White Folks & Bad Law with Elie Mystal

y'all want to talk about. I know, I just want to shout out everybody who subscribe to our YouTube channel. We are now at one hundred thousand subscribers and guilty, so shout out to all of you. Thank you for supporting this NAACP Image Award winning show. And I want to ask you all what you want to talk about today.

have to endanger your baby and new parents by coming in in those early days. And like I said, it was bipartisan. It was supported by both some of the most conservative and progressive members and both sides of the aisle. And the Speaker is so hell bent and shutting down this bipartisan petition, and we're not sure why that it

got voted down. The rule got voted down on the floor which was trying to shut that down, and rather than try to take it back up, make a compromise give parents the ability to vote remotely as they're recovering from the birth of a child. He canceled votes for the rest of the week and just shut the entire thing down.

a proxy vote. I'm just curious because the other part that we don't talk a lot about around Project twenty twenty five is the real misogynistic, very unilateral view that they take of the family and their desire to see the woman at home in the kitchen, barefoot bearing babies and daddy going out to work is their view, and it's almost in equal portion to the dismantlement of dei and the privatization of government and all that other stuff.

But their views on the family are hardcore in that document, and it's reiterated time and time again. So I'm just curious to know if y'all a you think he's more offended by women being able to vote proxy after giving birth or does it upset them that men might possibly be included. And that's just taking a male, female view of a family, But there are many versions of what families look like.

we shouldn't elect them to Congress. And that is there, That is the thin end of the wedge to more generally restrict voting rights for women in general. I think it's laser focused on the misogyny and the family issues, and it's also like one of these things. And I talk about this a little bit in the book. If you think about like how this country is structured and the deep roots of misogyny that are layered into this country.

Here's a pop quiz. How many legislatures in American history have been controlled by women, have had a majority women in their in the legend of zer right And the answer is, of course never in Congress, not once in American history has called him had a majority of women. The first one was Nevada in two thousand and eighteen. That was had the Nevada State House was had a

majority of women over men. When you think about the fact that women have made up about half the half of the population forever because that's how DNA works, and yet women have only made up the majority in a few state houses Posts twenty eighteen and never in Congress, you can see how this entire country is kind of by men for men, consistently stamping on the women's right to vote, right to choose, right to do anything other

than have babies and make sandwiches and so. I in the book, I talk about how the very first voter registration kind of proposal was in Massachusetts in eighteen hundred and there was this back and forth between the Attorney General of Massachusetts and John Adams, who would go on to be the second President of the United States, and the attorney general was arguing that they should lower the property requirements for white men to vote right because remember

this is this is the eighteen hundreds. You know, black people aren't voting because they're not considered people. Women aren't voting because they're not considered people. Poor white men are not being allowed to vote because they're not considered people, and they're trying to lower the property requirements for poorer white men to vote. And Adams, opposing this measure, literally says, well, if you let poor white men vote, I mean, what's next women voting? I mean, come on, guys, like that's

his literal argument in a letter. So the mass the misogne sticker roots of this country are deep, and make an argument in the book that the nineteen sixty five Civil Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation ever passed in this country because not only did it take us out of our apartheid past, it's the first law that made full, fair and equal elections even a

possibility on paper. People also forget before the nineteen sixty five Civil Rights Act, the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, didn't mean jack for black women. Black women were not voting because white suffragettes the one

the privilege in the nineteenth Amendment. Now I know, they had to wait until the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act to even have a shot at voting, which is why that piece of legislation is so important, and that's why the Republicans are always trying to tear it.

your permanent friends, as we always talk about. So I think that it is important to understand that when there was a national crisis, the pandemic, they voted by proxy. There was a piece in here that would have allowed someone not just the twelve weeks of a new mother,

but also if they're experiencing a serious medical condition. There are a number of members, including Sylvester Turner who passed literally the night of or the day after the joint address from Donald Trump, that are in the middle of health crises. Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee who had cancer right Congressman coming to was very ill, Donald Payne Senior and Donald Payne Junior who were very ill. There are always

reasons why your humanity should leave first. And what I would agree with you on tip is this question around what did you expect from this party, this party that doesn't want to democratize access to healthcare because health issues and concerns and challenges and conditions are absolutely nonpartisan, but they still want to make you pay for health care costs at a premium unless you're a healthcare or health

insurance company. Chip Roy, who last night tweeted or Tuesday night when this happened, tweeted, proxy voting is unconstitutional and will be abused and expanded.

Flip that around, and in a lot of households, how many women are with partners who can drop their jobs and are willing to drop their jobs and drop their careers at the drop of a hat because the woman gets called into the studio unexpectedly at eight o'clock for free. How many women are with husbands that are going to do that or with partners that are going to do that.

Not everybody, Not everybody. And we're not even talking And I know I'm looking at Tiffany right now, we're not even talking about you know, Tiffany has to get into the studio what three hours before me to do this and the hair and whatever to make sure they're at Whereas I can just roll my fat ass up whenever I want to with the pick in the hair and be like yo, I'm good to go. Let's roll right

like the I've been in these green rooms. I'm sure you guys have too, with women guests who are there with their kids because they could not get child care to do the hit to advance their career or make their points. And this is just that small slice of weird life that is kind of live television, right. This lack of care or help that we give to families, and especially families with young children, permeates our society, and

the burden disproportionately falls on women. To just add that to the list to just add that to the pile that's on our society, that's on not a lot of people not having the best partners. There are lots of ways that we can skin it. But the party that most often talks about family, talks about life, talks about the sanctity of the family, is also the party that makes it as hard as possible to raise children in this society.

People are saying, I worked harder than I ever have, but the prices on everything in my life were getting higher. People who are saying that America I learned about in school, the one where people's rights are protected. The people are saying that why are we yet again going through another healthcare battle that threatens millions of people. The people are saying that I'm worried about the financial security in the

future of my country. The voices of folks and so I end by saying simply this where I started was John Lewis. I don't know how to solve this. I don't know how to stop us from going down this road. Chuck Schumer's now told me that they're greasing the skids to do these things. I'm sorry, but I know who does have the power, the people of the United States of America. The power of the people is greater than the people in power. It is time to heed the words of the man. I began this whole thing with

John Lewis. I beg folks to take his example of his early days, where he made himself determined to show his love for his country at a time the country didn't love him. To love this country so much and be such a patriot that he endured meetings savagely on the Edmund Pettis Bridge, at lunch counters, on freedom rides. He said he had to do something. He would not normalize a moment like this. He would not just go along with business as usual. He wouldn't know how to

solve it. But there's one thing that he would do that I hope we all can do that. I think I did a little bit of tonight. He said, for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble to redeem the soul of our nation. I want you to redeem the dream. Let's be bold in America, not to being into great Americans, not divide us against each other. Let's be bolder in America with a vision that inspires, with hope that starts with the people of

the United States of America. That's how this country started, we the people. Let's get back to the ideals that others are threatening. Let's get back to our founding documents that those are perfect geniuses. Had some very special words at the end of the Declaration of Independence. Was one of the greatest in all of humanity, declarations of interdependence, when our founder said we must mutually pledge, pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

We need that now from all Americans. This is a moral moment. It's not left or right, it's right or wrong. It's getting good trouble, my friend, Madam President, I yield the.

So he broke the record of strom Thurman, who was an infamous segregationist who previously filibustered for more than twenty five hours, and a thing that he was protesting was the Civil Rights Act, the nineteen fifty seven Civil Rights Act, and how he sustained himself as he had one foot off the floor and it was a bucket where he could relieve himself so he could keep one foot on the floor and he ate little bits of hamburger meat,

just because he was that incensed about giving equality to people. And I think why it is so important to put that in context our listeners and our viewers is because as those civil rights are getting rolled back today, Senator Corey Booker. Because and Angela will correct me if I'm wrong. This wasn't a filibuster, This was an open debate, and so it was a speech, right and so he you know, I kind of feel like, you know, I think Angela

had some frustration with me some weeks ago. So I'm like, I don't know what to do, Like I feel hopeless, and she's like, well.

so tired and scared and worried about my family. And I was literally on a went to bed at eight o'clock because I had to get up at three o'clock in the morning to take a train out of Boston. And when I got up at three o'clock, he was still talking. And when I got on the train, he was still talking. And when I got my train came in, he was still talking. And I was looking at that man and I was like, fool, you're the one who's tired. Nah, Bro,

you don't, you don't. It just reminded me I don't get to be tired, and not just because Corey Booker wasn't tired. I've talked about this before, but I but I'll do this thing sometimes when I'm feeling really down, just really like I can't go on, I can't fight these people. I should just move to Montreal. I should

just move out of the country, right. And I'm like in a CBS and I'm seeing all these white folks in the CBS, and I'm like, you probably hate me, maybe I hate you too, right, And then I think, what would Frederick Douglas say, Right, Frederick Douglas was right next to me in the CBS. What would he say? And he would say, Bro, you're you're tired, my man. I was a slave, right. I taught myself how to read. I didn't have no schoolhouse rock And you're tired, right,

my brother. You have every book in the world available on a magical device in your pocket. Hmm, right, I had to, Right, I had to risk my life for like a few pages, right, for a few letters. And you have every book in the world and your you can write any book you want to and you're tired. Nah, brother, you don't get to be tired. And Booker reminded me that we do not come from a defeated people, right, We do not come from a bowed or cowed people.

We come from fighters, We come from struggle, right. And it just it was a it was unnecessary after so much of the crap the Democrats have done, placard Gate, you know, at the sity of the Union, at the fake state of the Union, after so much crap that Democrats have done that has been enervating to me. That has felt like knives in my back. Right to see Booker out there, standing out front and taking some heat

for all the rest of us. Reminded me that we don't get to be tired, We don't get to be depressed. Our job is to push the rock, and it doesn't matter if the rock makes it to the top of the mountain, because then the next generation up we'll just push it a little bit more. We wouldn't be here if people behind us hadn't been pushing the rock when it looked hopeless, right, and so now we got all we got to do is keep pushing the rock and keep trying. And so that's spiritually what that meant for me,

very quickly. Intellectually also important. And these people who were just like, oh, it was just a stunt first of all, Yeah, it was a stunt because the Democrats don't have any power. So what are we supposed to do other than stunt on these fools? That's literally what we can do right now. Number one. Number two, how do you think the conversation

gets started? Right when people have been asking me with my book, like, you know, why did you write this book when you didn't know who was gonna win the election? It's like, dude, I wrote this book before Joe Biden's first the Band. I was pretty sure who was gonna win the election when I wrote it. All right, I'm not under any illusions. I wrote the book because I've been calling it my start of writing Project twenty twenty nine.

Right when did Republicans start writing Project twenty twenty five? In twenty twenty one when they had no power? When they at lust when they got in their asses kick and they were so pissed off they tried to attack the capitol and that didn't work, and that's when they started planning for twenty twenty five. So in the same way, this is when I start planning for twenty twenty nine, right. And the thing about Booker is that he reminds us that you have to start from somewhere, you have to

build momentum and build the conversation from somewhere. And he's obviously a person who is trying to start and build that momentum that sure will not have an immediate effect today, but it's how we build forward. We're too much of a nation of front runners, right, We're too much of a nation of like if we didn't win, if we can't win tomorrow, then it wasn't worth it. No, No, it's building towards winning is actually what the work is that we have to do right now.

I'm going to read it. I'm very excited about actually, but it's remarkable to me that what Corey kept referencing on the floor is that he was trying to beat the man that was trying to ensure that he would never be able to stand on the floor of the Senate floor. And it's this is about something so much bigger. There's another segregationist that is ever present now, sign in

executive orders every single day. And one of the things that you say in here is, if it were up to me, I treat every law passed before nineteen sixty five as presumptively unconstitutional. And I think that that is such a great point, and it would be a great starting point if only we had some white allies in the House and the Senate that could understand that, if only we had judges on the courts at the federal level who could understand that, that can understand that we've

been operating at a deficit. And even though we just celebrated or commemorated really bloody Sunday, the sixtieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday this year later this year, the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five. We still are not free, and they're dialing back these laws every single day. In fact, in Wisconsin, while folks are celebrating the victory of the Supreme Court justice, they also constitutionally it's not a state constitution mandate for voter ID, which means it can't be

challenged anymore. What is the path forward to us deciding that all of these laws are unconstitutional where they are steady using them as building blocks for how to oppress us further in twenty twenty.

winning argument to me. You have to give me a present day reason for why your idea or your law should exist that we used to do it that way. That's not an argument that the slavers really wanted it that way. That's not an argument. I don't care what the slavers wanted. But one of the things that I believe we have a problem with as a country, as a party, and sometimes as a people, is that we accept the bad note right, we accept we accept the bad as like there, well, there's nothing we can do

about the past. We can only look forward to the future. Now, No, we can do some things about the past, at least the parts of the past that are still like reaching their hands out to grab us and hold us back. Now, no, we can do something about that, right, And that's kind of what I try to refocus and reform the debate around, like these things in the past that still affect us today are things from the past that still need to

be stamped out and fight and fought. And it's not enough to just do the back and forth of comedy of like, oh, well, this is how we always did it, so it's how we're gonna continue doing enough, miss me, with that, I don't.

But we are all accepting what came before. And I think in thinking about getting rid of a whole set of laws that pre existed a date, you are tapping into your imagination. You are deepening into what it is to if we had a blank sheet of paper, then you just start writing from the blank spot. And I

like to know where do you give yourself permission? And then how do we give others permission to think about just society in general, wherever we are at our local level, at our county's, state, national level, how do we how do we begin the process of decoupling ourselves from a commitment to what has been to really affirmatively saying, you know what, man, if I could dream this the shit I.

going on, Right, what did South Africa do. Did they just go say, like, oh, our old racist constitution, We're just gonna make some amendments and you know, change some of the terms and now we're good. No, they were like, get that shit out of here, get it just get it straight out here, throw it out, the bath, the water, the baby, all of it. Throw it out. We're starting again, and we're starting again this time asking everybody, not just

the white folks. Right. South Africa had a whole different constitutional convention that included, yes, the majority black population, but also whites. Whites were not unrepresented in the New African South African Constitutional Congress, right, and they wrote a new document which now stands as one of the best written

constitution in the world. If you ask legal scholars and human rights watchers, South Africa has exceeded our constitution because they started again from front first principles, right, So that's number one. Like, if if you the the idea that put like this, the idea that my people were kidnapped, captured, brought here and slaved here, got free, but then still have to live under the laws as they were understood by their enslavers. Nah, that ain't freedom. That ain't freedom.

That is a different form of capture. Right, you don't have you can go back throughout history. You don't have vikings getting you know, kidnapped by the Romans and then getting free and at all. I'm just gonna stay here in Rome and live as or No, that's not that's not how it happens. Right, So if we're gonna if we're gonna be free, at some point, we have to address the terrible laws and terrible principles of the plast as brought to us by our enslavers. Right, So that's

kind of big picture number one. Number two, Just on the ground in the trenches, Never accept the premise of the question. Never accept the bad premise of their questions, right, Never accept that it that we we just have to wait a little bit longer for white folks to get an attle bit better. No, no, no, no, Like it's the fierce urgency of now that I'm talking about, Right, we can right now start changing some of these things in our first in our local communities, then statewide, and then

and then nationally. And again, that's not something that I came up with. That is something that I learned from watching Republicans, because when Republicans take power, look at how they use it. They use it maximally. I made the argument that Republicans come into office with that sledgehammer and they just smash things. They smash what they don't like,

they smash what they think is holding them back. Right, Democrats come into power with super glue and sell it tape, and we're gonna duct tape the thoughts back to get there and protect the institutions. And that no, and I'm trying to talk about, let's come into power if we're ever allowed to have it again with a sledgehammer. There are other things that we need to smash. That's why

you'll never hear me really defend institutions. I'm not an institutionalist because the institutions most of the time are shitty, especially to me. Trump is taking a piss all over the FBI. You don't hear me saying like we need to restore the FBI. Nah, the FBI. I don't think that we should take it down the way Trump is taking it down. I don't think that we should politicize it and turn it into truly a secret police the

way Trump and Cash Pattel want to do it. But I don't think that what we really need to do is just go back to the way the FBI worked when it was I don't know, not investigating Brett Cabinack. No, I don't think that FBI was any goddamn better, right, No need to. We need to fix and reform the FBI. But I'm not gonna defend the in of the FBI. I'm not going to defend any institution. I'm not going to defend the institution of the filibuster. Are you kidding me?

That's terrible, I hope, and one of the reasons why I was pissed at Placard Gate. I want the Republicans to right now be forced to break the filibuster. I want them to have to break the filibuster in order to get their horrible agenda through because it's clear to me that only Republicans have the stones to do it. Democrats will never have the stones to do it unless Republicans do it first. So I want Republicans to break that so then if we ever get power again, we can break it.

be stealing it from my brother Andrew. Andrew has such a great question that I want to hear your thoughts on, and he has a very eloquent way of asking these questions. But Andrew, I'm curious your thoughts. And I know we're gonna do this later as a whole special, But when we were talking this morning, you said you wanted to get Ellie's thoughts.

says separate but equal, but inherently unequal right. And then of course the fight became around how it is that we have integration and equality by virtue of basically the mixing of of of the races in our in our public education system. And I'm just I don't know if you've entered that that fray of conversation and whether some of this feels a little sacrilegious even to me. I got to tell you to because I'm so faithful to the work that was done there. But it did beg

the question as we as we ask. I talked to some the old heads that I know who live around, who are in my family, and there's some real striking divergent opinions about whether or not we should have kept us or if integration was a right fight to be had.

money back, right. Brown v. Bordived is the top line case. But there was another case in South Carolina that was consolidated into the same case about integration, and what they we were asking for was not coequal black and white schools. They were asking for a bus so that black students could get busted to their black school as opposed to to having to walk eight miles literally in the rain and swamps of North Carolina, when the white kids had ten buses. Give us one. We paid taxes, Give us

a bus for our kids. That was what they were asking for, not to go to the white school, but to have the opportunity to make the black school as best and accessible as it could be with the taxpayer money that the whites were already extracting from our community. And the answer from the Supreme Court was not give blacks the money that they have put into the system.

It was throw them into the white schools, and then they can't bitch anymore, right, which is an answer, right, But the actual ask was give us our money back. And you see this happen all the time in litigation around black issues, where we're asking for one thing, and even when we win, the court doesn't give us what we ask for, they give us something else. They give us what they think is the most beneficial for white people, even when they agree with our point, to say nothing

of what happens when they disagree with our point. Right, So on that kind of thirty thousand foot look at integration, Always remember the quest for integration was not the quest to have the opportunity to eat lunch with Chip Harrington. The second. I don't give a damn about Chip. I don't want I don't need to, I don't need to hang out with Chip. I want the money. I want the money that our people have put into the system to come back out to our people at the equivalent rate.

And that is what white people have always denied us, Right, That's number one number two on the kind of social questions of integration. I grew up an I am an integrated man, right. I went to phrenominantly white school. I was the only black kid and most of my schools and most of my classrooms, and that was difficult, right that that has scarring, psychological scarring, other scarring. I know Pearl Jam's lyrics better than I know nass right, like

this just it's I do I can. I can sing you a Pearl Jam song right now at the.

great for me personally? I don't know. That's hard to say, because it's hard to then unravel all of the other things. If integration comes but the money doesn't come, then it was clearly then segregation was clearly worse for me. In this kind of Wakanda future where we don't have integration but we do have all of our money, am I

better or worse off? That's really just hard to say, right, It's hard to project into some truly at that point science fiction future where black people receive all the resources we need and deserve and then live in a separate society if the white folks ever, But it'd be interesting to try, right, if the white folks ever wanted to pay us back, give us our reparations, give us our back pay, and then give us the land that we

should have. Right. I don't know how that. I don't know that we're worse off than you get you want to get, because you know I was. I'm always like, you gotta give your reparations. But reparations with that land means nothing. So we'll take whatever. We'll take New York, New Jersey, you know, New England. We'll just take all that y' all can have, Texas or whatever. We'll we'll take our little enclave, you know, north of Philly, south of bangor like, let's go give us the money back

and we'll see what we can do. I think we would thrive in that situation, and I would I would like to play that out. But you understand, Andrew, that is a science fiction play. That is not something that's actually gonna happen, given what white people were actually willing to do. I think integration is probably the best answer.

like half white. So there were, so my mom couldn't go to the one library in her town, but her dad could go in. And so she's got horrible stories about kind of waiting on the steps of the library waiting for her dad to check out books for her while she's sitting on the steps, and the white people walking by here just calling her everything the son of God, saying, you know you can't go there, you know you can't

go in there. She's like, I'm literally on the step right, so that's where she starts, right, and then I show up and I do whatever I do. I you know, Barack Obama gets elected and she's like, we won, We won, and she's so happy. And then we start losing, and then we start losing and losing and losing. I can see it just wearing on her face and her soul. And she says to me, in twenty seventeen, right, so

not even the second eruption of racial violence. In twenty seventeen, She's like, I cannot believe that my grandkids are gonna have to fight the same battles that I fought. You couldn't have told me in the sixties and the seventies that my grandkids were gonna have to fight the same battles that I fought as a gen X black person.

I realized that I grew up in a bubble, in a time bubble, in a warped bubble where, for a brief moment, this country was actually interested in moving forward, This country was actually interested in integration, in justice, in fairness. That was a bubble. That wasn't what my mom grew up with, and it's not what my children are gonna grow up with. Right And so when you say, like this point where we can rest now, we can never rest because they will always try to take it from us.

You know, one of the things that I have learned for sure about white folks in this country is that they never take a loss as a defeat. They never take a loss as the end of the story. They don't retreat, They reload, and they will come. If we win a RTE today, white folks will be at the door trying to take it away tomorrow. So there is no rest, no never rest, because they will always try to get it. That said, what would make me feel like we are winning or that we're winning more than

we're losing. Well, first of all, you'll see why I'm stopping for a second. A lot of these boomers are gonna die soon, right, like some of this dead hand control that we have right now, like they are dying off at this point. My generation gen X has failed. As a generation, gen X has failed, and we need to own our failure. We had an opportunity to push the ball forward as a generation. We failed. But the millennials haven't failed yet. Gen Z hasn't failed yet, and

I don't think they're gonna fail, right. So what gives me hope is when I see younger people taking up the mantle and pushing that rock forward. And every time I go into one of these rooms, and you know, Angela, you you got you guys know the rooms that I'm talking about, right, We're in rooms where really old people. We're in rooms where like I'm one of the youngest people in there, and I should not be the youngest people in any goddamn leadership room.

the winning goal or score the time. I'm trying to bring the kids out for pizza afterwards, right, Because I have things now that they don't have, like a mortgage I've gotten, right, I've got disposable income, and you know, and if they want to access some of my wisdom or experience while I'm funding them in whatever ways that I can and helping them in whatever ways that I can, that's great. But I don't get to lead it because my generation had a chance to lead it and we

screwed it up. So what will give me hope and what makes me feel better is when I see these young people out there doing what they're doing the Justinson Tennessee, right, like, like, those are the guys that are our future. You know, we I am already part of the past, and my charge is to simply help the younger generation fight battles that my generation fought and lost, but my mother's generation fought and won.

I mean, I really got goosebumps off that. And it's something for us all to consider that white folks never take a loss as a defeat.

have to go fight in Segovia or whatever. But we're gonna have a free and fair Democratic primary in twenty twenty six. For that's that's gonna be free, that's gonna be fair. And that is what I'm laser focused on because I think about the Tea Party, Right, how did the Tea Party announce itself to the world as a force to be reckoned with in this country by being a Democrat?

our side. Twenty twenty five is our opportunity to go out and tell some of these Democrats you're not getting through the primary process if you don't play to our issues and fight the way that we know that we need to fight, and we might lose a seat. We might lose two seats right if we elect if we primary out moderate centrists, meleiemouthed Democrats and replace them with actual fighters. But that would be okay because that would announce to the rest of the party coming into the

twenty twenty eight cycle. Y'all better not come weak. You go hard in the paint, or you don't come in here at all. And that is what I am focused on right now, and it's something that I think everybody can do right now to start to change the course

of this nation. And the other thing we say it, people like us say it all the time, and I just I really don't think people understand how important it is to actually call your representatives, to actually show up at their town halls and bitch and moan and scream and bring signs and throw tomatoes and do all the things like that actually works. Politicians generally are not the most courageous people.

when his inbox got filled up. I heard him say some things I didn't think I was ever going to hear him say when that answering machine couldn't accept no more calls.

course the entrenchment of these polls. All the polls are saying D D. And I'm like, I'm sorry, when do we When do we stop reading the polls and start shaping them? Isn't that's what leadership is supposed to be? But shouldn't you be here telling me another way of thinking, of doing, of being and see if I could subscribe to that perspective, and then so doing we start to lead and then shape how other people believe and feel about it. Ellie, I really thought.

don't want to get fired from no job. And I do think that that is one of the that is why they need outside pressure, because the thing that they are scared about. I've met politicians, congress people, Senator I think who has never been fired from a job. And let me just tell you, if you ain't never been fired,

I don't trust your ass. I'm sorry. If you ain't never been fired, I do not trust you, because that means at some point, at some point, some boss has been willing to say something, and you've been going to say yes, And I'm like, no, no, no, I've been fired for so many jobs, right, because that's the only way I know how to beat Yeah, So sorry, I cut you off, Andrew, No, because this is where the.

like a cheap chair. He will not. John Roberts does not want a confrontation with Donald Trump on the law because Roberts is pretty sure that Donald Trump will ignore a Supreme Court order and do what he wants anyway. And there's nothing that makes the Supreme Court look worse, there's nothing that makes it look more effeckless than having a powerful executive ignore one of their orders. So John Roberts will try to avoid that one on one confrontation

with Trump. With Trump, you know, courts versus the executive And so when on issues where Trump has all of the power, Roberts is going to cave. He'll might wag his finger and be like, I don't like the process you used, right, he might bump it back, remand it they'll call it back to a lower court, basically to give Trump a second, third, fourth bite at the apple. That's exactly, by the way, what he did with the

Muslim band. If you remember, Trump lost the first two Muslim bands cases, but never forever, because again, they don't retreat, they just reload. Roberts was like, try it again, try it again, and eventually Trump got it right and got his Muslim band. That's how Roberts will deal with issues

where Trump has all the power. On issues where Trump doesn't have all of the power, where he can't do what he wants to do unless state and local officials follow his rules, Roberts and the Supreme Court might push back a little bit there. Right, So, I think about some of these lawsuits against sanctuary cities, against you know, New York State or whatever with congestion pricing, where Trump can't force hulkl to do what Trump wants her to

do unless the Supreme Court agrees. If the Supreme Court sides with Hchel, Hulko's gonna stand, you know, two fingers up and be like, what come on, bro? And if Trump wants to stop that, he's gonna have to put troops on the GW right. So like, on those issues, I think Roberts might stand up. But on these issues of like can he abduct people off the street and send them away for writing newspaper articles, Roberts is gonna say he can. He might not say that dire, but

he's not gonna stop him. Does Trump have to turn the planes around? You notice you noticed that Roberts went out there and said, like, impeaching judges is bad. He didn't say ignoring lower court orders is bad. He said, do the appeals process, bro, who knows, maybe you'll win, sir, That's what he said. So, no, the courts are not coming to save us on these issues where Trump is acting with physical military authority. The rest of the stuff we might get to.

views of white folk. White folk view marginalized communities gaining aspects of equality as a zero sum game, meaning that they got to lose something in order for other people to gain. How did we get to a place where black people feel the exact same way about gay people, like for gay people to gain rights means that black people lost something. Andrew, make that make sense to me because I don't get it as a black man.

their CTAs, I would like to request of you. You mentioned that you have two kids, but you actually have three, and I think our viewers, I know the listeners won't be able to, but.

their hand. They always always overplay their hand. So don't give up right now, don't don't turn in, turnout, and and that's how we're gonna get through it.

after the election something broken her. And she was saying how being together and working on this project, the Power Tour, which launches in Atlanta on April twenty sixth, has reignited something in her and I got to tell you all there being lolo or talking to each other all the time about go to.

this podcast. Supporters, please tell us what we're missing. Tell us about that workshop that you know you could run in any one of these ten cities. Sign up on State of the People at STATEOFTHEPPL dot com. Native Lampad will be present. We can't help but to show up, and so we ask that you all show up with us. Elie O'll be there too. We'll have him yelling on the stage somewhere maybe in a few places, and he'll be slaying these books.