The Daily - “Charm City,” Part 3: The Lure of the Streets

Episode Date: June 6, 2018

Nook spent the first few years of his life in an affluent suburb, a world away from the streets of Baltimore. But the city drew him back, and he and his friends became part of a generation caught between the crack epidemic that consumed their neighborhoods and the aggressive police tactics meant to fix the problem. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. This episode includes disturbing language and scenes of graphic violence.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, part three of our series on race and policing in Baltimore. What happened to a generation caught between a crack epidemic that consumed their parents and the aggressive police tactics meant to fix the problem. It's Wednesday, June 6th. I don't know what to say here. Okay, Toby, which one was it? Was it on this picture?

No. No, my name's Ryn. And it's Ryn. Can I go ahead and take which one was it? Was it on this picture? Mm-mm. No. The one in his room. In his room. Can I go ahead and take a look at it? Okay. Actually, let me grab my book first. The first time I went to visit Toby at her house, we went into this empty room.

She called it Nook's room. Oh, yeah, this is the one. Do you mind if I bring it in, you guys? No, bring it in. Okay. So the room is filled with all these photos of Nook. And she tells me to bring out this one. It's blown up to poster size. And it's this really beautiful photo of seven teenage boys. And Nook is right in the middle of them. Okay. So... It was a group of them.

You see the group, right? A whole group of them. On the far left is Fats. Fat man. Fat. Fat man. He's the one with the dreads, making a peace sign.

And then next to him? Razor. Then comes Razor. I like Razor, really. That was Nook's best friend. And this one? That's Razor's brother, Mitch. Razor's brother, Mitch.

Has his arm kind of casually hung around Nook's neck. Nook smiling, just beaming. He looks like someone just cracked a joke and he's cracking up. And then there's Eddie on the right in a red sweatshirt. Jim. Jim, who's wearing kind of what looks like a varsity jacket. And Tata. And Tata.

My big baby. Tata. That's my big baby. I'm sorry. Raisa went first, my son's best friend, September 2015. Then my son went December 2016. September 2015, Eddie, at 18 years old, was shot in the street. He's handicapped in a wheelchair with one leg down. He's about to take that one off. That man, he got killed 53 days after my son.

Ta-ta. The one that's kissing my son. My son kissing right there. I got off at 10. By the time I got to my girlfriend, I was set on the step. About 10.30, I got a phone call from my son's girlfriend. My, why are you not at the hospital? For what?

I just hung up and went straight to shock trauma. He was dead when I got, all of them was dead when I got there, all of them. So one, two, three, dead when I got there, all of them. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Out of seven friends, two are in jail, one survived, everybody else died. It didn't stop there.

So she reaches for this photo album and she opens it up in front of us and she starts flipping through, showing us birthdays, family celebrations. She was killed. All with Nook and their extended family of friends in their neighborhood. And so many of them had been killed. A girl cousin, Dejanay. I grew up together. I got pictures of them together as children. She was killed. A girl cousin, Dejanay. I grew up together. I got pictures of them together as children.

She was killed. That was my birthday, May. A cousin named Little Tony. Another friend named Malik. I'm going to show you a picture of him. He was murdered on Pennsylvania Avenue. I remember thinking, hold on a second.

What? I actually couldn't quite process it. I didn't know how to ask her a question. I didn't know how to ask her a question about it. It's bad with that generation. It's real bad with that generation. They're killing our babies badly. This is how. I mean, it reminds me of covering the war in Iraq and having people die, you know, right under your nose. You're having an interview and writing a story about a family, and you leave them on Friday and come back on a Tuesday, and the father's dead.

I mean, that would happen all the time, and that's what her life is like. People are just evaporating. And not, you know, old people who got cancer, but 17-year-olds, 15-year-olds. That's insane. But they're, like, in a war or something. What happened? I think the town is in a war with itself. Zero-tolerance policing was supposed to make life better for Nook's generation. It was supposed to stop the crime from the crack epidemic that had so tormented Toby and Devetta's generations.

But obviously that's not how it played out. Instead, Nook and his friends, their lives were shaped by two forces. First, by what the drugs and the job losses had done to their parents and the options they saw for their lives as a result. But then second, by a policing strategy that seemed to assume their destiny

from the very beginning. Arrested or dead. I always thought Nicholas was the cutest tail in the world. I tell people that now. I ain't never seen a baby as cute as that baby. That baby was funny looking. Big head. And real dark eyebrows. and real long eyelashes.

And a little cut over his eyebrow that he dot when he was 10 months. He had real distinct features. What did he remind you of? What did he look like? What did he look like? Me. Me. Oh, my God. Every day I think about Nook as a child. He was sweet. He was adorable. Very, very smart. So it turns out that when Nook was younger,

he'd spent several years living with his great-aunt Marion, Stavetta's younger sister. She'd become really successful as an accountant. And she'd moved out to Baltimore County, like so many upper-middle-class people in Baltimore in those years. It was a world away from Toby and the city. We just wanted to give him a better life. So we asked her if we could, you know, take him, and she would be able to come visit him,

or she wanted to have him on the weekend whenever she want. It was still her child, but we just wanted to give him a better life and not be brought up in, you know, in the city. And that's how it became of us having milk in our home. Look at these little young girls here. Let me zoom in or you're going to close up. I'm going to close up. He had piano lessons. They taught him sign language.

They taught him how to read very early. I told you he was very smart. He would pick up on anything. We had bought him the Fisher-Price recorder, and he went to church every Sunday with us. And coming home, he would get on his recorder and pretend he was the preacher. And he would be like, let me bless you. And he would put a little spit on his big quarter and pretend he was the preacher. And he would be like, let me bless you.

And he would put a little spit on his finger and put a cross on your forehead, like when they anoint you at the altar with the holy oil. So that's what he did. And he would say, in the name of Jesus. And we just thought it was so cute because it was. Because that means he's paying attention. But it didn't last. We gave him a good life.

We really did. But I guess it just wasn't enough. Or what he wanted. I think about those times with him. Nook wanted to go back to the city, back to his mom. And he was a strong-willed kid. So he moved back in with him. Nook wanted to go back to the city, back to his mom. And he was a strong-willed kid. So he moved back in with Toby.

She was working nights as a bartender. And he was often fending for himself. This just in, you were looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I should tell you this story

about the morning of September 11th. Nook was in this daycare preschool type thing some blocks away in West Baltimore and nobody can rouse Toby on the phone. The school has to shut down because the planes just hit the Twin Towers and everything's closing. Oh my goodness.

Oh, God. There's another one. And Nook, who at the time is three, makes his way home himself. He crosses this big avenue, Lafayette Avenue, as a three-year-old on his own. And that was kind of his world. He had to figure it out for himself and make his own way. He was a leader. He was like his own way. He was a leader. He was like a leader.

He definitely was a leader. Everybody told us that. Everybody loved Nook. You know what I'm saying? Everybody loved Nook. Everybody loved Nook. Neek met Nook in elementary school. All the little kids love him.

Love him. You know what I'm saying? Nook might, he might beat him up, wrestle with him and all that, but he playing with him. He giving that little kid attention. Some attention that little kid ain't getting at home. He come outside, see Nook. Nook.

Come on, shorty, let's go to the store real quick. Get him a dollar, buy him stuff from the store. He was like the Pied Piper of children in the neighborhood. Nook be sitting there playing with him for a whole hour. It be to the point he be playing with one kid. You turn around, it's 10 kids right there. They done went around the corner. Yo, look around the corner.

Everybody came around the corner. Now he playing with all of them. He was the fun one. He liked bikes. All the little kids liked bikes. All right, this is what we going to do. Y'all come outside the mall. All y'all going to have new bikes.

Don't ask where the bikes came from. But y'all all going to have new bikes. You get what I'm saying? But y'all all gonna have new bikes You know what I'm saying It might be four bikes Out of ten kids it might be four bikes Y'all gonna have to take turns on them But y'all gonna have some new bikes Stuff like that

Did that happen? Yeah Don't be out there with that sign on the wall. Teachers, when the students return to your class at dawn, I repeat, teachers, you are expected to be at the door greeting them as they arrive. Nook was in high school when he was killed. He was one of seven kids in his high school, killed in little over a year. Different kids than the ones in the photo.

But Nook was never really interested in school. Ladies, come on, let's hit it. Come on, y'all, let's go. You know, I love you forever. Love and loyalty. That's all we know. This is actually Nook. She's like, shit crazy, because crazy was just here last year. Lynch was just here, and now we got 10. This is actually Nook.

He was never told to say, like, I want to be a police officer or a doctor. He liked basketball at first, and then he wanted to be a rapper. And I won't say what else he said he wanted to be. It's not nothing illegal. But, yeah. What was the craziest thing you thought? You were like, no, no, no, no, he can't be around. A porn star. I mean, in the fourth grade, that's what he said. I wasn't going to say it, but since you asked.

He told his teacher, you know that he teaches his ex around. Do you know what that is? When they told me, I was so embarrassed. He knew exactly what it was. But, yeah. He just wanted to be rich. I don't know. He was rich?

I don't know. I have no idea. Free money making, man. Free money making. Free regal. Long live regal. Long live regal. Long live regal. So his grandmother, Davetta, did get him a job in the library one summer.

But he didn't take to it. It was too slow. He was looking around his neighborhood and he was seeing pretty much one path to getting ahead fast. And that was the streets. We grew up so young that we already paying attention to all these kids. Watching hustlers outside, watching people outside. We probably was on the steps, you know what I'm saying? Watching them hustle. Nook grew up watching the young men in his neighborhood and watching their relationship with the police.

He's just watching. Okay, so the police came from this way. He got away and ran that way. You know what I'm saying? When you put that in your mind as you get older, you just do the same stuff. You just put it all together. I know what to do, what not to do,

because I was watching so young. You know what I'm saying? Long before Nook was actually doing anything illegal, he had some run-ins with the police. But then Nook did start selling drugs when he was about 13. That's what his friends say. He got with those boys in the photograph. They had a block where they worked. And then to protect it, their turf, they got guns. We don't got guns because we just little bad kids running wild. We trying to better our situation.

We just little bad kids running wild. We trying to better our situation. I got to keep this gun right here that's going to let him know I'm not going for it. You ain't ready to take what I got. Because I'm trying to better my situation. If you take it, I'm going to better my situation. You know what I'm saying? And then I'm securing my life at the same time.

You know what I'm saying? It's not just kids just running around. We just running around with guns, shooting, shooting, shooting. We do all that to protect our life and to secure what we got. It's all a part of the game. At some point, we know he started selling heroin. We know that because of the police report from an undercover sting that ended in Nook's arrest when he was 18. Today's date is Monday, July 25, 2016.

Time on deck is 0850. You see 526 doing bywalk initiative in the southern district. Yo, I'm going. What's up? I'm out. How you doing man? I'm chilling man. Hi. What's up man? What's up yo? How you doing man?

What's up yo? Tax free yo. I'm in. Where at? I'm in. What? I'm in. What's up?

What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up? What's up, yo? Taxi free, yo. I'm in. Where at? Four. Everything good? Yeah. All right. Y'all be safe out here.

I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you.

I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. I ain't staying here. I wish I was there. Oh, we ain't around. All right, man.

Nugget hated the police. He hated them. Why did he hate them? Because they don't do shit but make our life hard. We just trying to get our money and better our situation. I know that me saying that, they not going to understand.

But that's how it is with us. You know what I'm saying? From the people outside looking at it, we just some misguided kids that probably didn't have no attention. You know what I'm saying? We found that attention on that block and that loyalty with who we on that block with. And we just trying to all better our situation. And if we could do it all together, that would be a plus. we found that attention on that block and that loyalty with who we on that block with and we're just trying to all battle our situation and if we could do it all together that'd be a plus the fact that they are like say they're enforcing a law that's against the thing that you're doing

right like is that like like how do you understand that i'm doing what i'm doing i understand like these drugs kill people i understand that these drugs fuck up people's life i understand that but i got to get mine you get what i'm saying and today is all about getting your money and getting out I'm going to get my money If that person come She could be Michelle Obama If she come spend her money with me everyday It's supply and demand That's how the world go round

You get what I'm saying I understand that So I understand that. So I understand why they lock us up. It's illegal. But that's life. You know what I'm saying? Everybody that hustle ain't bad people. Everybody that sell drugs ain't bad people.

Everybody that, you know what I'm saying? Stuff like that, it's not bad people. They just come from bad situations. We just try and make them better. But the police, they're not going to understand that. You know what I'm saying? They just on the outside looking in. They don't care if we ain't got no money or we ready to get evicted

and we need this certain amount of money. You know what I'm saying? get evicted and we need this amount, certain amount of, much of money. You know what I'm saying? Nook spent some time in jail, but when he got out, he kept going. And he was making money.

He bought nice clothes. He bought a car, even though he didn't have a license. His Instagram account was full of him holding money, flipping through it, counting it, smiling with giant wads of cash in his fist. No, because the 20s cheating on the 10s, but the 10s cheating on the 20s with the 5s. But it ain't a lot of 5s right here because we just made it.

Everybody want that legal money. That legal money is safe, secure. legal money. That legal money is safe. Secure. The whole objective of illegal money is to make enough illegal money so you can turn it to legal money. That's the whole

objective. Do you feel like you're close? Probably not close, but I'll be there. I keep hustling. I'll probably make enough to get me a house, buy a house in my neighborhood, rent it out to somebody, buy some cars, sell some cars, you get what I'm saying? Buy a laundromat or something.

When we get there, I know I keep hustling, keep doing what I'm doing. I'm doing. I'm staying alive. We started reporting in Baltimore because of Nook's story. But actually, Nook was the exception. He was shot by the police. But those other young men in the photo, most of them were killed by other young men in Baltimore.

The thing about murder in Baltimore is that it's actually really tightly contained to the circle of people committing crimes. If you were killed in Baltimore last year, the likelihood is you'd been arrested an average of 11 times, which means today's victim is often yesterday's perpetrator. And what's left is a very unusual situation in America, where in these Baltimore neighborhoods, an 18-year-old has a one in seven chance of dying before he reaches his mid-30s. And Nook's friends, they know this. Death always a surprise.

Nobody knowing death gonna happen. You don't know if this next bullet coming towards you or your homeboy. You don't know if it's gonna hit you. You don't know if you're gonna live. You don't know if you're gonna die. What's that like? It's... It's overwhelming at the moment. It's scary at the moment it's scary at the moment

but it come with it so it come with the game that we playing so it's not scary you know it's going to happen one day you know that's possible you wake up

with that thought in your mind you wake up, you're in the mirror, you're ready to hit the block. Damn, I can get locked up today. I can get killed today. It's life. We'll be right back. There's a kind of eerie feeling when you go to the block where Nook had been selling drugs. Most days his friends are still there, doing their thing.

You get this sense that nothing has really changed. There's just a different kid in Nook's spot. His block was the corner of Calhoun and Pratt. That's in West Baltimore. There's a bodega on the corner. Old guys holding bags of potato chips and people kind of milling around. They say it's very rare.

Just the longest I've been with women, I don't be in no murder. It's 10 days strong. I just seen that this morning. 10 days without a murder. 10 days strong. It's like, damn. 10 days here without a murder.

It's going to be two weeks. They could get a month without a murder. Sheesh. It's going to be two weeks. They're going to get a month without a murder? Sheesh. It's cold, and one of Nook's friends is inside the bodega, watching the street through the glass door. What did he want for himself? To save his money up and get away for real.

And that was really his main objective for him and his mother. And when you say get away, meaning like leave Baltimore? I mean, like... Just get away, period. This ain't forever. Do you remember him talking about that? Yeah, we always talked about that. We ain't going to be like the older people that we see out there.

Yeah. Still out there. Yeah. Who out there, good bro? So all of a sudden, this police car pulls up. This Creed right here. Oh, really? Come see him.

Okay, cool. But not just like slows down and puts on the brake and pulls up, but like screeches up, practically bumping up onto the curb. I mean, goes from 70 to zero in like three seconds. And these cops get out. You open up with your case? No, you're a kid. You got 200 pills you got? That you put on? And these cops get out. We're standing there in the middle of the street in this kind of absurd situation in which they're kind of bantering and they're all kind of insulting each other.

And you can't really tell what's going on. And Nook's friend is just shouting about this litanies of wrongs against him. Tell him about when you put that stolen bike on me. I was just riding a bicycle and you accused me of having stolen it. He spent out driving too fast and hit it. You put me in the back of your police car and took me on a rough ride. This is before Freddie Gray, before they start doing the seatbelt shit, because they ain't do that effort. You did this, you did that. You, you did that. You got him on the front page. You put him up the line. You're the one that gave him the right all the paperwork. Do you see what just happened to his partner? Your partner,

y'all is stone cold liars. The police have no idea who I am and are confused by my presence. My private investigator right here. Is that what that is? What is that right there? Tape recorder. She records. I'm a reporter. She recorded.

Talking about your 200, 500 pills. No, New York Times. New York Times. Okay. Usereg blow up. You know that? Usereg will glow. You just ready to blow up.

You know that? You just ready to go global. So you got a private reporter. That's pretty interesting. And it's clear there's this long history between them. Like this is some weird cat and mouse routine that both sides understand. Y'all have a good day. You too.

Yeah, you too. I got about 100 videos on my iCloud. I got videos on your dumb ass from back in 14, stupid. No, 15, stupid. After a few minutes of this, the cops get in the car and drive off. I'm going to see both of y'all over Supermax. But they didn't really leave. Hey, boss!

Man, boss! The car kept buzzing the block. I mean, really accelerating, like it was like on a racetrack or something. Read all the way, yeah! Going around and around, backing up really quickly, tearing through an alley. They're coming out the hole! I asked the guys, I said, does this usually happen? What is he doing? And they were like, oh, yeah, that's what he does every day.

And I mean, obviously, this is a place where drugs are being sold. The police should be here. But it's just the way that it's happening. All day, every day. All day, every day. He like pops up onto the curb and tries to spook people. If you was not right here, he'd be doing so much. I swear, he's jumping on curbs and all that. Act like he's going to hit you and all that. And Nook's friends, they're pretty unfazed.

What she want? What you want? Nine. Nine, boy. In the midst of all of this, one of the guys on the corner makes a drug sale. So it doesn't seem very effective. Walk to that corner down there and come back up. Walk to the corner. And then it kind of occurred to me, oh, this is exactly what we've been hearing

about policing in Baltimore after Freddie Gray. The police, they've been trying to get away from their bad behavior, but they don't know what to replace it with or what to do instead. So what's left is this kind of half thing, this winding up of the hammer. But the hammer never comes down.

And so you have these teenagers openly breaking the law. The cops still unsure how to police them. So nothing's really happening. Drugs are still being sold on the corners. And the kids who are selling them keep dying. The four boys in that photograph, they were all killed after Freddie Gray. Yo, you're going down the carry-up! And then, just like that, it's over.

The cops drive off. And Nook's friend keeps talking to me about Nook. You ain't no different from no other kid out here. We be forced into adulthood early because we be taking care of ourselves for real. He wasn't no different from nobody else out here. And what's a kid like from Baltimore City? Just trying to get some money. Stay out of the way.

You ain't got no choice but to do it. Or starve. Everybody don't come from a happy home for real, for real. Everybody don't come from a happy home, for real, for real. Everybody don't come from no happy home. Some people ain't got no choice but out here. Ain't got nobody. So this be it.

This really be it. Some people take care of their whole house. And they're young still. Do you think Nook had a choice? When he was younger, for real, from what I can see and what I was hearing, for real, he really had it all when he was young. But as

he got older, he didn't really, for real. So he started doing for him and his mother, like, not just him. So he kind of had a choice, but he kind of didn't. Kind of, sort of. Yeah, kind of, sort of. He knew he had the option,

but it's like a strong force that was against him or had a hold of him that he just couldn't let go. I just couldn't understand it either. What do we do? What can we do? Nook's family thinks he did have a choice. Nook would probably right now be at Cornell or something like that or somewhere. I mean, this was for the most part a family that kept rising, like Marian, the accountant, or his great-aunt Gina, who built a very successful business. She got pregnant at 16 and worked three jobs so her son, Maurice, could go to private school.

You know, I drive through the inner city where I used to live at because my business is not too far from there. And I see some people that I grew up with. And I'm telling you, and I went to school with a lot of people that picked on me because I didn't have the most nice things. And I see them now, and I have two Mercedes, and they're walking, and they look like they're about 80 years old. And I know I look good. You know, so it's all about the environment. Either you get out of it or you stay there. Some people love the street.

Some people want to do better. Some people have no choice but to do better, some people can't do better because they're not given an opportunity, some people are teetering in line and can make the choice, can go right or left, and some people just love the street, like you have some guys love doing business, you have some people like you love what you do, some people love the street life, some people love being in the mix. Some people feel more comfortable in the street. Whether they, you know, whatever, for whatever reason, they feed off the energy of it, the

outside, the possibility of being murdered, the fast selling drugs, all the shystiness and you got to be on a swivel. Somebody's always trying to agree. I think some people, it pumps. It's the heartbeat of their life. The more I listened to everyone in his life talk, the more I was thinking, it's kind of a false choice. It wasn't really a choice for him.

He was a little kid and he wanted to be with his mom. And his mom was in that world. And his mom loved him fiercely. And he loved her too. And it would have been unreasonable to expect that he would have stayed living away from her forever. So Nook, as a little kid, chose his mom. The streets came with her. If you knew your son had a gun, would you call the police? Would you call the police? Such a hard question, right?

It's such a hard question at this point. And that's bad. That's a hard question that you don't know if you would call the police if your own child had a gun. I don't feel so bad. Because guess what? Why should I tell mine to put his down? Because Charlie not going to put his down. John not going to put his down. John not going to put his down. Tracy

not going to put hers down. And they just might not like Nook today. I got to protect mines. And I think that's why everybody's seeming so selfish. You don't know who to trust. Everybody is scared. Everybody want a gun and everybody can get a hold to a gun and has a gun.

And what a scared person going to do if they finger on the trigger? Boo. get a hold of a guy and has a guy. And what is a gay person going to do if they finger on the trigger? Boom. I asked Toby if she thought Nocada had a choice. She didn't really answer. But she did say this.

The streets was in or something. It was just like he already, as a baby, had this leader attitude, like this old spirit or something. Like he's just going to do it his way. And if it's wrong, he's going to figure it out. And is she saying all of this, I'm realizing, she sounds proud of him for being a leader in this world. And could he have, say, for example, just like gone to work at the library, for example,

like with your mom or something like that? No, indeedy. It wasn't his personality. I ain't going to say he couldn't work. It wouldn't have been that. That's not him. That would have never been enough for him. They're going to drive the spaceship and he is going to the moon

and he's going to come back and get us and take us there and the house is going to be built at the end of it, I'm trying to tell you. There ain't going to be no other way and if it can't be that way, there ain't going to be no way. That kind of stopped me in my tracks. Here was someone who loved her son so much, who admired her son so much, but they lived in this upside-down land her son so much, who admired her son so much. But they lived in this upside-down land, and there were very, very few ways to make it as they saw it.

This was the fastest way, and Nook was good at it. He was important in that world, a leader. And she didn't want to take that away from him. She wasn't going to stand in his way. And did you resist that? Before I discourage him, I won't say nothing.

Every thought in that boy's mind was to get a heat. Like, so why take that from him? Because it's possible. Like, so why take that from me? Because it's possible. At the end of the day, we all make choices in life. And each generation tries to, you try to make your next generation better.

From what my grandfather went through, to my mother, to me, to him. Well, he's going to be better than me me and he's having it better than me. So it works on the flip side of the spectrum. If I was in the street right now, he would be deeper in the streets than me. I could nourish him and raise him just like I am now to be something. I can nourish and raise him to be in the street just like a mobster can nourish his son to be a better mobster than what he was, to maybe get made and go higher and become the boss of the family. Whereas though he didn't make it,

that makes sense. So on the street, you can do the same thing intentionally or unintentionally. And do you think that's what was happening with Toby and you? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't, yeah. I just don't think that she foresaw the ending result.

I don't think she thought it was going to be that. I don't think she foresaw that. But I don't think she wanted that. I just think that's kind of what happened. I don't know what. Razor, bro. That's Razor and Mitch. Is that Nook? That's Nook singing. That's Razor.

Uh. Razor, everybody think Nook and Razor look alike. Uh. That's Nook singing. That's this song? I love them, I wouldn't trade them for nothing. I'd just be looking back and wondering why they changed so fast. You better watch me. You better watch how you approach. I put that flame in your ass and I'ma take the hit myself.

I'ma put no change in your ass. I'ma grab you till you die. You niggas go out the back. You a bustin' ass nigga, love you but you a bad. We be tryin' to catch up. Put my foot on the gas. We'll be right back. Thank you. Here's what else you need to know today. The results of Tuesday's primary voting in California,

the single most important battleground for Democrats trying to retake the House, are still coming in. But as of Wednesday morning, early returns seem to show that Democrats are in the top positions in the key districts where they are hoping to reclaim seats previously held by Republicans. California's unusual primary system allows the top two candidates to advance to the general election, regardless of party, which had raised fears that Democrats could be locked out altogether in the final round of voting.

Democrats think that California could give the party a third of the seats they need to regain control of Congress. And... Just to sum it up, I think we have enough work to do for the American people that we should be here during these weeks. On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell canceled most of the Senate's annual August recess in a move that could keep Democratic lawmakers off the campaign trail ahead of this fall's elections. McConnell said the decision would give the Senate time to complete important legislative work. But the Times reports it is as much a political maneuver

that would force nearly a dozen Democratic senators to choose between missing votes in Washington and defending their vulnerable seats back at home. I hope we'll get greater cooperation, but everybody should anticipate that we will be here as I announced today. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.