. This is a big round for us we're raising 17 million dollars um and allowing the general public anyone that's watching this program right now anybody that hears this video sees this video to invest in fan base and actually have equity in a social media startup and i think with what's going on in tick tock right now and the the uncertainty and instability of what's going on with social networks, I know that there will be other networks that emerge. So I encourage everybody to go to startengine.com slash fanbase.

It's on my shirt. Go to startengine.com slash fanbase and invest. The minimum to invest is $399. That's a small amount compared to what it normally takes to invest in seed stage companies with these high minimums. But $399 is all it takes for you to get 60 shares, 665 a share and become an owner and have equity in fan base. We had that equity conversation even last week about it's time that we own these platforms. And so I'm glad we're at this level with fan base. Well, speaking of that, a lot of people, a lot of black folks who use TikTok, a lot of creators. And now folks are like, what the heck is going to happen after this decision by the House and the Senate? This bill is now on its way to be signed by President Biden.

It is calling for TikTok that for them for it to be sold because they allege that the Chinese government has an equity stake in this app. Your thoughts on this action? I'm torn. Actually, the president signed the bill today, this afternoon. And so it gives TikTok about 270 days to divest from ByteDance, its owner, and be sold to an American corporation or will be banned. If the president sees that there's a deal on the table, he may extend that deadline about 90 days. And so it's about a one year, a little a year or a little longer that TikTok has left to sell this company. I'm torn about this situation because, number one, first and foremost, the

people that are affected the most are the creators, right? And there are millions of people that monetize and make money on TikTok. And it's really scary for those people to have their livelihood threatened based on this action. But at the same time, I understand that they may not want to accept the fact that, in all fairness, there are no American companies that operate inside of China. So there is no Instagram. There is no Facebook. There is no Twitter. There is no Snapchat allowed to operate.

So as a form of reciprocity, why should, Chinese having access to users data, Americans data. This is the give me one second, one second. I want to pull it. Oh, no, don't go to that. I'm going to go to something else, y'all. I want to pull up. I got two different things. I'm on a computer here. And so we pull the story up because this is what this is, what Congress is saying by this particular action here. And, you know, what they're saying is that this is all about ensuring that the Chinese do not continue their involvement with espionage. What a lot of people don't understand is that the United States is in a constant battle with the Chinese, with Iran, with North Korea, with Russia and other folks as well when it comes to espionage.

And it's all about information. This is a quote here. Give me one second. I'm going to pull it up. This is Congresswoman, excuse me, Senator Maria Cantwell. She chairs the Senate Commerce Committee. She said Congress is acting to prevent. She says Congress is not acting to punish ByteDance, TikTok or any other individual company. to prevent foreign adversaries from conducting espionage, surveillance, maligned operations, harming vulnerable Americans or servicemen and women and our U.S. government personnel.

What people, you know, users are one thing. But what a lot of users aren't just aware, Isaac, is just how significant espionage is, how this this tech battle, the stealing of secrets, the stealing of data is a part of this. And when you sign up for these apps, you're turning over a significant fear of the Chinese eavesdropping on conversations, accessing people's emails. And look, you got a lot of number of governments tell people they can't even download that app on their devices because out of out of those fears. Yeah, well, one of the things that I think people forget is before this ban came into place, it was actually brought to the attention of ByteDance that they should not allow the Chinese government to actually have ownership. The problem here is that the actual Chinese government owns part of ByteDance, which is TikTok's parent company. So the first choice was to say that if the Chinese government divests from ownership in ByteDance, then there wouldn't be a ban because the Chinese government doesn't own ByteDance. The Chinese government

refused. They still sit with the Chinese government owning part of ByteDance, that TikTok was still a safe place. But you understand that the communist country like China, they can do whatever they want to. They can have access to whatever they want to. So China refused to divest itself from ByteDance. So therefore, America decided that it made the decision to ban TikTok. So this isn't just something to come out of the blue. This is something that first and foremost said, hey, look, China, if you're going to own part of this tech company, we're not going to allow you to operate in the United States of America. So you can either leave, sell your equity stake in ByteDance or you can seek this ban band and I think this is going to be pretty scary because I'm I'm not sure that ByteDance will sell TikTok I don't know I

mean they have a year to do it but I don't I don't know if they will sell because I think one of the things that people pride themselves or one of the things that ByteDance and TikTok pride themselves on is this amazing algorithm that they have, this algorithm that keeps users locked into the app for hours and hours and hours. And so when you sell that company, you're going to be selling that. You're going to be selling that precious algorithm. And so whoever winds up purchasing TikTok, if it does happen, is going to get a massive tool of influence and power and marketing.

And I think that's one of the things that is going to make this situation a little different, a little complex, and see if Bidenets will hold firm and they'll try to fight this in court. Robert, for a lot of these content creators who don't follow any of this stuff, they don't even understand that this is not new, Robert, when we talk about banning the Chinese right here. This is a political story from earlier this month. U.S. states are cutting off Chinese citizens and companies from land ownership. So this is not, you know, something that's new in the United States. There are laws in this country to prevent foreign ownership of various United States assets. Robert? I want people to understand that we've been in the middle of a virtual war with China for over

two decades at this point in time. If you take a look at the Chinese J-20 stealth fighter, just take a just a little picture of it and look at an F-22 or F-35 from the front. It's the same damn plane. Because we had a massive data leak where the Chinese were able to steal information on our stealth fighters that came from a military base. Somebody's in prison over there right now. We have digital attacks against our power grid, against critical infrastructure that are headquartered in China. Remember Jack Ma, the Chinese billionaire, just disappeared for a few years there, and then came back, and he seemed to be a completely different human being. So I know people want to do their dances on TikTok, et cetera, and the viral content on all those sorts

of things. But if you were to introduce a Trojan horse that you wanted everybody to bring into their homes, put on their personal networks, put on their work networks, where you will be able to hack and download data. Forget the stuff on your phone. They want you taking your phone into the Pentagon. They want you taking your phone into Google. They want you taking your phone into Delta. They're putting it on the Wi-Fi there so they can have a direct access to every document that comes through there and every bit of—terabyte of information

so that they can decrypt it. And the world's fastest supercomputer is located in China, even faster than the quantum computers here in the United States of America that can perform billions of searches and queries by the second. The strongest AI in the world is located in China. So when we're talking about TikTok, what we're really doing is the same thing the Chinese are doing to America, which is that if we allowed American companies into

China, America will be spying on China also. The only way to keep our critical national security infrastructure safe and protected is to not allow these things onto our networks. We've seen what has happened before. We'll see what will happen again. And this is a prudent step by the Biden administration. And I think more

than likely this will end up being sold within the next year. Here's one of the things that, Rebecca, that people also don't realize. Foreigners cannot own more than 25% of a U.S. airline. And not only that there are already existing laws in place that limit foreign ownership of what are deemed to be national security interest industries in the United States.

You know, I think it's also very important to keep letting people know and informing them the national security reasons in this. And the reason why I say this is that I work with a lot of Gen Zs on college campuses, and I even think about some of my friends who have teenagers now who are up in arms and they're anti-bite because of this particular issue. And, you know, we make jokes all the time about the meta companies saying that, you know, Instagram is listening to you anyway, because when you have a conversation with your friend, the next thing you know, you know, you'll see a targeted sponsored ad targeted towards you. That's about the very thing that you were just talking out loud with your friends, whether or not that is true or not

with whether or not like companies like meta is actively listening to people even when the app isn't open. I don't know about that. But one thing that I do know is that even when you have an American company, even if that American company is skirting the line when it comes to privacy, one thing that I know is because they are an American company, the federal government and even some state governments can regulate those actions, fine those particular companies. But the issue here is when you have a foreign actor that has actively spied on Americans, as long as that foreign actor is allowed to perform on American soil, i.e. Americans have access to TikTok, there really isn't a lot of regulation that the U.S. government or even state governments can do to prevent their intrusion into privacy. Outside of having rigid sanctions against China, the U.S. really wouldn't have a lot in its tool belt. So while I do have empathy for some of the creators who are making their living off of a platform like TikTok. There's also other platforms such as Fanbase,

but there's also other platforms like YouTube where folks are able to take their content, monetize their content. But this also might push creators back into actually creating their own platforms or going to a Fanbase where they will have equity stake in Fanbase or even be able to immediately monetize their content on fan base in a way that is transparent. Because one thing we do know is that TikTok comparatively doesn't pay well.

Like you're not getting like most of your folks doing their dances on TikTok aren't even making a hundred dollars off of any of those dances. So there are other places for people to go. But I do think it's important to be able to explain what the distinction is and why specifically this particular company, there's a bigger problem with this privacy intrusions. Tyler, folks may not even realize, and again, this is just one of those things that, I mean, obviously I knew because this is our industry that we're in, but here's a perfect example right here.

It wasn't until 2017 that foreigners were allowed to own TV stations in the United States. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

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

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug man. 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. Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing nonprofit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the L.A. fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program,

providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. get involved sign up to volunteer donate furniture or even donate funds you can go to ascensivehome.org to find out more information together we can help our la community rebuild it takes all of us law existed up until 2000 up until seven years ago yeah exactly and i think the context and understanding is important. And I think today when we saw the announcement, I saw all up and down my feed of folks who are upset about this. And I think I definitely agree with the folks who have, you know, concerns about their living and, you know, monetizing and, you know, providing for their families. But at the same time, I think the administration has to make

clarity of what this actually means, especially during a crucial election year. And as mentioned, you know, even before, American companies such as Instagram and Twitter and Snapchat aren't allowed in China, but yet they are allowed here. And so some form of oversight was bound to happen regardless of which political party. And I think it's critical. And I think just to let folks know, this law will not directly immediately stop your disruption on your TikTok. It still has to go through the buying process. It may have to go through some legal battles. But for the clarity of it, as you mentioned before, the Chinese government, Communist Party, has stake in TikTok. And so I think it is really about the bottom line of protecting national security, protecting

the data of American citizens. And even going deeper into it, the Chinese government has content recommendations, algorithms that control what we see on our feeds. And so, as I mentioned before, oversight at some point was bound to happen. But I do think there has to be a level of education because there's a lot of misinformation going around saying, you know, they just want to keep us from being able to access information. But the bottom line is protecting our national security is most important.

And it's critical that folks in this White House also informs folks in such a critical year of what is happening, why it's happening, and, you know, as it relates to especially younger generations who go to this for most of their news or most of their media. And so it's important that that information is relayed and an understanding is made about what is happening with this ban. And you know what, Isaac, here's the thing that, let's just cut to the chase. A lot of Americans don't know a damn thing what's happening in China. You said it earlier.

The Chinese control everything. They are a communist country. So folk here who want to act like, oh, no, it's all wide open and freedom of expression and freedom of speech and we should have access. That ain't how it works in China. China believes in capitalism outside of China, but inside of China, they're like, we run this. You do not have the same type of laws in China that you have in the United States.

No, not at all. And I think that's one of the decisions, like I said, was made because China is China. It's a communist country. And I think there is a danger. And to follow that point, your devices can listen to you. The permissions that you give your phone definitely give it access so that these companies that run ads, we don't run ads on Fanbase, but these companies that do run ads, they do listen, they do track your movement. They know when you drive by a certain restaurant or a gas station to send you an ad,

they know how high you are, how fast you're moving. They're collecting all this data on you. And so there is a danger in that, knowing how Americans move, massive amounts of people move, so much information is traveling through your phone. So the potential for a foreign entity to have access to all of that type of information, especially through a platform like TikTok, which even a lot of young people use,

is very, very dangerous and very important. I think that's the seriousness of this matter. We prepared for this over at Fanbase, actually. We've been preparing for this. We have a migration tool that has been pretty successful, something that we patented where it allows you to actually copy all of your content that exists on TikTok and migrate it over to Fanbase for free up to 1,000 posts because we didn't know what was going to happen with TikTok.

But I wanted to make sure that creators still had an opportunity to have and own their content, put it somewhere safe and secure, and they could actually still monetize that content. the creators still had an opportunity to have and own their content, put it somewhere safe and secure, and they could actually still monetize that content. And so our content migration new update, I think, releases tomorrow. And so people will be able to actually, you know, move their content from Instagram or TikTok directly over to Fanbase and continue to build over there as we continue to, you know,

raise this capital and scale the company. All right. I hate the third. I appreciate it, folks. If you all want to get more information on the capital raise of fan base, go to start engine dot com forward slash fan base. Start engine dot com forward slash fan base. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Folks, that is it for us. Let me thank Tyler. Let me thank Rebecca. Let me thank Robert for being on today's show. I appreciate all three of y'all being here. Thank you so very much, folks. Tomorrow, I will be on the road broadcasting from Dallas, Texas, going there because tomorrow is the 77th birthday of my dad.

And so I'm going to stop in Big D. And I planned on, you know, you try to sit here and plan this stuff. I planned on, you know, surprising him with his gift, you know. But, you know, when you mail boxes to the house with your name on it? How your parents open the boxes? So last night, y'all, we in the middle of the show, and in the middle of the show, I get this. Why they wearing the cowboy hat that I send him for his birthday gift?

I'm like, you wasn't supposed to open the box. Lord have mercy. All right, so I'll be in Dallas tomorrow. Then on Friday, I'm going to be in Miami for the meeting of black county officials. And then head to L.A. on Saturday. I'm emceeing the Dominoly Jazz Festival at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and then on Sunday

the George Lopez Golf Tournament Sunday and Monday. So, busy five days, and so again, we'll be live tomorrow, we'll be live Friday as well, so looking forward to that. Alright y'all, that's it. Don't forget, I want y'all to do several different things. First and foremost, we only got 500 copies of my book covering the 2008 presidential election.

The first president, Barack Obama, rode to the White House. That's originally reported by Roland S. Martin. Go to RolandSMartin.com forward slash the first to get your copy. I'm selling them for $10 plus $5.99 shipping in handily. And so I'm personally autographing them. Once we sell 500, that's it. Ain't no more. Doesn't exist.

Can't get them anywhere else. And so go ahead and do that. Don't forget also, we also are running out of the Shibori pocket squares. The customized pocket squares, of course, can be had at any time. So to get those, you go to rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. And so don't have many more of the shaboys left. I'm trying to get the count right now. And the same thing.

Once those are gone, they're gone. They're gone. But the customized pocket squares can be ordered at any time because those are, again, customized. And so that's rollinglessmartin.com forward slash pocket squares. Also, be sure to get a copy of my book, White Fear, How the Browning of America is Making White Folks Lose Their Minds, available at bookstores nationwide. You can get the audio version of White Fear on Audible.

I read the book as well, so check that thing out there. And, of course, support us in what we do by joining our Breana Funk fan club. First of all, if you buy white beer, if you buy the first, if you get the pocket squares, that money comes right back into the show. And so, y'all, we're doing everything we can to generate resources because we're trying to close these advertising

deals. It is not easy at all, but we're trying to make it happen for us to continue to build this show, build this network, add new shows, do all that sort of stuff. But you can join the Bring the Funk Fan Club. The goal is to get 20,000 of our fans contributing on average $50 a year. That's $4.19 a month, $0.13 a day. All the content we provide for you.

And so please do that. Send your check and money over to the PO Box 57196, Washington, D.C., 20037-0196. Cash app, dollar sign, RM Unfiltered. PayPal, RM Martin Unfiltered. Venmo is RM Unfiltered. Zelle, rolling at rollinsmartin.com, rolling at rollinmartinunfiltered.com. And, oh, one more thing, y'all.

So, yeah, you know I'm going to be repping Alpha the next several days as I always do because Saturday, April 27th, is my 35th Alphaversary. And so, y'all know the rest of y'all folks who play in little youth groups? Always. Y'all got to kiss the ring. Ha ha! I'll see

y'all tomorrow. Holla! Black Star Network is here. A real revolution right now. Thank you for being the voice of Black America. All the momentum we have now, we have to keep this going. The video looks phenomenal.

See, there's a difference between Black Star Network and Black-owned media and something like CNN. You can't be Black-owned media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You can't be black on media and be scared. It's time to be smart. Bring your eyeballs home. You dig?

Hey, Drew Scott here, letting you know why I recently joined the board of an amazing non-profit, A Sense of Home. For 10 years, this charity has been creating homes for young people exiting foster care. It's an incredible organization. Just days into the L.A. fires, they moved mountains to launch a new emergency relief program, providing fully functional home environments for those who lost everything in the fires. Please get involved. Sign up to volunteer, donate furniture, or even donate funds.

You can go to asenseofhome.org to find out more information. Together, we can help our LA community rebuild. It takes all of us. 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. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes.

We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. 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.