#RolandMartinUnfiltered - SCOTUS Weighs Voting Rights Case. ObamaCare Anniversary. Memphis Task Force Under Fire

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

3.23.2026 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: SCOTUS Weighs Voting Rights Case. ObamaCare Anniversary. Memphis Task Force Under Fire The Supreme Court heard arguments that could upend how millions of Americans vote, putting mail-in ballots and voter access at risk just months before the midterm elections. The Nation's Justice Correspondent, Elie Mystal, is here to breakdown today's hearing.  Sixteen years ago today, Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, giving millions of Americans access to health care for the first time. Today, Democrat Leaders are reminding the country why Americans and those protections should take first priority over the Iran War.  Donald "The Con" Trump was in Memphis today, praising a task force he sent into the city to reduce crime, although protesters and Tennessee leaders say the Safe Task Force has hurt thousands and terrorized their communities for months. A Tennessee Pastor and President of the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action & Hope will explain how the city's Safe Task Force is impacting the community.  And in tonight's Book Club, Jamie Holmes' book, "The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and  America's Forgotten War which recounts the events surrounding the 1835 attack on the Seminoles in pre-statehood Florida, which was part of the broader Seminole Wars between the United States and the Indigenous tribes of Florida. 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.

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Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Like, CNN. Republicans in Mississippi are actually going against Republican National Committee and a Supreme Court case when it comes to mail-in balloting. The real issue is how many days after election day can ballot still be counted? Looks like the conservatives can very will say five days. It's too long. We'll talk about that. Also, 16 years ago on this day, the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. Today, Democratic leaders are fighting that issue, still fighting that issue while a country is involved in a war with Iran. Also, in Memphis, the twice-impeach,

convicted a felon in chief. Donald Kahn Trump went to Memphis, talked about a crime, but he ends up just lying about all sorts of things in this long-winding speech. In tonight's book club, we'll talk to the author of the book, The Free and the Dead, the untold story of the Black Seminole Chief, the indigenous rebel, and America's forgotten war. It's a conversation, folks, you do not want to miss, and it is a fascinating history. It is time to bring the funk. I'm Roland Unfiltered on the Black Star. network let's go. The Supreme Court today heard oral applications when it comes to elections in

Mississippi. Ellen Balding, ballots to still be counted when it is postmarked on election day. Well, Donald Trump, of course, hates that and then that's been a lawsuit. The Republican National Committee is actually going against Republicans in Mississippi on this particular issue. And so Trump hates mail-in voting, even though he's voted by mail any number of times, because he says that's the reason why he lost in 2020. liar. But so, but the, of these conservative-leaning justices who are based upon their questions, it sounds like they could be restricting in terms of ballots being counted that have already been postmarked. This is a portion of today's oral arguments. And trust me, what this could do,

this could impact a significant number of states where mail-in voting is allowed. Throughout your brief, you say that the federal statute does require voters to submit their ballots to election officials on election day. Must be cast by election day, and that the election day is the day to conclude and consummate the election through a final selection. You agree with all those statements in your brief? Yes. Okay. But at the same time, you say, actually, it doesn't have to be submitted to an election official. It just has to be submitted to a common carrier.

here. And there's a contradiction there that I just want you to first address and then I'll give you my hypothetical. Very good, Your Honor. I think when you put something in the mail, you're not, I think... That's not an election official. FedEx isn't an election official. Right, but the recipient certainly is the person who you're submitting it in the mail too. I mean, that is the recipient. Sure, of course. And right, Your Honor. I think... You submit it to FedEx and they deliver it to the election official, but But you say it has to be submitted to an election official throughout your brief, but then you say a common carrier is okay. And those two things don't add up.

Well, I think the difference is, say, you know, sending it to your brother versus sending it to the registrar. Well, we already dealt with that. The brother turns out to be okay so long as the state says so. I think that's okay on their view, Your Honor. It's also okay. It's a little more guarded on that. I think you already answered that one. So here's the hypo. Let's say you have a state where a large portion of the electorate, mails in their

their ballots on or close to election day, not far-fetched. Many states are like that. Then the day after the election, a story breaks that one of the lead candidates engaged in an inappropriate sexual escapade, or perhaps is concluding with a foreign power. Again, not far-fetched, I think. And the competing candidate immediately goes on the airwaves and urges voters to recall their ballots and to tell the common carriers not to deliver them. And many common carriers will do that with anything that you've sent through the FedEx. You just call them up and say, I want it back. In that hypothetical, did the election happen on election day?

Oh, by the way, it swings the election. So the election did happen on election day, Justice Gorsuch. As we've explained, our ballot does not allow using mail recall anything like that. When somebody submits their ballot by mail— Just first deal with my hypothetical and then I'll deal with your statute. Okay, the election happened on election day. Even though it changes the outcome. I mean, I think...

Yes, it has to be your answer, doesn't it? I mean, yes, Your Honor, I'm just... I want to be clear about the... All right. We are not agreeing that the outcome can be properly changed in that circumstance. Well, hold on. It did in my hypothetical... You can't change my hypothetical counsel.

And I'm just saying it's unlawful, Your Honor. I don't mean to disparage your hypothetical. I'm just saying that it's an unlawful circumstance because we don't allow ballot. Oh, in Mississippi. Okay, but that hypothetical could happen in another state, right? I think if the state is not providing that on mailing, there's a final choice made, I think that would be a problem with that law under the better statute.

Now, you say your statute, you're different. You admit my hypothetical could happen, but you say it can't happen in Mississippi because recall's not allowed. I couldn't find that anywhere in Mississippi law. In fact, what I did see was a statute that says, that you that the Secretary of State can promulgate rules and regulations. That's 2315, 6373. And then I went and looked at the regulations.

And Rule 2.1 says that an absentee ballot is the final vote of a voter when the ballot is marked accepted. That doesn't preclude recall. In fact, that allows recall. I respectfully don't agree with that, Your Honor. I mean, what... Where does it say recalls don't? not permitted. I couldn't find that anywhere in your statutes or the rule. And I think by providing the ballots are final when cast under our statute. No, it doesn't. It says they're final when

marked accepted. That's the regulation, Your Honor. Yeah. It's your, and it's your regulation. And it allows recall. It does, I respectfully, it does not allow recall, Your Honor. The ballot is final. Would you read to me the provision that precludes it? It's subsection three of the statute that my friends have found. I read you said subsection three that says that Secretary of State can make rules. And then I read you the rule. that the ballots are final when cast. The key thing, the ballots are final when cast. It says, no,

votes promulgated by an absentee ballot, that the absentee ballot person's absentee vote is final. You can make rules about when they're final. And what the rule says is it is final, when marked, accepted. And that's, I mean, it's speaking to a processing rule about

what to do when somebody's, you know, when somebody's ballot potentially doesn't arrive on time, they submit an affidavit ballot. But I would come back to the text of the statute, Your Honor. Okay, so Republicans and their hypotheticals. Joining us right now is Ellie Mistel. He is the Justice Correspondent for the nation. Glad to have him here.

So, okay, Ellie. These people really drive me crazy with these BS hypotheticals when we have real examples of voting. And what was interesting here is that this is the Mississippi state law. This is the red state. and listening to these oral arguments, these folks sound like they're saying, oh, well, man, we could sit here and just,

hey, if it's not in by Election Day, this postmark stuff doesn't impact us. Well, you've got military, you've got veterans that vote. You've got other people that vote. This could have serious implications for voting in November and in the future. Yeah, and not just for ballots postmarked by election day that were received after.

this is going after all of mail-in voting and potentially all of early voting, and I will explain how. First of all, I'm glad that you started off with that ridiculous, stupid, nonsensical hypothetical that Neil Gorsuch laid out, because as he said, my hypothetical is not far fresh. It could happen. No deal. Your hypothetical is provably dumb. It has never ever happened and never will happen. Neil Gorsuch is basically saying, Mississippi, what's to stop a dog from voting? And the guy's like, well, dogs don't vote. It's like, oh, point to me in the statute where it says a dog can't vote. And the guy's like, well, we didn't write that down because dogs don't vote, you idiot.

Like, that's what he should have said. But as you're saying, Roland, that this is a fight between Republicans and Republicans, let's never forget that the Mississippi Solicitor General, who was terrible today, was a terrible arguer to it today, his heart's not really in this case. The Mississippi Republicans basically agree with the Republican National Committee. This law at issue was adopted by Mississippi during COVID-19. Mississippi hasn't gotten around to repealing that law that allows for ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if they are received within five days.

Mississippi Republicans don't actually agree with that law anymore, and part of the reason why it's still on the books is so the Supreme Court can knock down the law, not just Mississippi, but in the over 30 other states where it happens by basically punching a straw man that is the state of Mississippi who doesn't really want to make this argument. So that's the setup to what's going on here. The way that it impacts not just ballots postmarked by Election Day, but mail-in voting in general, is that listen to what the argument really is about here. It's about whether or not election day, right, the single day, which is mandated,

by federal statute from an 1845 federal statute that sets election day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. What they're actually arguing is that election day is the only day that... Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk Podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking

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Go ahead. The Election Day is the only day that votes can be cast or received, right? And that is, that goes to the heart of early voting. If Election Day, as federally mandated is the only day that votes can be cast and received, then that means that

any votes that are cast prior to election day are just as invalid as any votes that are received after election day. And that is the crux of the argument that the Republicans are really making, right? So much so that even John Roberts was like, whoa, seems like you're coming after early voting. And Paul Clement, who your listeners will know is like the super Republican lawyer that does all of their dirty work. Paul Clement, representing the Republican National Committee, laughed and said, well, I mean, maybe I'll challenge early voting in the future. But right now, I'm only challenging ballots received after election day. And then they all had a big laugh about it.

So it's clear that if the Trump administration wins this case, the thing they're coming for in now, is early voting writ large. And even Roberts was like, that seems too far for me. Even Amy Coney-Barrant was like, well, what about provisional ballots? And again, it was a big chuckle amongst the Republican lawyers. But it's clear that they're coming after all voting that doesn't take place in person on election day proper. That's the scope of this case. And the Republicans are having a laugh about how that's what they're going to come after next.

Well, and again, what this is all about is Donald Trump, flat out, wants to target everything and all, all voting. Because, again, we've said this. Paul Weirich, co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, the moral majority, he said it publicly, 1981. We do not want everyone voting. That is literally the strategy of the entire Republican Party. Right. As I said, Rowan, this law comes from 1840. And let me just bring you back to 1845.

I know we don't like to do that so much. But let's just bring people back to 1845. Here's the thing about voting in 1845. There was no paper ballot. None. People didn't use paper ballots in 1845. They generally shouted into the air, yay or nay, right? I vote for James Buchanan, and that's how they did it.

Right? So back in 1845, the difference between casting your vote and having that vote received and having that vote counted was nearly instantaneous. It all happened literally at the same time. Now, obviously, since 1845, we've come up with some innovations. Paper, right? Paper ballots, secret ballots, voting machines, mail-in voting, right? All of these other strategies to vote. And what Congress has done has let, and I'm going to use a phrase here, the states decide how the election should be administered, right? We are talking about an issue of states' rights, right? So, Mississippi can have one rule for administering its election, and New York can have another, and Georgia can have another, and Oregon can have yet their own, right? As long as we are all—as long as we understand that election day is the last day.

to vote, then states can figure out for themselves what the voting period is, how votes are going to be counted, when those votes have to show up, you know, at the polls, right? As you'll well know, Rowan, some places, their polling places close at 7 p.m., other places close at 9, some places closes at 10. Nobody closes at midnight, even though technically midnight is the end of election day, right? So why is that? Because we let the states decide. But, and that was an uncontroversial opinion, until Donald Trump lost. And Donald Trump threw a temper tantrum, and Donald Trump had to launch a coup because he couldn't handle losing like an adult. And all of this is happening.

All this literal federal case is happening because Donald Trump is a baby man who needs his bottle and needs to be constantly fetid and told, oh, no, actually, Mr. Trump, you totally won that election that you got your ass kicked in. Like, that's why all of this is actually happening, because the fundamental law at issue has not been challenged and has not been a problem for over 150 years. So your option at this point is to think that either is to accept the Republican argument, you have to believe that the states have been doing it wrong, and by it, I mean, elections, that the states have been doing elections wrong and, and unconstitutionally for over 150 years,

and the first person to figure that out was Donald Trump. Like, that's literally the Republican argument. And if you believe that argument, if you think that Donald Trump is the first person to figure out that the states have been violating the Constitution for 150 years, there's nothing I can say to help you. Like, you are too far gone. You are too far beyond the pale that any rational thought can still help you.

Well, they'll explain to people places like Oregon, okay? Their entire election is conducted by mail. And also, when you're doing that, also explain to people why that recent Supreme Court decision regarding how you can't sue the post office also impacts this. Yeah, so first of all, Oregon is a great example of a state that does all voting by mail, and there are no problems. There is no fraud. voting by mail and for many people in many ways is just easier. You fill out your ballot. It's a secret ballot.

You put it in the mail and boom, you're done, right? The way of the post office is involved here, and this is you also heard in the clip of Neil Gorsuch that you played, the question is whether or not the post office is a government official capable of receiving votes, right? We're capable of receiving ballots. In Oregon, they say yes. Neil Gorsuch and the other, you know, some of his other Republicans are saying, no, no, no, you can't trust the post office. Which is interesting because just a couple of weeks ago, Neil Gorsuch and the rest of the Republicans said that the post office could intentionally not deliver mail if the post office doesn't feel like delivering your mail and that there's nothing you can do to sue the post office to force them to deliver your mail or hold you accountable.

This is a case that arose out of Texas. A black landlady in the suburbs of Dallas was not getting her mail, not getting her rent checks, not getting her notifications through the mail because some Yahoo's in the post office in Dallas just decided they didn't want to give the black lady or mail. They just literally two years just decided they weren't going to give her mail. And Neil Gorsuch and the rest of the Republicans said, no, no, no, that's fine. Post office does not have to deliver mail to black people, right? That's just okay, apparently, according to Neil Gorsuch. And so if it's okay for the post office to not deliver your mail, it's also okay for the post office to not deliver the mail to a black landlady, then it's also okay for the post

office to not deliver mail to the Elections Bureau or to the State Board of Elections, right? It's the same kind of thought process because according to Neil Gorsuch, the post office is not a reliable government official for the sensitive documents. But you know what's interesting rolling? We're here in late March. We're coming up on tax day, right? And there are a whole lot of people who are going to mail in their tax returns by April 15th.

And as long as it's postmarked by April 15th, those tax returns are going to count. The IRS is not going to say, oh, well, you know, I didn't receive your taxes by, it was postmarked by April 15th, but I actually didn't receive it so a week later. So you know what? Your taxes don't count. Nobody's going to say that. It is obvious to everybody that if you mail your taxes in by April 15th, your taxes were set before the tax deadline,

and you cannot be sued or held accountable for a late filing. So the post office is apparently okay to handle the tax budget of the United States of America, but it's not good enough to vote. That is the level of hypocrisy that the Supreme Court is running with today. Neil Gorsuch says, yes, yes, yes, yes, post office, fine for taxes, not fine for voting. Well, we see what is going on here today in Memphis. This is exactly what the twice impeached, criminally convicted felon in chief, Donald Trump actually had to say about mail-in voting. So I'm tying Homeland Security into voter identification.

with picture and proof of citizenship in order to vote. And those two items are the most important thing having to do with Homeland Security. So it should be part of the Homeland Security bill. And I'm requesting that the Republican senators do that immediately. You don't have to take a fast vote. Don't worry about Easter going home. In fact, make this one for Jesus, okay?

Make this one for Jesus. That's what I tell him. The sheer stupidity of this man, but people need to understand what is at play here, that there is a nationwide attack on voting by Republicans. These people, these white conservatives are scared to death. I need black people to understand that when we sit our asses at home, we are helping them. And all of this, folks, and I've been saying this now for 18 years. everything that we're talking about, Ellie, goes back to 2008. When the 2008 election was the first time in American history that black people voted at a higher percentage than white people.

Now, there are more white Americans than black people, but black people voted at a higher percentage in 2008 in the election of the nation's first black president and Republicans have been pissed off, since and they have been viciously attacking voting. They have been attacking the Voting Rights Act, even though that used to be passed bipartisan, damn near unanimous, but their whole deal is so they don't want black folks voting. They are attacking Latinos. They are claiming Democrats, oh, you want all these illegals in the country. They could convert to voters. What white,

what the Republican Party, what MAGA wants today, Elliot, they really only want white people voting in elections. And frankly, if they have their choice, they want to go back to the days when the legislative bodies picked United States senators and House representatives. Yeah, I think that, Roland, you're exactly right.

And I think that sometimes, I'll say similar things, and sometimes people act like I'm being hyperbolic or I'm being alarmist. No, this is the idea that black people got together enough voting power in association with Latino people, an association with white allies,

that the rising majority in this country got together enough political power to elect a black president is a nightmare for the white supremacists that they are still trying to wake up from, right? If you go back and look at the autopsies, the losing a party always is an autopsy after they lose an election,

if you go back to look at the 2008 and the 2012 autopsies, It told the Republicans very, very directly, you have to start appealing to black people, you have to start appealing to Latinos, or you're going to lose every national election going forward. And the white supremacist looked at Donald Trump and just like, well, what if we just didn't let those people vote? What if we just only had white people voting? Then we wouldn't have to reach out to nobody. And that is the plan that they had been prosecuting since 2012 through all three branches of government. You have Trump doing his Trump thing.

You've got Republicans in Congress, restricting voting rights, you've got gerrymandering bills, and you've got the Supreme Court cutting the Voting Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most important piece of legislation in American history. You've got Republicans cutting them out at the knees, starting in 2013, which Shelby County, which ended preclearance, and a whole bunch of other things that John Roberts have done. So the attack is coming from all three branches of government, whenever Republicans control those branches of government to prevent people from voting. And Roland, you're exactly right, that the only way to overcome that is with overwhelming

turnout, not just, you know, we show up and we do our jobs, with overwhelming turnout. You know, you look at the Texas gerrymander, the recent Texas gerrymander that is taking seats away from Democrats. It's one of the reasons why Crockett had to run against Tolarico in for Senate and Texas, because her seat was being chopped up, well, those maps are based on Latinos only slightly voting for Democrats, right? Like pretty much, say, you know,

60, 40 Democrats, maybe 63, 36 Democrats, right? If Latinos ever showed up and voted like black people do, if Latinos ever voted for Democrats, 80%, 82%, 91%, if Latino women ever voted for Democrats to the way black women do, those maps fail. They can't even win their gerrymander maps if Latinos overwhelmingly turn out

and overwhelmingly support the party that is not trying to take away their rights. So their numbers games, they only work if we stay home. They only work if we tune out. They only work if we're apathetic. And when I say we, I don't mean at some kind of, I don't mean like, oh,

the political class needs to get on the ball here. I mean, we need everybody. One of my favorite lines in all of media is Kermit the Frog, man, we need more dogs and bears and cats and chickens and things.

We need everybody in the game because that's how you stop these voter suppression tactics. And as long as they can exhaust some of us or make some of us feel like it doesn't matter or that we have no chance,

then they've done. all that work. And you're doing all their work for them, right? So that's the only way to stop this stuff, but make no mistake. This is a full court press dreamed up by the Heritage Foundation, by the Federal Society, and by the Republican National Committee, because it's the only way they can win elections. If everybody who is eligible to vote votes and everybody who votes has their vote counted, Republicans can't win nationally.

there are very few states even that Republicans can win if everybody who is eligible to vote votes. All right then. Ellie Mistle, we certainly appreciate it. And, of course, this will come down in June. We expect that. June. They were even talking at our argument. They're not going to do it until June.

Yeah. In the in the Clay decision that is going to devastate black political power, people need to understand what is at stake. We appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, wrong. Folks, my Pam. Thanks a lot, sir. My panel is Thelma Anderson, creator of the public opinion in court, author of Shut Up and Prosecute, joining us from Dallas Cameron Trimble, CEO, hip politics, media and former White House senior advisor from D.C.,

Dr. Avis Jones DeWeaver, author of How Exceptional Black Women Lead, unlocking the secrets to creating phenomenal success in career and in life. Co-founder of Erin Cheeb, Max, Blacks, Blacks Media, from National Harvard, have all three of you here. I'll start with you, Cameron. I have been saying for the longest, why it's critically important

for us to be turning out and voting at 70% of our capacity in how we need to be voting. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring. women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on Iheart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od and that's exactly what the show is about doing whatever it takes to be

thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Langoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before.

For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, Get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about and they are experts at everything. Here, the Nick Dick and Poll show, we're not afraid to make mistakes. What Googler did that I think was so unique.

Who see? He's the writer-director. Who do you think he is? I don't know. You mean it the president? You think Canada has a president. You think China has a president? Los Angeles Rousette.

God, I love that thing. I use it all the time. I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it at night. It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus. It was a good one. I like that saying. It is an actual Polish saying.

It is an actual poem. Better version of Play Stupid Games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time. I actually,

I thought it was. I got that wrong. Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman,

chairman and CEO of IHeart Media, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes

of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between. This seasonal math and magic,

I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cessario, financier and public health advocate, Mike Milken, take-to-interactive CEO Strauss Elning. If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business. Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and her own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.

Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it wise to the top. Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the Iheart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, leap with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all. cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018.

These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been saying to millennials in Gen Z, do you need to understand what's going on here? And, you know, I was in Birmingham yesterday for a friend's 70th birthday, and there was a brother

who was asking me about politics, asking about 2028 and all kind of stuff. and then he conceded that he didn't vote. And then when we started talking about the election, and I was like, well, why in the hell you give a damn about public policy when you don't even vote? And then we was talking, and he was like, well, you know, I just found Hillary Clinton to be, you know, just I just didn't support her, disingenuous.

He brought the hot sauce. And I said, you know Hillary Clinton for 20 years before that interview in the breakfast club talked about her love of hot sauce? And I'm like, she didn't say that, because of what Beyonce had in a song. And then I was like, so can you give me something else? And he really couldn't. I was like, just say you didn't want to vote for a woman.

I mean, it was, but the whole point here, he was a black man trying to ask me and get my opinion on 2028. I'm like, you don't even vote and was coming on everything else. And I keep telling black people, the other side, these white folks are not playing. Okay, they don't want us voting, period. Okay, they really, they really believe that the downfall of America began. with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act,

and the 1968 Civil Rights Act known as the Fair Housing Act. So I'm like, you need to understand what's going on here. And for every black person who is sitting their ass on the sideline yelling and screaming by who I'm not going to vote, I'm like, you don't understand.

They want to snatch everything from us. There's a meme that's been going pretty crazy these last, and it keeps getting reposted and reposted. If you don't do politics, politics is going to do you. And I think today, as we saw with the TSA lines going crazy, and we've seen so many other things going crazy, you'll see it'll be an example of ICE agents

or something that the government's getting wrong. It's like, for those that don't do politics, this is politics doing you. It's not that we can't, we have to keep meeting people where they are. and even with all that is going on, we still have to continue to convince people to vote that their votes will matter. But what I think the dangerous games,

the dangerous times that we're entering in, and what you just talked about in the last segment and the last discussion is that it is now being so pushed forward that what Trump is trying to take away our right to vote, trying to take away mail-in ballots, constantly casting more and more doubt upon the process that I think now it's becoming almost like a psychological thing where now people have an example.

See, I can't vote. See, now my vote doesn't matter at all. My mailing vote, they're not going to count it anyways. But I had to stop getting mad at people who just didn't vote and didn't have something about politics. We just have to continue to push forward and get those folks on board. The other big issue, the other big issue. No, no, no, but we got, no, but no, no, no, but no, but you know, Cameron, Cameron.

But we got to call him out. And, and, Abis, we got to call him out and say, listen, your lack, your, your, Avis, the point here is we have to explain to people. Your lack of participation is how he won. You have to connect those dots. So when they say, well, you know, the war in Iraq, well, guess what, all the fools who said, Kamla was going to be the same as him? No fool. We wouldn't be in the war that we're in right now.

We wouldn't be having the issue of the airlines because, you know what, ice would not have been unleashed. So we need people to understand. Sitting your ass at home has consequences, Abis. And you wouldn't be paying, damn there, $4,000, exactly, $4 a gallon and gas because this fool got into office. There are so many other examples that we can give.

I agree. I still am mad, and proudly so, at the 90 million people who stood on the sidelines and didn't vote in this last election. And I'm particularly disappointed and mad with black folk that, keep singing the same tune about, well, my vote doesn't matter. I mean, just think logically, okay?

Just think logically. Take the specific people out of the equation in terms of who you are voting for. Just think logically. If your vote didn't matter, why are they going through all of these various different things in order to try to rob you of your vote? Just think about it. Think about how long it took for your parents and your grandparents, My parents.

I mean, it's not been that long. We've only been voting in this country for 60 years, y'all. Okay, I know we're recognizing the 250th anniversary of the nation this year, but black folk, all black folk, men and women, have only been voting in this country for 60 years. So let's just realize that fact, and all the blood that was spilled to make that happen. And you mean to tell me, you don't understand that between now and then, all the various different things that they've been doing,

including the Supreme Court case, including that atrocious Save Act, including this ridiculous attempt to latch on to Homeland Security, other provisions to make it harder for you to vote. You don't think that they would be doing all that because they can see that they can benefit when you are not voting? The fact that you can't logically put those two things together shows to me that there is a huge problem,

with critical thinking skills with millions of people in this country, and we need to do something about it, because that is ridiculous to me. Philo? It's very clear that with our current state of this country, the fundamentals of not only reading, but listening to understand what people are really saying, is critically low.

Because the fact that no one is paying attention to how a project, not only this is Project 2025, But this is white fear on display because you buy up all the media to force the silence and the education. You are changing how teachers can teach. You are regulating immigration to a level that is very criminal on the federal and state level. now we want to talk about the impacts of voting that started with the gerrymandering case back in 2013. You fast forward to now, you wonder, okay, well, why are the Republicans now figuring out like, oh, maybe this is a little too much. It's a little too much because they understand what our ancestors did.

When they gave us raw blocks, they still showed up. When they told us that we couldn't vote, they still showed up. When they tried to assassinate, kill, do everything possible, we still showed up. So if you know that you're going to place this type of

delay for African Americans that are going to affect not only African Americans, but minorities, you have to look at your mediocre white relatives and think, are they going to actually both? Because they're lazy in real life. And the only reason why in this country actually operates is because it was, it operates on the backs of minorities and the backs of immigrants.

We, we know we ain't going to show up. So now they have figured out, okay, we have to actually expand it. And expanding it ends up at the Supreme Court where they have expand their rights and their power in order to put their plan in motion. And when I see people that look like me, have these types of emotions like, oh, well, I'm going to go vote. Well, you need to get the hell out of my face because until you vote, until you understand what our ancestors went through and everyone that fought so hard for us to have the privilege to have a voice, you cannot think that that is okay. I'm going to be

real, which I had an individual who tried to date me and voted for Trump. Hell no. Well, I'm telling right now. Folks need to understand public policy controls everything. It has an impact on what's public, has an impact on corporate America, and if you don't think these people are not playing for keeps, you have no

idea on what the hell is going on. All right, earlier I mentioned Donald Trump was in Memphis today. Of course, he's hit the National Guard there, and so he decided to bring his trifling behind to Tennessee. You've got a Republican governor there, you're Republicans who love what's going on there. And so, of

course, they're talking about issues of crime and everything else. And so he, of course, was praising the city's safe task force saying the city is close to crime-free status. That's a lie. Now, he, of course, ordered the Memphis Safe Task Force into action last year to address what he caused violent crime. He joined Tennessee political leaders and a handful of his administration at a roundtable to highlight the task force achievements. Nearly six months after the National Guard arrived in the city, according to the White House, the operations. have resulted in 7,240 arrests. The seizure of 1,180 firearms.

Charters from those arrests include 44 homicide cases, 798 controlled substance offenses, 93 sex offenses, 203 juvenile detained, and 44 known gang members taken into custody. City data shows overall crime in Memphis is down 43% from last year. According to Memphis, Safer Communities Dashboard, Downtown Crime has fallen more than 46%. ICE Director Todd Lyon said more than 600 migrants convicted of violent crimes were arrested, as part of the task force. Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson was among those at the no Trump, no ICE, no unsafe task force rally through the streets of Memphis.

Protesters say they want to send a message to Trump, the state and local leaders who were complicit and allowing the unsafe task force to terrorize the community for the past six months. Pastor Keith Caldwell is president of the Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope. He says the Memphis State Task Force has hurt thousands and is calling again for the end of the occupation. He joins us now. Pastor, glad to have you here. So when you hear these numbers,

when you hear Trump, Tennessee, and city leaders tout how crime is down, what do you see? What do you feel? Do residents saying the exact same thing? Yeah. Thank you for having me, Roland. No. What crime was already going down before the unsafe task force came.

And what we understand is this was never about safe. or crime for President Trump. This is about taking control of blue cities and particularly majority of black cities. And this is a prelude to really tyranny. We are a test city about how he can put his foot on the neck of a majority of black city. That's what is really happening.

And we also know he's here to divert attention away from the illegal war with Iran. Iran that he's waging. Gas has gone up a dollar in the past two weeks, and we're in a war that we see no way out of. So he goes back to these tropes of immigrants, and someone is coming to take something from you and the fears. And what we say is immigrants are not our enemies.

They are our neighbors. And we know folks are trying to get documentation, but no human being is illegal. So none of that is what we're talking. about. So when you hear that this action so-called brought crime down, what do you say? Because when I look at what has happened in Baltimore, when I look at what happened in Chicago, in Cleveland, it wasn't just about law enforcement that caused crime to go down. It was a multi-pronged strategy that caused crime to significantly drop in those other cities. Yeah. So we have a poverty problem. And we know

there's a direct correlation when there's a drop in poverty, that there's a drop in crime. And our mayor was actually working to help get crime to come down to begin with. And we can't police this problem away. This isn't about over-policing. This is about having affordable housing. This is about having reliable transportation for people to get to work and to get to school. This is about not racially profiling votes. I mean, there's so many layers that we've been working on.

This is about having our schools fully funded. So if they want to spend this kind of money, it could be to help our infrastructure and not over police us. And so folks are just not coming out. That's another reason. People are terrorized. There are immigrant folks who haven't gone to work. They won't send their children to schools or children aren't getting their education. This has gone on for 179 days, and we just wanted to stop.

Well, it is a perfect example. So when I think about this, when we talk about crime, and anybody who understands that they knows what the real deal is, as I sit here and look at this video, this Make America Safe Again, was the mayor on this panel? I'm looking at, I see a couple of African-Americans who were on here. Looks like he was.

And the thing here, so here, so here's my question. question. Okay, so he comes here. Did Memphis city officials say to Trump, hey, this is what we need to end crime. I'm sitting here watching guys, y'all should pull this White House video up in the control room. They've got these boxes on the desk, DEA evidence, they've got guns, all this stuff on stage. But did the mayor, the city officials say, hey, this is how much we need for housing? This is what we need to do with food insecurity. This is what we need for education. I mean, so did any of that happen at today's, at today's so-called Make America Safe Again session? So we were having our own protest rally at the same time. And I just want to

be careful, like our mayor, Mayor Paul Young, is really trying to appease the president and our governor, which are both Republican and MAGA. And what we are trying to tell our mayor is you cannot negotiate it. I get it. I get it. Yeah, but here's my whole deal, though. And listen, I've been trying to get the mayor come on to this show more than two years and he won't come on. I don't know why. And I would love to ask him. And here's my whole deal.

If the governor is going to be there and the occupant of the overall office is going to be there, that's the best time to say, hey, here's my $500 million proposal that I would love for you to fund. So if you're going to come to my city and tout what's going on, my deal is put the, put, the agenda on the table and say, say, hey, this also can cause crime to go down. And so, are you going to fund this? To me, that's what should happen. And I'm just curious if the mayor did that. I don't, I haven't seen him do it.

And our message to our mayor is you do not negotiate with a bully. The more you allow him to do, the worse he's going to get. And that's what he's done. He's just gotten progressively worse. So we can just withdraw consent. I would say, you know, to say that this is an illegal occupation and I would stand up in nonviolent, you would have to arrest me before I would betray the trust of the folks who elected me.

But our mayor has chosen another route. And, yeah. Well, I think, again, I think what's important is for the black mayor. Canadian women are looking for more. more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark.

And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Odds And that's exactly what the show is about doing whatever it takes to be thoughts Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers As they share stories about defying expectations

Overcoming barriers and breaking generational patterns I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer and director Eva Longoria I think I had like $200 in my savings account And my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media,

get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about, and they are experts at everything. Here, the Nick Dick and Poll Show, we're not afraid to make mistakes.

What Coogler did that I think was so unique. He's the writer-director. Who do you think he is? I don't know. You mean it to, like, the president? You think Canada has a president. You think China has a president. Those law crusette.

God, I love that thing. I use it all the time. I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it at night. It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus. Yep. It was a good one. It is an actual Polish saying. It is an actual Polish saying.

It is an actual Polish saying. Better version of Play Stupid Games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift, who said that for the first time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of IHeart Media.

and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between. This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate, Mike Milken, Take Two Interactive CEO, Strauss-Zell-Nich. If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.

Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top. Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you could try. podcast. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades. And

and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For Democratic mayors, if Donald Trump wants to come there and he wants to create this whole photo op and he wants folks sitting next to him and around him, praising him, then this is where I believe, and I believe that these mayors should be challenging him and challenging the governor to say, hey, these are the resources that we need. And look, I get it. You're a black mayor in a blue city and a red state, and you've got to work with state leaders. But here's my whole deal.

You're not going to use me as some political pawn or as some background dancer as you sitting here presenting this. My deal is say, I went to my people, went to the residents. This is what we need economically. And hey, say deliver. Say, Trump, if you, if you amending your word, then. you should deliver these resources that we need that's going to have an impact on crime beyond policing. Right.

And what we say, what we're saying is, we're giving you the cover for the political will to say, my people will not do this. So I'm just trying to negotiate being in support of a black mayor of a majority of black city who is not really standing up to the mayor or to the governor and to the president, as we think that he's sure.

Well, listen, my staff has reached out. We're going to keep reaching out. Mayor Paul Young is welcome to come on on this show. I have black mayor from all around the country that come on this show. And so I don't know why he's afraid to come on here. I don't dislike him. I'm not mad at him. But I do have some questions that I believe that's critically important because here's my whole deal.

I mean, this is March 23rd. In a couple of weeks, you know, you're going to have this annual commemoration of the assassination of Dr. King on April 4th that took place in Memphis, at the Lorraine Montel. And my deal is, I'm sick and tired of having the same commemorations. And so the thing I want to know is, for my audience, is, all right, mayor, what is the black economic plan? How are you challenging corporate America? And he knows very well that June teeth speech I gave last year that went viral, that had a lot of folks in Memphis talking about it. And the thing is, he needs to be coming talk to black media, to your point, given cover.

And so we're covering these things, then people are also aware of what's going on. That's what's needed. So he's more than welcome to come here. That's right. But running from us ain't to answer. That's right. Roland, I saw where you covered the death of Reverend Jim Lawson in June of 2024, a civil rights pioneer who invited Dr. King to Memphis in 1968,

who pastored the church and I currently pastor Centenary United Methodist Church. And we always have said that we live and die by public policy. So even with Moses and Yonway God telling Moses, go tell Pharaoh, right, to let my people go. because if you don't change the public policy, you don't change anything. And we want to, we're developing a nonviolent, really social revolution in Memphis now. We've got economically poor whites, Latin, eds, black folks coming together. Today we had a huge group that was completely nonviolent that protested.

And we're saying we've got your back, but you've got to say to the president, you've got to go tell Fayette. Absolutely. So keep us abreast future actions y'all have. Let me know if y'all have anything happening on April 4th. Because again, I'm not interested in just hearing a ringing of a bill and commemorating. No, my deal is black people in Memphis, black leaders in Memphis, political leaders, corporate leaders. I don't want to see the news releases in the tweet on April 4th. I want folks speaking to his agenda. not just remembering that he died in the city and why in fighting for sanitation workers folk today should be carrying forth the agenda of Dr. King, the agenda of Reverend Lawson, the agenda of Bill Lucy,

that's what we should be doing in 2012, yes, yes, and I invite you to come to Memphis on April 4th, April and 5th we're having an event to speak to that because that's precisely what we're doing. We're going to be working with Claiborne Temple, where it was the night. And so just come.

You have a standing invitation. I love to talk more with you about it. All right. Sounds great. Pat, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thank you. I'm going back to my panel here.

The point here for me, Avis, is don't let this man just use you as a backup dancer. No. This is where it should be, okay, you want to end crime? You want something with crime? Fine.

Here's our agenda. This right here is what we actually want to get done. This is what we want to achieve. And these are the resources that we need. Because the reality is, if you look at other cities, crime does not go down solely because of cops. It does not. Crime goes down because you are addressing economics.

You are addressing food insecurity. You are addressing housing. You are addressing a multitude of issues. It is not a singular issue of law enforcement. You are exactly right. I mean, there are so much studies, there are so many studies that have shown that over and over again, and just real-life examples of many cities across this nation right now are experiencing historic lows in their crime rates because their local government gets that.

And they've been investing in a lot of these other programs that have, I would argue, kind of attached what I would call like the social determinants of crime, kind of all those different things that you talked about and more. And so you're exactly right. It's a political rookie move. I mean, I don't really know much about this mayor, but why the hell would you let someone use you essentially as a piece of furniture? When you have the opportunity, as you mentioned, to advocate for your constituents. Because honestly, those various different programs that we have hard statistical evidence, which shows that they lead to crime reductions, are not free. And at a time in which we spent $12 billion in seven days in a war that should not have happened in the first damn place, you cannot tell me there is not money there to provide these programs that people need.

You know, that is really what your main agenda should be. He can say yes, he can say no. But your agenda as the leader of that community is to at least put that proposition on the table for him to consider and for action to move forward in that direction. And Thelma, look, I understand. I get it. You're in a red state. You're dealing with Trump. I get the dancing you have to do. I get how delicate you have to do.

But there's a way to do it, and I'm sorry. Put it on the table. You've got to confront this reality of resources. You're not going to see crimes solely happen because of law enforcement. Listen, the mayor of Memphis has no excuse being in a red state. our ancestors died in a red state. Civil rights leaders died in a red state speaking up and against what we are experiencing at this very moment. One of the things that is very clear to me is there's a disconnect with this mayor and the leaders around that city.

Because when you look at the dynamic of crime and what parts go into it, you got to look at the DA, the judge, the city council, and all these individuals that have influence in that community that helps with providing resources and how we can bring that crime down. So it is a very, you have to have a cohesive group of individuals, but when you have an individual that is falling on a sword of a dictator, a demonic, wasteful president, it calls into question, do you only show up to your community when you need a vote? Or are you showing up when we need the resources

so that we can keep our people out of a system that was designed to keep us in a system even when we are innocent? Because now we got to put you on that side and say, no, you don't belong here. We need to get someone that belongs in this seat that is going to show up, is going to answer the questions,

and is not afraid to be putting a, in a position of where you got to, you got to stand on it. You got to stand on your word. You ask to be in a public position. So why are you hiding from the people that need to hear from you so that we can know exactly where your heart posture lands? Well, as I look at this, this whole thing here, Cameron, and assessing this, really what is required in this moment is political courage. And again, when the people are rocking with you, they're going to stand with you. This is

the way you have to challenge these folks is okay, you say you want this to be successful. Well, this is what we need. This is what is required. And then when you go to the people and say, this is my agenda, the folk

going to rock with you. And so when you do that, the pastor say, we're with you. The people, the grassroots activists, and on and on, and on, that's what has to happen. I am just not. interested in Donald Trump coming into places, pimping our people, and then leaving, and he didn't leave a check behind. You want to bring your ass here and talk big? Put some money on the table. Exactly. I'm glad you teed that up, Roland, because Mayor Paul Young, I got a lot of family in

Memphis and have been doing some research there. He's trying to play politics, and it seems like he's getting played because he has three several major initiatives that require state and federal funding. Most importantly, there are two big stadiums, Liberty Stadium and FedEx Forum, have over a couple hundred million dollars that they're looking for state funding for. And then also the Memphis airport and their revitalization project, which has been like something, that's been a core tenant of what he ran on. And they are seeking tens of millions. if not hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal highway authority and several other federal agencies.

Some of that was granted to them under the Biden administration, and as Trump has been doing, where he's holding up federal funds that were already appropriated to various cities and states, and coming in here, hey, you've got to kiss my ass in order to, in order before I make sure I cut you literally. Yeah, but, but, but camera, here's my issue. Okay, but Cameron, here's my whole point.

Two of those things are the stadium and one is the airport. I ain't talking about that. I'm talking about what is the community agenda? What is the, what, listen, those are in, first of all, the airport is a revenue generator, I don't give a shit about these stadiums, okay? Because billionaire team owners can pay for their own damn stadiums. My point is, what is your community agenda and what's the number attached? And are you putting that on the table to say, hey, you know, I, you know, I'm.

I don't use, I don't call this thug, Mr. President, but this is where you say, hey, Don Trump, appreciate you coming to our city. Crime has dropped, things on those lines. We also believe that what can also cause crime the drop is if we fund this initiative, and this is how much is going to cost $300, $400, $500, $600,000, $500, $600,000, $600, $600,000, $600,000, $1,000,000,

you're going to put something on it? Yeah, and I think what he's, you can tell the political inexperience and that he has not run across the Trump before. He probably in his mind, I'm not going to sit to jump in his mind here, but I think what not to do, because Trump is going to continue to go city to city

and try to hold these, hold them ransom, take credit for the crime going down because he's sitting in ICE or sending National Guard, and he's like probably behind the scenes, hey, I'm holding back some federal funding if you don't play nice with me. But as we've seen, States in California, like in California, as we've seen in Chicago and other cities where they've

been able to be very confrontational or be very direct with the president and say, hey, you're welcome to the city. You're still the president. But we're going to need your, we're going to need your commitment on camera in person on what you're going to do to be able to say help with this. But this looks like, like I said, this looks like here in Trump, this is how Trump's game. He realizes he has so much power and so much funding. power over so many of these states that he probably doesn't intend to fund anyway. And that's where I think where people have got

to realize, hey, we need to stand up to him now because the more we let Trump get away with this, the more we let him to take credit for things he actually didn't do, we're going to be left holding a bag, and our communities won't get better. All right, folks. Let me get an update on this afro-man's story in the recent legal case where he won.

He was literally sued for defamation by seven white sheriff deputies from Adams County, Ohio. The jury ruled in his favor. Yet the judge has ordered Afro-Man to pay half of the court costs. Although the specific costs have not been detailed, the case was significant enough for the judge to indicate that the expenses should be divided based on the merits. Judge Jonathan Hines stated in his final order regarding the case, based upon the relative merits of the case and the justibility of the claims, costs are divided, one-half to the plaintiffs and one-half to the defendant. I'm sorry to the foreman final appeal order.

According to Rule 54 of the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure, costs are typically awarded to the winning party unless the court specifies otherwise. I, I, okay, Thelma, I'm sorry. Y'all punk asses sue me.

I win, and we got a cut cost? No, pay your own shit. You lost. Pay your own damn attorney. Listen, this judge is showing his racism on the role that the people elected him to be in. You can, when you look at what happened throughout the case,

he was clearly trying to interfere with Afro-Man's defense. He was interrupting his lawyer. He was ruling against his lawyer when he was legally right in his argument. And that's the one thing that I love about Afro-Man's attorney. He kept his, he kept his cool, who stayed calm, he did not let that racist judge deterred him from making sure he

showed up and showed out for Afro-Man, and they did exactly that. That judge was not expecting their jury to find Afro-Man not liable. That's why when you go back, and I want people to go back and look at how long it took him to read through

the jurors when they put their verdict on those forms, it don't take them that long. That man fiddled through them damn papers because he could not believe the fact that he actually won. That is the reason why he went and ordered that they split costs because that's never the case. He's only doing that because he's pissed that every man came in that court and won

and kicked the sheriff's ass. But they shouldn't even brought that case in the first place, but that judge was very biased. And I'm pretty sure if they ever needed to approve. kill. Bray will find that that judge was biased throughout their trial. I mean, my goodness, Avis, I mean, how in the hell I win a case and I got to split, we got to split the cost.

No, no, no, no. I'm going to pay my lawyer. Y'all pay y'all people. Yeah, this is crazy. I agree. It's an outgrowth of racism. It's an example of racism. I've had the misfortune of living in Ohio for a couple of years.

I have to tell you, it's one of the most racist places I've ever been in my life. So I'm not surprised that this judge did that. I am not an attorney, so I don't know if... I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od and that's exactly what the show is about doing whatever it takes to be thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers and breaking generational patterns.

I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Langoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford it. I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month?

I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of IHard Media, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast,

Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between. This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cessario, financier and public health advocate Mike Milken, take to interactive CEO Strauss Elning.

If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business. Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and her own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it wise to the top.

Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech and the future of humanity, the hosts always act like they know what they're talking about and they are experts at everything. Here at the Nick Dick and Poll show, we're not afraid to make mistakes. What Coogler did that I think was so unique. He's the writer-director. Who do you think he is? I don't know. You meet the president? You think Canada has a president.

You think China has a president. The law crusade. God, I love that thing. I use it all the time. I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it at night. It's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus. It was a good one.

I like that saying. It is an actual Polish saying. It is an actual thing. Better version of Play Stupid Games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift, who said that for the first. time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. Listen to the Nick, Dick, and Paul

show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all

cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these

victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, folks. Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here. And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high-profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake lively thing about anyway? We are on it every day, all day. Follow us, Amy and T. for news updates throughout the day.

Listen to Amy and TJ on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. He can appeal that. It looks like from what I just read, that it looks like it is an appealable decision. So I hope that he does. Because there seems to be like no logical explanation as to why he should be burdened

with covering half of the court costs for a case that he did not bring and that he actually won. I mean, it just, there is no logical explanation from that. The judge himself is just trying to insert himself into that situation in order to punish Afro-Man since, obviously, the jury did not go in the direction

that I'm sure, privately, he hoped that they would. And so I'm hoping that this is not the end of the story. And he better worry about next time maybe Afro-Man will have some songs for him, so he might want to get that straight. Cameron? Yeah, I think Afro-Man is probably in the studio cooking up something right now for this judge. I can't wait to see who he features on it.

The problem here is that Afro-Man used that, used the system, used their system against him, came out on top, and they can't stand it. And he was his full self the entire way. probably picked up more fans and picked up more money on the way as well. And I know that's the type of, I would say, powerful black men. That's the type of person that put the thumb right in the eye of the judge and so forth and folks. So it's unfortunate. I'm really hoping he gets another lawyer that can talk him out of this. I've seen some lawyers talk about this, that this might be something that he is able to appeal.

and overturned, so I'm hoping for that. But I really do hope, even if he is forced to pay half their court costs, he's definitely making another song in probably using the royalties of the song about the judge to pay for that. Yeah, I understand. All right, folks, time for Black Slight Network headlines with Brittany Noble. A California jury found Bill Cosby liable for sexually assaulting a white woman in 1972, awarding her $19.75 million.

Donna Montinger, now 84, claims that Cosby drugged and raped her after inviting her to one of his comedy shows. She states that he gave her two round white pills, which caused her to lose consciousness before the assault occurred. The jury determined that 88-year-old Cosby acted with malice, oppression, or fraud, which could result in additional punitive damages during a second phase of the trial. The jury awarded Motzinger $17.5 million for past suffering and $1.75 million for future. suffering. This verdict follows other civil legal losses for Cosby, including a 22 jury finding Kim liable for assaulting a teenager in 1975 for which he was ordered to pay $500,000. New York's LaGuardia Airport reopened following a tragic collision that occurred overnight. Officials report that a fire and rescue vehicle collided with an Air Canada regional plane

operated by Jazz Aviation. The plane, which was traveling from Montreal, to New York, had 72 passengers and four crew members on board. Unfortunately, both the pilot and co-pilot lost their lives in the incident. Over 40 others, including passengers, crew members, and two Port Authority officers sustained injuries with nine individuals suffering serious injuries. Air traffic control had authorized the vehicle to cross the runway, but urgently instructed it to stop just moments before the impact. An investigation into the incident is currently underway.

Federal prosecutors seek to dismiss charges against two officers accused of falsifying the warrant that led to Brianna Taylor's killing. The U.S. Department of Justice has moved to dismiss the remaining federal charges against two former Louisville officers accused of falsifying the warrant used in the 2020 fatal raid on Brianna Taylor's home. This follows previous court actions, reducing the charges from felony to misdemeanors. Joshua James and Kelly Meaney were accused of creating a false warrant affidavit to target Taylor's home. The DOJ's decision to dismiss is based on difficulties in securing a conviction after the felony charges were twice struck down. Former Detective Brett Hankinson was convicted of violating Taylor's civil rights for firing shots into her apartment and he was sentenced to 33 months in prison. In 2020, the city of Louisville reached a $12 million wrongful death settlement with Taylor's family. The city of San Diego approves a $30 million settlement for the murder of Kahona Wilson.

The 16-year-old was shot twice in the back by a cop in one second while running from a shooter. The incident happened January 28, 2025. Police body camera video shows Wilson running away from someone who pulled a gun and fired at him in a downtown train station. As he exited the station, Wilson encountered San Diego police officer Daniel Gold, who was responding to an unrelated call. Gold fired at Wilson without warning as he emerged from a corridor, hitting him in the back. Although a concealed gun was later found on Wilson, the lawsuit claims he was not a threat or suspect, and Gold only saw him for one second before shooting. A California resident shares her sentiments on the tragedy and carelessness of that situation.

And a black woman wins $50 million after a jury found she faced years of racial discrimination at work. Lekebia Wilson, also known as Kiki, accused her supervisor of repeatedly using racist and abusive language, while allegedly facing no consequences. Her co-worker, Charles Smith, supported her claims in court, helping her build the case that led to this verdict. Despite the city denying the allegations after an internal investigation, the jury reached the decision in just one day, holding the city liable for discrimination.

Wilson was awarded $15.4 million, while Smith received $400,000. Officials are now considering an appeal, citing potential budget impacts. A historic milestone is being set in Concordia, parish Louisiana as a black woman becomes the youngest police chief in Louisiana at just 27 years old. La Kisica Bowman was sworn in Chief of Police in Faraday on Saturday, March 21st. For her, the achievement is the result of a dream that started early.

She says she knew she wanted to work in law enforcement at just 11 years old. She graduated from the Police Academy in 2021 right before earning her degree at Gravelling State University. She quickly built experience all across multiple agencies, including. the Concordia Parish Corrections, Louisiana Probation and Parole, and the Jonesville Police Department. She later stepped in as Faraday's interim chief before officially being appointed to the position of February 10, 2026. A Brazilian lawmaker, Fabiana Bolsonaro, is facing backlash after applying dark foundation on her face during a session. The Blackface Act was done in protest of Erica Hilton. a trans woman being appointed chair of the Chamber's Women's Rights Committee.

Well, during her speech, Fabiana said she had experienced the privileges of a white person and questioned whether by putting on makeup she had become black. She added that she was making an analogy with Hilton's gender identity and called it a social experiment. Her speech was interrupted by another lawmaker who accused Fabiana of transphobia, racism, and blackface and requested the suspension of the session in its broadcast. The session chair allowed Fabiana to finish speaking and said the matter would be referred to the Assembly's leadership. Eighteen lawmakers filed a petition saying the demonstration violated constitutional principles and reinforced stigmas against trans people. She also filed a criminal complaint for racial discrimination.

Babiana denies doing blackface saying her speech was meant to show respect for the historical struggle of black people. That's that bullshit right there. All right, y'all. Let's talk about what's happening. These airports all across the country. Donald Trump has now sent ICE agents to 14 airports, okay, which makes no sense because if you look at most of the videos, they're just standing around laughing, doing nothing. They're not really helping TSA agents.

Atlanta, where I am right now, has had some massive problems. Atlanta, San Francisco, some real, real issues with massive long lines, three and four hours. Folks were missing flights, all kind of stuff like that last night. and guess what? This is all because Democrats have said until they get more transparency and information from the Department of Homeland Security,

they're not going to approve their budget. Yet Democrats have offered more than almost a dozen times to advance a bill to pay TSA agents separately. They will pay their budget but not the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans have rejected that.

Well, guess what? The Republican Senate leader, John Thune, actually went to the White House, told Donald Trump, we have a bipartisan agreement. We can deal with DHS, and then we can actually, we have a bill of the Democrats to fund ICE, excuse me, to fund TSA,

and then what we will do is we will fund DHS through a reconciliation process, which will be passed with 51 votes instead of the 60 needed, the filibuster. Trump said, No. He said no. So here is Republican Louisiana Senator talking to Will Kane on Fox News saying basically, hey, this is Trump's issue now. We can keep blaming Democrats, but no, Trump is now at fault. Listen to candy. You don't have the candy bite? All right. Um, I'm going to pull that bite. Uh, because again, this, this was like, this was so, so clear in terms of, you know, of terms of what the issue is in terms of the problem. And it was just, and it was just nuts.

It was just nuts to me. I'm going to pull this here because that's who's out and I don't have fault, y'all. So Republicans, Avis keep blaming Democrats for it. Yo, y'all could pay the agents. But no, now y'all don't want to. And now Trump is the reason for it. So don't look at us. He's the problem.

He's the problem. Indeed he is. and, you know, this is just another example. I mean, how many ways does, you know, just making a dating analogy, how many ways does somebody got to show you that they don't give a damn about you before you actually believe that they don't give a damn about you?

I mean, like, really? What else does this man need to do? He really does not give a damn about the American people, period. Period. Period. I mean, you're exactly right. There was a resolution on the table, and if he actually gave a damn

about all of the inconveniences that people are going through all across the country because of these huge delays due to being unable to get through security, he would have signed it. But no, the only thing that he thinks about is how can I create a political advantage? And he believes that the Republicans are winning by having all of these delays in which they can try to pin on Democrats because the Democrats are really horrible at messaging. And so he is thinking that he is providing an advantage for his political party that would ultimately be of an advantage for him. He does not give a damn about people, about the American people. I don't care.

And in this instance, it's not just people who did not vote for him that are being inconvenienced. It's everybody that's being inconvenienced. And frankly, he still doesn't give a damn. Oh, absolutely. So y'all got the clip ready? Let me know y'all have the clip ready. Go ahead and play it. with the Democrats.

Senator Cruz and I came up with a plan. We said, look, it's a two-step process. The Democrats have offered to open up everything but ICE. Ted and I said, okay, let's accept their offer. And then at the same time, we would offer a bill for reconciliation where we don't need any Democratic votes to do whatever we wanted to do with ICE. and that way we're out of the shutdown and DHS is back open. We submitted that, Senator Carthune submitted that to President Trump, as is his right.

He said no, no deals with the Democrats. It would have worked. We could have had TSA paid by the end of the week, but the president said no deal. Give me that. So what you got going on here, Cameron, it's simple. Trump says, hey, my priority is the save America. Act. Well, guess what, that sucker ain't passing. So Republicans, y'all now

own this nonsense right here because here you have kidding is saying it would have worked. We had a deal. So I don't want to hear any Republican now trying to blame Democrats because they now own it. And guess what? When you got the House and a Senate and the White House, how in the hell you keep

blaming the other party? Y'all got total control. Trump continues to show his hand. All this is about is stopping the midterm elections and staying in power. And he is willing to let his party burn. He is willing to let federal Republicans in the House and the Senate really hang, really, really really be the ones in the firing line for this. He does not care. He is Democrats control shutdown. Democrats, the TSA lines, making sure he's

sending, if you notice, the cities and places that he sent the ICE agents to have show of force are in cities, most of those, I believe almost all the cities are controlled by Democratic mayors. So it's just another talking point. But if this does it to our earlier conversation around voting and how much they are looking to take away our right to vote, suppress a right to vote, ensure that they stay in power by any means necessary. Trump is laser focused on that. He is laser focused on that, to the point that something that is causing a, Mence pain nationwide. Doesn't matter if you're Republican, Democrat, independent, yellow, white, blue, whatever.

You are being affected by this. Whether you're trying to travel, your friends are trying to travel, trying to get stuff. But he has made it extremely clear that this is all about 2026 and beyond the elections. I want to stop people from voting. I want to ensure I can either run again. I can, and anybody that I want to see in power can be empowered. if it isn't the Save Act he is not interested in signing it

uh Thelma this is my position of all these mega people y'all whining and complaining the airport call your man call your man because he the reason listen that line is so busy right now

they ain't gonna be able to reach him they probably won't be able to reach him until he in the dirt but what Trump is attempted to do is get a two for one this is nothing but one of his checks on Project 2025 that says that they wanted to

take TSA private. And this is his way. You're like, oh, yeah, I see that y'all don't like ice. So let me go ahead and stick up in there since they don't want to vote on a Save Act, go on and get my victory. Let's go cause chaos in the airports. Let's keep TSA agents from getting paid. because you know what they do. That puts TSA agents in a predicament to say,

well, if they're not going to pay me, I've got to go find somewhere else to work, which means that now they're trying to cut away at the union. And if you get rid of these workers and then you get rid of that union, his buddies are going to come in and take it private, which means that they're going to get their two for one. They're going to check off another goal on its project 2025.

hence why they want to defund DHS, and they only want to focus on funding for ICE. That keeps their agenda going and keeps the chaos. That keeps people in rage and the fear going instead of stabilizing individuals like TSA that need their pay. So I don't feel sorry for his people that is at the airport complaining, complain until you can't complain no more.

This is your fault. So y'all need to be the ones that standing in line. Everybody that didn't vote for him need to be able to go and get to their planes. Why these other ones, they want to vote for this crazy man, y'all are the ones that need to wait. Get on the sidelines and wait, just like we got to wait to make sure that our rights are still intact. And, of course, you have ICE doing what they do, arresting the folks. They took down this woman in San Francisco with shameful and despicable.

and all that's going to do is cause them to be even more hated by voters, by folks in this country. Folks, as I said earlier today, it was the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. And, of course, it is under attack as we speak in this country. It was hugely important. I'm going to go back to this conversation I had yesterday in Birmingham, and it was crazy this guy was like, nothing, nothing. Democrats have done nothing in the past 20 years. said, do you have any idea about the Affordable Care Act? And the crazy thing is this here.

I was just sitting here reading. I was reading Thelman, the new book by the new book dealing with Jackie Robinson and Jackie Robinson and Paul Robson, Howard Bryant's new book. I got us sitting over there. And he was talking about the election of 1950. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Odds and that's exactly what the show is about doing whatever it takes to be the odds. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria.

I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the MyCultura podcast network,

available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When you listen to podcasts about AI and tech, in the future of humanity. The hosts always act like they know what they're talking about, and they are experts at everything. Here, the Nick Dick and Poll Show, we're not afraid to make mistakes. What Kugler did that I think was so unique.

He's the writer-director. Who do you think he is? I don't know. You meet the president? You think Canada has a president? You think China has a president? Those law crusette. God, I love that thing.

I use it all the time. I wrap it in a blanket and sing to it. Like, it's like the old Polish saying, not my monkeys, not my circus. Yep. It was a good one. I like that snake. It is an actual Polish saying. Yeah.

It is an actual Polish saying. Better version of Play Stupid Games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of IHeart Media.

and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between. This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate, Mike Milken, take two interactive CEO, Strauss-Zell-Nich. If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.

Sesame Street CEO Sherry Weston and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it wise to the top. Listen to math and magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you could try. podcast. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades. For decades and

and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, folks, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here. And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high-profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake lively thing about anyway? We are on it every day, all day. Follow us, Amy and TJ for news updates throughout the day.

Listen to Amy and TJ on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. In the election, Henry Wallace was FDRs. Henry Wallace was FDR as vice president. He got dropped from the ticket because the southern and southern Democrats felt that he was way too progressive. He wanted to get rid of Jim Crow. And you're reading this book and you're going, wow, actually it was in 48. In 48, 1948, Henry Wallace was talking about ending, he was talking about social justice. And he was talking about a national health care plan.

and so when I listen to these idiots say oh my god nothing happened I'm going do you can you even remotely understand how important the Affordable Care Act was for people getting health care for a lot of black folks who did not have any health care at all not being able to access for health care is it perfect absolutely not but I tell you what I'd damn sure rather have the Affordable Care Act in this country than not have the Affordable Care Act in this country than not have the Affordable Care Act. And I do not call it Obamacare because I refuse to use a Republican poll tested word meant to denigrate it. And I told the Obama people, they should stop using it as well because you're just reinforcing it. It's called the Affordable Care Act for a reason.

And that's the whole point. So here we are 16 years later. Listen, Henry wasn't late. He was too early. He was decades early to what we have seen manifest and come into play. The most important thing about the Affordable Care Act is when I remember when I graduated from undergrad and I can no longer be on my mother's insurance, how high insurance was for me at the age of 21. So when the Affordable Care Act was passed, that allowed me not to depend on finding a job if I wanted to be an entrepreneur in order to get great health care, they gave me options.

And options that wasn't going to be hinged on mostly discriminating, because that's a part of the issue that we suffered from prior to this. And you're right, it's not perfect. But I damn sure appreciated when the Affordable Care Act was passed. And I damn sure I'm so upset now that my premium have risen to the point where now I'm paying more than I ever have before because of what these people's agenda was because they wanted to take away the idea of Obamacare when it's the Affordable Care Act.

Cameron? This was a special day. Affordable Care Act, I had just got my career started on Capitol Hill. It was a few months in. I remember my boss, then Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson coming back from the White House. She's in that crowd when it was signed, when the bill was signed and seeing how much, how happy she was. But what I've seen, and I like what you talked about this, I liked what you said earlier, Roland, about refusing it to call it Obamacare and ensuring you're calling it as proper

name the Affordable Care Act. This piece of legislation flawed is. it may have initially been, has saved millions of lives, and it has now created something that we couldn't even think about going back from no pre-existing conditions. Something as simple as you're not being able to be excluded from health insurance without a pre-existing condition. It almost seems, it seems criminal that that used to be the case. And the fact that Trump, Republicans have literally spent almost two decades looking to peel back just because it was such a landmark piece of legislation, and they look to what they said, try to denigrate the bill and denigrate Obama by putting his name on there. But if you go ask anybody, hey, do you,

how is their Affordable Care Act, or what are you benefiting? They love it. They love it, and they love so many of those tenants. So it's something that they now depend on, their voters depend on. Every voter, every person in the country depends on. And it's something we must continue, not only just to protect and keep where it is, but we've got to continue to expand on it. It's still something that, like I said, it has saved millions of lives, and hopefully we continue to stand up for it.

And, Avers, let's be real clear. When people talk about how unpopular it was, that was because there were a lot of progressives and Democrats who wanted a single-payer health care system. And so when you broke that out from the Republicans, who didn't like it at all. That's why more than the majority of the country wasn't in support of it.

And again, it's not a perfect law. It wasn't. It was like, yo, we got to get it done, but this is one of those things where you get something passed and then later on you want to be able to come back and finish it. That's what has to happen.

So the health care battle still exists in this country, and you still have Republicans who absolutely want to destroy the Affordable Care Act and get rid of it, but it's amazing. They haven't been able to. You know why?

Because a bunch of their people are broke as hell and sick as hail. And need it. And now it's overwhelmingly popular. You know, I remember that day like it was yesterday, I was fortunate enough to be invited to that signing. I got the text, the email the day before. I happened to be in Atlanta for a conference. I jumped on a plane so I could be there to see that history in person.

It was such a powerful day. I was there to witness at that time. Vice President Biden said this is a big leap. deal when he signed it. And I'm also old enough to remember that there were several southern states who balked at this, who delayed the implementation of it, who would not allow Medicaid expansion leaving a gap within the Affordable Care Act, so that initially as it was even put into practice, it didn't cover as many people in some states as it did in other states because of these Republican-controlled states actually voted to hamper the distribution of this act to its poor citizens.

And ironically, in those southern areas where there's a disproportionate number of black people. So this once again goes back to the point that we made at the very beginning of the show, which is the importance of voting. And not just voting for president, but voting at your state and local level as well. because it's the state-level politicians that put in the gumbed up the works to make it more difficult for even more people to be initially covered. Now, a lot of those states now have finally sort of begun to move in that direction, and it's become something that's very popular, and people are holding on to it now. Like, don't take it away from it, even though they don't even understand that it is the Affordable Care Act, and Obamacare is the same thing. It's just so crazy. But the bottom line here is that this was a historic day.

It's a historic piece of legislation. It was something that was decades in the making, and millions of people have benefited from it and continue to benefit from it in a nation that has forever refused to really be able to expand health care until this particular landbreaking act. It's something to be proud of. Absolutely, absolutely. Avis, Cameron and Phelma, we surely appreciate y'all joining us on today's show. Thank you so very much. Folks, right now, I'm going to show you

this interview idea, this amazing book. It is called The Free and the Dead. It explores the untold story of Black Seminole and Indigenous Resistance during the Seminole Wars in the 19th century Florida. Written by Jamie Holmes, the book recounts the events surrounding the 1835 attack on the Seminole

in pre-statehood Florida, which was part of the broader Seminole Wars between the United States and the indigenous tribes of Florida. Holmes highlights the alliance between Abraham, a free black American, and Osceola, a renowned Creek warrior. Together, they fought to defend their homes

and communities against the U.S. Army. I talked with Holmes about the book. Here's our conversation. All right, Jamie. When we think about American history, we think about Native Americans, people really don't understand that there were black Indians. There were black Native Americans. There were, I've covered the battle, DeMorrow Solomon Simmons in Oklahoma, the treaties, and Native Americans that owned slaves and how they had to admit and provide for enslaved folks.

And so this is a history that people just don't realize. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why my editor, is Simon and Shuster Nixiani, bought it. He said, I think there's a space here. I think 1% of the current population of the United States has both African and indigenous heritage. And the Black Seminoles are probably, the most well-known story, and it's still not widely known at all.

So that was one of the reasons I jumped on it. I read a newspaper, a letter to the editor in 1991, and it said something to the effect of there was a group down in Florida, an alliance between Native and African-Americans, who fought together, a rainbow coalition, who fought off the U.S. Army for 40 years, and we don't know the story. and if we didn't have such a Eurocentric vision of history, we would know it. So I was attracted to the story. One, it's underserved.

It means there's something to do there that people haven't done well enough anyway. Just from that perspective, because I thought it was an incredible story. It was sort of similar when I was reading a man, the book on dealing with the Texas Revolution. And reading about this relationship between where, you know, enslaved folks were traveling, traveling to Mexico and how they were, there were Mexican colonies of free people in the history of Mexico and the stuff that they were doing there. And so when you start, that book is called by Gerald Horn. And when you start talking about, you know, this history, it really speaks to the problem that we have in this country of what I call history versus history. In fact, Gerald Horn's book is called The Counter Revolution of 1836, Texas slavery, and Jim Crow, and the roots of American fascism. And so it was just fascinating to read about, again, this back and forth going to Mexico.

And so to hear this story, and you said this was a 40-year war? There's a, so the Seminole Tribe of Florida calls it the Long War. In American histories, we divide it into three wars. The first Seminole War, 1817, 1818, the second Seminole War, 1835, 1842, which is the focus of my book, The Free and the Dead. And then the third Seminole War, which is 1855, 1858. The Seminole Tribal of Florida considers that one long war. war, the long war, one long colonial aggression. But the military alliance, the black Seminoles really are first clearly in Florida and allied with the Seminoles around 1790.

Okay, and now, hold on, let's do what, let's do what phrasing here. So you said the Black Seminoles. Yes, I did. Okay. And they were aligned with? The Seminoles. Okay. They were, they were Seminoles, right? So in American culture, we call them now Black Seminels. But they were Chiefs. So Chief Abraham, and there's at least eight other chiefs and sub-chiefs with African descent. There's only one reference at the time that calls them either black Seminoles and African Seminoles, and it's African Seminoles, and it's 1838. Abraham himself was called the chief of the Istelousse, which in the Muskogee language means the chief of the dark people.

and he was the head of a group of about 500 African Seminoles who were in Florida, who had various levels of relationship with the tribes in Florida, which were not just the Seminoles, which were the Seminoles and the Mika Zookis and there's a number of people down there that in American history books get kind of clumped together under the title of Seminole. But there's a group, so there's a number of people who are freeing themselves, who are formerly enslaved,

who are joining the Seminoles in a military alliance. There's an old Spanish policy in the late 1600s where if you were an enslaved person and you could make it down to Spanish Florida, La Florida, you could say you were Catholic and you could join the army and your civil rights would be protected. This is civil rights for soldieries. This is a very old deal, right?

It's like the French Foreign Legion. So the British did that, and the Seminole's clearly, to some extent, adopted that policy. The other thing that's happening down in Florida, this is pre-statehood. Florida's not a state until 1845. It becomes the territory of Florida in 1821, is that you have children of prisoners' war who were taken by the creeks in the Revolutionary War. It's a little bit complicated, but by the old Muskogee rules, children of a prisoner

of war could be full members of the tribe. So you have a number of Black Seminoles, probably Black Seminole royalty, who are children of POWs, who, because of the old Muskogee Way, could become full. adopted into the tribe. Yeah, I mean, this was, I mean, this was actually the lawsuit that was taking place, uh, uh, in Oklahoma. Uh, again, attorney DeMario Solomon Simmons, uh, they actually were successful with the, against the Muscogee Creek Indian, uh, freedman ban, uh, and they got citizenship in the Muscogee, Muscogee Creek Nation. Uh, and it was in 2000, last year, In 2025, the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court ruled in their favor in ordering them a citizenship,

and they struck down this by-blood requirement. So that was just interesting that this was, and DeMario argued that the 1866 treaty guaranteed rights to the freedmen, saying they were violated by the tribes' 1979 Constitution. And so there's this really, really interesting history here. Now, by Black Seminole, where did they come from? Where their roots, did their roots predate 1619? So just where do they come from? As far as we know, it's Georgia, South Carolina.

So it's West Central Africa, Georgia, South Carolina, modern-day Alabama. So did these enslaved people of African descent, that they marry Indians, Native Americans, have offspring? Is that how this came about? That's part of it. So what you have is, you know, the seminal break off from the Creek or Muscogee people in three waves of migration. First about this pre-revolution, 1700, 1750.

There's another big wave down around 1790, another in 1814. And they're breaking off because they don't like the acculturation, the degree to which the creeks are acculturating. to the ways of the Anglos and then to the Americans. But in the Revolutionary War, the creek side with the British, and they're attacking what's there. And what's there is forced labor camps, it's plantations. So they're taking prisoners war.

Now, by the old Muscogee Way, it was not done by skin color. They would either kill you or adopt you or make you a servant, not on a plantation, but a servant. But still, the old way was your child could be a full member of the tribe. So part of the Seminole story is the Seminoles were still practicing the old way. And I think some of the black seminal royalty were probably children of POWs captured by the creeks who went down to the Seminoles who had an more open view. It hadn't adopted this idea of the Anglos, which is we're going to do it by skin color and it's going to be transgenerational. I'm going to own your children.

So that's the big thing that's happening in the Creek Nation around 1790, which is exactly the same time with the black seminals start to show up in Florida. this is interesting because again when I was reading Horn's book he talked in there and where there were there were the white folks in Texas who wanted to maintain slavery they they they did understand because the black folks who were forced to fight they refused to scalp Native Americans that was his very interesting so this relationship between enslaved people of African descent and Native Americans was interesting. So it was as if those Native Americans understood

that, look, these folks are here under the arrest, they're not our enemy. The white man is our enemy. Yeah, well, we don't, we don't, we don't extend this definition of servitude to children. We don't do it like that. We're not going to punish every generation successfully.

The, the the bonds that grow, you know, starting around 1790, as far as we know, are really quite strong by the time there's immigration to what became what was Indian territory at the time what became Oklahoma. And there are instances in which there are claims made on the Black Seminole's,

attempts to enslave them. And Chief McEnope, who's the head of the Seminole's, he said, I've known these people for 50 years. So that means... When you say claims made, what? Was that the Feudgeon the Slave Act? The claims were being made on... on the basis of, so one of the thing, one of the really foul things that this general, General

Jessup, who's a main character in the war, does, because the army is not doing well, fighting them because they're sort of chasing them around. They're not good in Florida. It's more bush fighting, guerrilla warfare. They're not good at it. So one of Jessup's solutions is he hires a number of acculturated creeks. And he says, you can, it doesn't pay them, pays them almost nothing, but he says you can keep anything that you take, including human beings.

Now, the Black Seminels were not enslaved people, but they were claiming to be. as protection, almost entirely as protection. Because if you're, you're an undocumented population. So it's the easier thing in Florida, in American Florida, is to say, yes, I'm owned. But if you look at the actual rights they had, they are all bold, active, and armed, all the chiefs had a lot of property, they traveled freely, they were educated, they were bilingual, they were trilingual. So anyway, some of the black seminoles are captured by these Creek mercenaries.

and they make claims on them, and then there are other claims on them, which are all bogus by whites and by Native Americans. And anyway, so Mekinope says, I've known them since I was a child. And in fact, when Abraham, Chief Abraham visits New York in 1852, there's a description of all the chiefs around him as six chiefs and sub-chiefs, both from what's now Oklahoma and from Florida. And he said they all surrounded him and clearly looked up to him as if he was their father. And his name, his Indian title is Sawa Noctoscanuki, Shawnee Warrior. So is, and even in Oklahoma when there's, when there are claims being made on them, there's one very dramatic event where enslavers come in and they're trying to claim some of the black Seminoles. And the Seminole allies put on war paint and they join them and they make clear, and everybody's got guns and they make clear that they were willing to stand or fall with them. So in cases these will really...

I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od and that's exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be the odds. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria.

I think I had like $200 in my savings account and my mom goes, to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When you listen to podcasts about AI and

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It was a good one. I like that snake. It is an actual Polish saying. It is an actual Polish saying. Better version of Play Stupid Games, win stupid prizes. Yes. Which, by the way, wasn't Taylor Swift who said that for the first time. I actually, I thought it was. I got that wrong. Listen to the Nick Dick and Paul show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of IHard Media, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. I'm talking to leaders from the entertainment industry to finance and everywhere in between. This season on Math and Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate, Mike Milken. Take to Interactive CEO Strauss-Zalny. If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business.

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I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down.

time and time again for decades and decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration. The Justice Department through, I think we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Amy Roboc alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast. And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.

What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F. So let's cut the crap, okay? Follow the Amy and T.J. podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day. And listen to Amy and T.J. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. very close relationships. Abraham was very close with Chief Mekinope. He was his interpreter, but also his advisor. They were also clearly friends.

This other chief named Jumper, it was really that trio of people were very close. And there is some intermarriage at the top as well. You asked about intermarriage. Yes, there's some intermarriage at the top among the elites. The thing that trips me out, I think about the Grammys and how all these white conservatives were up in arms when, I think it was Billy Elish, where she made this comment about stolen land.

And let me call it white American history. White American history has presented this whole view that, oh, no, the land was just here. nobody was here and we moved in and we just went to the west and we and there were words to cover there were words to cover the truth right started starting yeah started handing out land and the homestead act and things were wonderful and we're looking for a goal as if these wars didn't actually happen yeah yeah so this story is uncomfortable to that mythology you know what you here basically I'm writing something about it. It's related now. I'm trying to write about it, think about it. This idea of the birth of America as like the birth of enlightenment freedom or

enlightenment knowledge, right? Then you have the Constitution as a sacred document and this is the beginning of freedom. All of that entire story, which is completely incompatible, by the way, with all of the book, all the evidence that I looked at and the entire story of this book and an entire birth of Florida. That's not what's happening. There's no enlightenment ideas down there. So, you know, it's to the degree that there's a democracy among common white men, congratulations.

But the country is also founded on enslavement of Africans and displacement of indigenous people. Probably more than that. So, you know, this is like a way of covering. It's a mythology that's covering. I think it's fair to describe it as a more. alibi. What people have to understand, this was vicious. This was war.

This was people being killed. This wasn't land freely given. This was literally, we are going to conquer these people. And Native Americans were like, we were here before you got here. This is our land. And we are just not going to freely give it up. Yeah, the U.S. government didn't have much money. So the way they did it was coercion.

So they would send something down, and this is what happens in this story, starting in 1835. Andrew Jackson sends down an Indian Asian into Florida, essentially to run a con. And the con is you bring the settlers down, the settlers starts to drive out the game, and then you send in a federal agent,

and the federal agent comes down, and he says, boy, I'm a nice federal guy, there's these locals here, and they're really corrupt, and I really want to protect you from them because they're so corrupt. And so you should really go west, and here's some gifts. And also, if you don't, there's a gun over there.

But I'm really your friend because they don't want to spend the money on a war. They're trying to do it cheaply. So this is how they're doing it coercively. And in Florida, that doesn't work out for them very well. The war ends up costing $30 to $40 million. By my estimates, there's 10 times more deaths in the Army and among the colonists and there were on the Semino-Black Semino side. A lot of violence.

A lot of violence. I'm Brittany Noble, Midwest-born HBCU educated with experience in newsrooms across the country. Well, I've teamed up with Roland Martin to bring to you the breakdown. This isn't just news. It's our stories, our voice, our community. Join me for the breakdown Monday through Friday at midday, only on the Blackstar network. We talked about this relationship. And I'm very interested in terms of...

the kinship between these Native American leaders and these people of African descent who were fighting their own bondage. So you had two wars going on. You have to fight for freedom from American shadow slavery. We have Native Americans fighting for their homeland against these intruders. So you talked earlier, just how they got along and how immersed they were in understanding of each other's plight. There's a wonderful article by a scholar named Anthony Dixon, which is called Black Seminole ethnogenesis. And it's about ethno being ethnic genesis being birth, African Semino Ethnogenesis. And it talks about the ways in which aspects of African culture, these threads which are unraveling, are being. preserved and are being interwoven with indigenous practices as an act of retrieval,

as an act of preservation, as an act of reinvention, as an act of survival, and as an act of rebellion. There's a wonderful folk tale called Uncle Monday, which was recorded by Zorro Neal Hurston in the 1930s in Florida. She goes down to Florida and they tell her this folktale 100 years old, and it's a black seminal folk tale. And what's in the folktale? In the folk tale, there's a great African medicine man named Uncle Monday from the crocodile clan. Soon after he was stolen from his home and forced to America, he comes down into the Indian territory, which is now Florida.

And more or less, he joins up with the Seminoles. They fight. They fight bravely. At one point in the folk tale, he turns himself into an alligator. But, you know, in northern Zambia, there's a crocodile clan now. That may be too far east for the transatlantic slave trade. But along the Congo River, there's crocodile veneration. And then you find yourself in a place where there's tribes, there's a matrilineal descent, and there's an alligator clan.

Seminole's had an alligator clan. At one point, they did anyway. So I think there's a lot of commonalities between these tribal heritages. And I think that was a strong basis. And it's pretty clear, you know, by the way, they knew Florida is kind of international. You know, it's Spanish, and then it's British for a little bit, and then it's Spanish again, and then it's American. They were very discerning about which white people were the enemy. It was not the French.

There's a point where, like, they could kill some French people. There's a shipwreck. They spare them as not being American. And before the war starts, the Black Seminole's go door by door to the settlers that they liked. And they said, you'd want to be here next week. Just fair warning, you shouldn't be here. And then when the Americans, in 1821, when it becomes the territory of Florida, a lot of people of color know that the American colonization of Florida is uniquely bad news.

Spanish would have been way better. There's a large free population of color. French would have been better. And they leave Florida. So that's part of this story, is this really an interesting. international place. I think in Abraham's youth, you know, he's probably born, Chief Abraham is probably born around 1790, 1795. By the time it becomes an American territory, 1821, he's mid to late 20s. So he's grown up in an international environment. You know, there's,

Andrew Jackson's wife comes to Pensacola at one point. She's like, I don't understand these African Americans. They all speak four or five languages. This is international. And so is, and she gets bored. They're not enough white people here. like New Orleans in a way. So they have like, you know, part of the ways and part of the horrors of American child slavery is the denial of knowledge. And they had that.

They were enriched with that. So they had, they were, anyway, that's a situation when America takes it over. So the reason I think is hard for people today to understand what you're describing is because we have been so conditioned to go, Oh, the United States, the 50 states. Oh, you throw in Alaska in Hawaii, not being connected.

Oh, and not realizing that we're talking about not the United States that we know of today. We're talking about the Louisiana purchase. We're talking about that you had, frankly, the land of America was colonized. You had the role of the Spaniards, Mexicans, the British. And so America was not always the United States of America. This was this, this was land that was being colonized by other countries. Yeah. And in 1835, when a story sort of starts, almost everything east of the Mississippi River has become a state, except for Michigan and Florida.

And Florida is lagging. Florida has about 35,000 people at the time. There's an informal requirement of 60,000 before you can. demand to be a state. And the interior has never been colonized. It's not really, there's most of it, especially the south of Florida, not great for farming. But there are tribes there. And so the colonists, all the colonists, British, Spanish, and American have more or less state on the coasts. And that's because of ships, ships, troops. It's because of ships, troops, and the navies were able to take over that area, supposed to going inland where you have

had to have troops traveling in. Yeah, and let's say you got an army and you're not, you don't know how to live off the land, then you're limited because you've got your heavy, you know, you're carrying rations. So oftentimes they would take, you know, they would march in, Andrew Jackson invades Florida in 1817, I think it is. And, you know, they go and they march and they burn an empty village and they go back and then the newspapers to say that they won, more or less, that happened a lot. You would go and march and you would just leave.

You couldn't stay there. You couldn't stay there. So Florida is kind of more, you know, it's more of a buffer as the United States wants it, as a strategic buffer. But they don't even have maps of the interior when they start the war. The first good map is 1837. It comes from prisoner war reports. There's one moment where a general has to go to a bookstore because that's the best map he can get is to try to find a book that has an old map of Florida in it. So that's how little they know about the territory.

So they don't know where the river crossings are. You know, they run into, like, at one point there's a siege where the Seminoles and Black Seminoles traps them in this little bend in a river, and they start starving. You know, they're, like, eating their horses. They start eating a dog. And it's like, it's sort of tragic comic. The ways in which the army is failing, repeatedly failing. And the strategy that they end up using,

is not military, they end up using these Creek Warriors to take the women and children and essentially extort the warriors to come in. I have your women. And once that happens, once they have your family, the warriors go in. That's mostly what they did. Or they just seized people under a white flag, saying it's a truce, saying we're just going to have a talk under illegitimate guises. You know, there's one point where General Jessup says, he writes a letter to end to Andrew Jackson, and he says, I now have 530 prisoners,

but I've only been able to kill 30 people or something in two years of the war. So they're unable to win militarily. They can't handle the territory, and they have to resort to this, essentially this kidnapping scheme, kidnapping and extortion scheme, which is not the story you're going to get if you read it in the U.S. textbook. Of course that. I love this line right here in 1852, escaped the troubles, a party of over 200 Indians and black seminoles fled to Mexico,

where slavery was outlawed. Abraham and the others remained in Indian territory. Frustrated by their defiance, the Creek Council had passed an act prohibiting enslaved people from owning guns, but the sense bearer and his neighbors simply ignored the decree and retained their arms and lived as they have for many years under no restraint whatever from their owners on lands where the laws were still written with powder and lead. So they were like, now we're good. We're going to keep our guns. Yeah.

And yeah, you get a sense of it being a different time. So there's a story at the end of the book where because they've captured the families and people that they love, they've agreed to go west. Under protection, under the same protections that they had, all the same rights that they have. But they know it's going to be dangerous to go west because they have to go through the deep south. So you have to go through New Orleans and there's all these claims on them. And there's letters from Washington, from the State Department, signed by the acting secretary of war, saying, I order you to enslave these hundred people. And Miki Nopey says, no, I don't think so. And they say, what do you mean? You don't think so. This is a letter from the Secretary of War.

Well, you've got 10 guards here. I've got 100 warriors. Do you want to try something with 10 guards? It's like, no. So then he writes a letter. They stop in Little Rock. And the guy who's gotten this letter from the acting secretary of war, he writes the governor. and he says, I've got this order. Can you give me troops to help enforce this order? Because they're not complying. And it's the governor, the acting governor. He says, because he knows about what's happening in Florida.

Everybody in the country knows they're getting whipped in Florida. He says, actually, you need to leave immediately. I'm going to decline your request. Then they get out to Indian territory, and the same guy, takes his letter to the local commander of the fort. And he's like, give me armed forces to enforce this order. And the guy says, are you crazy? Are you out of your mind?

No. And so they have to leave and they fail in the attempt. But this is a story in which forced means force. Even in Florida, there are, it's General Jessup makes it very clear that you do not want to mess with the black seminals. And everyone down there, it's like this is a huge, huge error. So after what's called the Dave defeat, some people call it the Dave Massacre, it's just a defeat of day. in which there's 50 black Seminoles who participate and three people die on the Seminole Black Seminole side

and 105 American soldiers are killed. This is in a slave territory, right? So people of color destroying an army. They know that very well in Florida. And the legislature meets and they're not very happy about it. And they write a note saying, okay, if we ever see any person of African descent, we can either enslave them or kill them, something like that.

And they pass this decree. Now, Abraham and the Black Seminoles hear about this decree and tell Jessup. And Jessup has to write the governor and another slaveholder saying, you must be out of your mind. As soon as you try to do that, they're going to start the war again. And they back down. And the law is repealed. And there's no enforcement. And there's no punishment.

Now, they try to hide the Black Seminole participation in the day defeat later on, although it's obvious that that's a lie. but even in Florida you have this idea of law meeting force and you know you got a gun, a gun is a gun. So what made the black Seminoles such badasses? They were, they

I think Spanish Florida I think the close friendships and bonds with the steminals and the other tribes in Florida you know there's a there's a

so there's a legacy of going back to 1802, the chief of the Seminoles, this is the Royal Line of Seminoles, which is a cowkeeper, Payne, Oleg, and then Mekinope, who's the chief of, in this, in 1835. But going back to 1802, going back to King Payne, you have a black seminal advisor and interpreter, close advisor to the king,

who is of African descent, who is a black Semple. So Abraham is a boy. So he sees from the beginning that you have this high stature highly valued member of the elite. And that's his mentor. And then I find him again in 1822, and he's training as a translator under one. Another black sonnel was also an advisor and interpreter.

Abraham himself has a formal title of the sense bearer or the sensekeeper. It's a formal position, which is like a prime minister, keeper of the king's conscience. So the white people think he's just the interpreter, actually, of course, he's a chief and the interpreter and a close advisor and one of the most powerful men in the nation. So I think it's it comes out of the confidence and the boldness comes out of this 40-year span of having earned and re-earned, constantly re-earned again when Jackson attacks. They fight off Jackson's forces in 1818 at Swanee Old Town, Black Seminole Forces against Jackson's

forces, fight him off successfully and cross the river and get away. it's this long history of military engagements and the freedom that they've had for and they've earned for four decades. Two questions left. First, what is the most important thing you want readers to walk away after reading this book? Well, I want the Abraham family to get their due. So Jimmy Abraham was, Abraham's great, great, great, great. grandson. I want him to have his due. He's starting up a foundation. They're going to put that website up soon. I want Abraham to get his recognition. He was an incredible, incredible man in many ways. Not there's the warrior's side, but there's also like the diplomacy, his wisdom, the way he navigated this, the way he managed to shepherd his people through and maintain their freedom

successfully through this mind where there's danger on all sides. For me, that's what we're which stays with me. But everyone's going to take what they want from it. For me, it's, it's Abraham's book. Last one, and I ask all authors this, as you were writing, as you were researching the free and the dead, what was the wow moment for you? What was it as you were writing in the research that made you go, wow, this is unbelievable. There's a few of them. So one is in Dade's defeat, which is December 28, 1835, when Abraham and Jumper and I think Chief Alligator is there, Mekinope is there,

and 180 men absolutely annihilate this U.S. Army force. The bodies were left out, because this is in the middle of the Indian Reservation, so it's in the middle of Florida, about 40 miles west of present-day Orlando. the bodies were not recovered for 54 days. So 54 days, the army, these bodies were decomposing in central Florida. And it took that long for the army to get more recruits from New Orleans to have a big enough force. This time it's 1,100 or something like that, to have the confidence to go in and see the battle scene and bury the dead. So that was a moment where I thought, oh, this is, you know, there's this phrase, the past is a foreign country.

This is a different time. If that's how weak the military was, I mean, it's about 14,000 people. The Army's only 7,000 people at this time. That's how weak the military was that the bodies stayed out in the open air, in the weather, for 54 days. It's always interesting when I talk to authors, especially writing about, stories that we've never heard about. And you just sit here and you just shake your head and go, isn't it pathetic how in this country these Yahoo's,

they run around praising Robert E. Lee praising these Confederate generals as these great patriots, these great military tacticians. And they ignore people like this Black Seminole chief. Yeah, I appreciate that. And to your point, what's so difficult about the truth? Why can't? What's so hard about the truth? All I did in this book was try to tell the truth.

To the degree that that reflects on what the country was and what the country is, it's all from the archives. But I appreciate you having me on. That was fun chatting. Folks, the book is called The Free and the Dead, the Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and the American. America's forgotten war. Jamie Holmes is the author. Jamie, I appreciate it.

Thanks for joining us. I'm rolling book club. Thanks a lot. Hello, gorgeous. It's Lala Kent. Host of Untraditionally Lala. My days of filling up cups at Sir may be over, but I'm still loving life in the valley.

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