#RolandMartinUnfiltered - SCOTUS Decisions: Student Loan Forgiveness, Religious Liberties, DV TRO Guns, Unrest in Paris

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

6.30.2023 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: SCOTUS Decisions: Student Loan Forgiveness, Religious Liberties, DV TRO Guns, Unrest in Paris The Supreme Court issued several important rulings today that will impact the future of LGBTQ rights and student loan forgiveness.  We'll delve into how these decisions will affect America and discuss the next steps laid out by President Joe Biden on how he plans to help those drowning in student loan debt. We'll also preview a case headed to the Supreme Court about allowing people under a restraining order to purchase firearms. There was a  stirring memorial service remembering the victims of the Atlanta Child Murders, bringing up still-lingering questions about justice and representation for African American communities. Plus, we'll discuss the developing situation in France, where a police officer killed a 17-year-old, and now they are experiencing massive unrest.  We will give you updates on what happens now. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. It's Friday, June 30th, 2023. I'm Attorney Robert Petillo, sitting in for Roland Martin, who is in New Orleans at Essence Fest. You know, I'm kind of jealous. Here's what's coming up on Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. Of course, you've seen it. The Supreme Court has continued issuing a string of rulings that are fundamentally changing the nature of American society. We're going to talk today about how it will impact the future of LGBTQ rights and student loan forgiveness. We'll also delve into how these decisions will affect everyday Americans

and discuss the next steps laid out by President Joe Biden on how he plans to help those individuals drowning in student loan debt. Also, we'll preview some of the cases headed to the Supreme Court about allowing people under restraining orders to purchase firearms. Remember, there are 430 million guns in this country, only 330 million people,

but we gotta keep selling more guns. There was also a stirring memorial service today remembering the victims of the Atlanta child murders, bringing up still lingering questions about justice and representation of African-American communities. Plus, we'll discuss the developing situation in France, where they're going through their own George Floyd moment, where a police officer killed a 17-year-old, and now they are experiencing massive unrest, riots, burning in the streets. And Emmanuel Macron, who was just over in China, has no idea how to deal with the situation. We will give you an update on what is happening now. Also, we're going to go live to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is speaking at Essence Fest in New Orleans right now. It's time to bring the funk on Rolling Martin Unf it is, he's got the scoop, the fact, the fine. And when it breaks, he's right on time.

And it's rolling. Best belief he's knowing. Putting it down from sports to news to politics. With entertainment just for gigs. He's rolling. It's Uncle Gro-Gro-Yong. It's rolling Gro-Gro-Yo Yeah, yeah It's Rollin' Martin Yeah, yeah

Rollin' with Rollin' now Yeah, yeah He's funky, he's fresh, he's real the best You know he's Rollin' Martin Now Martell! Martell! We're going to go live to Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at EssenceFest. Moderator Monica Simpson here.

What is going on? So when the Dobbs decision came down about a year ago, last week actually, they took a fundamental right from the people of America, from the women of America, and I think it's really important when we talk about this issue to understand that, first of all, one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree that the government should not be telling her what to do with her body. If she chooses, she will talk with and consult her pastor, her priest, her rabbi. But the government should not be telling her what is in her best interest.

Trust the women of America. Trust the women of America to know what they need. And what we have seen happen is exactly what we so sadly and accurately predicted. Women across America who are silently suffering, so many of them, who are being made to feel as though they've done something irresponsible or wrong, who are being judged, who are being denied access to essential and critical care. Understand that after the Dobbs decision came down, laws have been proposed and passed that are criminalizing physicians with significant prison time in many cases, understand that laws are being passed in America

since that decision came down a year ago that make no exception for rape or incest. And I know it's a difficult conversation to discuss, but one must discuss it because we have to be real about what's happening right now in our country. As many of you know, I was, and Sonny, you and I share this background as prosecutors. I became a prosecutor because my best friend in high school, I learned was being abused by her stepfather.

And I said to her, you have to come live with us. And I called up my mother, she was at work, and she said, yes, she has to come live with us, and she did. Now, these extremist so-called leaders who are passing these laws saying no exception even for rape or incest, understand what they are saying, these so-called leaders. They are saying that after someone has survived a crime of violence, a violation to their body, that after that has happened, you will not have the choice about what happens to your body next. That's immoral. That's immoral.

And they want to prance around as so-called leaders with their little flag pins? This is what's happening in our country right now, and I've met far too many women who have shared their stories. A woman in Texas, actually many women in Texas, who was suffering a miscarriage went to the emergency room for help, and they turned her away. We can't help you because we're afraid about the laws, what it might do. She went back again, I need help and assistance with what's happening, this miscarriage. She wanted to carry her pregnancy to term. They turned her away.

It was not until she developed sepsis that they treated her. I met another young woman who came to one of my events with her husband. She was diagnosed at 18 weeks pregnancy. They prayed to have a baby. At 18 weeks pregnancy, she was diagnosed with fatal fetal disease, and that the baby would not survive. They were devastated. She wanted to then have a procedure. She was denied to have the procedure. So basically, she was being told that she should carry this, even though the diagnosis was clear about what the outcome would be. So she had to travel from Texas to Washington State to get the procedure.

Now, again, let's break these things down because it's more than just some intellectual and political issue. So this young woman who prayed that she would be able to have a child and then received a diagnosis from her doctor that is devastating news now has to be made to get a plane ticket if she can afford it, go through TSA, sit on a plane with a bunch of strangers, to go to a healthcare provider she doesn't know to address this critical issue. It's inhumane to make people do that.

And this is what's happening in our country every day. People silently having these experiences. And I think it's so important that we all speak out and say that this is a violation of basic rights that are about bodily autonomy and self-determination. And we have to stand with what we know to be right and true about the importance of foundational principles such as freedom and say that we are not going to stand for this. And we are going to stand up and speak to the need to, one, elect members of the United

States Congress who will pass national legislation to reinstate the protections of Roe v. Wade. That we will pay attention to who's governor, and if they're passing and signing these state laws, who's the attorney general, who's in the state legislature. If they're passing laws criminalizing, who's the attorney general, who's in the state legislature, if they're passing laws criminalizing, who's your prosecutor? And we've got to vote in our numbers and speak loudly about this grave injustice that is affecting the women of America. Vote, vote, vote, vote.

Now I have—vote, vote, vote. You have that power in your hand, at least where they're not gerrymandering. I want to finish this line of questioning, and Monica certainly has another line of questioning that she is going to get to that's very important. I just want to switch gears quickly and talk about the black maternal health crisis. Because as you know, they say when the world gets a cold, we get the flu. It's another issue you have been such a champion for us, and we thank you for that. Can you tell us how you view the relationship between the fight for reproductive rights

and the black maternal health crisis? Because for some people there seems to be a disconnect there. Oh, for some people, they have just revealed themselves to be hypocrites. So here's why I say that. So this is an issue I've been working on for many, many years.

And in fact, when I was in the Senate with my colleagues, the Congressional Black Caucus, I was on the Senate side. They who worked with me on this were mostly on the House side. We passed, we proposed and got passed what we call the momnibus to address the need to support mothers and women in the various stages of motherhood. And what I can tell you, and everyone here probably knows, is this. We are one of the wealthiest nations in the world, and we have one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world.

Black women in America are three to four times more likely to die in connection with childbirth. Native women are twice as likely to die. Rural women are one and a half more likely to die. And if you're a black woman in rural America, you can see where that's headed. And by the way, when it comes to black maternal mortality, it has nothing to do with her educational level or her socioeconomic level. It literally has to do with the fact that when she walks into that clinic, that emergency room, that doctor's office, she is not taken as seriously.

And we have sadly too many high-profile stories of exactly what I'm talking about. And so this is an issue that I've been taking on for a number of years, both in terms of what we need to do to address the racial bias that is present with this issue, and in particular, I was very proud to make clear that as part of the solution, we need to have the training of healthcare providers in a number of ways, including that the trainers would—among the trainers would be doulas, right? Who fully understand what it means when we talk about community care and recognizing the whole person and the dignity of that person because let me be clear, for women who want

to be pregnant and want children, it should be a joyful experience. Black women deserve to have. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

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

Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts binge episodes one two and three on may 21st and episodes four five and six on june 4th ad free at lava for good plus on apple podcasts i'm clayton english i'm greg glad 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. 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 it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple 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. all of these reasons, and it has included, as you mentioned in the introduction, I issued a challenge back in December of 21 after we were elected to the states to say, well, Medicaid covers postpartum care for two months. I challenge the states to extend it to 12 months. And we started with three states were doing it, and now we have 35 states and D.C. doing it. So we still have some more to go, so you can help me in shaming the rest of them. We're doing it, and now we have 35 states and D.C. doing it. So we still have some more to go, so you can help me in shaming the rest of them. But back to the point about hypocrisy.

In the top ten states that have the worst maternal mortality, they are the same states that also have abortion bans. So these people who walk around saying that they have passed these bans in the interest of the health and well-being of mothers and children are hypocrites. They've not—when we look at what are you doing to support women around prenatal care, their pregnancies, postpartum care. What are we doing to recognize that women need affordable transportation, that they need real support in terms of what they need, because if they already have children, affordable child care, paid family leave, paid maternal leave, for the men in

their life, paid paternal leave. And so there's still so much to do, but on this issue where these people are beating their chest with these laws that are about denying people the ability to make decisions about their own body, they must be confronted about this. Because there is an utter hypocrisy at play. And by the way, Virginia is the only southern state that does not have a ban. The majority of black women live in the southern states. So understand the connection between race, between income, and who gets what kinds of services, and what are the predictable

outcomes when those services are lacking, and that divide exists. And here you see then the data that talks about black maternal mortality. So we got some work to do. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. It's been hard for me not to act like a black church girl in here. Every time she says something, I'm like, yep, amen. I just want to encourage y'all, y'all can do that if you feel that today, okay? But I also want to just kind of continue on this vein that we're on about intersectionality, because that's what we're talking about here

when thinking about how do we connect reproductive rights and maternal health. And I know we hear you talk very much about the interconnectedness, right, connect reproductive rights and maternal health? And I know we hear you talk very much about the interconnectedness, right, of reproductive rights and other very real social justice issues like voting rights, like economics. And I think that it's been beautiful of you to talk about that as our vice president

because it's helping other elected officials understand the importance of that. And that's what reproductive justice really is all about. And so, can you talk to us about how you see these connections and why they're important right now, especially in the particular moment that we're in? So, that's—and this is your life's work, Monica, and I so applaud and so grateful for all that you do. Because you are always highlighting the interconnection and the interdependence, right?

And therefore the collective responsibility. And so, I asked my team after we started to see these attacks, I said, do a Venn diagram. So I love Venn diagrams, you know those three circles. So I said, let's do a Venn, so I love Venn diagrams, you know, those three circles. And so I said, let's do a Venn diagram. From which states are we seeing attacks on voting rights, women's reproductive health rights, and LGBTQ rights? You would not be surprised of the intersection. It was so apparent and clear.

And so thinking about then the opportunity that exists always in moments of crisis, and on this point, the importance then of the coalition, and building the coalition, and creating spaces and opportunities for the folks who have been fighting for voting rights to be in the same room with those who have been fighting for maternal health care and reproductive health care, those who have been fighting for LGBTQ rights, and to bring folks together, understanding that if we step back and look clearly at what's happening, there is a full-on attack at play that I believe is part of a national plan to attack hard-fought and hard-won freedoms.

And an attack on anyone's freedom is an attack on all of our freedoms. And so looking at it then as an opportunity to build the coalition. Understanding, again, that these attacks are about folks who are exerting their rights. Like, when we talk about freedoms, it is a right. It is a right. These are attacks on our rights, on your rights, on their rights, on rights. An attack on rights is something that we must see clearly as being an offense to foundational principles about who we are as a country. And I would also ask this of all the friends

in the sisterhood here. You know that thing about the frogs in the pots? Okay, so here it goes. There's two pots of water, and there's two frogs. In one pot of water, you put the frog in and you slowly turn up the heat. And that frog's kind of like, oh, it's getting kind of warm in here.

And then the heat keeps going up to boiling, and that frog perishes. In the other pot, you turn up the heat up on high, get that water boiling, you put the frog in it, he's going to jump out. Let's not be that first frog. Let's not be that first frog. No. Let's not be that first frog. That is, ooh, that's going to stick with me for a minute, Madam Vice President, truly. We do not want to be that first frog. I want to push us a little bit further into a different conversation, but one that is

so timely and so necessary right now. And that's the issue of gun violence in this country, right? You have eloquently, eloquently framed gun safety in the context of freedom in this country. The freedom to be saved from gun violence. And I think that we would be remiss to not mention A.J. Owens in this moment, a black woman, black mother, who was killed in Ocala, Florida, so senselessly, right?

And we can also see the interconnections there to reproductive justice and gun violence because she was truly working to protect her family, right? And so we know that this issue was big and it's multi-layered, right? Can you take a moment to just talk about what we can do to really end this senseless violence that is harming so many in our communities right now. Well, there's a theme in this conversation that we are all having, which is about many things, including rights and freedoms, and also the importance of the vote. That's right. Because, you see, we need people in the state houses and in the United States Congress who have the courage to act around very clear and reasonable gun safety laws, who don't fall for the false choice that you're either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want

to take everybody's guns. I'm in favor of the Second Amendment, but we need an assault weapons ban. Assault weapons are literally designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly. These are weapons of war that have no place on the street. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

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

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

It's of a civil society. That's right. One in five Americans has a family member who has been killed by gun violence. The number one cause of death for children in America is gun violence. Not some disease. Gun violence is the number one cause. And when you start looking at the statistics in terms of our young people, young black people in America, it is a crisis of extraordinary proportion that we should also think about not only in the context of the right to live

free from violence, but also in terms of the importance not only of public safety, but public health. Because be clear, we are also talking about a residual impact that is actually a direct impact, which is about trauma to individuals, to families, and communities that lingers. The fear that communities are experiencing where a mother has to say to her child, if gun violence is ringing out in the neighborhood, jump in the bathtub to avoid a stray bullet? Or how about the fact that our children are right now, they're on summer break, K through 12, but they're going to start school in the fall, and one of the first things they're

going to learn barely before they learn their teacher's name or where the bathroom is, is how to hide in a closet quietly if there is an active shooter in their school. Talk about the trauma. I have met children who have said to me, I don't like going to fifth period. And I said, baby, why don't you want to go to fifth period? Because there's no closet in fifth period classroom. This is real. Our babies are afraid to be in a classroom where their backs are to the door.

And then these so-called leaders, these extremist leaders will say, well, the solution to that is let's have the teacher strap a gun. Are you kidding me? And so, again, though, this has to be about what do we do in terms of fighting for real leaders who have an understanding about what is sensible and reasonable. You know, after—I was just talking, I suppose, after, so the Tennessee Three, the two Justins and Gloria, so I hope you all saw that. So I was actually at home, it was watching the late night news with my husband, and I saw what was happening in Tennessee, and they, these, the people who run the legislature, so these, the two Justins in particular, two

young legislators in their 20s, young African American men leaders, and they are in the well of the chamber trying to debate the issue of the need for smart gun safety laws. They are in the well of the chamber, and you know, for these wells and these chambers and legislators and legislative bodies, they're designed for debate. Literally, the design is for debate. They are trying to debate in session. They're in session. They're on the microphone trying to debate the need for reasonable gun safety laws, and

these people turn the mic off on them. They turn off the microphone. You talk about a tax on our democracy, we're not even looking for symbols anymore. They're turning off a microphone. But this is what I loved about this. This is what I loved about this. So these young leaders said, all right, anybody got a bullhorn?

And they got a bullhorn? And they got a bullhorn to make sure the voices of the people were heard. And you got to love, love, love, love, love that. Yes. You've used your bullhorn quite a bit. You've used your pulhorn quite a bit. You've used your pulpit quite a bit. And I know we've had this discussion that as DA in California, you prosecuted crimes against women and children. As a federal prosecutor, I prosecuted child sex crimes, of course, and child trafficking. And that always makes you feel like you're on the right side. You've also have been such a champion for women's health, including reproductive health

care. You filed briefs as an AG to protect access to reproductive health care. As a senator, I really miss your Senate debates. I'll be really honest with you about that. Is there any law that tells a man what he can do with his body? I just really miss it. It's so classic. I just miss it.

As senator, you led on maternal health and have carried that forward also, of course, as vice president. You're leading the administration's work on reproductive health, as we've mentioned before. I mean, my question is, it's such—it sometimes feels like such an insurmountable topic. Why is it so important to you? Why do you think you're getting so much pushback? And where do you see the way forward, if you can?

Well, Sunny, first of all, as I said, I feel very strongly that the promise of America will only be achieved if we are willing to fight for it. I love my country. I believe in its promise. I'm also very clear-eyed that we will not see progress if we do not fight for it. All of the movements for progress in our country have been movements where people were prepared to take to the streets, prepared to organize, prepared to speak loudly with truth about what is happening, all with the intention of finding solutions. And when I look at the work that I did, whether it was being a prosecutor to say we need to focus on crimes against women and children and protect them,

but also when I was DA, I said we need to also do things like, I created one of the first initiatives that was about getting services and jobs and then dismissing cases against young adults. So there is all of that, but there is the work that is ongoing in our country that is about fighting for progress. What distresses me is that the strength of our nation, for the most part, has been because we have been committed to the expansion of rights. And for the first time in a long time, we are seeing very powerful forces that are engaged in an intentional goal of restricting rights. And we've got to take this moment seriously.

Back, Monica, to the point about the frogs. And here's how I also see it. As Vice President of the United States, I have now met with over 100 world leaders. Presidents, Prime Ministers, Chancellors, and Kings. When we walk into those rooms representing the United States of America, traditionally we do so chin up, shoulders back, with the self-appointed and earned authority to talk about the importance of democracy, rule of law, human rights. But what this group, all of us know, is that the thing about being a role model is people watch what you do

to see if it matches what you say. Say that. Say that. And one of my fears about this moment includes that in places around this world where, for example, women are fighting for their rights, some dictator, some autocrat is looking at them and saying, you want to hold out the United States as your example?

Look what they're doing. You want to, maybe it's a different person saying you're fighting to end corruption in elections? Look what they're doing. You be quiet. The implications of what is happening in our country, not only directly and right now in real time affect all of us as Americans, but very likely affect people around the world. So that's how I think about this moment in terms of what is at stake. And I go back to saying we have to fight for the future we deserve.

We have to fight for a future that we deserve, also understanding that very foundational principles about who we are as a country are at stake, including freedom and equality and basic notions of justice. And the thing about a democracy, and I'll end my point with this, I think there's a duality to the nature of democracy. On the one hand, there's an incredible strength. When a democracy is intact, it lifts up individual rights. It protects civil rights. It's very strong in that way. On the other hand, it's very fragile.

It's very fragile. It will only be as strong as our willingness to fight for it. And so fight we must. Thank you for that. I think we've heard two really key words come from you, Sunny, and from you, Madam Vice President. And the first word that you said, of course, Sunny, was vote. Like how important that vote is. And then you followed up by talking about organizing.

And so voting is powerful when we organize. And one of the powerful things I love about organizing as a cultural strategist and someone who's deeply rooted in culture work as a means to really move the masses and to really dismantle systems of oppression. And we've had this conversation, Madam Vice President. There is such a power in using the culture, right, to be a tool to make those movements happen.

We've seen you on the parking lot, right? We have seen you convene really powerful influencers that represent television shows from actors to musicians. They really have a pulse of the people. And I truly believe that some of our elected officials are learning from you that policy alone, without using culture to actually shift hearts and minds of people, doesn't really make the mark for us. So can you talk to us,

because we are in the room, in the epicenter of black culture this weekend, and there's a lot of folks in here, in particular black women, how y'all doing, who are in this room who want to take action, they want to protect their rights, they want to be able to move and channel their energy in very intentional ways. 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 one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod.

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

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

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. What are some of your ideas as to how we can do that and how important do you think culture is in particular to help us do that? Well, I think culture is, it is a reflection of our moment and our time, right? And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment. And we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy because, you know, it comes in the morning.

We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too. And we also, I think it's very important that leaders, anyone who considers themselves a leader really understands how anything they say would affect a real human being as opposed to, you know, otherwise be a poet and write poetry. But if you want to understand, I don't mean to dismiss poetry at all, but if you want to understand any concept, you have to ask questions like, how would this affect a child?

To have a real understanding of what it is that you propose. And culture helps us do that, because you sit down with Kiki Palmer and you're going to have a real conversation about a variety of issues. But I think it's so important also just to be present. We have to be present. And in this moment, I think there's a perversion in some ways about what it means to have strength.

Some people would suggest that it is a sign of strength based on who you beat down, when I think most of us know the real sign of strength is based on who you beat down, when I think most of us know the real sign of strength is based on who you lift up. And so all that we can do that is about that is, I think, in preservation and in the purpose of growing our strength. Now, we're really almost at the end of our program. I do want to shout out to the men also in our audience.

I see my dear friend, Ben Crump, in the front row, who has done so much for our community. We appreciate you, Ben. Oh, look at Reverend Sharpton in the front right over there. Look at you. Next to Sade Better-en-moi. See, I don't wear glasses on TV, but I can't see anything. She knows this now. Roland, Roland's up.

Where's Roro? All the cool dudes is up front. We see y'all, brothers. Standing by. Women. So we thank you for that. One last question, if you'll allow it. I often get asked after I'm on air and I give speeches around the country, what can I do

to help? I have a platform of three million people a day. You have a platform of millions and millions and millions and a hundred world leaders. What can people sitting in the audience today do? What is their call to action? You know, we network well, as evidenced by the fact that we're all here right now together. And I would urge everyone here to think about your networks as a way to empower each other, to share the stories, to share information. You know, one of the concerns that I have truly is the level of misinformation that

is out there. And so what we can do to reinforce the truth and spread that truth, these are hundreds and hundreds of opinion leaders here together. And so thinking about the networks, be that through your church, through your sorority or fraternity, through whatever civic organizations and nonprofits that you're a part of, I think it's important to really be active in those organizations and continue to grow those networks. Because part of what is happening when we see these attacks is they have the effect,

which I think often is intended, to make people feel alone. And it's important to remember that we are all in this together. It is important to remember that our voices are so important and we should never allow anybody to silence those voices. And using our voice individually and in connection with our networks is a very powerful way of organizing and building into the movement. And all said and done, this is the reality, is that all of the people upon whose shoulders we stand

and honor every day of the year, they carried the baton for the time they had it, and then they passed it to us. And the question is going to be, what did we do while we were carrying the baton? And I don't think anyone expects that we're necessarily going to finish the race, but the measure will be, what did we do while we were carrying the baton? And so let's stay organized and stay in touch with each other and hold each other up.

It's so important and it's so powerful to do that. Well, thank you for giving us the honor of facilitating this conversation, Madam Vice President. Thank you. You just heard from Vice President Kamala Harris talking at the Essence Festival in New Orleans covering a wide range of issues, everything from women's rights to the role that we play in democracy. I want to bring the entire panel in. We have Abdul D'Souza, founder. I want to bring the entire, we're going to go to break real quick

and then we're going to come back and we're going to bring the panel in to discuss this and break down everything that happened. You're watching Rolling Mark Unfiltered, streaming live on the Blackstone Network. Hatred on the streets, a horrific scene, a white nationalist rally that descended into deadly

violence white people are losing their damn lives there's an angry pro-trump mob storm to the u.s capital we're about to see the rise of what i call white minority resistance we have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys. America, there's going to be more of this.

Here's all the Proud Boys guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is Whitefield. Black Star Network is here. Oh, no punches! I'm real revolutionary right now. Thank you for being the voice of black America.

All 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 dig? I am Tommy Davidson.

I play Oscar on Proud Family, Louder and Prouder. Right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable. You hear me? Joining us to break down both Vice President Harris' speech to Essence Fest, as well as me and the Supreme Court cases, we're joined by Abdul D'Souza, founder and chief strategist of the Young Black Lawyers Organization, organizing coalition.

Joining us from Dallas, Texas, as well as our panel. We have Michael Imhotep joining us from Detroit, Michigan, as well as our panel. We have Michael Imhotep joining us from Detroit, Michigan, as well as Kelly Bethea joining us from here in Washington, D.C., as well as Matt Manning, civil rights attorney, joining us from Corpus Christi, Texas. So, Kelly, I'm going to start with you as the woman on the panel. What were your takeaways from Vice President Harris's speech? I think she covered a lot of ground and it was quite rousing. It was very engaging, but in typical political fashion, I don't want to say it was empty by any means, but it was very clear that we have a lot of work to do on the legislative side, on the executive side.

I would say on the judicial side, but that's a lost cause at this point, in order to see real change in this country. This is not a time for just pleasantries and hope speech. We really need to act and we really need to engage. And I think her her being there was the catalyst for that. But also for me, it was made clear that we have a very long way to go. Absolutely. And Abdul, you know, you've been organizing down in Texas. What were your takeaway from the speech and what are kind of the marching orders that Vice President Harris gave? Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.

You know, I thought what was most powerful about her remarks is the way in which the vice president really drove home the point that our democracy is in critical condition, and that many of the challenges that we're facing, whether we're talking about Black maternal health, whether we're talking about the attacks on reproductive rights, whether we're talking about the unsensible gun policies that we have in this country and our inability to pass common-sense gun control legislation, all of that is connected to the ways in which our democracy is in crisis. And I think it's important for folks to understand that we have work to do and that the work we have to do is really to shore up and strengthen our democracy.

And a key part of that, as we'll talk about later, is making sure that we as a community are paying attention to what's happening. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

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

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

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

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early

and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. In the courts, because the courts have really been weaponized as we've seen over the last 24 hours uh they've been weaponized against our communities against us against any semblance of progressive policies and matt to uh to abdul's you know, I think a lot of people will say to Vice President Harris's speech, you know, it's a great speech, love hearing it, wonderful and all, but this is a time for action. We see the conservatives are no longer playing with us. They're trying to take us back not to 1964, but 1864. What do you think the reception to this speech will be?

Well, I think one of the first things, Robert, is obviously the importance of voting. I mean, we talk about it on this show all the time, but this is the fruit of a concerted effort to pack the courts, which has happened. And you see the outcome of that, where, you know, nine people sitting in an ivory tower in Washington, D.C., are telling 330 million-plus what rights they literally do or do not have, rights that many of us would argue are inalienable by virtue of their mere existence. So I think the action now has to be not only voting in every election, but it also has to be very targeted in our efforts, because, as Abdul said, I think the courts are obviously one of the battlegrounds we're fighting in right now. And unless people start paying attention, they won't start realizing that their actual lives

are materially affected by the decisions that are being made. Case in point, you know, you can't go now and ask a wedding planner to necessarily help you if you're in the same sex relationship, right? Because the Supreme Court has said now they can refuse to provide you certain services. And the outcropping of that is going to be something we're going to continue to see for generations to come. And the way we push back on that is making sure we have the right people in office to counter that with actual legislation. And Mike, we've seen this before internationally, where in South Africa, for example, towards the end of apartheid, when the white majority saw or when the white minority saw that they could no

longer govern, they entrenched themselves in the bureaucracy. They entrenched themselves in the court system. They entrenched themselves in the functionary parts of government. And then, very much, they still were able to control the government, even though they didn't have the majority of power there. Here in America, conservatives haven't won the popular vote since 2004. Lost the last election by 7 million votes.

Lost the election before that by 3 million votes. Yet and still, they're getting more of their agenda passed right now through the judiciary than they ever could legislatively. Listening to the Vice President, what do you think we need to do to start fighting back against that now because it seems that we're behind the eight ball?

Well, it's good to see you, Facebook friend Robert. I like a lot of your posts on Facebook. There's a number of things here. One, I'm glad Madam Vice President was speaking at Essence Festival and educating people on what's going on, because so many people wrongly state she's not doing anything. They don't see her doing anything. That's just false. Two, I think it's really important for us to understand, as a historian, myself, we need to understand history, economics, law, and politics. History, economics, law, and politics. I would

encourage everybody, as I do numerous times on this show, go to whitehouse.gov and read the fact sheet that's now about 36 pages. It's called the Biden-Harris Administration Advances Equity and Opportunity for Black Americans at Communities Across the Country, because it breaks down category by category and shows you how the policies of the Biden-Harris administration are helping African Americans. And overwhelmingly, the policies that passed in Congress, Republicans overwhelmingly voted against those. And the policies that were implemented from the executive branch, Republicans overwhelmingly against those as well. So that helps to start educating people on what is taking place.

Also, we have to take this back to some recent history. We don't have to go back to 1890, the Mississippi State Convention in 1890, where they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests to suppress the African-American vote. We can go back to 2013 Shelby County v. Holder, U.S. Supreme Court case, which gutted Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The 1965 Voting Rights Act came about because of what happened in Mississippi in 1890. And then, if you look at the 2014 Republicans take back control of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell Republicans block 103 federal judge nominations from President Barack Obama

and block Merrick Garland in 2016, which was Obama's Supreme Court nomination, which sets it up for Trump to win through the Electoral College. And unfortunately, many of us haven't read the U.S. Constitution, don't understand how the Electoral College works, but Republicans do. So then Trump gets three Supreme Court nominations and 226 federal judges. Well, whatever bills get passed in Congress or policies come from the executive branch can be challenged in court, as we see now in the judicial branch of the federal government interprets law from the legislative branch of the federal government. So we have to understand how all these policies work together. And Republicans are not done. They're playing for keeps. And this

all plays into the browning of America, which is the which Roland deals with in his book, White Fear. And Republicans want to control the judicial branch of the federal government for the next 25, 30, 35 years. So we have to understand that we have to stop telling African-Americans to exercise your right to vote. If you want to exercise, you go to the gym and work out. You vote for power. You vote to put people in office that pass laws that are beneficial to you, your families, your communities.

And what's good for African-Americans is good for America in general. And joining us now is Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition of Black Civic Participation. She's there in New Orleans. Melanie, what was your takeaway from Vice President Harris's statements to EssenceFest? First of all, thank you. You should be down here. She's going down here.

Hot as the dickens. Well, I think that she did a good job. I didn't hear, clear transparency, didn't hear the whole entire speech. But I think part of what I was able to hear was she was really kind of laying down, you know, how do I say, the things that they have done, but also addressing the true reality of where we are right now. We are, you know, in a situation as a country where the gains that we've made are being reversed in such a fashion. And just making sure folks are, I hate to overuse this word, but we better be awake about what's going down right now. And so I think she was not shying away from the challenges that we are facing and that we can do something about it.

And we can. And we've got to play the long game, too. You know what I'm saying? She said that. I'm saying that. We've got to play the long game, you know, because when you talk about power, and that's real, and it is real that what's happening is that they are trying to cut off all the levers of power that we have been able to utilize as black people in this country. And so we've got to come together more and get real serious about looking at that long game, because all they did was keep playing that game until they've been able to really annihilate a lot of situations that would impact our young people, our kids for so long.

I've lived long enough to know when Clarence Thomas got put on that bench, right? And that's how, in the civil rights community, I was in Atlanta at that time, living in Atlanta and being around Dr. Lowry and others in the SCLC and others who wanted to believe him. And it didn't take

us long to figure out, shouldn't have believed him. I won't embarrass you. Well, he's been embarrassing us for 30 years. And so the reality is that we've got to look at—I think our people are going to understand more and more, young people especially, why the judiciary branch matters when you're trying to play that long game. Because presidents come and go, congressional members come and go, but you're sitting on that highest bench in the land,

that Supreme Court, you're there for a lifetime. And that can affect three, four generations, sometimes five generations. You know, to your point, I want to stick with that and transition over to the Supreme Court's decisions on student loans and LGBTQ issues today. You know, from 1964, conservatives have been trying to take a majority in the Supreme Court just so they could repeal the civil rights act of 64, repeal voting rights in 65, repeal public accommodation, repeal fair housing, all those things. They sat and waiting for 60 years for just a moment. And all that it took was Mitch McConnell to just not give Merrick Garland a meeting and then wait. And then by that, they were able to get the 6-3 majority that they have today. And we're seeing the rollback of affirmative action, the rollback of student loan reform, the rollback of women's rights.

So, Melanie, what should be the marching orders when we're talking to people now to tell them to have some hope and the plan to fight back against this? Because many people are just going to say, well, as long as they have that 6-3 majority, there's no point in us even doing anything because they're just going to strike it down on judicial review. One, have the faith that just because you don't see the change coming, it's still coming. And that's what our ancestors and our predecessors taught us. So have the faith to know that this is not going to be always.

And also faith without works is what? Dead. So we have to have the faith. And because I believe there's a spiritual warfare, that's my opinion, there's also spiritual, there's some wickedness going on in that building. And so we have to make sure that we look at that. But also, the election is around the corner. You know, some things are just all what they are.

There's a presidential election. There's congressional elections. There are also elections in these states. And we have numbers that we still not maximize. It does not mean that we're going to win every ballot at the ballot box, but it is still the strongest mechanism that we have. With all of the problems that go with it and all of the barriers, we still found a way to elect. The black vote really did drive that vote in 2020. That's why there's a Biden-Harris administration.

We also stopped, and not alone. There are allies and others, but we have to use that, and we have to build those kind of, Reverend Barber talks about it all the time, fusion politics, how we have to fuse our movements together, because the attacks on LGBTQ folks, attack on black and brown folks, attack, attack, attack. Well, if enough of us are being attacked and we find a way to bring those movements together, then we're that much of a stronger force. I don't know what it's going to take for poor white folks to figure out that they're voting against their own interests.

I come out of Florida where a whole lot of mess is going on, right? Grew up in Memphis, Florida. So, you know, even in what's happening in Florida, if you look at the demographics, the numbers are there. The challenge we have, because you have a Supreme Court that seems to be in line, and this is where I, now what they did with redistricting, I always felt like it was like, they were just like, okay, because we're looking so bad, we better not be so bad, because we knew, I just knew it was going to be bad, and it was, unfortunately. But the next president could, the next president that gets elected could put two or three more people on that bench. You know, only God knows.

Change happens, right? And so when you least expect it. So we have to be ready. We have to use those tools. So next year's election, we have to start organizing now. We have to engage. I know it's important that we engage our brothers and our sisters, right, to be able to know that we own our power and we can make that difference if we come together also across other kinds of movements together. And diving deeper into the student loan forgiveness case, Abdul, I wanted to bring you in because I thought that this case would not get decided on the merits because they never established standing. The five or the six,

the Republican attorneys general who brought the suit under normal circumstances would not have standing. They're not parties to the case. They were not harmed by the case. Can you explain this public interest or this public question doctrine that the Supreme Court used in order to establish standing to even be able to rule on this? You're absolutely right. One of the things that we have seen this term is that in some respects, the Supreme Court has almost obliterated the doctrine of standing. Right. I mean, the reality here is that you typically need, not typically, you do need a particularized injury in order to claim standing. And it's unclear here what the particularized injury here is that allowed the court to reach the merits on this

decision. There was a lot of hand-wringing, a lot of nuance, a lot of parsing by the chief justice in order to get to the merits, because clearly they wanted to decide on the merits. And ultimately, they did. And I think we have to be mindful that the way they got to the merits here is through this doctrine, which really is a made-up doctrine called the major questions doctrine. And essentially what the major questions doctrine says is it allows the court essentially to blunt the authority of the administrative agencies to act broadly when given that delegation by the Congress. And that's exactly what they employed here, to blunt the action of the administrative agencies who clearly, on the

text of the statute, had the authority to act to forgive student loans. And Matt, I want to bring you in on this point because the other thing that did not quite make sense was during COVID, Betsy DeVos used the HEROES Act to delay student loan payments. That's well established, nothing controversial around it. President Biden used the exact same HER act. For people who don't know, heroes act was passed after 9-11 so that people who were either impacted by 9-11 or who were deployed during the war on terror could have their student loans either deferred or forgiven. Those are not bankrupt people who are being affected by a national emergency. The law was codified into law by Congress and therefore when COVID hit, you can use that exact same same at the natural disaster this time is COVID as opposed to 9-11 in order to change or alter the student loan repayment process. That's not controversial.

How do they get to the point of trying to parse out that somehow what President Biden is doing? I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

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

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. 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. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter. Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.

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

It's different than what Betsy DeVos just did. Well, because they don't like it now. They liked it when she did it. It was okay if she did it, and now it's a problem. I mean, that's really basically all it is, is what it comes down to. And I think this is another example of, unfortunately, the Supreme Court getting where they want it to go by virtue of whatever vehicle they have to make up to do that. I think Abdullah is 100 percent right with the major questions doctrine, because the statute, from my understanding, is pretty exceedingly clear. National emergency. This is a national emergency. The executive branch can employ whatever it means it wants to respond to that as it relates to student loans and the cessation of payments. So

it's a pretty basic thing. And the question you didn't ask me that I nonetheless want to answer is I think this is indicative of a crisis point we see in the country where the Supreme Court is increasingly out of sync, obviously, with what average people want. But if I were a person who weren't a lawyer, I would be like, what do these people exist for, right? Like, government exists to help me, to provide services. And all they do is continue telling me why I'm not going to get services or why certain things that could help my life be measurably better are somehow because of some obscure legal doctrine that they come up with, you know, not going to be implemented. And I say all of that to say I'm wondering where this

is going to leave us going forward, because we know the Supreme Court already has the lowest level of trust it's had in years with the American public. And it's starting to get to the point where it's just kind of like, what is the point? You know, at this point, the rights that have given us certain ways to move through the world are being rescinded and being rescinded at lightning pace. And I'm wondering what the measurable effect of that is going to be, because that is going to continue fomenting distrust in government and in the Supreme Court in particular. You know, I think back to the Warren court when they were passing Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice Warren fought to have unanimous verdict because he understood how important it was to the legitimacy of the court,

that people understood that the entire court was united and desegregating schools. The same thing that John Jay said, the first Supreme Court chief justice, where he talked about the fact that the court does not have troops. The court does not have an enforcement mechanism. The only thing that they have is the trust of the American people and the belief that they are going to be a non-biased tribunal answering the laws. When John Roberts was being confirmed, he said, I'm a neutral umpire. I call balls and I call strikes. These are legislators who are on the bench. And Republicans have said for years, they do not want activist judges on the bench. They want to make sure that it's just simply going to be

the law and the law and nothing else. But now they are legislating from the bench. Michael, before we go to break, what is your take on the legitimacy of the court going forward? It was shaken by Bush v. Gore two decades ago, and it seems to be shattered now. Well, you know, you have people like Leonard Leo, you have the Heritage Foundation, you have the Federalist Society, and this all ties into the long game

and them really making up laws and making up the rules as they go along. But they're playing for keeps. They're playing for control of the federal bench and the U.S. Supreme Court for the next 25, 30 years. And very quickly, you know, when Melanie Campbell was speaking and when Madam Vice President was speaking, we have to understand how to protect gains that have been made. One, how to assess gains. Two, how to protect gains. It's not only about what an elected official politician can do for you. It's also understanding who will protect what has already been done to help you as well.

OK, so, you know, Shelby County versus Holder, U.S. Supreme Court case 2013. And that played a big part in the 2016 presidential election because there were 868 fewer polling places in the U.S. because right after that verdict, you had states started passing these voter ID laws and start closing voter polls, and a lot of those voter polls that were closed were in African-American communities. And lastly, on student loan forgiveness, that would have greatly helped African-Americans. African-American women have almost two-thirds of the $1.7 trillion student loan debt, okay? That executive order would have moved 500,000 African-American families from a negative net worth to a positive net worth. So you look at the venom coming from Republicans trying to strike

this down. We have to vote these crazy people out of power and make sure they don't get back into power. And Kelly, real quick, just on Michael's point, the president announced today he will be taking remunerated mentors. He's going to attempt to cancel student loan debt through the Higher Education Act of 1958, that he will be suspending reporting of past use of the loan payments to credit bureaus for 12 months.

He made the deal with Kevin McCarthy saying, well, I'll restart payments in 60 days. But then he said, well, look, I said I'll restart payments. I didn't say I'll restart collections. Kevin McCarthy got hustled. But is that going to be enough going forward? Or do we really need legislative action on student loan reform? I think when it comes down to it, we are going to need legislation on every damn thing.

Because we cannot trust the courts to interpret the laws as they stand. And we cannot rely on the executive powers that the president has because they are so fleeting. We need legislation. That is the whole point of the legislative branch, to codify policy, to codify law. And that is not what's happening right now because of, frankly, people just not wanting to do their job. Now, while everybody is really focused on student loan relief and the like, especially with this Supreme Court case that came down, while that was troubling, my biggest concern was the case regarding the LGBTQ rights in this country, because what that did was a slippery slope into Jim Crow 2.0.

We're going to talk about that on the other side of the break. I know we're going to talk into that, and I'm not going to go into it right now because I know we've got to go to break. But the student loan thing will resolve itself eventually because something's got to give. And what's not going to give is my coins. And I say that proverbially. If I got to pay, I got to pay. But as a collective, this is not going to get paid back. It's virtually infeasible in the way that this economy has been structured right now for us to pay back $35K, $50K, in my case almost $250K, thank you, law degree. So all of that to say, yes, the legislation needs to happen because the alternative cannot happen. Absolutely. Well, we're going to talk more about this in the other cases in front of the Supreme Court after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network.

We'll be right back. Early days in the road, I learned as a musician. I studied not only piano, but I was also a drummer and percussion. I was all city percussion as well. So I was one of the best was also drummer and percussion. I was all city percussion as well. So I was one of the best in the city on percussion. There you go. Also studied trumpet, cello, violin, and bass,

and any other instrument I could get my hand on. And with that study, I learned again what was for me. I learned what it meant to do what the instruments in the orchestra meant to each other in the relationships. So that prepared me to be a leader. That prepared me to lead orchestras and to conduct orchestras. That prepared me to know, to be a leader of men, they have to respect you and know that you know the music. You have to be the teacher of the music. You have to know the music better than anything.

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violence. White people are losing their damn minds. There's an angry pro-Trump mob storm to the U.S. Capitol. We're about to see the rise of what I call white minority resistance. We have seen white folks in this country who simply cannot tolerate black folks voting. I think what we're seeing is the inevitable result of violent denial. This is part of American history. Every time that people of color have made progress, whether real or symbolic, there has been what Carol Anderson at Emory University calls white rage as a backlash. This is the wrath of the Proud Boys and the Boogaloo Boys.

America, there's going to be more of this. There's all the Proud Boys, guys. This country is getting increasingly racist in its behaviors and its attitudes because of the fear of white people. The fear that they're taking our jobs, they're taking our resources, they're taking our women. This is white fear. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

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

when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at lava for good. Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the war on drugs. But sir, we are back in a big way, in a very big way, real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star studded a little bit,

man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King,

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

MMA fighter Liz 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. Farquhar, executive producer of Proud Family. Bruce Smith, creator and executive producer of Proud Family. Louder and Prouder. You're watching Roland Martin. Welcome back. Today in the second major case decided by the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court rolled back protection for the LGBTQ community, but this is a Trojan horse for

rolling back the rights for everybody else. And in sum, this case comes down to a Colorado woman who has a company that designs websites. And she does not want to design websites for gay people because she claims her strongly held religious beliefs as being a Christian. Now you may be thinking to yourself, well where in the Bible does it say Christians cannot design websites for gay people? It doesn't.

And that's why this woman did not have standing. Not only does the Bible not say that, also she had never actually been asked by a gay person to design a web page. However, using the major questions doctrine, the Supreme Court decided to give her standing, even though none existed. And then they ruled that she, because of her strongly held religious beliefs, should not be forced to design a web page, which nobody asked her to design for gay people. Joining us to discuss this is former CEO of the Rainbow Push Coalition, president and founder of SALT, an advocacy group.

Reverend Dr. Todd Urie. Dr. Urie, how are you doing this evening? I'm listening to you talk about that Trojan horse, because that's a big deal today. Lots of Trojan horses on the loose. Absolutely. So talk a little bit about how the Supreme Court found its way to actually answering this question, even though this woman has never been asked to design a gay webpage, has not received any injury,

hasn't lost any money, this has never even happened. Normally the court would say that this is not right for finding, but somehow they still found standing. Well, not only would it normally be that's not right. There's no issue. There's nobody that's come to her. She wants to expand her business. it does not conflict with her religious beliefs. And yet she's trying to get the Supreme Court to chime in with an injunctive firewall just in case some customer that she does not yet have decides to ask her to do something that she's not yet been asked to do.

And so now we have this opportunity of misusing the court. The court presents itself now as the one to kind of forecast. This is the social engineering that we will permit and allow based on the irrational fears of folks who have no evidence. As a matter of fact, stories come out later that the person she referenced supposedly that was thinking about asking, this guy's never even talked to her. He does not even know her. And so the defense is, well, she doesn't have to validate that the customer is legit. She gets to just operate off of her irrational fear that somebody, somewhere, may at some time ask her to do something that she does

not feel compelled to do. And can you talk about the slippery slope, Trojan horse nature of this? Because we saw this in Florida with Ron DeSantis. When he wanted to get rid of black history, he said, oh, it includes queer history. And so then because people have this anger toward the gay community, they said, oh, yeah, well, get rid of black history to get rid of the queer history also. In this case, you're saying, well, you don't have to make a gay web page. But then let's say her religious beliefs tell her, well, you know, I don't really like Jews either. Does that mean she doesn't have to make a Jewish web page, Catholic, black, anybody else? What are the limits on this?

Well, there are not. We don't know yet. Basically, what the court has done is it's not a slippery slope. It's a ledge. And we just jumped off. We just got pushed off of it so that it allows anybody and everybody to claim that somehow my deeply held religious belief might create this irrational fear, this almost religious psychosis that causes me to claim that my speech, my expression of my religious beliefs will be adversely affected if I am forced to deal with people

who behave or conduct their lives in a certain way. So it could be I don't like black people because I don't or interracial marriages or you just name it. Right. The sky's the limit. There are no boundaries. And the court just basically opened Pandora's box to be able to say that the paranoia of this regression that we've seen politically as embodied in January 6th and all of the other irrational behaviors now gets a receptive audience amongst the nine to be able to say, your fears are not irrational and we will actually protect you from the boogeyman. I want to bring Melanie Campbell back into this discussion. So, Melanie, where are the limits of this?

Because it seems to be pretty plenary that as it's deemed right now, pretty much anybody can claim that anything is their strongly held religious beliefs because the Supreme Court does not lay out what you actually have to show to say that this is part of your strongly held religious beliefs. Are there any boundaries to this? Have we just literally re-approved segregation in America? Melanie, I think you might be muted. I think it's a slippery slope. And because what they're saying is,

I'm not a lawyer, I'm just an organizer and activist, right? But the reality from just being a sister in this movement, I'm like, okay, so what you're saying is, if I don't like your religion, I don't have to do business with you, right? You didn't have to do business with black people, right? And so we are getting sent back before the 50s, right, in a lot of ways with these cases. And, you know, time will tell.

But at the end of the day, I was listening to the earlier segment. They found a way to get into something they had no standing to even get involved in. So, they're legislating from the bitch. And when that sister talked about we're going to have to have legislative fix, yes, we are. We're going to have to have a lot. But we've got to get the people in office even to fix it, right? We've been trying to do that with the Voting Rights Act and so many other things. And so it's going to take more than one election. This election

definitely will, though, determine whether or not we have a democracy to even fight back. But if we end up with a straw man kind of being able to control this country and a Supreme Court that will go along with whatever their political beliefs are, as opposed to the rule of law. For black people in this country, we've always had to go for federal intervention. And we don't have the Supreme Court to really be there for us in today's times. And Michael, what happens the first time that someone takes this to court and says, well, I'm a black Hebrew Israelite or I'm part of the Moors nation and I believe the white people are devils and I do not want them in my restaurant. I do not want them in my bed and breakfast. I don't want them darkening my door. Does this mean the Supreme Court has to uphold that now?

Well, you know, Moors have a better understanding of law than most people. I know some Ouachita more so. They may win that. They may win that Supreme Court lawsuit because they'll go in and put their status as white. They may win that. I don't know. Now, a lot of other people may try that. I don't know.

But this is a slippery slope here. This is I can't stress this enough. Elections have consequences. And, you know, you go back to 2016, you had so many people who were too woke to vote. They wanted a perfect candidate. They didn't want Hillary Clinton. If Hillary Clinton had become president, you'd have a 6-3 liberal majority as opposed to a 6-3 conservative majority, okay? And a lot of this stuff would not have taken place.

We've been able to preserve a lot of this stuff would not have taken place. We've been able to preserve a lot of these laws and make advances. So this is really dangerous territory right now. I know some—I know, you know, on Facebook, you know, you and I are on Facebook all day, or a good portion of the day. I was looking at some comments saying, okay, now Biden has to expand the court. Well, the ability to expand the court belongs to Congress, not the president. Now, he can encourage it, but it's up to Congress. That's Article 3, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, which goes back to why we need to study the U.S. Constitution. That belongs to

Congress. Well, you need, if I'm correct, Robert, you ain't going to be able to do it with 51 votes. You need 60 votes in the Senate. Is that correct? Yeah, I think we have officially started the race to 60. You need 60. Exactly. I saw your post today. You need 60.

Democrats are going to have to start for 2024. It has to be about getting to 60 votes in the Senate. You're more than likely going to get the House of Representatives. You got to get the 60 votes. Matt, I want to bring you in on this conversation. So for people who are just trying to understand what the rules are at home right now, does the court say how you prove something is a strongly held religious belief? Does the court demonstrate exactly or create any kind of test to know if you're operating within the curvature of the law or is it just a wild, wild west now?

Well, first, Melanie, be grateful you're not a lawyer because we annoy ourselves a lot of times. I haven't read the opinion of World Transparency. But I will tell you that in what I did read, what they have done is created a very murky standard as it relates to when this will be applicable, meaning that they've tried to carve out some kind of exception for artistic expression and artistic services that are so, you know, greatly entwine the artist's personal beliefs into what they're creating that it allows them to say it's expressive. And that to me is BS, right? Because where do you draw the line on when I get to decide that this is now infringing on my rights and when it's not? And to answer your question, no, they didn't do that. And that's been one of the issues with, if you look at kind of the full panoply of cases that relates to religious freedom and expression, is how do you know somebody really means what they're

saying they mean, right? You have cases back in the late 1800s about, you know, whether people had deeply held religious beliefs. But to your point, no, they didn't do that. And that allows for people to be dishonest about it. And even beyond that, this upends the idea of justiciability. I think you were talking with Reverend Urey earlier about this. And, you know, you don't see them generally making decisions on issues that are not issues yet. So that's what's really strange about this is the idea that someone can say, hey, I think this thing might happen. I want you to kind of give an injunctive way to tell me that I can exercise my rights in a certain way or that this would infringe upon my rights. And that becomes the problem because now, you know, it's going to be murky as to know when a circumstance is really discriminatory and when it's not. And it's going

to empower people who are hateful to say, I don't have to do it for you now. Supreme Court says I don't have to when the law might still require that they otherwise accommodate you. The crazy thing is, just last week in the border case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the governor of Texas didn't have standing to bring the case. And now, this week, in two cases in a row, they said, well, standing doesn't matter. We'll just invent it when we feel like it.

Kelly, you know, when I read this decision, it reminded me of the movie Life. And I'll tell you the one scene. I know what you know what I'm talking about. When Eddie Murphy and Marla Lawrence walked into the pie shop, and they said, well, can I have a slice of pie? He said, well, no, these ain't no nigga pies. Well, guess what? Now that's legal.

That's legal in America right now. I have artistically created these pies. I've invested myself so much into the artistry of my baking that I have created a nigga free pie. And so what do you think happens in America where that becomes the new standard? And also one has to say is I've invested artistry into it and therefore it's not non-judicial by the Supreme Court and it's enforceable by law. You can't sue me. You can't have me arrest. You can't do anything about it. You just can't have the pie.

Nigga free pie. Come on Kelly, hold it together. I'm trying. Come on, Kelly. Hold it together. Let's go. 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 two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

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

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

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm trying. All right. So here's the thing about this case. A lot of people are saying, and rightfully so, that this, you know, the company in which, you know, brought this case,

you know, it was under First Amendment issues, Right. And while that may be true, what I find most interesting and more importantly, problematic about this case is the fact that it's not that the court came up with a different test in order to get to their conclusion. What they did was take her plight being, I don't want to do this because I'm Christian. They took her as a protected class and they diminished the other protective class being sexual orientation. And for me, the issue with that is you basically put two protected classes against each other.

Further, what you did was put one above the other. So what does that mean when you talk about a protected class being a religious class where traditionally in the Supreme Court is under strict scrutiny, meaning what is the state interest for protecting this class, right, as far as religion is concerned? Why are we really protecting? What is the state interest? What does the state have to do with whatever is going on on the basis of religion, right? They did not use that type of scrutiny with the sexual orientation one, which is technically speaking a little lower, but they didn't regard that test at all. So my issue with this is if you have another tier for protected classes outside of what has already been established, what exactly does that mean?

And that's what I mean by the slippery slope. So you're telling me that the religious class trumps the class of race. You're telling me that the religious class under strict scrutiny trumps the strict scrutiny class of national origin, trumps sex, trumps age, trumps alienage, trumps migration, all the things that are under that strict scrutiny class. And that's how we are going to get the Jim Crow 2.0, because you're saying that race, low key, isn't under strict scrutiny anymore because you don't regard it. And that is the issue here. That's what I am most concerned about because of that slippery slope. And Abdul, you know, on that point, we saw this in the affirmative action case where you take, you know, if it's a white person suing to

overturn the affirmative action, more than likely have a different outcome than recruiting Asian students, or sorry, Reverend Geary. When you're talking about the case where you have Asian students versus black students, here you have a Christian woman versus the LGBTQ community. Have they effectively gotten rid of the concept of strict scrutiny at the Supreme Court? Well, to Kelly's point, the First Amendment argument, because there's a commercial issue framing this First Amendment expression, it actually took them out of the strict scrutiny category and made it more of an intermediate scrutiny. So the standard was lower.

They tortured themselves to kind of find a way not to have to apply strict scrutiny because they were trying to get to a particular outcome. What do you do? To Kelly's point, you create this hierarchy of competing interests that ultimately the outcome, all it does is further insulates those who really have the most feeling like they've got the most at stake. And that's really white political interest. So you can have an Asian student complaining about black students getting one or two slots when they got a far higher number of admission slots at Harvard and UNC. But in the end, because we play this game like somehow or other, this preferred lower group has now been harmed. What we've actually done is given this ruse that what we were really doing, what we were really after was trying to protect whiteness without saying we were trying to protect whiteness. And it's a particular kind of whiteness. It's a conservative religious whiteness that leans towards this homophobic, xenophobic expression that allows now this notion that if you got more guns, more fear, more fear, and more crazy running around,

you call them Trojan horses. These jokers are walking around. They're not on wheels and they know horses. These are upright walking two- legged folks who are losing their absolute mind. And they ain't trying to make know what you call them. They ain't trying to make no nigger cakes, nigger pies, none of that, because they really trying to get rid of anything that they would categorize as a nigga. And so this was, and then add to it, you've got Clarence Thomas on one having to be schooled by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on the other side, waving that mama finger at him, and he ain't getting it.

So when you have the overseer loyalist on the overall plantation of the bench, nine justices, he then becomes the apologist for the white racist lean plantation of the bench, nine justices, he then becomes the apologist for the white racist leanings of the court because now he's the one, he ain't even in blackface, he just black, doing everything that he wants them to do, cooning, shucking and jiving, because at the end of the day,

this never was about protecting Asian students or protecting some white woman with conservative religion. It's to protect her white husband who's at home worried about whether or not his seed is going to be extinct because of the browning of America. And what Dr. Francis Cress Wilson always told us, it was the irrational fear of white genetic annihilation. That's what this is all about. That's what it's always been about. And it ain't changing no time soon. You know, I think this is why we have to watch so closely this court, because we're moving towards that singularity. The 2040s, when white people will be just one of many minority groups in the country, they will no longer be a majority. And as we've seen in nature, we get to singularity, things start speeding up,

things start compressing, and we see them clawing to power. And that's what this Supreme Court is doing right now. Thank you so much, Reverend Gary. We're going to be back after the break. You're watching Roland Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. that we have to have we're often afraid of it and don't like to talk about it that's right we're talking about our relationship with money and here's the thing our relationship with money oftentimes determines whether we have it or not the truth is you cannot change what you will not acknowledge balancing your relationship with your pocketbook that's next on a balanced life with me dr jackie here at blackstar network on the next get wealthy with me

deborah owens america's wealth coach i'm sure you've heard that saying that the only thing guaranteed is death and taxes the truth is that the wealthy get wealthier by understanding tax strategy. And that's exactly the conversation that we're going to have on the next Get Wealthy, where you're going to learn wealth hacks that help you turn your wages into wealth. Taxes is one of the largest expenses you ever have. You really got to know how to manage that thing and get that under control so that you can do well. That's right here on Get Wealthy, only on Blackstar Network.

Hi, I'm Joe Marie Payton, voice of Sugar Mama on Disney's Louder and Prouder Disney+. And I'm with Roland Martin on Unfiltered. The Supreme Court, in more crazy news, says it will consider whether a 30-year-old federal law prohibiting people under domestic violence restraining orders aren't allowed to possess firearms. That seems like something that you probably shouldn't do. If you beat women, you probably should not have a gun. But the case is brought by a Texas man indicted by a federal grand jury

violating 1994 law prohibiting gun ownership by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order. Zachary Rahimi was under a federal restraining order in February 2020 for threatening a woman with a gun. He was also involved in five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021. Rahimi attempted to dismiss the indictment against him, arguing it violated the Second Amendment. A federal district court denied his motion, noting that the federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of the firearms law in 2020. Rahimi pled guilty and was sentenced to 73 months in prison but appealed to the United States appeals court for the Fifth Circuit. After an additional review, the Fifth Circuit reversed

the decision saying the 1994 gun restriction for people was subject to domestic violence restraining orders violated the Second Amendment as the government failed to meet the burden of showing that the law is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation, the justices will hear the arguments in its next term, which begins in October. The reason this is important is we saw from the Heller decision a couple of years ago that they established the Second Amendment as being an individual right even though the second amendment says a well-regulated militia the letter starts with the words to it a well-regulated militia the supreme court said well that doesn't count

the only part of that amendment that counts is where it says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed so if it says shall not be infringed what So if it says shall not be infringed, what this case is arguing, another one of the Trojan horse cases, is arguing that no gun law is constitutional. Doesn't matter if you are a woman beater, doesn't matter if you're a convicted felon, doesn't matter if you're a terrorist, that any gun law in America could be invalidated. So Michael, I'm going to start with you on this. What do you think will be the consequences of the Supreme Court effectively invalidating every gun regulation if they rule in the affirmative on this case? This is, Robert, this is dangerous. This is going down another slippery slope.

We're already dealing with, what, 430 million guns in the country and a population of like 330 million people. You're going to have an increase in deaths from domestic violence. You're going to have an increase in women being killed, African-American women being killed, if the Supreme Court sides with this man here. So once again, this is why we have to be vigilant and really understand the law. And I would argue, I know a lot of people may say, oh, well, this is the white man's law, things like this. They may make those arguments.

If they use the law to trap us, and I would argue we need to understand the law better than they understand the law so we can disarm them with that weapon and try to exercise political, utilize political self-defense and use the law to our advantage. But once again, this is dangerous. And this is why elections have consequences. OK, not just the president, but also the U.S. Supreme Court as well. I mean, U.S. Senate, also the U.S. Senate that confirms federal judges, confirms Supreme Court justices. So we need to watch this also. And Matt, on that point, if under the Heller decision, they rule that the right to keep and bear arms is indeed an individualized right, and then you lay on top of that this, which may invalidate the regulation saying that,

well, if you have a restraining order against you for beating women, that you shouldn't be allowed to have a gun. Will any gun law be able to stand constitutional scrutiny, or will we have nationwide constitutional carry? Well, you know, I don't want to be glib, Robert, but I think the ones that they think should be able to stand will be able to stand, and the ones they want to invalidate because it's politically expedient, they will invalidate. And, look, I'm currently a criminal defense attorney, among other things, and I've been a prosecutor. And this is a huge issue in Texas, in South Texas, where I live especially. And what I think is actually interesting about this issue is that it implicates something far larger than just gun rights. One of the issues that criminal defense attorneys always crow against is the idea that if you're under accusation for a crime, but you haven't been

convicted yet, that none of your liberties should be curtailed in any way, right? So the idea that you shouldn't be able to wear a GPS monitor or do any other number of things because you haven't actually been convicted. But obviously, from the public safety standpoint, we allow bond conditions to be applied because we want to make sure people are safe when somebody is under accusation of a serious crime, particularly when they're under accusation of a protective order. Because the way a protective order works in Texas is the judge has to find that there's credible evidence of domestic violence having occurred or that it will occur in the future, right? So what that means here is the idea that the rest of the bond conditions will be okay, but the one that implicates your Second Amendment right is going to be removed is an absurd outcome. The reality is you should not be able to have a gun if you're on bond conditions or you're under protective order for a serious crime.

And I think we as a society just have to say there are some places where we draw the line. One such being, if you're an accused woman beater, you don't get a gun, right? If you beat the case, then maybe we restore your gun rights down the road. But to cherry pick this as one of the things that is okay to remove as a curtailing of your rights when you're under accusation or under a protective order is really kind of absurd. And I do think you're right. I think it's going to mushroom to the other gun laws. And that's, again, why we need really meaningful legislative options. Because, look, I live two and a half hours from Uvalde. And what, a year ago, 19 kids were killed in a school. And we have no meaningful gun control laws passed since then, right? But now we're talking about whether a guy

who has a protective order should be able to have a gun while he's under accusation of having harmed somebody. I mean, it's getting absurd. We as a people have to demand that our representative government actually represents us and passes laws that matter, that keep us safe. And I think the Supreme Court ruling affirmatively in this case could be ruinous to public safety, to Michael's earlier points. Kelly, can you talk about how dangerous this could be to women? A lot, you know, and I don't mean to be flippant about it, but it is so scary to me that this is not being that this is not only being presented to the Supreme Court, but ironically, even those being presented to the Supreme Court, which is a serious issue, that in itself implies that it's not that big of a deal for a felon to have a gun, right? And this kind of actually goes back to the last case, my point being regarding protected classes under constitutional law. With this case, my point being regarding protected classes under constitutional law. With this case,

it's almost as if the Supreme Court is saying that not necessarily felons, but gun owners are a protected class, and anything impacting gun owners should be held under strict scrutiny by constitutional law. That's crazy. That's insane. Because it's not something that you identify with. It is not something that is innate within you to have a gun. It's not your skin color. It's not your gender. It's not your orientation. It's your right, and I with that. I don't understand. Like, that is blowing my mind right now. And it is, I'm going to have to wait until it actually gets heard in order to parse it out and really see what the arguments are going to be here. Because if they go that route, that's crazy to me. Well, as we've seen, this court in the last two days has done more crazy than many people can think of. And I think the danger that this court has created is this idea that the institutional legitimacy of the court is now so far in question.

It's difficult to see how they can regain that. What is standing? Who knows? It's whatever they feel like it being on any given day. What did the Second Amendment mean? It says one thing, but hey, it's whatever we feel like it says. Remember when they talked about Scalia being a textualist, going back and doing a searching inquiry into what the founders believed and what the drafters said?

We know exactly what the drafters of the 14th Amendment said because they were drafting to remedy slavery, to deal with discrimination against African Americans. July the 9th, 1868, they passed the 14th Amendment to help black people after slavery. And this court said, well, that same 14th Amendment can be used to keep black people out of college. So this court is not bound by logic. They're not bound by law. They're not bound by stare decisis. The courts had decided 25,500 cases in this history

has only overturned that 250 times. The Dred Scott decision hasn't even been overturned by the Supreme Court. But in the last two years, they've reversed themselves on Roe and they've reversed themselves on affirmative action. So this court literally is legislating from the bench. And if they want to be legislators, then get off the bench, have your sugar daddy, Harlan Crow, whoever else it is, and then run for Senate. But otherwise, be a judge. Or we'll be back after the break. Sorry. You're watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered.

I've been on radio since 7 a.m. this morning, so I ain't slept in days. You're watching Rolling Martin Unfiltered, streaming live on the Black Star Network. We'll be back after the break. Up next on The Frequency with me, Dee Barnes. She's known as the Angela Davis of hip hop. Monet Smith, better known as Medusa, the gangster goddess, the undisputed queen of West Coast underground hip hop. Pop locking is really what indoctrinated me. 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.

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It was a moment of release. We're going to be getting into her career, knowing her whole story, and breaking down all the elements of hip hop. This week on The Frequency, only on the Black Star Network. Next on The Black Table, with me greg carl succession we're hearing that word pop up a lot these days as our country continues to fracture and divide but did you know that that idea essentially a breaking up of the usa has been part of the public debate since long before and long after the Civil War, right up to today. On our next show, you'll meet Richard Crichton, the author of this book,

who says breaking up this great experiment called America might not be such a bad thing. That's on the next Black Table, right here on the Black Star Network. Hi, my name is Brady Ricks. I'm from Houston, Texas. My name is Sharon Williams. I'm from Dallas, Texas. Right now, I'm rolling with Roland Martin. Unfiltered, uncut, unplugged, and undamned believable.

You hear me? So I've been doing a lot of international media lately. Right before I was headed over here to the studio, I was on the news over in Lebanon. Earlier today, I was on the news in Dubai talking about the affirmative action cases here in the States. And there's a case going on in Europe right now that really got my attention. Because in Europe right now, in France, there was a young man who was shot by police. And this young individual, he's on screen right there, he was shot and killed by police. And France is currently undergoing their own George Floyd moment. Throughout this week,

we've seen this snowball into riots, into destruction. Buildings have been burned. President Macron has not been able to establish order. And the reason being because this young man is part of the massive immigrant community there in France who have been consistently alienated, who have been consistently neglected, who have been consistently treated the same way there as we treat migrants here in the United States of America. One of the issues that we have with the Pan-African community is understanding that our problems here in the United States of America are not unique to us. They're very much part of an international wave of anti-blackness.

If you look at what's going on in Italy with Giorgia Maloney, the prime minister there, becoming a neo-fascist, saying she misses the days of Mussolini, and even saying that they specifically do not want African immigrants coming to France or coming to Italy. They'd rather have immigrants from Venezuela because they share Latin roots. You can look at Viktor Orban in Hungary. You can look at Lukashenko in Belarus. All of these countries are dealing with these issues of African migrants who are coming to Europe, not because they just love Europe, but because Europe has raped and pillaged Africa for the last five centuries. You stole all the food. You stole all the luxury items.

You stole the people and enslaved them. So these folks are just coming to where the resources are at. We just saw the migrant boat in Greece capsized while the news media was searching after that damn submarine. We're talking about 700 people were in that boat that capsized. So these riots in France are really a buildup of that anger, of that feeling of displacement these individuals have. The same way that George Floyd wasn't just about George Floyd in America, these riots in France aren't just about this individualized shooting. And I think it's important for us to understand that we want the whole world to focus in on our issues here and to unite against white supremacy here.

We have to be equal partners in ensuring that we're fighting against white supremacy international. Because if you're looking at everything going on from the Conservative Party in Great Britain instituting voter suppression that they learned from the GOP here in America to anti-immigrant forces in Eastern Europe building fences and barbed wire to keep African and Middle Eastern migrants out. migrants prior to the invasion or what's going on in Israel where black African Jewish migrants from Ethiopia are treated as second-class citizens in their own homeland. And we're not going to pay attention to the international white supremacist community and their fight for anti-blackness. No one is going to pay attention to what we're doing here in America. Michael, I want to bring you in on this. What do you think it will take to re-establish order in France? Or do you think it will take to reestablish order in France? Or do you think Macron is actually up to the job? Well, you know, I've been following this some. Of course, I've been following the Supreme Court decisions more.

But I have been seeing stories about this. And this is—you've had the third day, third night of these riots, rebellions taking place. I'm not exactly sure what it's going to take, but it's going to—France is a colonizing country, whether we talk about Haiti, whether we talk about African nations. So I think it's going to take some real truth-telling, some real honesty about the oppression of African migrants and migrants from other countries coming into France. So I've been reading about this story here. It's a 17-year-old young man, if I remember correctly, they just give his first name, N-A-H-E-L. And this is,

I think these protests may spread around the world once again, like the George Floyd protests spread around the world as well. So we could have another wave of, you know, social justice movements also. So we'll have to see what happens here. But there's going to have to be some real truth telling that takes place in France. And Matt, to that same point, you know, part of the issue that I think people have is the fact that we very rarely see anything come out of these protests. That here in America, we have the George Floyd summer in 2020. We are yet to pass federal legislation to address police brutality here in the United States of America. We were able to pass $1.5 trillion for the Inflation Reduction Act, $1.7 trillion for the Infrastructure Bill, $3.5 trillion for the Omnibus Spending Bill. We were able to pass the American Rescue Plan. We were able to pass $4 trillion in the debt

ceiling deal. We were able to pass the Stop Asian Hate Bill. We were able to pass the Respect for Merit Act. All of these in a, quote unquote, divided House of Representatives, a divided Congress. You had Marjorie Taylor Greene supporting the president on the debt ceiling deal, but we've seen absolutely no movement, absolutely no action on police reform in the United States of America. And similarly in France, we've seen absolutely no movement on actually addressing the issues of migrants there. What do you think has to happen to move these white supremacist power structures both here and abroad towards actual action? What did Pac say? They don't give a fuck about us, right?

I mean, that's what did Macron say? He said, I don't believe there's systemic racism in policing. And I think to get right down to it is the idea of truth-telling, which I think you just mentioned, in terms of how to remedy this issue in France. They have to be truthful about, one, the disparity that is experienced by migrants and immigrants there in France. And also, they have to remember this. France is the perfect example of how they have to make the smart move to remedy this, because first, if you're looking at the French Revolution, it really wasn't that long ago that, right,

the entire country was reshaped because of the revolution. But just a couple months ago, the French people essentially revolted over the lowering of the retirement age, right? So France is a place where the people really take it to the government if they're not happy about what's going on. And I say that to say, I think Macron and his people would be smart here to get together with the people who have the biggest megaphones and who have the ability to move the ball to say, what do you need meaningfully? Because I don't think France is a place where they'll let it die. And I think it is obviously an outcropping of what we're seeing here. And, you know, to Michael's point about this spreading across the world, I know the George Floyd protests did.

And I don't know that Young Nahal will necessarily have the same mushroom effect because George Floyd was so recent, relatively speaking. But outside of that, France would really be remiss if they didn't take this as an opportunity to meaningfully listen to its citizens, because if not, I think there's a good chance that there will be more. I mean, I think there's a good chance that there will be more. I mean, I think 900 people have already been arrested. There will be violence and there will be loss of property and loss of, hopefully not, but loss of life.

So I think what they need to do is listen to the people there to say, how do we improve the conditions? Because the same conditions are at play there that are at play here. People saying, we are tired of being the bottom cast. In fact, one of the quotes that I read was someone who said, you know, we are not scum. We don't like violence either. We are French, just like you. And until they give them that inclusion and that route there too, then you're going to

have this continued issue. Kelly, we've got about 30 seconds. What do you think has to happen to get black folks here to care about what's happening to black folks everywhere else in the world? That's a loaded question for 30 seconds, for sure. It's all about the world's problems in 30 seconds. Right. It would start with empathy, for sure. And I think Michael really brings this home every time we are on Roland, and it's to do your research, to read, and to expand your mindset regarding these issues, right? Because we are all the same to the like, I think that as Americans, we need to understand that they are under a very similar system, being that they are

like the tenet of French culture is to be colorblind, right? You know, city of love and all these things. And, you know, we don't have racism here because everybody's the same. And that's obviously not the case. And we have that same problem here. So the more that we're able to empathize and actually see each other as brothers and sisters in the same fight, I think we can have a more global discussion about white supremacy and about racism across the globe. Absolutely. Well, and Michael, I know you wanted to talk about your class. I also want to have you on my radio show Sunday to talk about it also. But do you have a couple seconds on that? Oh, I'll come on your show.

All right, everybody. This Saturday, July 1st, 2023, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Join me for my new 12-week online course, Ancient Kemet, the Moors, and the Maafa, Understanding the Transatlantic Slave Trade, What They Didn't Teach You in School. Visit my website, AfricanHors, and the Maafa, understanding the transatlantic slave trade, what they didn't teach you in school, visit my website, africanhistorynetwork.com africanhistorynetwork.com

Register there. We deal with thousands of years of history and what leads up to the transatlantic slave trade taking place. It's a very visual presentation. You will never see history the same way again. All right. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you so much, Michael. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you so much, Kelly. Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you so much, Kelly.

Gotta thank our guest, Reverend S. Todd Geary. Also, Abdul D'Souza. Also, Melanie Campbell. Thanks, Roland, for letting me sit into his chair while he's having a good time at Essence Fest. You know, could have invited me. Could have hollered at your boy. But thank you so much. Follow me on social media at Robert Patilla. And as I say

in every show, in the words of Gil Scott Heron, no matter the consequences or fears to grip your senses, you got to hold on to your dreams. Hold on to your dreams, America. This is an I heart podcast.