Unstealable Joy

the Supreme Court, but which will happen in June. But I gotta say, folks that yesterday, watching the final vote come in, watching the history being made, watching vice presidents, oftentimes missing Kamala Harris pound the gavel and declare that

she has been confirmed, is an extraordinary moment. And I want us to take pause to celebrate and appreciate this moment because they're fleeting right, because there is just so much that is going on in our country and in our world right now that it is so easy for us to just speed bump over this right. Let it just be a flash in the pan, and then something catastrophic will happen tomorrow or later in the day and this will all be lost. And this is why, friends,

I want to say on this Friday. Why meditation to me has become so important and such an integral practice of mine, and it is because it forces me to be present. It forces me to be with my breath and in my body at the time that I am practicing. And it's so important because we future cast, that's what I call it, future casting, when you start to make up stories that we often tell ourselves in our minds about what could possibly go wrong in the future. Renee

Brown referred to it as catastrophizing. Right when you are your brain is working through all of these fight or flight scenarios as a way to keep you safe. Sure, but it also robs you of the joy that you can experience in the present moment. And you know, by virtue of where we are in our politics, it's really easy for us to think about what the next few months will look like, what the next few years will

look like. I mean, I am forced to do that because of my line of work, but in my personal life, I try really hard to be in the moments that I am and to really like even when I find myself kind of again going off the deep end, going towards the dark side where it's so easy to live I even physically will ground my feet if they're in my shoes, if they are barefoot, I will ground my feet. I will feel, you know, my hands, feel my body as a reminder to send a signal to my brain

that I am here. And so when the gavel was struck and the applause broke out in the chamber of the Senate floor, I mean, my heart bursts right because I realize, let's do away with those fucking racists, which I will get to later in the show. Let's do away with the disrespectful and awful treatment that we witnessed over four days of her the confirmation hearings. Let's do away with all of that, just for a moment, and

think about this. Two hundred and thirty some odd years, two hundred and thirty some odd years, our court has been filled with only white men, two black men, and if I'm counting correctly, I think now five women, Katangi Brown Jackson being the first, the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court. And I want you to think about, and I'm going to get choked up, think about the image that sends to young people. And I don't just mean like little black girls that are in

Kate through twelve. I'm talking about what it says to young people, young Black women right now, who are in law school, who are in clerking positions, that they can be the second that one of the largest glass ceilings that have hovered over our heads has finally been shattered and been shattered with a woman who has such grace, intelligence, beauty, right, dignity, integrity, a woman with natural hair, which for many of you may not seem like a big deal, but I just

want you to understand that we had to pass federal legislation entitled the Crown Act that would bar discrimination against mostly black women with regard to their hair presentation not being seen as professional. If you remember, it was only a handful of years ago that this was a huge topic of conversation in the US military because they were saying that braids that black women were using who were in active duty did not fit uniform. Well, what were

they supposed to do? Shave their heads and putting our hair just throwing it back in a ponytail like white women do, is not healthy for our hair. That has always been a point of contention about how we look and how other people, namely white people, get to dictate not only beauty standards, but what it means to be

a professional. So for Katangi Brown Jackson not only to be this brilliant black woman, but for me and for so many of us that had been told when we were making our first steps, first foray into natural hair, my own grandparents, God rest their souls, but my grandparents when I told them that I was gonna lock my hair. We're from Jamaica, by the way. When I said that I was going to lock my hair, my grandparents were like, where you're going to work? What kind of job are

you going to have? Because you see, we have always Black people have always been raised to think about what white people will think about us, and that we always know and we're taught that their perception of us was

always going to be negative. And so then we would have to be forced to spend our time and energy making ourselves palpable to people who've never seen the need to provide us with any dignity or respect, and frankly, to go even further, still want to debate our humanity, which is why we have to sit around and continue to chant and march with regard to black lives. So again,

I just the weight, the layeredness. I won't even say the weight, because the weight indicates that there is something that weighs on us in this moment of celebration, and it's not that, but the layers that are present in this confirmation. For this woman, who she is, where she came from, what she looks like, fucking matters in a world, in a white world that has always seen black people

as less than. So to see her is to see myself is for so many black women who have dealt with the kind of overt racism and series of microaggression that we saw in four days, many have spent their entire professional life working under that kind of duress and for jobs that are not that prestigious, but that you actually you do need right in order to put food on the table. So you have to have the kind of fortitude that black women have to have in this country,

right is extraordinary. And what pisces me off most often with regard to that is how it's just overlooked. Right. People want to give us the moniker of strong black woman and either use that as a compliment or use it as an insult, right, and neither should really exist. You use it as a compliment that denies the reasons why we have to be strong, right, It makes the responsibility of strength to fall on us rather than for

society to actually shift. It's always about how we can contort to meet other people's needs and expectations, but not the expectations that we should have on the world to be better. And then when it's used as an insult, it's like all black women are too strong, right, that's

why they never find a man or a woman. And that's bullshit as well, because if you had to walk through life not only dealing with consistent, consistent misogyny, and then you want to add racism on top of that, and there's a term for it, misogyn noir, right, which is the complexity of living and dealing with the intersectionality

of being both. And so to see Katangi Brown Jackson, to see her glowing daughters, to see her husband, her parents, to think about the enormous weight that she was carrying for those days of disgusting accusations by the White Supremacist Party, Senator Corey Booker really encompassed in that now viral clip how millions of us felt. And that's why I am saying I will not allow these racist white Republicans to rob my joy. I will not allow them to live free.

In my head, day in and day out, I say what the fuck I say, and then I move on, because there is nothing that they want more than for us to live a life that is in fear of what they may do, right, to live a life of shame, right for people like me who also happen to be queer. So I won't give them that, and I don't want you to give them that either. I want instead for us, on this day, on this celebratory day, to give all of what would be the negative, hateful energy that the

Republican Party rightly deserves. I want us instead to give that energy, to shift it into the positive, into the beauty, into the light. For Katanji Brown Jackson and her entire family, her friends, her colleagues, everyone who got her to that moment. I want us to give that energy to them, because they deserve it. She deserves it, and for all of the little black girls who will see not only not only a vice president that looks like them, but it's

Supreme Court justice that looks like them. Don't ever let anybody tell you that something is impossible. Because it is impossible until it is done. So I refuse to live a life that is so small, because that is what Republicans do, and that is what they want. They want

a small and to stay in our place. They want a small so that we're just grateful for the scraps that come our way and don't demand our just do That's the purpose, you know, That's one of the effects of their culture war campaign that they are raging is to make all of us who have finally started to be seen to feel like we are seen and accepted, to go back to living fearful, small, shame filled lives. And I refuse. I refuse. So on this day, I

celebrate Katangi Brown Jackson. I celebrate all of the black women who feel seen, feel heard, feel celebrated for our extraordinary, extraordinary attributes that, for once, the exception and all black lady black woman was not overlooked by for some mediocrity, some white mediocrity, the audacity of those people to sit up there and push through their last two disgusting representatives, the last two justices, give me a break. Couldn't hold

a fucking candle to Katangi Brown Jackson. They don't even deserve to sit on this same bench with her. But we see you, Republicans, We know who you are. And even though mainstream media loves to hold their tongue for some semblance of neutrality, I call a spade a spade. Y'all are some racist, hateful, disgusting pieces of shit. Ted Cruz is your representative. Lindsey Graham is your representative. Donald

Trump is your fucking deity. So how dare you, how dare you even begin to come out your mouth with any hotshit directed at this pristine black woman. And I'll say this too before I move on to me. You know what equity truly looks like. It doesn't look like exceptionalism in order to be accepted. It looks like black people, people of color being able to be as fucking mediocre and basic as white people and still get the job,

still get the promotion. That's what equity looks like to me, not that we all have to be exceptional, but that we can all just be and still get the job done. Switching gears, now, folks, you know I have been talking about him, probably more than I am interested in ever

talking about Tucker Carlson. But the fact is that you are seeing over the last couple of weeks, really series of intense sanctions going out against Putin and Russia and Russian oligarchs coming in from the G seven countries, the United States and others in an attempt to break down Russia's economy. And Russia right now is currently ex boarding, blackmailing all of Europe because they are dependent on Russia's oil, right, and wheat and a lot of other shit that comes

out of that country. And we're seeing more sanctions because of what we have seen transpire in Bucha and new news of what has happened in Marapol. And what disgusts me about Tucker Carlson and Fox News is that outside of a handful of anchors, no one pushes back at the fact that Kremlin talking points airing on American television and networks to tens of millions of Americans across the

country is a threat to our national security. And I really wish, among other things, that Democrats would actually push back with forceful language as it pertains to Fox News. Now, you may say, well, Danielle, there is you know, the constitution freedom of the press, Okay, but you're not You don't have just because we have freedom of the press, that doesn't not mean that you are free from people's

opinions and pushback. And so while you may not be able to actually shut down a Fox News and I argue that I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that you could find ways to point to the fact that they are a dangerous entity, right that they spread lies about COVID that contributed to almost a million people, if not over a million people at this time I've

lost track losing their lives to COVID. That you can point to the lies that they have told about somehow Trump losing or having the election stolen from him, and how that then planted the seeds for insurrectionists to go and try and storm and take over the Capitol building. I think that there are many things that you can point to, and there is an actual criminal case to be brought against the network and their biggest talking heads

like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram. What you need is the actual will to do so, because the evidence is clear. So what discuss me is that you have Fox News allowing people to come on air to plant seeds of doubt about what we have all seen images and video of out of Buscha and now Mattow Paul, how is that okay? How is it okay that Tucker Carlson can be labeled as like a news anchor because he's sure as fuck is not a journalist, right like he is

nobody's journalist. And you know, I remember I'm not because I am not too old. I remember when Tucker Carlson was on MSNBC. I fucking hated him. Then I thought

that he offered absolutely nothing to anyone's fucking conversations. So the fact that he has turned himself into a caricature, a Russian puppet and asset, and then there is really no outcry of the poison that this network is spewing out into the public is really problematic because to me, again, if we had an activated Apartment of Justice, then we would have an outlet that would actually do something right, that would if nothing else, if nothing comes about an

in depth investigation, then by all means, the point of an investigation is to find out information, right. I want to find out if Tucker Carlson is a Russian asset. I want to find out if he is bought and sold and is paid to spew lies and hate on national television at the direction of Vladimir Putin, at the direction of the Kremlin. How is that not pertinent and important information to know? How do you not decide to

address these situations head on? You know? And I'll take it now to Merritt Garland, so you know, news comes out, news comes out that the Department of Justice has denied the ability of the House Commission to see the I think it is ten boxes of White House documents that

Donald Trump took with him to Morrow lago. And initially, I'm like, why the fuck are they blocking the House Commission's ability to look through these ten boxes of documents that Donald Trump just walked out of the White House with without anybody saying anything, that he's had these for

over a year. Well, it turns out that the reason why they're blocking the House Commission from getting said boxes and looking through them is because the Department of Justice, many believe, and what they've been trying desperately not to say, is that they have an ongoing investigation into Donald Trump and his criminal activity and behavior. Now, while I would like there to be more news about that so that we can continue linking Donald Trump and his entire entourage

to criminal work right. The tepidness, right, the unsuredness that this Department of Justice displays and that democrats you know, readily show, is just so fucking disheartening. And I said this in a video that I posted on TikTok yesterday, that like, you can't lead from the back, right. I remember when I ran track and cross country in high school. You used to love running. And you know, while I was never the fastest person, I was not a sprinter either.

I was a middle distance and long distance runner, which kind of makes Actually now, I haven't even never thought about why I have like stamina for the type of bullshit that I deal with with work, probably from that. But I say that to say that my coaches. You know, again, I wasn't the fastest person, but I was the one that was like called upon to get the team hype, to like come together, and you know, my voice was

always appreciated and needed. And my coach used to say, you can't lead from the back, right, People will only follow you if you were out front. Democrats constantly think that they can lead from behind, think that they can just poke up their heads a little bit. But then they're like, don't hit me. Don't hit me. Don't hit me. You can't run shit like that. You have to be fearless, right. You got to call people out to check you and be like, so what do you all hot up in

the collar about? Because the last time I checked, you did eleven hour interview with Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary State about Benghazi. You wasted tax dollars money for I don't even know how many fucking hearings were done, and it came up with zero indictments, zero because you didn't have a leg to stand on and it was

all a media campaign. I wish that Democrats would do the same thing, because you know why, they have a fucking legal leg to stand on, because they have actual evidence of wrongdoing to point to to say we cannot allow this shit to slide. And they're gonna say that we are politicizing everything and anything, so we gonna take

a hit regardless, we might as well do something. We might as well poke out our chest, put our shoulders back, and actually put our back into the fucking work that needs to be done to restore faith and integrity into our agencies and into our government. If you know that your opponent is gonna come for you regardless. Why is doing nothing the choice that you would make, because it

wouldn't be my choice. Right If you're gonna hit me over the head, if you're gonna call me outside of my name, you're gonna call me everything a child of God? Why would I then think that the best move that I could make would be to sit silent or to call you my friend and think that somehow I'm gonna lure the hive of wasps to me with somebody's honey. It makes absolutely no sense. But these are the moves that Democrats make. They make moves from a place of fear.

Everything they do is about reacting or trying to preempt what it is that they think that Republicans are doing. I don't give a fuck what Republicans are doing. I don't because I know that at the core of every move that they are making is about tearing our democracy apart, ripping up the Constitution, and inserting there forever king. I know that that is what they are doing, and Democrats

know that that is what they are doing. So tell me again why you think slow walking and tepidness is the kind of energy you want to show up with. I have no idea but we have reached a place and a space in time when it's either you going to put your whole self in the game, right or you're just gonna lay down and let them have their way with this country, with everything that has been fought for, bled for. You're just gonna give up, because that's what the fuck it looks like. But you know the person

that isn't giving up. You know, the person that I appreciate the most right now is our friend. And I say our friend because I just think that she is rock solid. New York Attorney General Tish James. New York Attorney General Tish James has gone to a federal court to say that Donald Trump needs to be fined ten thousand dollars a day for failure to show up to be interviewed to provide the documentation that is being asked

for that like, I'm coming for him. Ten thousand dollars a day may seem like nothing to Donald Trump, but I'm gonna take it right because you're not going to sit around and dick us around here in New York like you've been doing for the past forty fucking years with your salum fucking buildings and your tax evasion. She's the only one to me who is actually working right, who is actually like yeah, so no, So she has asked a judge, not a judge, to hold excuse me,

not a federal judge. Let me say that, not a federal judge, a judge, to hold Trump in contempt for refusing to turn over documents and find him ten thousand dollars a day until he complies. And I'm saying, yeah, that seems about right right, because I don't know what the fuck else we're going to do is just sit down and allow Donald Trump to dictate to us what he wants to do and when he wants to do it, like he's been allowed to do for way too fucking long.

I'll tell you this too. What I find, also, ha ha funny is that look who else has decided to stick their head out after two high profile prosecutes prosecutors in his office quit Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District attorney who wouldn't release the letters of resignation from the two top prosecutors who were going after Donald Trump, who then quit in protests earlier this year because they don't know what the fuck is happening with the investigation and why

nobody has been interviewed and they haven't been able to move forward in them and over a month and if you remember, I mean our friend Glenn Kirshner and I have talked about this many a times. Sivance before departing, called a special grand jury to stay sit for a longer period of time than their normal handful of weeks, because that's how much information is there, right, So I have called for and have said it on social media a million times. I want Alvin Bragg investigated. I want

his donors looked into. I want to follow the money because I don't know why, now unless you're just a complete and total punk, that you would stop your lawyers from moving forward, or that they would even get an inkling that you were not going to be interested in persecuting Donald Trump to the fullest extent of the law, with all of the evidence that you have in front of you, enough evidence that your predecessor, again this special

grand jury, so that that could be so. So this is what is being said, according to the Washington Post, and I'm like nah. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thursday that Donald Trump's business practices remain under criminal investigation, despite two high profile departures, a leadership shake up, an upcoming grand jury term expiration, and as The Daily Beast

reports about the prosecutors returning documents to people. In a statement, Bragg insisted that his office was still pursuing its three year investigation without fear or favor. He said a team of career prosecutors were exploring evidence not previously explored. Mark Pomerantz and Carrie Dunne, a pair of senior level prosecutors who had been tapped to lead the probe, quit on February twenty third, and said case had been suspended indefinitely.

Brag denied that, adding that the grand jury expiration was not magic timing that would force his office to drop a case. The new spells trouble for Trump, who was earlier Thursday hit by Attorney General Tish James Folks. I think Alvin Bragg is full of shit. As I've said here many times before, I will believe it when I see it. And yeah, grand jury expirations are in fact magic because they expire, and unless you can prove that

you need another special grand jury, then you're done zo. Right, So you would think that having had that expiration date. In mind that you would have been working feverishly to continue the work of your predecessor to bring this motherfucking criminal to justice. But all of a sudden you get in things closed down, and then your two top level prosecutors quit and say that the work was suspended indefinitely.

You see pushback in the press and everybody calling you everything right, you have no friends in New York and then you want to come out and give some weak ass pr spin. Miss me with the bullshit, folks. You know, all I will say is the news comes at us at breakneck pace. We know this. I tell you to be sparing with how much time you spend marinating in it. Today I started off with great news, something that we

should all collectively be sharing and rejoicing in. And I'll leave you all with this today, which is again, take time each and every day find one thing that you are grateful for that you can just give sixty seconds of gratitude four right. It could just be your breath, it could just be opening your eyes, It could be anything so small or so big, but do it, because a regular gratitude practice can actually transform your life, and it allows us to not only look at the good.

I mean, look at the bad and investigate the bag and analyze the bad. But it allows us to see the good in even bad situations. That does not mean that we overlook the obvious. It's that we also look for something that brings us joy. Folks. I am very excited on this historic day to welcome to Woke a f Daily for the first time, Deputy Counsel to the

President Danielle Conley. Another Danielle, which I always love. Can you just express what it means to have Judge Kentangi Brown Jackson confirmed and what it means for this administration, but what it means for you as a black woman. So, first of all, thank you so much for having me.

Everyone over here right now is elated. We're all on cloud fifty seven at this point because you know, there there's just so much joy behind ultimately getting from the President from the time he was on the campaign promising to nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court to

the day of her confirmation. And I think the moment is so historical, Danielle, because you know, from the start of our nation's history, from the time we started the Supreme Court, right we've had one hundred and fifteen Supreme Court justices. Out of that one hundred and fifteen, only five of them have been women, and none of those women have been Black women. And so she is literally

making history. Today was literally a history making moment as we watched the vice president, first black woman vice president, preside over the confirmation of the first black woman Supreme Court justice. And you know, as a black woman lawyer,

there's just nothing more meaningful than that. You know, I was thinking about what it must be like right now, and I'm certain that you must know young black women that are in law schools across this country right now, what they what can you express to us what it has been, what it was like, were you one of only a few black women in your law school in your class, and kind of speak to some of what Judge Katanji Brown Jackson offered up during her hearing process

as the experiences as to what it means to be

a black woman attorney in these United States. So I will say that I was super fortunate because I went to Howard Law School, where I was in law school filled with black women to my right and to my left, and it was wonderful and it was awesome but but I will also say that, like, as a young black lawyer, you know, I grew up idolizing Justice Third Good Marshall and Consence Baker Motley, but never really envisioned, you know, this idea that a black woman in my lifetime would

sit on the Supreme Court. And so I think for so many like black women lawyers and for women lawyers period, and and you know, young girls sort of looking up and saying, oh, this is this, this is achievable, this is there's somebody that looks like me on this court. And I really do believe that the power of representation. I mean, that's that's real. Like, I think one of the things that this confirmation showed is that black women belong in all rooms. They belong in all spaces, including

the nation's highest court. And so you know, when little black girls like dream about being a Supreme Court justice, they can look up and see somebody who looks like them. And that's that's not a small thing. Danielle. While um, the appointment of Judge Jackson won't shift the balance of the court, we have a six to three court now with um really uh, life altering decisions that they are going to be making um in June, life changing decisions. What do you think that her impact will be on

the bench. What will that look like. Look, you know, the President chose her because it is crystal clear that she has a commitment to ensuring that she's fair, that she's impartial, and that the justice system works for all Americans. We know that, right I can't say how she's going to rule in any particular case, but we know that she has a commitment to the rule of law and the commitment to ensuring that she is a fair and

impartial judge. And so, you know, I think when we think about some of the big decisions that will be before the court, you know, having someone who has had unique perspectives that she's had throughout her professional trajectory, like being a district court judge, which the only other Supreme Court justice to have been a district court judge is

Justice pseudomyor being a former federal public defender. She will be the only public defender to have ever been on the Supreme Court, the only you know, judge who has the experience of actually having represented criminal defendants people accused of crimes. Bringing that vanished point to the court is extremely important and so I think that you know, um,

you know, history, we'll see what her legacy is. But you know, I can't imagine that all of these professional experiences that she's had, coupled with her life experiences will ultimately shape the kinds of things that we see from her on the bench. Why do you think that we needed to have a declaration from this president on the campaign trail about appointing a black woman justice. Why did

that declaration need to be made? And if it hadn't, right, like, would we still be in this would we still be in this space? I wonder? So, you know, I think that the president recognized that, you know, it is so critical for the public to have confidence in the judiciary at the highest level. And in order for the public to have confidence in the judiciary, people need to look up and see that that judiciary reflects like people who

look like them in their communities. And so, you know, I think that that promise that he made about you know, nominating the first black woman Supreme Court justice, I mean that his promise that was one promise about sort of equity, but he made other promises around ensuring that the judiciary like is diverse and has followed through in those promises. So, for example, with respect to the lower the federal courts of appeopals, he's nominated twenty people and out of those

twenty nine have been black women. Five of those black women have already been confirmed. Right, So you know, he made the promise with respect of the Supreme Court. But his commitment to diversity at the highest levels of government, whether you're talking about the federal judiciary or even in this administration, like thinking about the people who are you know, a part of his cabinet, the people who are part of his team in the West Wing, it is diverse.

It is something that he is committed to because he thinks it's important that the government looks like the people that it serves. And my final question for you it is with regard to the public's faith in our judiciary. Right, it has been deeply politicized over the last four years from the prior administration. How do you think that this administration goes about restoring that faith and integrity that we

used to have as a nation in our highest court. So, you know, I really think that the nomination of Judge Jackson was a step in that direction. You know the fact that she did get by a partisan support and received the votes from Senators Collins, Murkowski, and Romney. It's not a small thing, um. And you know, I think that someone of you know, her talent and with her impeccable credentials and with her professional trajectory like was worthy

of and deserving of bipartisan support. And so you know, the hope is that, UM, you know, we we we can continue to sort of view judges no matter who's in power, like we look at we look at their credentials, we look at, you know, whether they're qualified to do the job and make decisions based on that. Well, it is an exciting day. I hope that you have a celebration in your future, UM, for this big day for

us as black women, but for the country. Thank you Danielle Connley for making time to join wok F. We appreciate you. Thank you very much. That is it for me today, dear friends on this woke F as always, Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.