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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's Pod, Dan talks to Rashad Robinson from Color of Change, one of the activists leading the fight against Facebook? S handling of hate speech and misinformation. I also talk to Rebecca Nagel, host of Cricket Media. Is this land about this morning, Supreme Court ruling about native rights.

Before that, we'll talk about why Donald Trump is bullying schools to reopen this fall, whether or not it's safe to do so. How Joe Biden is consolidating support among the progressive left.

And yes, we're even going to briefly touch on Connew West's latest flirtation with running for president. But first, check out this week's Pye's Save the World. It has everything the Brazilian president catches Cauvin mysterious explosions at an Iranian military site. And our good friend and chief domestic policy adviser for Barack Obama, Cecilia Munoz, explains Trump's latest efforts to punish immigrants and how the next administration can fix it. Tomorrow. We also have our third and final installment of That's the Ticket.

Dan Analysts' bonus series and the vice presidential selection process. Dan, what's in the finale? We're going to reveal who Joe Biden is going to pick.

Wow. The perfect finale hits. I'm so glad they decided to do it right here on Friday. Erica, this is what they've been with us, but we haven't gotten the biting interview. We've been waiting.

They're going to come as a surprise to Joe Biden. But now, in all seriousness, listen, I talk about the factors that Joe Biden in every previous nominee looks at when they make the decision. And we're going talk about how those announcements are made. This has got some really good ideas for Joe Biden on how he could make his announcement, hopefully soon.

Excellent. Everyone check it out. It has been fantastic. I've loved every episode of Miss It When It's Gone. Finally, now that adopted state organizing trainings are all wrapped up. We need you to check your email, which is where your friends and vote Save America will be sending you state specific volunteer opportunities if you haven't already signed up. It's not too late. Go to vote.

Save America, dot com slash, adopt and join the thousands of volunteers out there looking to flip some swing states. And, you know, maybe you maybe you adopt Arizona. Maybe you think that's important.

I mean, you could you could also adopt North Carolina and elect a senator or a governor of the state house. All kinds of cool things you can do that.

You can do all of that in Arizona as well. Anyway, anyway. All right. I want to start with some pretty big news from the Supreme Court this morning with a ruling that upholds the treaty that says nearly half the land in Oklahoma is a reservation that belongs to Native Americans. To give us a little more insight about what this means, we're joined now by Rebecca Nagle, an Oklahoma journalist and citizen of the Cherokee Nation, whose podcast This Land tells the riveting story behind this case and what's at stake.

Rebecca is releasing a bonus episode of this land next week where she'll talk more about all of this.

But for now. Welcome to the show. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

So big day. Good day for those of us who who haven't had a chance to dive into this land yet. Can you give a quick summary of what this case was about and what was at stake here?

Yeah. So the case was brought by a man named Jim C McGurk, who was convicted of crimes by the state of Oklahoma. He is a tribal citizen and his crimes happened on the reservation of Muskogee Creek Nation. And so he appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, arguing that Oklahoma did not have the jurisdiction to convict him because his crimes happened on a reservation, a reservation that Oklahoma for the past century has acted as this. It no longer existed.

And so that was really what the thrust of this case was, is does Muskogee Creek Nation and by extension, a total of five tribes in eastern Oklahoma still have their reservations or because, you know, so much time has passed or would be extremely inconvenient for all the white people who live there. Is there some other conclusion that the court speaks to? And in a decision that did not hold back at all, Faucet's wrote that basically, you know, this land was promised to Muskogee Creek Nation and that the Supreme Court was going to hold the government to its word.

Can you give us a little bit of your reaction when you when you read the ruling this morning since you have been investigating this, researching this, following this for so long?

Yeah, I mean, I woke up this morning very emotional and not like with a sinking stomach. And my gut, you know, I mean, I think throughout history, you know, indigenous people in this country, you know, the government has just invented new reasons and new ways to take away our land. And so I was like crying, brushing my teeth. I was I was ready. I was already full of rage and sadness. And then the second the decision came out, I am the first thing I look for actually was who wrote it.

And when I saw that it was written by Gorsuch, I just I started crying. And, yeah, it was it was really emotional. It's been really dry here. And for people who know eastern Oklahoma, like, we we get a lot of rain and, you know, like all of the grass in my lawn is dead.

It's just been very dry. And right around this time that the decision came out, it just started pouring. And I'm gonna start crying. But it's just, you know, over the course of history, you know, we have really just ask for the United States to follow its own laws, you know, its own constitution, its own set of laws that govern our life, our rights and our land rights. And so, so rarely does. And so it's just such a such a big win when people in power and, you know, use that power the right way.

For those of our listeners who haven't yet listened to this land, could you explain a little bit about why when you saw that Gorsuch is usually very conservative, justice was writing the majority opinion that that was what made you realize that the ruling with the right way?

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think that when it comes to Indian law, like you, you can't you can't talk about parties. I mean, you know, Native Americans tend to be Democrats and Democrats tend to support native issues. But, you know, like I think a really good example is that we got four. We have four native people in Congress right now. Two of them are Democrats and two of them are Republicans, you know. And so Gorsuch is what people call a textualists.

So he looks at the law. He looks at the plain text of the law. And he interprets that and the plain text of the Constitution. The plain text of these treaties says that this land is still reservations. And what's you know, a lot of textualists don't apply that to treaties and the laws governing native rights. But Gorsuch does, and he does it uncompromisingly. And so, yeah, I think that him him being added to the Supreme Court, if we can keep Ginsburg speaking, Ginsburg on our side, we might actually, for the first time in U.S. history, see a court that tends to rule in the favor of native rights.

We throughout history have basically lost the majority of time that our rights have gone up against the Supreme Court.

Well, on that note, I mean, what, if anything, will change as a result of this ruling and what other cases involving native rights. Do you have your eye on now?

Oh, that's a really good question. So, I mean, what's funny about this historic ruling and what's going to change on the ground is that the answer is actually very little. So the Supreme Court has actually really limited tribal jurisdiction over both non Indians on reservations and land on reservations. That's also owned by non Indians. And that's, you know, the majority of the residents, the majority land on these reservations. And so, you know, for folks who, you know, live in Jenks, Oklahoma, like their life is going to go forward without much difference.

I think what it really changes for the tribes is that we have been losing land and losing restricted status on our land for over a century. You know, it's just been a slow bleed of the laws, the Oklahoma setup, when it was created as a state. And so I think that this really affirms our sovereignty and lets us rebuild. You know, I always talk about, like in Turkey history, everyone points to the Trail of Tears as, you know, the most traumatic moment in our history.

But from that moment, we rebuilt actually the period of Cherokee history right after the Trail of Tears. It's called the Golden Era because we flourished in our new lands. But then when Oklahoma was created on top of our land, it was divided up. We were preyed upon. Our land was stolen. We have never fully recovered from that history. And so I think of this decision as a opportunity for our tribes to start to rebuild. Our sovereignty and our land rights finally being recognized.

So one last question before I let you go. What are some of the things that people can do right now to ensure that this national focus on systemic racism and injustice includes native rights?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's a really, really important point, because I think that one of the ways that the entire indigenous racism functions is a racial. Right. And so it's like, you know, to everybody, listen, it's podcast. I would challenge you to name the people whose land you live on.

You know, name, name an important Supreme Court decision throughout history. That's not this one that impacted native rights like you probably never heard of. You know, Oliphant's or the Marshall trilogy, you know, these, like, foundational things. And so I think that that invisibility is absolutely why we get Supreme Court decisions that make no sense and rule against tribes all the time. And so I think it's really an opportunity for people to both educate themselves and also to, you know, consistently do that for it to not just be, you know, this moment or this flashpoint, but for it to be something that is an everyday part of the media and the news that people are being very good advice.

Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for making this land. Everyone go check it out if you haven't already and be on the lookout next week for a special bonus episode of this land. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Rebecca Nagle. Good day. Thanks for being here for part of it. Thank you so much.

OK, so Dan, the other major piece of news from the Supreme Court this morning that we should just briefly mentioned, the justices rejected President Trump's argument that he has, quote, absolute immunity while he's in office and open the door for prosecutors to obtain his financial records. The court actually ruled in two cases, one involving Manhattan's district attorney, the other House Democrats. Well, the ruling clears the way for Manhattan's D.A. to pursue a subpoena for the records.

The case is going back to a lower court and Trump's records are probably going to be kept secret under grand jury rules until after the election. In the other case, the one that involved the congressional requests from House Democrats, the court basically pushed things back to a lower court and ruled that the House can't have access to the same records for now, citing some issues that are been unresolved about the separation of powers.

Trump took the news very well this morning, rush to Twitter to complain about how unfair the court was to him. Throw in some other grievances about the Mueller hoax and Obama gate. He wrote, This is all a political prosecution. I won the Mueller witch hunt and others, and now I have to keep fighting in a politically corrupt New York. Not fair to this presidency or administration. Dan, you have any reactions to the other the other rulings from this morning?

Well, I think if these rulings are good for the rule of wall over the long term, like we shouldn't have to point out that presidents are eligible for her criminal prosecution if they can if they are suspected of committing crimes.

And we shouldn't have to point out that they are not immune from the from congressional oversight. But it is.

I think these these rulings are a loss in the sense that the way the Supreme Court very specifically wrote this, it is going to deny voters the ability to know what, if any, conflicts of interests. Donald Trump has before they have to vote in November. Spoiler alert he has them. I mean, you can just presume. I guess so. The republic side, plenty of evidence, plenty of evidence points to the idea that, yes, he does.

He has plenty of conflicts of interest. He is plenty corrupt.

It's a blank canvas. Thanks. This room for. That's the other way of thinking about it. I do think it.

And, you know, it does leave him open. Hopefully, if Joe Biden wins and he leaves office and Donald Trump leaves office, it really does open him up to prosecution in in the Manhattan D.A. case. I think. Which is something that, you know, we can all look forward to because we care about the law, we care about justice being done. That's why. All right. Let's get to some other news of the day. Dan, on last week's episode, we answered we answered a listener question about schools reopening this fall.

You know, it's a very challenging issue for kids, teachers, parents, the economy kind of issue that, you know, really, really deserves.

Thoughtful debate, grounded in science. But we live in Donald Trump's America. So shortly after the CDC released guidelines for safely bringing students back to school, the president jumped on Twitter on Wednesday and accused the agency of asking schools to do very, quote, tough, expensive and impractical things, threatened to cut funding for schools if they refused to just open and accused Democrats of wanting schools to remain closed for political reasons. Later in the day, Vice President Mike Pence said that the CDC would be issuing new guidance for schools and at the White House would be, quote, looking for ways to give states a strong incentive, encouragement to get kids back in school.

As Congress takes up this next round of pandemic relief.

So, Dan, here is just some of what the CDC proposed in their original guidelines that sent Trump spiraling desks at least six feet apart and facing the same direction. Lunch in classrooms instead of a cafeteria, staggered arrival times, cloth masks for staff and daily temperature screenings for everyone.

What's Trump's problem with all that?

It's not clear what his problem is. It's very common sense. This is a very. Complicated issue where we have very low information. And so I want to try to separate various parts of it. One, the things that that the CDC is asking are not are not not on paper hard, but because we have been underfunding public education for decades in this country, there is many classrooms are overcrowded, and so six feet apart is not an option.

And in many, many, many classrooms. Right. You know, because of we are in the middle of a pandemic and the economy has gone through the floor. There is not money for testing right there. We have not. And I think perhaps most importantly, we have not spent the many months since the we began since we began responding to the coronavirus to prepare for this moment. Fellow government has done essentially nothing to help school districts do this. And so it they we trumpet sort of like woke up school starting a few weeks and realized that there is no plan and there is nothing to do.

So we just want to shove kids into schools without a plan to make it safe for both the students, but also the teachers and everyone else who works in a school.

So so I guess the threat of cutting funding for schools from the Trump administration is not really going to help the situation in any kind of way.

Well, it's also not real bright. 90 percent of funding for schools is state and local. And that's what Trump has.

There's a question he can't really do. I mean, there is the I guess we should say that the in terms of pandemic relief and there is some money for schools in the last round of relief and there has been money proposed for schools in the current relief that there's going to be they're going to be debating over the next few months. So there is some thought that the Trump administration could play around with that. But certainly most of the money that schools get is from state and local governments.

Right. Like the overwhelming majority of Trump threats. This one is not based in reality. Right. Why do you think Trump's picking this fight right now? He's desperately looking for a fight, right? Like he is a man who he only thinks of politics in the context of wedge issues. And this is a really, really hard thing for parents.

Right. You know, people have been working for home with kids. That is essentially an impossible situation. Right. And, you know, and you can use it if you talk to any parent of young children, the idea that their kids will still be home doing distance learning throughout the fall is devastating and it's devastating for their ability to be functioning adults and to do their jobs. And it's devastating for their children because the distance learning thing is basically impossible, though it has very little impact, you know, depending on the age of, you know, certainly for, you know, the age of the children.

And I think unlike previous fights that Trump has picked about the opening, the economy and mass and things like that, he has some backing on his side. Right. The Academy of Pediatrics have recommended that schools open. Right. If we know with some caveats about safety.

But there is a belief that schools need to open both for the well-being of children, both in the short term, long term and for the economy, because the economy cannot open if people's kids can't go to school because people can't work. And so he's looking for a wedge issue. I think he's making the same mistake he's made on every part of this, which is just by looking for the issue. He's simply revealing that he has not done the work it takes to solve the problem.

So, I mean, thinking that, like, you know, it's obviously not just Trump that wants schools open, you know, the American Academy of Pediatrics also issued guidelines on how to safely reopen schools. I guess the question is, I always like to play the game of like, what if we were in a normal administration that was not Trump and we had this challenge of opening schools safely in the middle of a pandemic that has not died down?

Like, what would it look like to open schools safely? And where should Joe Biden and the Democrats be on this one?

Well, I think that like just like with the economy, did Joe Biden, the Democrats should work to avoid Trump sort of bifurcating the issue on. He's opening schools and Democrats are for closing schools because that's not their position. Right. It's open without a plan or open with a plan. And so having a plan is the way to do it.

I mean, Democrats do you know, they have taken steps in Congress to have funding for testing for schools to help them do this. There are a number of other ideas out there. So like having a very specific plan helps with that challenge in a normal world. I mean, this is like this is complicated by the fact that we know so little about this virus.

You don't really know. There's been like I have read so much about this because.

Our daughter, who was only two but like under the normal course of business, was planning to start in two weeks to go to a, you know, a several day a week program for two year olds.

And so, you know, you know, you see all these studies about how kids have gone back to school in Europe and Asia and there have not been transmission of it.

But also, you know, in Trump Bay, that point is tweet. He said the schools are open and all these countries. But those countries did the work to contain the spread of the virus. And they're having a couple of hundred cases a day. You know, we're setting new records on a daily basis of front of virus infections. And so what it looks like is, I think, ramping up testing, ramping up contract tracing, ramping up resources for schools.

You know, Emily Oster, who is a Brown economist and writes a lot of books for parents, you will soon read a lot of Emily Oster.

Well, I've been I've been reading crib sheet to prepare. Yes.

And, you know, she has an idea where you take, you know, college young people, critically, college students who may be taking a gap year because their schools are not coming back into full session and hire them to work, work in schools.

They're not trained teachers, but they can help facilitate, you know, activities and other things in order to, you know, sort of separate kids so that, you know, you can reduce the number of kids in a classroom at one time because the limits on how you do social distance, you're both a room in the class and number of adults who can watch the kids safely.

And like, there's a whole host of things you could do to get people to do it.

You could surge funding to get, you know, surge, Teach for America, things like that. But none of those things are happening. We did nothing right. It's like we as a country, we made two fundamental errors, which is the whole point of flattening the curve is to prepare.

And if we had really thought this through, we would have worked backwards from the opening of school. Because that is the thing. Because when the virus started, it was a couple months then summer, and you could manage that both from a kid's learning perspective and an economic perspective. And then you could enter, you would say everything we are doing is to reduce the spread to a manageable level and to prepare terms of infrastructure and funding and teachers for opening up school.

We did none of that.

And then we did incredibly stupid things, which was we prioritized opening of bars and indoor dining over risk management to make it more likely that schools can open safely. And so, like it is, it is a gigantic mess. And we have lacked. Any federal leadership, as evidenced by the fact that Trump is tweeting at his own CDC about their guidelines, is supposed to pick up the phone and calling them. It's such a mess.

I mean, look, you know, and this is in the American Academy of Pediatrics statement and guidance to like, you know, there is evidence that obviously kids don't contract this virus as easily or pass it on as easily. Younger children especially.

But of course, there are people with sort of underlying conditions that you have to think about.

There are teachers. There are older teachers. This is this is not an easy thing to figure out. Even when you stipulate that distance learning is not only hard, but not nearly as effective and not doable for many middle class and lower class families. And so we do have this challenge.

It's not an easy solution, but it does seem like you said that a normal working government would adequately resource schools would have also made sure that we don't have sort of out-of-control outbreaks and a lot of places where we have out of control outbreaks right now because sort of having communities with lower transmission is probably the best way to guarantee that schools are safe. You could do, like you said, frequent testing of all students and teachers constantly you could. And then a contact tracing program where you isolate people who do catch the virus as fast as possible to cut down on the spread.

And you can have classroom outdoor, you can open windows, you do all these things. But, you know, we are because of Trump and his mismanagement in the situation we're always in where it's going to become some political fight.

Right. And it's just gonna be like what? They want to have one side be for opening schools and one side for not being open for opening schools when the reality is a complicated debate that takes science and an education experts and parents and everyone to like sort of come together and figure out the best solution to a very difficult challenge. And that is where we are right now. And it is fucking infuriating.

I know. I get the sense, John, it's only been three 1/2 years by. Bringing in data science is a way to solve complex problems is not necessarily in Trump's skill set. He's just it's Verdell. Pottsy of America is brought you by Squarespace. Turn your cool idea into a new Web site with Squarespace, they're powerful e-commerce functionality lets you sell anything online.

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All right.

Let's talk about the Democratic Party, which may be on the verge of becoming, at least for this election, one big happy, dysfunctional family.

Not even dysfunctional. Not even that just for. Well, there's always some dysfunction, so I had to throw that in there first. First, some evidence from data guru Nate Cohn of New York Times in their most recent poll. Voters in the battleground states who said Bernie Sanders was their top choice for president said they backed Joe Biden over President Trump 87 percent to four percent.

Democrats who said Elizabeth Warren was their top choice in the primary back to Mr Biden over Mr. Trump by a staggering margin of 96 percent to zero. Not a single Elizabeth Warren supporter to be found. He's not backing Joe Biden. Dan, how did we get from all those contentious primary debates and Twitter wars to this?

Well, I think it is safe to say that the panic over a divided Democratic Party was even overstated at the time.

And in the end, that is borne of, you know, just I mean, we laugh about it. But the press is obsessed with the Dems in disarray narrative.

And, you know, and some of them and certainly there are some particularly loud voices on Twitter who drove that conversation in the run up to the ending of the primary, I would say.

But it's also. The backdrop has changed, which is that this was always going to be an incredibly consequential and serious election, but it feels exponentially more with what's happening right now. Right. The time to play around and sort of try to make, you know, make a statement or whatever else with your vote feels so disconnected from what is happening.

And the idea, you know, and the people who you know, this was a common refrain among a very small business people, but a consequential percentage people in 2016, which is Trump and Hillary, are not that different. Right. Just when you look at what has happened in this country since coronavirus, hey, even if you had ignored everything that happened previously, said Trump was elected.

You just can not like the consequences of having Trump and uniquely Trump and uniquely a Republican who hates government in charge of the government at a time of a pandemic. Historically, unemployment is so obvious that it you know, it pushes for unity. And I think the other thing is the credit should go to Joe Biden.

I was gonna say.

And his campaign and all of his opponents, most notably Bernie Sanders, for working incredibly hard to unify the party after this.

There's a few things going on. And so it's it's hard to sort of cite any one factor as to what has changed. Right.

Like you, we can't sort of rerun 20/20 with Hillary Clinton as the nominee and say, OK, would it be different this time because people have seen what Trump is like for four years. And so they would be backing Hillary right now, much like they are backing Joe Biden. Like, we we can't do that. But that that could be a factor. Trump obviously could be a driving factor in all this. You know, Nate points out in his piece in New York Times how it wasn't quite like this in 2016.

You know, some research suggests that up to 12 percent of Sanders primary supporters ended up backing Trump in the general election. But then Nate points out that these voters tended to be relatively conservative, white and rural, and didn't actually come back to Bernie in the 20, 20 primaries. What did you think of that point?

Yeah, look, I think that is certainly right, that there may be some number of people who were in that we thought of as Sanders supporters in two thousand and sixteen that we as Democrats have not seen since. Right.

Sanders His coalition was different this time, and it was a coalition that was much more liberal, much more uniformly liberal and therefore more willing, it seems, to back the Democrat over the Republican.

Yeah, and like you said, I think there are you know, there are differences in how the candidates and their supporters acted in twenty twenty versus twenty sixteen. You know, and there is two big examples of sort of this intraparty dynamic of coming together has been playing out. Both happened on Wednesday. The first was when our good friend and activist Adi Barkan announced he'll be endorsing Joe Biden after finally landing an interview with the former vice president for audio series where he interviewed all the candidates in the primary.

Here is a clip of that conversation between Audie and Joe Biden.

Vice President Biden, I can't imagine there isn't a moment that this campaign is not in some way bittersweet, even though it sometimes feels impossible. I keep fighting for health care and doing the work I do for my son Carl and my daughter Willow. I just want them to be proud of me from everything I have heard and read. Your son Beau was an exceptional man. I am so sorry for your loss. If he were with us today, what do you think he would be saying to the American people?

What would be his guidance in this difficult hour? I think I hope he'd be saying. My father. It's totally authentic. Whatever he says he'll do. He will try to do. He'll never mislead you when he makes a mistake. He'll tell you he made a mistake and take responsibility. And even if it's not popular, he will push things that he feels are a matter of principle that relate to our values. I hope that's what you would say, because it is.

My dad used to have an expression. He'd say, you know, your success as a father. If you turn and look at your child, realize he or she turned out better than you. When Beau died, Brock did the eulogy. He said Beau Biden was Joe 2.0. That's the whole thing. To be objective, have objective standards. I've been fairly successful, but my children have done better than I have done. Every day I ask.

And I said, honest to God, truth and you ask. You'll be asking yourself too. How my kid's going to remember me. They're proud of me.

That's why I do the work I do to make sure that Willow and Karl are proud of me. Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for this conversation. I am eager to do everything I can to help you win in November. And I look forward to having you as our president next year. Dan, what do you think of the interview and noddies endorsement?

I mean, I had to take a moment to collect myself before we could do this part, because, I mean, obviously, we've talked about, Audie, a lot over the last few years. We've been doing this. And he is one of the most inspiring people that we've ever been around and listening to him talk about. How he is spending. The last parts of his life doing this work for his kids of every kid like. Gets me every single time minutes.

And then listening to Joe Biden talk about what drives him and how he has dealt with the loss of Beau. She's something that think is unimaginable. Anyone, particularly to any parent, about what losing a child would be like, no matter how old they are, whether they're younger or adults like Beau. And it's just, you know, it's like it's heart and inspiring all at the same time. And I think.

Listening to Joe Biden there, what it makes me think about him and why I think he is uniquely positioned to lead this country at this time is, you know, Joe Biden sort of discussion time is like a regular guy, right?

I've got some politicians like to do it, like I'm from Scranton and I'm middle class Joe. And like you, I think that is certainly true. And having no joint for a long time, like Scranton and his neighborhood of Claymont, Delaware, which, you know, near where I grew up, like, I think those values are part of him. But it's not like Joe Biden, regular guy. It's like Joe Biden. Regular Huben. He's a human who has his emotions and his flaws on his sleeve at all times.

And they're for their for the world to see. And he does think in wrestle with his own flaws and his own imperfections in a very public and I think reassuring way that is different than the way a lot of politicians handle. And that came through in that interview.

And and like obviously we were talking we're doing this in the context of a unified Democratic Party and having one of America's most important and most prominent advocates for Medicare for all. Endorsing Joe Biden on this day means something. But I think that conversation also revealed a lot about what is great about both of those men. Yeah.

And look, you know, you say as a regular person, but there there's nothing regular, at least there's nothing typical about the sheer amount of tragedy that he has faced in his life, losing so many immediate family members and doing so while living a very public life as a public figure.

And I you know, I I think in a moment where the country is going through such tragedy and such loss, that does make him uniquely qualified in one way.

Look, I love the interview for all the reasons you said. I I had always told Audie that I thought he would connect with Biden on that level even as they disagreed. And what I also liked about the full interview, which you should all go watched on now this and go to his Twitter feed and you can see all the clips is, you know, they both stood their ground on what they believed to. And they weren't they didn't afraid they weren't afraid to disagree with each other.

And when we know this because that is that done this on the pod so many times, he was not afraid to press him. It was not just some softball interview where they pretend to take to get along and agree on everything. You know, they went back and forth on Medicare for all. And, you know, Biden said how much he hated insurance companies, too, and has had to deal with insurance companies. He's not he's no fan of private insurance, but also thinks it's sort of the best way right now to get to full coverage.

Talked about his public option, said that he'd be going further than he did in the primary, sort of nodded at more ideas to come, especially around providing for the option to have home care paid for an elder care paid for not as part of Medicare, but just as a basic right. Also, when they were talking about criminal justice, you know, Biden talked about banning no knock warrants, which he's mentioned before, but also talks about redirecting some funding for police, even though he said he does not agree with defund the police.

He's open to redirecting some some police funding. And, you know, there was one moment when I think, you know, Biden talked about how he wants to propose like 50 billion dollars for the National Institutes of Health.

He said that wasn't enough. And then Biden said, well, if it's not enough, when I'm president, you come to me and we'll talk about it. We'll figure it out.

And I do think that sort of reveals the kind of presidency that Joe Biden would offer. It's not going to please progressives all the time, but there's always going to be a seat at the table for them. And he's always going to listen. And there are times when he's going to change his mind and agree with them. And there are times when he's not. But he is open and he listens, you know, which I think is really important.

And that's sort of speaks to I think the other big news on this front yesterday was the release of the Biden Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations. They were on six issues the environment, criminal justice, the economy, education, health care and immigration. The document with the full statements and recommendation is one hundred and ten pages long. So you won't go through it all. But here are some of the highlights on health care by now supports all low income Americans would be automatically enrolled in either Medicaid or a premium free public option.

Government health care program on climate. A commitment to carbon free power by 2035 instead of his original 2050 on criminal justice automatically expunging marijuana convictions. Didn't go so far as to favor federal legalization, but does leave legalization up to the states in decriminalizes.

There's plenty more. But here's what Bernie Sanders said about the recommendations. This is from Bernie. He said, quote, If implemented, they will make Joe Biden the most progressive president since FDR. That is from Bernie Sanders. Dan, what did you think of the recommendations? And are there any big ones that I missed that you found notable?

No, I don't think there's any big ones you miss. I think those are those are right. And I mean, those are the most important ones. I think it's the point you just made, which is the progress that was made demonstrates that Joe Biden is a willing to listen and B, he can be moved with activism. And so I think it is a message to everyone who cares about.

Climate, Medicare for all legalization of marijuana. That the work doesn't end on the day Joe Biden this morning is due. You can keep pushing him and keep engaging with him in good faith.

And there is a real opportunity to make progress. And I think it is to the credit of everyone involved with the Biden side and the Sanders side that this process worked out the way it did. There were a thousand potential pitfalls here where people could be unwilling to move on issues and people were willing to compromise on both sides.

And you hear you end up in a world where you have Alexandra Castillo Cortez tweeting about support for Joe Biden's climate agenda and what happened. And you have the activists onside understanding like sanity reigned here. And I think it's really important progress. And people should feel good about it, because I think so often, you know, these working groups are for certain.

It's like, oh, it's a working group. It's gonna be about as consequential as the platform, which is a white matter. But actual real progress was made. So the starting point on what Joe Biden public option looks like when he gets to Congress and introduces it has moved. This has become more progressive and more bold because of this work. The starting point for the conversation around what we're going to do on climate, both from his executive actions within his government to what happens in the House and the Senate has moved to be more progressive because of this work.

I think that, like that, progress should not be discounted by anyone. Even if people didn't get everything they wanted.

Yeah, I mean, look, I. I think that is some of the folks from the Sunrise movement were tweeting about this yesterday. And I think so often we talk about these sort of unity task forces and coming together in terms of, you know, building a coalition that can win the election. But it's clear that progress was made on a real substantive policy front, that if Biden wins, we'll sort of pay dividends in a Biden administration. And when the Sunrise folks were tweeting about this, they said, you know, we're really hopeful, not just because Joe Biden was a nice guy and accepted recommendations, but because we have built a movement that is powerful enough to compel potentially the next president noted states to adopt some of the goals of that movement, which is a real and, you know, he sort of said the same thing.

It is it's a real recognition of the power of activism and the power of electoral politics, because I think we're at a moment right now where there's a lot of young people who are very progressive, but sometimes they are cynical for good reason about politics and public life and electoral politics. And this is another example. And, you know, Audie proves this as well. This is another example that when you that when you mix activism with electoral politics, good things can happen and you can actually make progress.

It doesn't happen quickly. And there are setbacks, but it can happen.

The conversation we just had about the policy working groups and the polling are not disconnected. Right. Which is Joe Biden is in a commanding political position both within his party and in the electorate. And so you could have been a world where he said, look, I won the primary I wanted by a lot. I am winning. I don't have to make any concessions. Right. But there was compromise there. Right. And there is a world where Sanders supporters could say, look, you're winning by a lot.

We don't have to give you our votes. Right. Like, there could be a 2016 redux. In that situation and everyone avoided that that potential trap and actual progress was made that if Joe Biden is elected, will make people's lives better. And that's all you can ask for.

Or by the way, they could have said we're for Medicare for all and we're for the Green New Deal. And those are our plans. And if you're not for those plans, we don't have anything else to talk about.

And they didn't say that. They didn't say that. So it's it's good on them as well.

One more point on consolidating the Democratic coalition before we move on. It's not all optimism, Dave. Dave Wasserman from Cook Political Report noted that even though Biden is doing better among progressives and young people than Hillary did in 2016, he's actually doing slightly worse with non-white voters than she did, particularly with Latino voters. Almost even with black voters? Not quite, but especially with Latino voters. Biden's winning them by an average of 30 points instead of 40 points.

What's your reaction to that? What's going on there?

Well, as you know, I like to find things to worry about, so I know that. That's why you out of the line. Yes, I see. I see. It makes you feel more comfortable to sort of end this good news parade that I get from the rest of Bercot media.

I mean, I think we should all be concerned about it, right? I mean, this is something I've written about recently, but this is Trump's strategy is to shave Biden's margins with these elements of the Democratic base. Right. And they're running ads right now. They're running ads in Spanish in Arizona and Florida and elsewhere in the country that accused Biden of cognitive decline and not up to the task. They are running ads in Philadelphia and in other markets with a high proportion of African-American voters about Joe Biden's criminal justice record in the 90s.

Now, the Trump campaign is not super smart. So they're also running ads accusing Joe Biden of defunding the police in those same markets, in those same newscasts.

So they they really have a true strategy. But it is something that is concerning. And look, if the margins stay in the state where they are right now, let's not going make a huge difference. But there's a very real chance that that Trump will, you know, stabilize some politically, if not emotionally.

And and if that happens, then this can matter because, you know, we talk a lot about areas that we talk a lot about Florida. But if you are significant, underperforming Hillary Clinton with Latino voters, you're going to have real troubles in those states because that what the difference between Hillary Clinton's loss and a Joe Biden win in Arizona is not just.

White people in the suburbs. It's also a effort to organize registering turn out Latino voters. Same situation in Florida and Michigan. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are states that went red in 2016, in part because of lower turnout among African-Americans in those states.

And so there is work to do here. There is time to do that work. But we should not take comfort in that. And and the fact that Joe Biden is doing so well with other groups that he may not need these voters, that would be a fatal error, in my view.

And I'll just say from doing the wilderness and talking to a lot of these voters myself in some of these states, you know, these are not necessarily voters who are saying Joe Biden's too moderate for me. These are voters who and this is what Stacey Abrams told me.

This is what Cornell Belcher, who you've talked to for campaign experts react. It told me this is what a lot of the organizers who were working with Latino communities in Florida told me.

And this is what the voters themselves told me, is that these are voters who are very cynical about politics in general and distrustful of the system. And part of the reason they're distrustful, especially black voters, is because they know their votes have been suppressed in the past, that their voting rights have been restricted.

And, you know, the thing that always sticks with me is, is Cornell telling me that a lot of voters who who voted for Stacey Abrams in Georgia in 2018 think, you know, she won that race and she's not governor.

Why should I even bother again? And reaching these voters, a lot of and a lot of them are black and Latino and young.

Reaching these voters is really going to require the sort of, you know, close, I would say in person.

But it's going in the middle of pandemic, but really sort of intense organizing and relational organizing and talking to people one on one and talking to people who are friends and friends of friends. And this is really going to be the work of both the Biden campaign and their organizers, but sort of all of us. All of us. We're working our vote, save America and adopt a state. And we're going to have specific calls to actions, vetter, that were given to us by some of these groups that are working to organize black and Latino voters and some of these states.

And I think that's going to be the real work of the next couple of months ahead of 2020.

Yeah, I think that's right. And it's also going to be it's obviously organizing is a huge part of any and all political success. But you also have to give voters these years of reasonably if by this this time is going to be different. Yeah. And that is certainly about how you're going to deliver on the promises that you make after decades upon decades of politicians not delivering on those promises. But it's also convincing people their votes gonna count. Like that's the big impact.

Like that is the part of voter suppression that we don't pay enough attention to, which is sometimes you see just how explicit Brian Kemp was in Georgia in keeping people from voting or like these guys are the least subtle criminals in history. Yeah, but the lack of subtlety is a feature, not a bug.

They don't want to just make sure your vote doesn't count. They want you to know your votes not going to count.

The more explicit the voter suppression, the better, because that means the next time. Why would you stand in line for hours upon hours, particularly at the risk of getting corona virus if it probably is going to throw your vote out anyway? Right. Are your machines not going to work? And for all the insanity we see around Trump's crazy vote by mail tweets, there is a purpose in that. Right. And that is to convince. Democratic voters, particular African-Americans and Latinos, who were skeptical of food for good reason, that of voting and whether their votes will count, that they're unlikely to do so.

And so there are a lot of elements of this, but this is something that all of us. Right. This is not this is not advice for Joe Biden time. This is for everyone up and down the ballot, every volunteer to think about how we can combat this, because, you know, this election, as you know, has a very real chance of being very, very close.

All right. One last item. We were initially reluctant to talk about. But people have asked. So here we go. We're gonna cover it really quickly. Just answer your questions. Cornell West has once again flirted a run for the presidency. He was immediately endorsed by you on Musk. This is the world we live in.

In a wide ranging interview with Forbes, which is putting it very generously, we have learned that kind of a would run as part of the birthday party that he's never voted before. He's an anti Voxer that Planned Parenthood, he believes as a white supremacist organization that does the devil's work and that he's OK with siphoning off black votes from the Democratic nominee, even if it means helping Trump. Look, I do want to sit here and analyze Kenya. Let's just answer the question.

At this late point, can he get on the ballot in every state as a third party candidate? Can he in every state? No. Can he get on the ballot in some states? Yes. Is it easy? No. Is it possible? Yes. Like, let me give you an example. Right. So, Michigan, the deadline for an independent candidate in Michigan has not yet passed. We need to get 12000 signatures by July 16th, which is in one week.

And so that seems possible, but not probable. Some states are easier.

Some days it's quite easy. As you may remember from Tiger King, Joe Exotic got on the ballot.

So it is very possible that you can you can do that.

But it's unlikely, I think. And he is not someone who has shown a ton of organizational follow through in recent years. So.

Well, as of as of this recording on July 9th, it still doesn't appear that he is registered as a candidate with the FEC. According to publicly available records, a candidate by the name of Connew D Nuts West Register has a Green Party candidate in 2015 but is now reported raising any funds. You know, he did already missed the deadline in North Carolina, Texas, New Mexico and Indiana. And the states that have July deadlines like Michigan are some big ones Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maine, New York all have July deadlines.

So if he doesn't make those deadlines, then, you know, you're you have write in option. The write in campaign, though, that's quite difficult to impossible to pull off as well. So that's where we are on this.

I mean, like, here's what I would say. Do not pay a lot of attention to this yet.

Do not worry about this.

If all the sudden county starts hiring, if you registered as a candidate without in the middle name D nuts or like starts hiring organizers, then like now it's time to at least pay attention to it before that.

This is just sort of click bait for people stuck at home. You know, I would say that.

A plan where Conway runs for president to siphon off. Black voters from Joe Biden is the exact sort of plan that Trump and Jared Kushner would come up with because it's so obvious and so stupid and so likely to fail.

But this seems to be more like kind of a sort of popping off as he is want to do.

And it potentially could be related to some sort of music project, sneaker line dropping or something like that, because usually when he gets very engaged in the world publicly, it's because it's something that he wants to promote.

Coming down the pike, you know, we and we should say one last serious point on this related to third parties in general, and we've sort of made this point before. But, you know, The New York Times had another piece based on their poll about sort of third party candidates in 2020. A lot of pollsters are finding much less appetite for third party candidates this time around, A, that tends to happen during elections where there is an incumbent on the ballot in 2004 when it was Bush versus Kerry, in 2012, when it was Obama versus Romney.

The third party share of the vote in both of those elections was way, way down around one percent. It's much different when it's an open election, like in 2016. Then the third party share goes up. And I think also because so many voters have such strong feelings about Donald Trump, this incumbent, particularly pollsters, are finding that when they give people the option to select a third party candidate in a lot of polls, they are not doing so.

They are actually choosing between Trump or Biden or at least saying they're undecided between those two. So that's sort of the larger third party landscape for everyone. That's a real point to make within this kind of silliness.

Do you feel less good about yourself now? We talked about this because I torse. Of course, it's I just I said on Sunday morning I was texting with Tommy about whether we should talk about it Monday. And we were both like, this is ridiculous. And then after a week of some of this coverage, it lingering out there is like, let's just answer it for folks and just. And then we can move on.

I've had a lot of people tweeting me, asking them if this is something they should worry about. I got to be like them. We are in the middle of a pandemic. You can probably find something else other than this to worry about. But as we say here, at least, as I say, worry about everything.

Panic about I. And that is true for Khania, as is true for anything else.

All right. When we come back, Dan talks to Rashad Robinson from Color of Change.

But to America, is Broady by parachute. We're all still working from home and have been living in our robes. Have your robe and getting more used these last few months. How are your parachute robes keeping you comfortable at home? And the three of us now are supposed to banter about how comfortable we are at home in our robes. Let's banter. Let's start the banter.

Let out throw a robe on from time to time for some key. You know, look, we're talking about here is the liminal space between being dressed and being naked. That's what we're talking. Right.

And this is different than you've you've described it to me before. One time you told me the only time you wear your robe is is Halloween, when the trick or treaters come, because that's still not true.

Shame. Shame on you. Shame on you. As if I'm going to open the door for trick or treaters, lights off, bowl of candy in front of the house.

I say we do have to to parachute robes. Hannah uses hers quite often.

She is a huge fan. I think it's just very soft, very absorbent. Makes you feel warm when you're getting ready. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like there's two kinds of robe lifestyles. There's the in place of a towel robe lifestyle. That's one version. And then there's the kind of Hef version of like I'm slipping into something more comfortable. I'm more of a shower robe person as opposed to a cigar on the lanai robe person, you know, and I mean, that's me.

I'm I'm glad to know that. I'm glad to know that Emily's a big road person to she. She loves a good robe beyond robes. We just get a parachute rug from from parachute.

It is soft and comfortable. And, you know, it's just added to our parachute collection, many towels, many pillows and of course, those comfy robes.

My parachute is visible right now as we record this. We can see it on my bedroom.

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He's a president of Color of Change, an online.

Racial Justice Organization, Bishop Robinson, welcome to Positive Murka. Thanks for having me. You in Color Change have been spearheading a campaign called Stop Hate for profit targeting hate speech on Facebook.

Can you let our listeners know what it is you guys are trying to get Facebook to do, sort of help them understand what the problem is?

So we have a list of 10 demands and they are really rooted in years of back and forth with Facebook, not just by social justice organizations and users, but by the corporations themselves who have joined us in this campaign. Nearly a thousand corporations at this point have signed on to stop hate for profit. You know, one of the kind of ongoing areas of problems that Facebook is an incentive structure that's focused on growth and profit over civil rights, security, integrity.

And so what I mean by that is that the decisions about what type of content stays up or comes down a particularly when it relates to politicians and political speech, voter suppression, things like that runs directly through their government department, not sort of in a separate sort of entity. And so as a result, Donald Trump gets to lie about voter suppression on the platform. Donald Trump can post something call about looters and shooters, which is clearly a cry at all for vigilantes to sort of show up and and and push back against protesters as he's he's sort of alluded to and then posted in.

And they will leave that up and back. Mark Zuckerberg will call Donald Trump to have a conversation. Over the years, we've pushed on Facebook around their advertising targeting advertising that would allow you to target a job, just ad men or target housing, just that white people avoiding previous civil rights laws that we want and fought for over the years. We've been able to get them to change those things. But every single change over the years have come with like fights and campaigns.

In fact, those changes around the marketing, you know, came after the ACLU and others had to sue Facebook. And finally, we had to demand Facebook settle those lawsuits when they were still fighting them in court. You know, there are white nationalist organizations currently on Facebook with groups that are talking about a second civil war and are posting and putting up content. And then advertisers ads are showing up next to their content unbeknownst to these advertisers. All of this, right, is a kind of climate in a context where the profit motives and the growth motives of this platform run up against sort of the decency and all of the sort of real clear ideals around freedom of speech, which doesn't allow MSNBC to run on ads that are full of lies, doesn't allow no FOX News to run ads that directly call for the killing of folks.

Even if I may disagree with a lot of things on Fox News and Mark Zuckerberg will say things like, our guy catches eighty nine percent of this but not give us transparency around his A.I.. We know that the content is all over the place. And so in many ways when they tell us these stories, we see the hurricane that's happening outside on Facebook. And then Facebook hands us an umbrella and expects us to think that that's going to be enough.

So you were in a meeting, I would normally say. Take us inside the room. Take us inside the zoo. Yeah. Yeah. You were in a you were part of a meeting.

They assume with Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook executives earlier this week.

Q Tell us about what a what do you expected going into that meeting and what, if anything, came out of it?

So, you know, I've been meeting with the Facebook folks for the last five years at different levels and since twenty eighteen really meeting with folks at the senior level, because in twenty eighteen, The New York Times revealed that Facebook hired a PR firm called Definers to Attack Color of Change and run any sort of negative stories against us. And so at that point, we ended up, you know, kind of moving from meeting with, you know, government relations staff and others about our demands to meeting directly with Sheryl Sandberg and and others.

And so, you know, we met this week, which was, for me, a follow up on a meeting that I had with him on June 1st, also on Zoome. And in both those meetings, you know, Facebook has had our demands. They've had sort of the things that we've wanted. And walking into this campaign with the other members of the Stop Hate for profit coalition. We wanted Facebook to tell us what they were going to work on, because to be clear, they x for the meeting.

We didn't act with the meeting. They reached out and said, we want to meet with you. So I was like, let's go to the meeting and let's hear what they've got to say. And they, you know, wanted to walk through our demands and. Let's walk through them and explain them more, and we relate. Well, no, you bad news demand for years. Some of these demands are right out of previous previous iterations of your civil rights audit that you funded and has been out in the world.

But, you know, I think the meaning ended up with a lot of sort of back and forth, a lot of trying to get into the nuances. I think the one thing that they did sort of speak to is the hiring of a vice president sort of connected and dealing with civil rights. We were asking for someone in the C suite. They put someone who is going to be a vice president. It remains to be seen how much power in reach and budget this person will have.

But that, I think, if anything, is one sort of step forward.

All of these social media platforms have real challenges when it comes to hate speech. Facebook is unique in there, sort of, I think, obstinance here, like Twitter and YouTube for as small as these steps maybe have taken some steps. What is it you think that is unique about Facebook that is making them so difficult? So the company is, first of all, so much bigger than these other companies. When you think about that sort of size of YouTube and Twitter, you can combine their users and it won't get you anywhere near really Facebook in terms of its reach with two point six billion, you know, followers, more kind of followers in Christianity.

And so in just in that regard, they have insulated themselves from a lot of public pressure. They're the public pressure around ads. They have so many advertisers that no single advertiser represents, even a kind of percentage of those of the final sort of 70 billion dollar ad profit. And then you've got you know, and then you've got sort of a whole set of other things working at Facebook where they are really worried about regulation. And they are really worried about government oversight.

And they are really worried about new rules because they should be because they are currently operating under rules that were created before these platforms even existed. And so because of that. Right, they have created an infrastructure inside of Facebook that once again allows for the folks who are supposed to be dealing with government relations, global government relations. And they are the folks who the decisions about how so much of this content is dealt with, that is just those decisions flow through those people.

And so what's happened in this current political era is this idea of conservative bias has been weaponized inside of Facebook so that every time they sort of deal with something that is hate towards LGBT folks or women or black folks or other folks of color, they have to put it through the lens of what are we doing about conservative bias? Now, there we live in a country that has laws, rules and regulations about protecting protected classes while we call them protected classes.

You don't you don't get protected because you're a liberal or you're conservative. You get protected based off of things that you can't change based off of who you are. And there are sort of histories and rules around that. But they have weaponized this idea of conservative bias to the point where I will be sort of pushing back on some of the decision trees inside of Facebook. And Mark will say to me, like, you just don't want us to hire Republicans.

And I will say it's not about right or left. This is about right or wrong. And this is really clearly about, you know, who makes that decision and what their job is every day. And if I and if you have someone like Joel Kaplan, which and so I've said I don't want someone who's a Democrat who's like in charge of being with the administration, having this job. But I also don't want a false equivalency that Joel Kaplan, who sat behind Brett Kavanaugh during the hearings and threw a party for him afterwards, would be the type of person that would make it harder for my grandparents to be able to vote when they were fighting to be able to get access to the ballots.

And that's right. There is the person who then gets to decide whether or not something is voter suppression or not, because this stuff runs through him and the policy department.

I mean, there's obviously a world in which, you know, we wake up in twenty, twenty one and Donald Trump is no longer president.

And so we no longer have a situation where we have a politician who's hate speech is being protected by Facebook. But hate speech is a much bigger problem than just Trump on Facebook. You talk a little bit about that particular what's happening with some of the list of the things you're asking Facebook for. You talk about what's happening with white supremacy and and within Facebook groups. Yeah.

So, first of all, before I get to the white supremacy of Facebook groups, I know we talk about politicians. We spend a lot of time without Trump. But like I'm also talking about the sheriffs in Arizona who may say, like, no show up to the polls because we're going to be collect. We're going to be collecting papers. The councilperson in Mississippi who, you know, is saying he's going to be checking criminal records at the polls and making sure no one is voting illegally because they've been incarcerated.

I'm talking about a whole range of politicians who are being incentivized in the history of voter suppression, in the history of tactics that get supercharged in this platform. But you're right, there are all sorts of groups on Facebook that continue to pop up and answer and are allowed to flourish. There are white nationalist groups that are invited to set up new properties once they get on and then their properties, the Facebook closed groups, the Facebook pages, then get spread and amplify.

Cause. Right. The incentive of Facebook is profit. And so it's if kind of closed group is getting a lot of people joining and they are sort of calling for a second civil war, then Facebook will start running ads against that. Right. And so, you know, we've had to show members of the coalition have had to show like major corporations. Their corporate logo and brands, their ads sitting right next to the sitting, right next to white nationalist content that not only has been sort of allowed on the on the platform, but is given sort of permission to flourish because the sort of algorithms, the rules of the platform incentivize this type of content, incentivize the growth of it, because it all serves the bottom line of Facebook page for profit, essentially, as you say, culture, which is also spearheaded a campaign for justice for the murder of Briona Taylor.

And none of the officers involved have faced any formal charges and only one has been fired.

What is justice look like in that situation? And how can our listeners continue to put pressure on officials to do the right thing here?

So a couple of things. One should go to color of change talk and you should sign our petition, which is working to translate that Itogi both locally to build power around call tools that we've created to send calls directly to folks there to build energy in the media more publicly. But part of what we've been doing over the last several years is building some kind of a platform around district attorneys. 70 percent of d.a.'s in this country run unopposed, 90 percent of D.a.'s are white.

We have a real problem with district attorneys actually prosecuting police in this country because the incentive structures that have been set up means that district attorneys have to work with police every single day and they believe that they serve police, not the public. And I recently wrote about this in a New York Times op ed piece where I really talked about all the challenges that even progressive district attorneys who are elected into office and get all sorts of challenges to any type of changes from judges from the town to we'll see a decrease in jail size to the Fraternal Order of Police and the police.

Unions and Fraternal Order police are just incredibly powerful forces right now that protect police. And so we also have to hold politicians accountable that say that they are working with us but are taking money from police unions. There are a lot of barriers that are standing in the way of justice for Brianna. And I want people just to sort of think about this for a second with all the attention, all the celebrities, all the energy, all the rallies for justice for Brianna and those police officers still have not been arrested.

Think about all the other incidents around the country where not as much attention gets onto it, where not as much energy gets focused. And think about sort of all the ways in which we have very different tiers of justice in this country, very different systems of of of rules. And that all relates back to power. And so part of what we are really trying to do is rewrite the sort of rules of power I talked about that sort of the Fraternal Order of Police constantly standing in the way of power.

And this all connects right to how we're thinking about justice. For Brianna, signing that petition is one thing. Getting involved in work, the whole d.a.'s accountable and then challenging police unions and challenging the forces that stand in the way of progress. And Cook County, Chicago, Kim Fox, who is the district attorney that was elected by a lot of movement organizations who helped power her race, and then she went in and has lowered jail sizes, have reduced jail size, has done a number of things to kind of advance criminal justice reform, along with Larry Krasner, Philadelphia and the district attorney in San Francisco and others are really ushering in a new era of D.A. reform and D.A. accountability.

Well, Kim Fox decides she's not going to prosecute low level crimes anymore. It's going to reduce some overtime for police. They decide to march on her office. Everything's fine here. Right. Police unions marching on the d.a.'s office. That's First Amendment rights, right? They then they're marching, though, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, with four white nationalist groups, one being the proud boys. So they are marching on the first black woman d.a.'s office because she has something that she is absolutely allowed to do.

They take out pictures of Kim Fox, his face, and they rub them on her on a rub her face on their crotch. The pictures of her face. And then they do it in plain sight. Newspapers, their media that they've invited there, they feel totally comfortable. The next day, those same police officers put on their uniforms, their badges and their guns, and they go back into our communities to protect and serve. And so part of why people are hearing calls about defund the police or downsized, police say, or invest, divest, is because we actually have to deal with the fact that we have been investing in the wrong thing and that police officers have not been at the table to actually make fundamental changes because they're not interested in fundamental changes to safety and justice.

And so all of this is really connected. So, yes, justice for Brianna. But part of how we really, really, I believe, serve the long term goals of justice for Briona is that we undo all of the barriers to justice for the next Briona Taylor as well. And we make the system right by changing the systemic challenges to any type of justice and freedom for our communities.

Rashad, thank you so much for all of your work. And thank you much for joining us on parts of America. Everything you're doing is so important.

Thanks for having me. Appreciate you. Thanks to Rishard Robertson for joining us. Thanks to Rebecca Nagle for joining us. And everyone, have a fantastic weekend and we'll see you next week.

By everyone. Pottsy of America is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez, our assistant producers, Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segment is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya So Maneater, K.D. Lang, Roman Pappert, Demetrio, Caroline Reston and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Alija Ko Na Melkonian, Yael Freed and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.