Whose Freedom? Whose America?

WEBVTT
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16,292.
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That is how many refugees the United States led in this past year.
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16,287 of them came from one country, South Africa.
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Overwhelmingly, it's white Africana minority.
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Five came from the rest of the world.
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Five.
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In the same season, more than a million people from Haiti, Honduras, Somalia, and beyond were stripped of their protected status.
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And a post is going around your church.
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Yes, that church group, calling this freedom.
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I am Aya Fabarinelli, and I am the host of Rethinking Freedom.
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Someone who spent a lifetime asking questions that power hates most.
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This is Rethinking Freedom, where we examine freedom through history, through the law, and through the eyes of the people that America and the powerful have all too often left out.
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Who's freedom?
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Who's America?
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Let me tell you where I stand so you never have to guess.
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I am not pro-any party.
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I am not pro-Flag.
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I am pro-humanity.
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My loyalty is to the human race as a whole.
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To the person at the bus stop, in the classroom, in the detention center, and in pews, or praying in the corner of a room.
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Not to any politician and not to any symbol that has flown over both liberation and chains.
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So here's the post that I'm going to be addressing today.
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Someone writes they didn't vote for Trump.
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They voted for the First Amendment, for secure borders, for the Second Amendment, the police.
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They voted for law and order and a conservative Supreme Court.
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They voted for troops coming home and no more endless wars.
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They voted for American jobs, veterans for children, for religious freedom.
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They voted for the Electoral College.
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And the post ends with God bless America.
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Now can America please bless God.
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And the person who shared it admits they copied and pasted it from someone else.
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So here are the three ground rules I'm going to follow for the next hour with you.
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First, political language is not evidence.
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A politician can say freedom while restricting freedom.
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They can say law and order while excusing their lawlessness or any lawlessness that keeps them in power.
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And they can say religious liberty while privileging just one religion.
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And we're going to test every line against the record, not the slogan, but the record.
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Two, consequences matter more than intentions.
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I'm not going to pretend that I can read the minds of the people who've shared that post with their full chest.
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I don't need to.
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If a policy discriminates, if a policy harms, it does not disappear because you supposedly meant well.
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You do not have to intend injustice to help produce it and to keep it in place.
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Three, this hour is for everyone, not just for me.
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Every one of us, whatever our racial classification, our class, our gender, our sexual orientation, religion, or party, has swallowed lies, propaganda, indoctrination about this country.
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Some of us have swallowed the lie that America has always been good.
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Some of us have swallowed the lie that the other party will save us.
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And tonight I'm encouraging us, whether you're watching it at night or in the morning, if you're listening on the radio show, it's definitely morning.
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Um I'm encouraging each and every one of us to examine what it is we've imbibed and how truthful it is.
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And then what are you going to do when you're faced with the facts?
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Because, see, the truth that only cuts one way is not truth at all.
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It's a weapon.
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And it's a weapon that I will argue is being wielded against people who've been historically disenfranchised.
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And if you're still supporting this, you can't hide behind the lies.
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Take action or you are complicit.
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So here's the post.
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I'll take it line by line.
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I voted for the First Amendment and freedom of speech.
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I voted for freedom of religion.
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I did not vote for Trump.
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The real test of free speech has never been whether your side can talk.
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It's whether the people who criticize you can speak as well.
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Freedom of speech that protects only you and your allies isn't freedom.
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It's privilege.
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By late summer, Reuters had counted 75 federal court rulings finding that this felonious administration, because it's run by a 34-time convicted felon, had violated First Amendment rights, speech, press, and religion 75 times.
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75 times judges looked at the evidence and said, you crossed the line.
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And after Jimmy Kimmel joked about the first lady, the FCC ordered an early license review, early license review of ABC stations.
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And in January, federal agents arrested two black journalists, Don Lemmon and Georgia Fort, after they reported on a protest in St.
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Paul.
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As the National Association of Black Journalists said, journalism is not and should not be a crime.
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Now faith.
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The First Amendment has two religion clauses and they belong together.
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As an attorney, this is what we were taught in law school.
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The establishment clause says government may not establish or favor a religion.
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The free exercise clause says government may not stop you from practicing your religion.
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That protects Christians.
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And it also protects Muslims and Jews and Hindus and Buddhists and indigenous spiritual traditions and people who practice no religion at all.
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The government does not and should not belong to one faith community.
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But in its first months, this administration, this regime, created a White House faith office and a federal task force on anti-Christian bias, only Christian bias, and a religious liberty commission.
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Government can work with faith groups, should work with faith groups, but when the state appoints itself the protector of one religion, ask what happens to everyone else.
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And what happens if that state's regime should change and begin to protect another religion to the detriment of yours?
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Here's what happened to everyone else.
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What is happening to everyone else under this administration?
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For more than 30 years, under presidents of both parties, immigration agents generally stayed out of houses of worship.
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But this administration ended that in its first days, and churches sued.
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Baptists, Quakers, Mennonites, Episcopalians, Reformed Jews, and Sikhs, including the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas.
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Congregations told courts their pews were emptying because members were afraid to come and pray.
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So whose religion is being protected and whose is being raided?
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Now, can America please bless God?
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That isn't a prayer.
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It's a political program with a name: Christian nationalism.
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The belief that America belongs to Christians, that God only serves Christians, and Christians and its laws make it so.
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The Public Religion Research Institute, which happens to be a nonpartisan research institute, released a 50-state survey just this past February that found that 56% of Republicans qualify, they identify as Christian nationalism adherents or sympathizers, and 67% as white evangelicals.
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Adherents were more likely to say patriots may need to resort to violence to save the country.
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Of course, this is not new.
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15th century church decrees told European kings that lands not ruled by Christians, according to their definition of Christianity, were theirs to seize.
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And in 1823, the U.S.
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Supreme Court wrote that doc that they wrote that doctrine into the doctrine of discovery, into American property law.
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Then, of course, came the Indian removal.
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Then came federal boarding schools, where native children were stripped of their languages, their names, their families, their culture, and their faiths, many of them run by churches.
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So you see, the cross has been carried in front of conquest time and time again.
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Frederick Douglass said it plainly in 1845, actually.
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He wrote that he loved the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ and hated the corrupt, slave holding, women whipping, cradle plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
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I would add the genocidal Christianity, the land-stealing Christianity.
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Two Christianities, and we are still choosing.
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You still have a choice today.
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A choice that you should be making at the ballot box on November 3rd.
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And hear this because it's about all of us.
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That same research institute found a majority of Hispanic Protestants hold these views too.
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And many Christians of quote-unquote color.
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In other words, non-white Christians, because Christian nationalism is an ideology about who owns America, and you do not have to be white to be recruited into it.
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Let's talk about big tech, the ones who are saturating the media, who are determining the algorithms, and whether you even get to watch this on YouTube.
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And by the way, if you are, please like, please hit that subscribe button, leave us a comment because that feeds the algorithms.
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And of course, share if there's anything that you are learning from this session.
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So for years, the people who share this post said the platform silenced them.
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But let's look at who owns and holds the megaphone now.
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Tech billionaires lined up behind Trump at his inauguration.
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As he returned to power, Meta ended professional fact-checking in the U.S., loosened its rules on immigration and gender, and pledged to work with him against foreign regulation of social media.
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X belongs to the man who bankrolled Trump's campaign and who's currently bankrolling Ken Paxton's campaign in Texas and, of course, in many other places as well.
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TikTok's operations went to investors friendly to the president, including Oracle's Larry Ellison.
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And since then, Palestinian journalist Bizdan Alda's account has been permanently banned.
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Users reported suppression of posts about Alex Predi's killing.
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And California's governor says his office confirmed instances of TikTok suppressing content critical of the president.
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Human Rights Watch called meta-censorship of pro-Palestinian speech systemic and global.
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And the people who spent years shouting, censorship, censorship, have gone quiet now that it seemingly has run the other way.
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So let's be honest about everybody.
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It was a Democratic president, Joe Biden, who signed the law forcing TikTok sale.
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Platforms don't serve free speech, they serve power.
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So the question was never whether big tech silences people, it's whom it silences.
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And right now, it's silencing any critics of this administration.
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It's silencing voices for truth.
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Here was another part of the post.
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I voted for secure borders and legal immigration.
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Legal, in quotes, for doing away with all the freebies given to all of the illegals.
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First of all, the fact that we would even call a human being illegal is problematic in and of itself.
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But we don't have enough time to unpack that this morning or afternoon or evening, whenever you're watching or listening to this.
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That's not neutrality.
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In 1857, in Dred Scott, the Supreme Court said black people could never be citizens.
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And in 1882, Congress barred Chinese laborers.
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In 1924, it set quotas designed to keep America white.
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Protestants and northern Europeans were the people who were invited and welcomed into America.
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And this was a system that stood until 1965.
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During World War II, the government imprisoned Japanese Americans, citizens amongst them, only because of their ancestry.
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And in Korematsu, the Supreme Court said that was just fine.
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Laws made by human beings with political agendas, with white nationalism in their hearts.
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So when someone says, I just want them to come the legal way, it behooves us to ask, which door has America ever held open and for whom?
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Today, as ICE is rounding up rough housing and detaining people who are here legally, who did follow the quote-unquote legal routes, but nonetheless imprisoning them.
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Where is your voice?
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Here's the record.
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Found that this administration caught legal entries 2.7 times more than illegal ones.
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Refugees from abroad fell about 90%.
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Student visas fell about 42%.
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And the diversity visa lottery was paused.
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But let me talk about this first.
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That diversity visa lottery, 55,000 green cards a year, that was going mostly to Africans and Europeans, is what was paused.
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A December proclamation barred American citizens, citizens, from sponsoring close relatives from 39 countries.
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Just hazard a guess where these countries are based and what kinds of people racially inhabit these countries.
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And then there's a number that I shared with you at the top of the show, that the Federal Refugee Order said slots shall primarily be allocated among Africaners from South Africa.
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Researchers in South African courts have rejected the claim of white genocide.
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It is not based on facts.
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Out of more than 40 million refugees on Earth, the U.S.
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government under this regime has found room almost only for white ones.
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That's the 1924 quota system on New Letterhead.
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Meanwhile, the temporary protected status, protection for people from countries in war or disaster, was terminated for 13 of the 17 countries that had it, including Haiti, Honduras, Nicaraguans, Somalians, South Sudanese, Ethiopians, and people from Cameroon.
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More than a million people affected, about a third of them from Haiti, Honduras, and Nicaragua, who have been living here legally since Hurricane Mitch in 1998, who have been paying taxes, who've been contributing to the growth of America, have nonetheless been stripped of their status.
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Red carpet for some, trapdoor for others.
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Who gets stopped on the streets?
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Who gets pulled out of their workplaces and out of schools?
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In September 2025, the Supreme Court let immigration agents in Los Angeles keep making stops based on factors like apparent ethnicity, speaking Spanish, the kind of work someone does, or standing at a bus stop or a car wash.
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Court filings later show that agents used racial slurs to pick targets.
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On October 29th, just this past Thursday, if you're watching this on November 2nd, a federal judge in Los Angeles issued an injunction blocking stops based on racial stereotyping across Southern California.
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Working while brown is the new driving while black, which by the way, still is maintained.
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And who gets to be born in America?
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Or who gets to be born American, I should say?
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On his very first day, President Trump signed an order to deny citizenship to children born here, to so-called undocumented or temporary visa parents.
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On June 30th, the Supreme Court, thankfully, finally following the Constitution, followed the law and struck it down 63, reaffirming its 1898 ruling in the case of Wong Kim Ark, a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents during the era of Chinese exclusion.
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The president, they said, does not get to rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment by executive order.
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The amendment was written to undo Dred Scott.
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Remember that.
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Now, the U.S.
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Constitution in the Fifth Amendment says no person.
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And note that it does not say no citizen.
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It says no person may be deprived of liberty without due process of law.
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Yet, in March 2025, this felonious administration invoked a 1798 wartime law to fly more than 200 Venezuelan men to a mega prison in El Salvador, many with no criminal record and no hearing, in other words, no due process.
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A Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was sent there despite a court order protecting him.
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Even American children have been swept out under this regime.
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In April 2025, ICE deported U.S.
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citizen children to Honduras with their mothers, among them a two-year-old and a four-year-old with cancer.
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Where is the justice?
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Where is our humanity?
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And a federal judge raised alarm that the toddler was deported with no meaningful process.
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When the government says it follows due process, ask this question: whose due process?
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And here is what that post that you all are sharing liberally in your church groups, all sanctimonious and patriotic, never tells you.
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Many of the people being caged are doing exactly what the post demands.
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They are coming the legal way.
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Since late 2025, ICE has been arresting people at their green card interviews, husbands, wives, and parents of U.S.
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citizens who walked into a federal office to finish the legal process and were marched out, humiliated in handcuffs.
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In one case, the government approved a green, sorry, a man's green card petition, and that same day, ICE arrested him.
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In the San Francisco area alone, reporters counted 539 arrests at routine immigration appointments.
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So these are people following the law you claim to be protecting.
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On top of 147 arrests after immigration court hearings, and 69% of those arrested at appointments had no criminal record at all.
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Attorneys say ICE is exploiting people's compliance.
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Now people are afraid to even show up for their hearings.
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So which is it?
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Do you want them to follow the rules?
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Or do you want them gone no matter what they do?
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While we are specifically targeting certain kinds of people.
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Then came what I call deportation by purchase order.
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The United States has signed secret deals with at least 13 African countries at Swani, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and others.
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And what are these secret deals supposed to accomplish?
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To make these governments take people who are not even their citizens.
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Men held in Eswatini were denied a lawyer for nine months.
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People in South Sudan have been held for nearly a year at an undisclosed location.
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Some deals came packaged with U.S.
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investment in the receiving countries.
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Africa, once again, is the place where America sends the people it does not want.
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And where do they hold the people they catch?
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The people they're terrorizing on the streets?
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Please listen to this.
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Nearly 90% of people in ICE custody are held in facilities run by four profit companies led by the Geo Group and Core Civic.
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And Geo Group reported a record 254 million profits in 2025 alone.
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Roughly seven times its profits the year before.
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This after landing ICE contracts.
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And its founder unabashedly stated that this moment is an unprecedented opportunity.
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Enriching yourself over the chained bodies of people?
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Why does that sound so familiar?
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These companies are paid per bed per night.
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The human being becomes a revenue line.
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From convicts leasing after slavery to the private prison boom.
00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:46.559
There has always been money engaging black and brown bodies.
00:27:46.799 --> 00:27:49.279
And you call this freedom?
00:27:49.519 --> 00:27:52.319
You call this being patriotic?
00:27:53.359 --> 00:27:58.960
At the same time this is happening, watch dogs have been gutted.
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:16.799
This felonious administration has effectively dismantled Homeland Security Civil Rights Office and the detention ombudsman that investigated deaths and complaints and slashed the internal inspection office.
00:28:17.839 --> 00:28:25.920
Members of Congress were turned away at detention center doors despite a federal law that gave them the rights to inspect.
00:28:26.240 --> 00:28:32.000
In fact, some of them were arrested and have been charged and are facing conviction.
00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:45.279
The Washington Post reported that ICE quietly weakened detainee protections after private outreach from the GEO group to this administration.
00:28:45.920 --> 00:28:55.440
And 37 people have died in ICE custody in fiscal year 2026, the most in the agency's history.
00:28:56.400 --> 00:29:01.279
For-profit cages, no one watching, record deaths.
00:29:01.519 --> 00:29:03.119
That is not an accident.
00:29:03.680 --> 00:29:05.200
This is by design.
00:29:05.519 --> 00:29:16.559
And if you are voting for anyone who is supporting this administration and this level of inhumanity, you are my friend.
00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:22.319
Or foe, if you choose that route, complicit.
00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:28.079
So what happens behind those doors?
00:29:28.480 --> 00:29:46.319
Senator John Ossoff's investigation logged 1037 credible reports of human rights abuses in immigration detention centers in this administration's first year, including 88 reports of physical and sexual abuse.
00:29:47.839 --> 00:30:00.720
26 of the cases included mistreatment of pregnant women, 40 were mistreatment of children, and 44 cases of family separation.
00:30:01.119 --> 00:30:15.359
And Senator Also reports in his first report, it indicates in his first report that Texas had more credible reports of physical and sexual abuse than any other state.
00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:19.519
Homeland Security disputes his findings.
00:30:20.480 --> 00:30:27.680
But when you have abolished the very offices that would investigate, a denial is all that's left.
00:30:27.920 --> 00:30:29.599
Let's be transparent.
00:30:29.839 --> 00:30:32.160
Let's see what the record really shows.
00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:35.359
And let's talk about the children.
00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:45.599
In Dilly, Texas, just a few hours south of us, sits the South Texas Family Residential Center.
00:30:46.000 --> 00:30:48.000
Sounds innocuous enough.
00:30:48.240 --> 00:30:54.400
It's run by Core Civic and it reopened for families in 2025.
00:30:55.279 --> 00:31:05.200
In January, ICE took five-year-old Liam Ramos outside his home in a Minneapolis suburb after preschool.
00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:18.160
You may have seen the pictures of this innocent child in a bunny hat with a Spider-Man backpack, like some of our children carry, and they shipped him there with his father.
00:31:19.279 --> 00:31:23.359
Members of Congress who visited said he was depressed and not eating.
00:31:23.599 --> 00:31:30.960
Children inside this facility staged their own protests, chanting Libertad.
00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:36.720
A federal judge ordered Liam and his father released after nearly two weeks.
00:31:36.960 --> 00:31:38.400
Think of the trauma.
00:31:39.680 --> 00:31:49.359
Lawyers described twin five-year-old girls, well, five-year-olds, who were held there for more than eight months.
00:31:50.079 --> 00:32:00.559
If you have a five-year-old daughter, son, grandchild, nephew, niece, a neighbor's child you like, think about that.
00:32:02.640 --> 00:32:12.400
They were held there, though the long-standing florist settlement generally limits children's detention with a parent to 20 days.
00:32:13.039 --> 00:32:18.799
A teenage girl was separated from her mother and siblings after speaking out about conditions.
00:32:19.519 --> 00:32:22.799
A former detention ombudsman put it plainly.
00:32:44.640 --> 00:32:49.440
And here we are implementing the same again in 2026.
00:32:51.200 --> 00:33:03.039
In Minneapolis in January, federal agents wearing masks reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan shot and killed two U.S.
00:33:03.119 --> 00:33:05.200
citizens in under three weeks.
00:33:05.519 --> 00:33:14.960
Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Predi, a VA intensive care nurse.
00:33:15.440 --> 00:33:19.599
Both were watching agents work, if you can call that work.
00:33:20.160 --> 00:33:32.079
Brookins reports that as many as 170 citizens were detained in this administration's first nine months.
00:33:32.559 --> 00:33:36.960
And let's address those freebies that so many of you are so concerned about.
00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:39.839
Here's the truth.
00:33:40.240 --> 00:33:46.559
Undocumented immigrants are already ineligible for most federal benefits.
00:33:46.880 --> 00:33:53.839
Food stamps, non-emergency Medicaid, SSI, cash welfare, most federal housing.
00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:56.799
What they do actually is pay.
00:33:57.519 --> 00:34:21.599
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that undocumented immigrants paid$96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022, including$25.7 billion paid into Social Security, a program that they are barred from collecting from.
00:34:22.079 --> 00:34:28.719
And that$4.9 billion was paid to state and local governments right here in the state of Texas.
00:34:29.440 --> 00:34:37.519
In 40 states, they pay a higher state and local tax rate than get this, the richest 1%.
00:34:38.800 --> 00:34:52.800
So when ICE handcuffs a worker at a green card interview, it is jailing a taxpayer with your tax dollars and paying a private prison company for the bed.
00:34:53.679 --> 00:35:02.079
The freebie is actually going to these four-paid institutes owned by these oligarchs.
00:35:02.559 --> 00:35:14.400
This freebie story was always told and is still being told to make you resent your neighbor instead of the people above you.
00:35:14.800 --> 00:35:17.840
Have you seen that meme that has gone around?
00:35:18.239 --> 00:35:20.079
Two people with plates.
00:35:52.239 --> 00:35:54.800
Stop letting yourselves be manipulated.
00:35:55.679 --> 00:35:57.199
Here's another post.
00:35:57.599 --> 00:36:02.719
I voted for the Second Amendment for the police to be respected once again.
00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:05.280
I voted for law and order.
00:36:05.760 --> 00:36:07.760
All of that sounds wonderful.
00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:13.199
But let's read the Second Amendment because most of us have never even read it ourselves.
00:36:13.599 --> 00:36:15.119
It's one sentence.
00:36:16.239 --> 00:36:31.199
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
00:36:32.239 --> 00:36:34.079
Well regulated.
00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:37.280
Regulation is in the text itself.
00:36:38.320 --> 00:36:47.199
In 2008, in Heller, the Supreme Court recognized an individual's right to a handgun at home.
00:36:47.440 --> 00:36:55.039
And in the same opinion, Justice Scalia wrote that this right, though, is not unlimited.
00:36:55.440 --> 00:37:06.000
The naming bans felons, the mentally ill, guns in schools, and conditions on sales as presumptively lawful.
00:37:06.480 --> 00:37:10.400
The question was never rights or no rights.
00:37:10.639 --> 00:37:16.719
It really has always been what checks and whose rights.
00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:28.800
Get this, included slave patterolers.
00:37:29.280 --> 00:37:29.920
Yes.
00:37:31.199 --> 00:37:37.360
Militias trained to go and hunt down people who were fighting for their freedom.
00:37:37.920 --> 00:37:42.159
After emancipation, what happened across the South?
00:37:42.320 --> 00:37:49.760
The black codes disarmed freedmen, because this is a white nation, and only white men should carry guns.
00:37:50.400 --> 00:38:08.719
In 1967, when the Black Panthers carried rifles openly in California, the states banned open carry signed by someone many of you view as an oracle, and that would be Governor Ronald Reagan.
00:38:09.519 --> 00:38:19.280
And that was with the NRA's support to suddenly ban open carry when black people started to enforce their Second Amendment rights.
00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.719
In 2016, Pilando Castile, remember that name?
00:38:25.039 --> 00:38:32.079
A licensed lawful carrier told a Minnesota officer that he was armed.
00:38:32.480 --> 00:38:33.679
What was his crime?
00:38:33.920 --> 00:38:35.760
A broken taillight.
00:38:36.400 --> 00:38:42.559
Nonetheless, he was shot dead in front of a child.
00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:48.800
And the NRA and the gun lobbyists, and many of you, you went quiet.
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.480
The Second Amendment has always had a color line.
00:38:55.679 --> 00:38:57.519
And now the children.
00:39:12.800 --> 00:39:16.320
Texas knows this grief intimately, or should.
00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:22.480
Because in Santa Fe High in 2018, we had our children killed.
00:39:22.639 --> 00:39:26.880
Repeat it again in Rob Elementary in Ovalde in 2022.
00:39:27.039 --> 00:39:31.519
Let's not talk about the Sandy Hook elementary school, and there's so many.
00:39:32.320 --> 00:39:38.639
Guns are now the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers.
00:39:39.920 --> 00:39:43.119
What did this felonious administration do?
00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:51.119
Within 48 hours, it shut down the White House Office of Gun Violence Protection, or sorry, prevention.
00:39:52.159 --> 00:39:53.360
Shut it down.
00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:03.519
It ended the ATF's zero tolerance policy against gun dealers who repeatedly broke the law.
00:40:04.719 --> 00:40:12.159
And this spring, this administration has proposed thirty-two rules that get this.
00:40:12.639 --> 00:40:16.320
Don't enforce or increase checks.
00:40:17.119 --> 00:40:35.280
No, rather, they're loosening oversight of the gun industry, including restoring gun rights to some people with mental illness, even though its own analysis acknowledges this is a public safety risk.
00:40:38.079 --> 00:40:46.159
Do you really want to fight for gun rights with zero checks and balances?
00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:57.360
Your right to defend your family includes your child's right to come home alive from school.
00:40:58.239 --> 00:41:00.320
And watch the double standard.
00:41:00.960 --> 00:41:07.280
When Alex Predi, a permit-holding VA nurse, was killed by federal agents.
00:41:08.159 --> 00:41:12.159
Trump said he certainly shouldn't have been carrying a gun.
00:41:13.760 --> 00:41:23.599
Loosen the rules for gun sellers who are violating the law, tighten them for people who film your agents.
00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:27.119
Now let's talk about protecting the police.
00:41:27.679 --> 00:41:30.800
Respect should be earned through accountability.
00:41:31.440 --> 00:41:41.360
Historians, and there's so many books on this, can trace Southern policing back to those same slave patrols policing black bodies.
00:41:42.159 --> 00:42:12.800
From the Red Summer of 1919, which I've covered before here in Rethinking Freedom, to Rodney King, from Brianna Taylor in Louisville, to George Floyd in Minneapolis, and here in Texas, Botam Jean killed in his own Dallas apartment in 2018, and his killer, a police officer, given a slap on the wrist, to a Tatiana Jefferson who was shot through her window in Forth Worth, Texas in 2019.
00:42:13.119 --> 00:42:27.360
Our families, black and brown families, have unfortunately been tasked with bearing the evidence of this country's double standards.
00:42:27.840 --> 00:42:38.800
After Floyd and Taylor, the Justice Department found patterns of excessive force and discrimination against black residents in both cities.
00:42:39.119 --> 00:42:45.760
And both agreed to court enforced reforms called consent decrees.
00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:49.280
They agreed that there had to be changes made.
00:42:49.679 --> 00:42:53.039
But what did this administration do in May 2025?
00:42:53.440 --> 00:43:07.599
They dropped those consent decrees and retracted the findings of unconstitutional policing in Phoenix, in Trenton, and Memphis and Mount Vernon, Oklahoma City, and the Louisiana State Police.
00:43:08.880 --> 00:43:16.559
Even in Memphis, where officers beat Tyree Nichols to death in 2023.
00:43:18.079 --> 00:43:20.719
And what about respect for the officers?
00:43:22.480 --> 00:43:39.519
On day one, Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 January 6th insurrectionists, including more than 400 charged with violently assaulting police.
00:43:40.480 --> 00:43:44.159
More than 140 officers were injured that day.
00:43:44.559 --> 00:43:48.559
But their assailants were pardoned by Trump.
00:43:48.800 --> 00:43:59.760
And not only that, they even went so far as to try to create a freedom fund that would compensate these insurrectionists, these assailants.
00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:03.920
Of going up against law and order.
00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:06.000
And you are quiet.
00:44:07.039 --> 00:44:08.719
So here's a pattern.
00:44:09.360 --> 00:44:16.800
No accountability for police who abuse black citizens, no accountability for rioters who beat police.
00:44:17.679 --> 00:44:20.239
And this is not about respect for law.
00:44:21.039 --> 00:44:31.199
It's respecting those who are going to shield this president and this administration from abuse of power.
00:44:34.079 --> 00:44:39.519
The post you have been liberally sharing blames Tim Walt for burning cities.
00:44:40.239 --> 00:44:47.360
But the president that day on May 25th, 2020, when George Floyd was killed, was Donald Trump.
00:44:47.760 --> 00:44:51.440
It blames Kamala Harris for a revolving door.
00:44:52.320 --> 00:44:54.400
Here's a revolving door for you.
00:44:54.719 --> 00:45:06.320
Juan Orlando Hernandez, convicted of helping move hundreds of tons of cocaine into this country, pardoned by Trump.
00:45:06.960 --> 00:45:15.920
Chiang Peng Xiao, who pleaded guilty over money laundering at his crypto exchange, pardoned by Trump.
00:45:16.559 --> 00:45:23.840
And his company deepened their ties with Trump's family's crypto firm.
00:45:24.079 --> 00:45:32.239
And George Santos, convicted and sentenced to 87 months for fraud.
00:45:32.480 --> 00:45:35.360
Oh, we're just going to commute that sentence.
00:45:35.599 --> 00:45:46.480
But yeah, we're going to arrest people who are working, who are attending their immigration hearings as required by law, who have committed no crimes.
00:45:47.039 --> 00:45:48.960
The door revolves, all right.
00:45:49.119 --> 00:45:51.599
It just revolves for the connected.
00:45:52.480 --> 00:46:00.239
And then it pushes out all those who are not bowing to power, all those who are not white enough.
00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:04.880
Here's another part of the post.
00:46:05.360 --> 00:46:11.599
I voted for a return of our troops, the end to America's involvement in foreign conflicts.
00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:14.639
I voted for peace progress in the Middle East.
00:46:14.800 --> 00:46:17.519
I voted for the military and the veterans.
00:46:18.639 --> 00:46:25.199
And then they say Trump even served his country for four years without pay.
00:46:26.639 --> 00:46:28.320
Let's go to the record.
00:46:28.559 --> 00:46:29.840
Are you ready?
00:46:31.760 --> 00:46:34.159
Let's pause before I go any further.
00:46:34.400 --> 00:46:42.719
Want to thank those of you who are watching, and I want you to, I want to ask you to please click on the like and subscribe buttons.
00:46:42.800 --> 00:46:45.920
And I'm going to have to go through this more quickly.
00:46:46.159 --> 00:46:57.280
For those of you on the radio side, you may have to go over to the YouTube side to hear the rest of the story, but I will get as much as I can in during the hour we have on the radio.
00:46:57.920 --> 00:47:07.039
In his first year back, this president ordered military strikes on seven countries, plus a campaign of strikes on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean.
00:47:07.199 --> 00:47:13.119
On Christmas Day, Trump bombed Nigeria and Somalia.
00:47:13.280 --> 00:47:19.280
On January 3rd, Delta Force raided Caracas and seized Venezuelan's president.
00:47:20.079 --> 00:47:30.000
His own national security strategy announced a Trump corollary, a corollary to the Monroe doctrine.
00:47:30.639 --> 00:47:36.719
The 1823 claim that this hemisphere is America's backyard.
00:47:37.119 --> 00:47:46.960
The same claim behind the occupation of Haiti, the 1954 coup in Guatemala, and the 1973 coup in Chile.
00:47:47.440 --> 00:47:55.039
For those of us who remember Patrice Lumumba, an American president, decided who should rule a black or brown nation.
00:47:55.199 --> 00:47:57.840
And this is not new, it's a return.
00:47:58.239 --> 00:48:05.360
Then on February 28th, this president launched an unlawful war on Iran alongside Israel.
00:48:06.400 --> 00:48:13.920
I chose that word carefully as a lawyer because the Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the president.
00:48:14.239 --> 00:48:16.559
He did not ask Congress before he struck.
00:48:16.719 --> 00:48:22.639
And in March, the Senate voted 47 to 53 against a resolution to stop him.
00:48:24.400 --> 00:48:37.119
The war powers resolution, the law Congress passed after Vietnam, gives the president 60 days to end unauthorized hostilities or get Congress's approval.
00:48:37.440 --> 00:48:39.760
That deadline hit on May 1st.
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:42.159
So what did this president do?
00:48:42.559 --> 00:48:50.800
Rather than go to Congress, the White House sent a letter claiming the hostilities had terminated because of a ceasefire.
00:48:51.360 --> 00:48:54.719
And then the president called the law unconstitutional.
00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:02.480
So was the war over?
00:49:03.199 --> 00:49:03.519
No.
00:49:04.239 --> 00:49:06.159
It's in its ninth month.
00:49:06.480 --> 00:49:13.440
21 American service members have been killed and at least 865 wounded as of October 10th.
00:49:14.239 --> 00:49:18.880
Iran has kept striking our bases, and our forces have kept striking back.
00:49:19.039 --> 00:49:20.559
That's our story.
00:49:21.039 --> 00:49:27.199
We instigated the war, but we're going to talk about someone else striking us.
00:49:27.519 --> 00:49:29.760
Then came the cruelty of the paperwork.
00:49:30.079 --> 00:49:38.559
Air Force Major Alex Klinner, 33 years old, died when a refueling plane crashed in Iraq supporting this unlawful war.
00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:47.440
His widow was told she didn't qualify for some combat-related benefits because the United States isn't officially at war.
00:49:48.079 --> 00:49:52.079
Trump calls the military conflict small potatoes.
00:49:53.280 --> 00:49:55.039
Do you see the pattern?
00:49:55.679 --> 00:49:59.360
Hostilities terminated when Congress asked for a vote.
00:49:59.599 --> 00:50:05.920
Not a war when the widow asked for her benefits, but a war from the podium nonetheless.
00:50:24.159 --> 00:50:34.639
And when Congress tries to look to examine what's happening, in October, the Pentagon barred Senator Chris Murphy, who sits on the committee that funds the military.
00:50:34.800 --> 00:50:41.599
They barred him from a base in Qatar, which Iran had reportedly struck repeatedly.
00:50:42.079 --> 00:50:52.800
He says Republican senators have been blocked too, and that he was never once denied access to any of our military bases through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
00:50:53.360 --> 00:50:56.079
And what are you paying at the gas pumps?
00:50:57.039 --> 00:51:01.679
Gas was$202.98 on the average before the war.
00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:11.519
Triple A, as of the time I recorded this, says gas is now around$4.20, with diesel averaging over$6.
00:51:13.119 --> 00:51:15.039
Peace in the Middle East?
00:51:15.519 --> 00:51:15.840
No.
00:51:17.039 --> 00:51:22.480
Last October, a ceasefire took hold in Gaza and hostages came home, which was wonderful.
00:51:23.039 --> 00:51:34.159
But Gaza's health ministry now counts more than an additional 73,000, 73,000 Palestinians killed, including since the ceasefire.
00:51:34.400 --> 00:51:39.119
And Israeli strikes continue in Gaza and Lebanon.
00:51:39.519 --> 00:52:01.440
And this president, well, this president lifted the pause on 2,000-pound bombs on taking office, and in September approved a$2.8 billion sale, including 40,000 one-ton bombs, largely financed by you and I as American taxpayers.
00:52:01.920 --> 00:52:08.079
About 20 billion in arms to Israel has been approved since January 2025.
00:52:08.719 --> 00:52:11.519
And in the spring of 2025, the U.S.
00:52:11.599 --> 00:52:13.599
bombed Yemen for weeks.
00:52:13.920 --> 00:52:21.440
One strike hit a detention center holding African immigrants, most of them coming from Ethiopia, killing dozens of them.
00:52:22.079 --> 00:52:32.480
You cannot sell the bombs, drop the bombs, and then whine that you should be awarded a peace prize.
00:52:32.719 --> 00:52:47.039
And we definitely should not reward this behavior by continuing to vote for people who are going to support this administration and these kind of actions unchecked.
00:52:47.519 --> 00:52:49.360
And that's where you fit in.
00:52:49.599 --> 00:52:54.239
That's where you get to decide what you really stand for.
00:52:55.599 --> 00:53:06.320
And the people who serve, the veteran affairs department lost nearly 28,000 employees in 2025, with staffing falling in every single state.
00:53:06.639 --> 00:53:11.519
About a quarter of those BA employees are veterans themselves.
00:53:17.360 --> 00:53:20.880
This will be the final point that I can address for those of you watching on the radio.
00:53:20.960 --> 00:53:23.679
So go over to YouTube to Rethinking Freedom.
00:53:25.119 --> 00:53:31.360
The president says he donated his$400,000 salary during his first term.
00:53:32.480 --> 00:53:37.679
This term, by his own account, it goes to White House preservation.
00:53:37.840 --> 00:53:46.719
Renovations, he says, including his new ballroom, for which the entire East Wing was demolished without permission.
00:53:48.559 --> 00:53:53.840
Officials say he'll most likely name this new ballroom after himself.
00:53:54.559 --> 00:54:12.079
Meanwhile, while he's donating$400,000, his net worth has reportedly gone from$2.3 billion in 2024 to about$6.5 billion this year, with roughly$3 billion of the family's profits from crypto.
00:54:13.519 --> 00:54:22.559
Hotel and licensing deals are being negotiated in countries where we're also negotiating tariffs and military aid.
00:54:23.199 --> 00:54:26.400
A 400 million jet accepted from Qatar.
00:54:27.039 --> 00:54:32.960
The constitution's emolument clauses were written to stop exactly this.
00:54:35.199 --> 00:54:36.800
Whose freedom?
00:54:37.119 --> 00:54:38.480
Whose America?
00:54:39.440 --> 00:54:44.079
Vote for true freedom on November 3rd.
00:54:44.559 --> 00:54:48.719
Well, for those of you on the radio, thank you for listening.
00:54:49.280 --> 00:54:56.239
Another part of the post reads: I voted for election integrity to include mandatory voter ID.
00:54:56.400 --> 00:54:58.639
Why would anyone vote against this?
00:54:58.880 --> 00:55:01.199
I voted for the Electoral College.
00:55:01.519 --> 00:55:08.079
I voted for the next Supreme Court justices, for a conservative Supreme Court.
00:55:09.679 --> 00:55:12.159
Most Americans support voter ID.
00:55:12.400 --> 00:55:14.960
Texas already requires voter ID to vote.
00:55:15.280 --> 00:55:19.440
Non-citizens are already barred from voting in federal elections.
00:55:19.760 --> 00:55:28.079
I'm not asking you to vote against that, but I'm asking you to really pay attention to what election integrity means.
00:55:28.239 --> 00:55:31.199
What do we mean by integrity in practice?
00:55:32.400 --> 00:55:40.159
Because has there really been any significant challenge to the integrity of elections?
00:55:41.360 --> 00:55:50.000
Is it not Donald Trump himself who only agrees that elections have been fair when he or those supporting him win elections?
00:55:50.239 --> 00:55:58.000
But whenever he or his supporters lose, then there has been some attack on the integrity of elections.
00:55:59.840 --> 00:56:09.519
Routers found that federal prosecutors have charged at least 147 people with non-citizen voting since this president returned.
00:56:09.679 --> 00:56:11.360
Most cases unresolved.
00:56:12.400 --> 00:56:20.559
That comes to fewer than one for every million people who voted in 2024.
00:56:21.119 --> 00:56:23.840
One in every million people.
00:56:24.880 --> 00:56:35.760
Meanwhile, the Justice Department has demanded unredacted voter rolls from nearly every state and sued 30 states plus DC, the District of Columbia, that refused.
00:56:36.400 --> 00:56:41.280
In October, a federal judge ruled that that effort was unlawful.
00:56:41.519 --> 00:57:07.199
And on October 21st, another judge has largely halted Homeland Securities voter investigations in nine states after testimony that agents were told to decide whether a person, agents, you know, this is the federal agents, not the state that is supposed to monitor and administer and do everything regarding their elections.
00:57:07.519 --> 00:57:15.440
These agents were told to decide whether a person was legally qualified to vote in no more than 12 minutes.
00:57:16.639 --> 00:57:29.920
And of course, here in Texas, the unit pursuing those cases, well, it sits inside the office of the current attorney general, a man who is himself on tomorrow's ballot running for U.S.
00:57:30.079 --> 00:57:42.000
Senate, an impeached official who got away with a hand slap for allegations of fraud.
00:57:43.360 --> 00:57:46.719
So there is a crisis being manufactured here.
00:57:47.440 --> 00:57:53.679
A crisis that doesn't exist of oh, elections are being rigged.
00:57:53.920 --> 00:57:56.400
People who are not supposed to vote are voting.
00:57:56.639 --> 00:57:58.639
But the facts don't back it up.
00:57:58.880 --> 00:58:10.079
But when they've manufacture that crisis, they whip you all up and you go along with an agenda that actually is not pro-freedom at all and is not pro your rights.
00:58:10.559 --> 00:58:13.039
Now let's look at the Electoral College.
00:58:15.199 --> 00:58:22.400
This is why some have fought very hard for us to gut teaching real history in American schools.
00:58:22.719 --> 00:58:45.519
Because the Electoral College was built on the three-fifths compromise, a compromise which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person, people who could not vote, in order to swell the slave state's power in Congress in choosing presidents.
00:58:46.639 --> 00:58:57.519
And slaveholders held the presidency of this free and democratic nation for most of the nation's first half century.
00:59:00.719 --> 00:59:04.000
And let's look at what the South did when slavery ended.
00:59:04.320 --> 00:59:16.079
In 1861, eleven states launched an armed insurrection to keep human beings who look like me in bondage.
00:59:17.119 --> 00:59:28.960
And after Reconstruction came the Colfax massacre in 1873 and the 1898 coup in Wilmington, North Carolina.
00:59:29.119 --> 00:59:32.239
This is all history they don't want us to teach in the schools.
00:59:32.480 --> 00:59:37.199
Because, see, people who don't know their history don't even recognize the signs.
00:59:38.239 --> 00:59:43.599
When they are on the path to repeating the same history that they are ashamed of.
00:59:44.800 --> 00:59:48.320
But instead of changing, want to suppress.
00:59:52.639 --> 00:59:58.239
Then came the poll taxes, literacy tests in the white primary.
00:59:58.480 --> 01:00:05.599
And I'm telling you, some of these voter suppression laws, that's exactly what they are, are operating as poll taxes again.
01:00:05.920 --> 01:00:12.639
I have children who are studying outside of the state of Texas, but they are residents of Texas.
01:00:13.039 --> 01:00:17.440
And so they requested ballots, mail-in ballots.
01:00:18.400 --> 01:00:21.039
Those ballots cannot just be requested online.
01:00:22.079 --> 01:00:32.159
You have to download a document and have the ability to print out the document, and then you have to go and mail in the document.
01:00:32.800 --> 01:00:35.119
We could easily just do this online.
01:00:35.360 --> 01:00:44.239
We send millions of dollars, billions through secure means on the internet, right?
01:00:45.039 --> 01:00:45.679
But no.
01:00:46.159 --> 01:00:54.639
And then after mailing it in, which I made them pay priority mail because our mail system has been so suppressed under this president.
01:00:55.039 --> 01:00:59.920
Mail that used to take two days, you all know this to be true, now it takes six days.
01:01:00.159 --> 01:01:06.159
So I said, pay the extra amount and send it via priority mail.
01:01:07.039 --> 01:01:16.400
And they confirmed when their requests were received by the voter election office here in Texas.
01:01:16.639 --> 01:01:20.159
And do you know how long it took for them to receive their ballots?
01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:22.559
Two weeks.
01:01:24.480 --> 01:01:29.920
Two weeks of them calling and asking and being told, oh, it's been mailed out, it's been mailed out.
01:01:30.880 --> 01:01:56.639
And because I understand how this regime has worked and finding all kinds of loopholes to disenfranchise people, to prevent people from voting, I tell them, fill out your ballots and mail them back, paying overnight postage just so there is no confusion and that there's no chance that your ballots are not received before November 3rd.
01:01:58.000 --> 01:02:05.360
And so these college students spent over$35 on overnight mail delivery.
01:02:05.519 --> 01:02:07.440
That's a poll tax, y'all.
01:02:07.679 --> 01:02:08.960
That's a poll tax.
01:02:09.360 --> 01:02:11.519
Because there are other ways we could handle this.
01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:15.119
And what happens to those who don't have the means?
01:02:15.840 --> 01:02:21.519
But nonetheless, by law, should be able to vote.
01:02:21.599 --> 01:02:27.840
Although, of course, we know the American Constitution, interestingly enough, does not guarantee us the right to vote.
01:02:30.880 --> 01:02:38.400
Remember that Texas ran a white-only Democratic primary until the Supreme Court struck it down in Smith v.
01:02:38.559 --> 01:02:41.119
All right in 1944.
01:02:41.440 --> 01:02:43.760
That's in my parents' lifetime.
01:02:44.800 --> 01:03:03.199
And on January 6, 2021, the Confederate battle flag, a flag for the insurrectionists, the people who fought against the US government was carried through the US Capitol.
01:03:04.320 --> 01:03:07.920
Something even the Confederate Army never managed.
01:03:08.960 --> 01:03:16.239
And this president sanctioned all of that when he pardoned every single one of them.
01:03:18.400 --> 01:03:26.480
So whose America and whose freedom do you claim to be protecting?
01:03:29.199 --> 01:03:34.480
The Voting Rights Act was written in the blood of Selma and it is being dismantled.
01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:48.559
In 2013, in the Shelby County case, the Supreme Court ended federal pre-clearance for states with histories of discrimination, including Texas.
01:03:49.679 --> 01:04:04.079
This April, in Louisiana, the Calemp, the court struck down Louisiana's second majority black district, sharply narrowing section two of the Voting Rights Act.
01:04:04.639 --> 01:04:11.920
A Harvard scholar estimates that nearly 70 congressional districts had been protected by it.
01:04:13.199 --> 01:04:31.920
But this white nationalist regime, and we can get to how they appointed some of the justices who are in the Supreme Court right now, they're fine with these changes, not just fine, they're championing them.
01:04:32.239 --> 01:04:43.119
The president's Justice Department has said that it will use the ruling to dismantle more protections before this election that's taking place tomorrow.
01:04:43.840 --> 01:05:07.920
And in 2020, when the Electoral College delivered this president, a 306 to 232 defeat, he refused to accept it, organized fake electors in seven states, and pressured his own vice president, who was being threatened by lynching, to throw out the count.
01:05:11.360 --> 01:05:18.320
Now, when it comes to the court, do not tell me a judge protects the constitution because someone calls that judge conservative.
01:05:19.039 --> 01:05:22.480
This, after all, is a court that gave us Dred Scott, Plessy B.
01:05:22.639 --> 01:05:24.480
Ferguson, and Koramatsu.
01:05:24.639 --> 01:05:30.559
Judges must be judged by what they do with the power that has been invested in them.
01:05:31.440 --> 01:05:35.360
And remember how this particular Supreme Court was built.
01:05:35.679 --> 01:05:44.159
In 2016, with 11 months left in President Obama's term, the Senate refused Merrick Garland even a hearing.
01:05:44.320 --> 01:05:45.760
Not even a hearing.
01:05:48.880 --> 01:05:52.719
They said, oh, the people should decide in the next election.
01:05:53.599 --> 01:05:59.840
And yet in 2020, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed as a Supreme Court judge.
01:06:00.400 --> 01:06:04.960
This just eight days before the election.
01:06:05.199 --> 01:06:11.840
As a matter of fact, while millions were already voting, had already cast their votes.
01:06:12.719 --> 01:06:21.280
Same Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, whom you go figure out what's going on with him and why he's still representing anybody.
01:06:22.159 --> 01:06:25.519
Same Senate leader, opposite rule.
01:06:26.159 --> 01:06:27.679
That's not principle.
01:06:28.400 --> 01:06:31.039
That's not defending your constitution.
01:06:32.880 --> 01:06:41.920
That's an unchecked wield of power to advance a particular ideology, a white nationalist ideology.
01:06:44.559 --> 01:06:47.760
What has the court the court done to our voices?
01:06:48.320 --> 01:06:54.159
The 2010 Citizens United ruling decided before any Trump appointee sat on the courts.
01:06:55.360 --> 01:07:06.639
But while the Supreme Court's justice, um, what's his name escaping me?
01:07:06.800 --> 01:07:09.280
Roberts was on the court.
01:07:09.440 --> 01:07:18.800
They let corporations spend unlimited sums on elections and opened the door to super PACs and dark money.
01:07:19.119 --> 01:07:23.119
And then Trump's appointees have flown open the doors.
01:07:23.280 --> 01:07:26.559
In fact, I don't think they are any doors anymore, they're just hinges left.
01:07:26.880 --> 01:07:39.039
On June 30th, in NRSC versus FEC, the court struck down limits on how much parties can spend in coordination with their candidates.
01:07:39.760 --> 01:07:43.840
Justice Kavanaugh wrote the decision, the opinion.
01:07:44.159 --> 01:07:52.079
And one of the original plaintiffs in that case was a senator named, at least one of his names, J.D.
01:07:52.320 --> 01:07:52.960
Vance.
01:07:56.880 --> 01:08:18.239
And any time that this Supreme Court has on a rare occasion told this president no, for instance, on birthright citizenship, which they've actually just kicked down the road to some extent, or on his tariffs, what has been this president's response?
01:08:18.399 --> 01:08:22.000
This person that you say you didn't vote for, you're voting for freedom.
01:08:22.399 --> 01:08:34.159
He said, I, and I quote, he doesn't want judges who respect, so I'm sorry, he said he was ashamed of certain members of the court.
01:08:34.880 --> 01:08:42.800
In other words, he doesn't really want justices who uphold and respect the Constitution.
01:08:43.279 --> 01:08:54.239
He wants justices who respect and are loyal to him and do whatever it takes for him to maintain and wield power.
01:08:57.600 --> 01:09:00.640
Here's another post, and we're almost to the end.
01:09:01.119 --> 01:09:09.439
I voted to fight against humanslash child trafficking for the return of teaching math and history and science instead of the indoctrination of our children.
01:09:09.600 --> 01:09:11.039
We don't want CRT.
01:09:11.279 --> 01:09:14.000
We voted to keep men out of women's sports.
01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:29.680
It's one thing to say you oppose human trafficking or child trafficking or sexual abuse, but it's another thing to judge the actions.
01:09:30.159 --> 01:09:35.840
Was this president not convicted of sexually assaulting a woman?
01:09:36.560 --> 01:09:47.680
Is he not all over the Epstein files that they've been trying to prevent everyday Americans from seeing in their totality?
01:09:48.399 --> 01:09:57.119
Who has been prosecuted for abusing women and children and trafficking people in the Epstein files?
01:09:57.840 --> 01:09:59.920
But let's go even deeper.
01:10:00.880 --> 01:10:09.439
At the State Department, this administration cut more than 70% of the anti-trafficking offices staff.
01:10:10.960 --> 01:10:19.520
You are opposed to child trafficking, human trafficking, but you cut over 70% of the people who would do the investigating.
01:10:19.680 --> 01:10:26.640
And then you put a woman in charge of this area whose background is interior design, and that's it.
01:10:30.319 --> 01:10:51.520
And then this administration withheld the congressionally required global trafficking report and left nearly ninety million dollars that had been appropriated for victims of sex trafficking, of human trafficking, they left ninety million unspent.
01:10:55.199 --> 01:11:16.399
Routers again has reported that in August, the so-called the promised sex trafficking crackdown has not been delivered because agents were actually pulled off of investigating sex trafficking and human trafficking, and instead were pulled into immigration work.
01:11:18.720 --> 01:11:21.920
And what did this president say about the Epstein files?
01:11:22.720 --> 01:11:29.439
The president called the matter a hoax and called Republicans who wanted the files released stupid people.
01:11:31.840 --> 01:11:35.840
And he did that until pressure forced him to sign the release law last November.
01:11:35.920 --> 01:11:48.079
And then they went against every Republican who voted for the laws for sorry who voted for the files to be released.
01:11:59.760 --> 01:12:01.439
What's hidden in the rest?
01:12:01.920 --> 01:12:07.920
And in June, a federal judge ruled that the administration likely violated the law.
01:12:08.239 --> 01:12:17.760
So how can you be a champion of trafficked children when you're also the person fighting to keep a trafficker's files sealed?
01:12:20.000 --> 01:12:21.760
Now indoctrination.
01:12:22.319 --> 01:12:27.279
The president complained publicly that museums dwell on how bad slavery was.
01:12:27.520 --> 01:12:28.720
Think about that.
01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:45.840
And under his order, the national parks were told to review signs that disparage Americans, not review signs for the veracity of the information contained.
01:12:45.920 --> 01:12:46.800
No, no, no, no.
01:12:46.880 --> 01:12:49.520
That quote unquote disparage Americans.
01:12:49.680 --> 01:12:55.840
And in January, a slavery exhibit was removed from the Philadelphia site where George Washington lived.
01:12:56.000 --> 01:13:04.960
I actually traveled to Philadelphia and saw the US-sponsored vandalism on that exhibition for myself.
01:13:07.920 --> 01:13:10.640
So who's doing the indoctrinating?
01:13:11.600 --> 01:13:14.079
The teacher who tells the whole story?
01:13:15.359 --> 01:13:20.159
Or the government that takes the hard parts off the wall?
01:13:21.119 --> 01:13:25.439
Teaching American history does not require teaching children to hate America.
01:13:25.600 --> 01:13:56.880
It requires teaching them the truth about slavery, about native dispossession, about Chinese exclusion, about Japanese incarceration, about Jim Crow, about the women's suffragist movement, about the entire history of America and what it has taken to get America to even attempt to live up to that thing that we always say we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
01:13:57.039 --> 01:14:01.279
Well, these are the fights for that equality.
01:14:01.680 --> 01:14:14.079
And if we don't teach them in schools, if we teach the revisionist history that leaves the truth out and makes you and I more susceptible to repeating these injustices.
01:14:26.960 --> 01:14:41.520
Letters sent from Republicans to parents telling them that their children are going to be operated on, and their gender, their sex changed.
01:14:42.159 --> 01:14:45.119
They put that information out there.
01:14:52.399 --> 01:15:00.000
And there's zero evidence that any child has gone to school as one gender and come back home as another.
01:15:00.319 --> 01:15:02.159
So what are we doing here?
01:15:03.119 --> 01:15:17.359
And this whole thing about sports and men and women's sports, listen, you and I can agree or we can disagree, but we don't have to vilify any members of our community.
01:15:21.439 --> 01:15:33.760
Right here in Texas, the Senate raise alone has drawn about$50 million of ads focusing on transgendered boogeyman fears.
01:15:37.119 --> 01:15:40.079
This is not about protecting girls.
01:15:40.399 --> 01:15:47.279
Not the same girls that you're trafficking, not the same girls that you don't believe when they say they're sexually abused.
01:15:48.159 --> 01:15:50.560
This is the oldest play there is.
01:15:50.800 --> 01:16:04.399
Find a small vulnerable group, make them a threat, and hope that people don't now pay attention to the war, to their pride, the grocery prices, or who's getting rich at their expense.
01:16:04.640 --> 01:16:10.800
Tax cuts for the super wealthy while you cut food to the most vulnerable.
01:16:10.960 --> 01:16:13.840
You cut health care to the most vulnerable.
01:16:14.399 --> 01:16:32.159
This is someone spending to make you afraid of a small group of people so that you don't see and focus on what you should see, which I hope you see, and that you act accordingly when you go to vote on Tuesday, November 3rd, for those who have not voted yet.
01:16:33.680 --> 01:16:36.880
So we've spent over an hour on facts.
01:16:37.680 --> 01:16:40.640
But the harder question is why do facts so often bounce off?
01:16:40.800 --> 01:16:43.279
Why do people just there's so many lies out here?
01:16:43.439 --> 01:16:44.560
Oh, our vote doesn't count.
01:16:44.640 --> 01:16:46.159
Who's telling you your vote doesn't count?
01:16:46.239 --> 01:16:50.560
And why then do they expend so much resources telling you not to vote?
01:16:50.800 --> 01:16:55.359
Listen, the people who have shared this post that I've addressed, they're not stupid.
01:16:55.600 --> 01:16:57.039
At least I hope not.
01:16:57.439 --> 01:17:05.359
They are our neighbors, our deacons, fathers, mothers, grandparents, teachers, even, our co-workers.
01:17:06.640 --> 01:17:10.800
And if we're honest, some of you have shared versions of this as well.
01:17:12.000 --> 01:17:13.680
So the first shield.
01:17:14.319 --> 01:17:16.479
I didn't vote for Trump, I voted for America.
01:17:16.560 --> 01:17:18.720
What that does is it separates the man from the boat.
01:17:18.800 --> 01:17:22.159
So nothing he does, do you have to bear responsibility for?
01:17:22.319 --> 01:17:24.239
It's not a reason, it's an armor.
01:17:24.800 --> 01:17:28.319
Own, own everything, own your choices.
01:17:29.439 --> 01:17:31.439
Oh, the second shield.
01:17:33.520 --> 01:17:38.079
This is about belonging, which beats or is supposed to beat evidence.
01:17:38.319 --> 01:17:48.800
Researchers at Yale, led by Dan Cahan, they found that people process facts in ways that protect their standing in their group.
01:17:49.199 --> 01:17:52.960
So if I'm a Christian, oh, I'm fighting for Christian rights.
01:17:53.119 --> 01:18:00.319
And you know what Christ said, listen, Christ would not recognize himself in what most of you are calling Christianity today.
01:18:03.840 --> 01:18:12.159
This group also found that people who are good at math or better at math were also better at bending numbers to fit their side.
01:18:12.399 --> 01:18:24.640
So when a fact threatens your church, your family, threatens your sensibilities, what your mind does first is you protect belonging and you reject the facts.
01:18:26.399 --> 01:18:29.439
Why else do these facts bounce off?
01:18:30.000 --> 01:18:30.960
Repetition.
01:18:31.600 --> 01:18:35.760
When people hear something enough, it starts to feel true.
01:18:36.640 --> 01:18:45.199
Remember, this very post that I am addressing ended with, I copied and pasted it from someone else.
01:18:45.520 --> 01:18:48.239
That post is a repetition machine.
01:18:48.479 --> 01:18:50.640
Not one fact checked.
01:18:51.199 --> 01:18:53.439
Every shear makes it feel truer.
01:18:53.600 --> 01:19:00.319
You look at it, oh, 20,000 shears, 100,000 likes must be true.
01:19:13.680 --> 01:19:13.760
B.
01:19:13.840 --> 01:19:19.600
Du Bois wrote, he described what he called psychological wage, a psychological wage.
01:19:19.760 --> 01:19:29.920
And he said, poor white workers were paid partly in the feeling of standing above black workers instead of in real wages.
01:19:30.159 --> 01:19:33.520
And they voted against their own pocketbooks to keep it.
01:19:33.680 --> 01:20:00.319
Here in Texas, where rural hospitals are being closed at record numbers, where you white rural citizens don't have access to the health care that you should have, you are still voting against your own interests because you're voting for your white nationalism with your health failing as well.
01:20:01.199 --> 01:20:07.039
That wage that Du Bois mentioned is still being paid.
01:20:07.359 --> 01:20:18.319
To the citizens who feel, well, at least I'm above the immigrants, to the Christian who I'm above the Muslim, listen to some of the rhetoric about Dr.
01:20:18.479 --> 01:20:19.760
Abdul Syed.
01:20:22.000 --> 01:20:23.840
Why doesn't he use his middle name?
01:20:24.000 --> 01:20:25.359
His middle name is Muhammad.
01:20:25.520 --> 01:20:29.920
And I heard one reporter ask, a 19-year-old white woman.
01:20:31.359 --> 01:20:34.800
Well, why is that a problem that he doesn't use his middle name?
01:20:34.960 --> 01:20:37.199
Do you know Mike Rogers' middle name?
01:20:37.439 --> 01:20:39.760
Do you know Ken Paxton's middle name?
01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:42.399
Do you know James Talarico's middle name?
01:20:42.640 --> 01:20:51.920
Why does it only matter when the person's middle name is Mohammed or Barak?
01:20:57.199 --> 01:21:02.960
This wage status that is being paid, it's being paid for the man who feels above a woman.
01:21:03.359 --> 01:21:08.000
Yeah, let's take women's rights their bodily autonomy away from them.
01:21:10.319 --> 01:21:16.960
Let's even take women's rights to vote away from them because the man in the house should be the voice of that.
01:21:21.279 --> 01:21:26.960
It's a wage that is paid for the middle class to feel better than the poor.
01:21:28.000 --> 01:21:31.680
Certainly for the oligarchs to feel better than all of us.
01:21:33.840 --> 01:21:35.520
But what is it costing you?
01:21:37.359 --> 01:21:59.520
Aren't you people who may identify as black, as being of African descent, as being Hispanic, as being of Asian descent, as being immigrants, children of immigrants, people who may be classified as living under the poverty level, people who aren't housed.
01:22:00.560 --> 01:22:01.439
Carter G.
01:22:01.840 --> 01:22:21.039
Woodson, credited as the father of first Negro History Week, now Black History Month, in 1933 warned that once someone shapes how you think, they no longer need to control what you do.
01:22:22.319 --> 01:22:27.199
They don't have to create a backdoor and tell you that's the only entrance for you.
01:22:27.439 --> 01:22:33.039
No, you will go, and if there's no backdoor, you will carve out one for yourself.
01:22:33.279 --> 01:22:50.239
Speaking to you, Tim Scott and Byron Donaldson and Vivek in Ohio, and so many of you here who are actively fighting against rights that were worn through blood.
01:22:56.560 --> 01:23:06.159
Some of us have been taught to admire the very power that seeks to oppress and even annihilate us.
01:23:06.720 --> 01:23:07.920
Nicki Minaj.
01:23:11.840 --> 01:23:12.960
Time to wake up.
01:23:14.720 --> 01:23:16.079
Who's America?
01:23:16.880 --> 01:23:18.399
Who's freedom?
01:23:20.399 --> 01:23:32.000
Now, if you've been nodding along through this hour plus, this is not only about them, this is about you as well.
01:23:32.479 --> 01:23:37.520
Because some of us have imbibed a different lie that the other party will save us.
01:23:40.399 --> 01:24:00.399
Again, I'm not here for any party, I'm here for our common humanity, and I can go down actions and policies taken by administrations that were quote unquote democratic administrations that also cost us a lot of harm.
01:24:00.720 --> 01:24:04.479
So here's the bottom line: it's not about party.
01:24:04.880 --> 01:24:10.000
You do not have to intend discrimination to support policies that produce it.
01:24:10.159 --> 01:24:18.560
But even when you say you don't intend it, I want you to be really honest with yourself, to figure out what wage status you are defending.
01:24:19.840 --> 01:24:44.239
But once, regardless of what your motives are, once the facts, the consequences have been laid in front of you, and I have done that today, you have a responsibility to decide whether you're going to keep supporting them, whether you are going to vote out the people who are engendering all this harm.
01:24:44.640 --> 01:24:56.079
And then when you vote in the next group of people, whether you're going to hold them accountable to really be for the freedom of our common humanity, of our common humanity.
01:25:08.960 --> 01:25:11.199
So, how do we reach the people we love?
01:25:11.359 --> 01:25:23.359
And if you're listening to this on November 2nd, we've got maybe 24 hours to impact this um election, this election cycle.
01:25:23.600 --> 01:25:27.520
So I would say this: start with the value you share when you're talking to people.
01:25:27.840 --> 01:25:29.119
You care about veterans?
01:25:29.279 --> 01:25:30.319
Hey, I do too.
01:25:30.399 --> 01:25:32.640
Let's talk about what's happening with that veterans.
01:25:33.279 --> 01:25:35.439
Bring one fact, not 20.
01:25:35.600 --> 01:25:37.039
I presented a lot of facts.
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You choose one, alright?
01:25:39.279 --> 01:25:42.239
20 facts coming at someone might feel like an attack.
01:25:42.399 --> 01:25:47.840
People get defensive, they close down, they shut down, and then they do the exact opposite just to prove a point to you.
01:25:47.920 --> 01:25:48.880
So bring one fact.
01:25:49.039 --> 01:25:51.840
One fact is a question, it's not an attack.
01:25:52.319 --> 01:25:54.079
Ask, don't tell.
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Did you know that only five of 16,292 of the refugees that came this year came from outside of South Africa, and most of those, if not all, that came from South Africa are white?
01:26:06.800 --> 01:26:08.239
What do you make of that?
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Do you know that this country is detaining people who are following the laws, the immigration laws of the country and deporting them without due process?
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What do you make of that?
01:26:23.359 --> 01:26:30.560
And then I would ask this question, particularly to those who are saying, I don't vote, my vote doesn't count.
01:26:30.880 --> 01:26:33.119
What would it take to change your mind?
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And if their honest answer is nothing, then it was never about the facts.
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In which case, don't waste your breath.
01:26:40.239 --> 01:26:45.039
Let them be and talk to those who are still open-minded enough to listen.
01:26:45.520 --> 01:26:51.039
And I would also say this, which is what has restrained me actually in talking with you today.
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Leave them with some kind of a dignified way back.
01:26:56.560 --> 01:26:59.199
Nobody changes their minds when being humiliated.
01:26:59.279 --> 01:27:03.199
Now, there are some people who absolutely do ask for humiliation, and I'm not okay.
01:27:09.680 --> 01:27:28.079
Trump has been so brazen in his attacks and in his humiliation of women, of non-whites, that sometimes bullies have to be served a little bit of their own medicine.
01:27:30.720 --> 01:27:37.760
But use use use some kind of um think through it is what I'm saying.
01:27:44.800 --> 01:27:53.680
The post that I was reading from, then that I was debunking this past hour plus you spent with me, it admits that the last six months have looked dire.
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Then it tells the people not to blame the president.
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It says look closer to home in the state you're living in.
01:28:00.239 --> 01:28:03.600
Yeah, don't blame him for this catastrophic unlawful war.
01:28:03.760 --> 01:28:07.920
Don't blame him for setting neighbor against neighbor.
01:28:08.079 --> 01:28:10.399
So, well, let's look at home really briefly.
01:28:10.560 --> 01:28:17.359
Texas has been under one-party control of the government, office, and both chambers of the legislature since 2003.
01:28:17.439 --> 01:28:18.960
That's 23 years.
01:28:19.199 --> 01:28:27.760
Last year, the president's urging, as I've covered before, Texas withdrew its congressional map in the middle of a decade to add seats for the Republican Party.
01:28:27.840 --> 01:28:29.520
That's an abuse of power.
01:28:29.920 --> 01:28:33.199
The state and the White House are not two separate teams.
01:28:33.439 --> 01:28:34.319
They are one.
01:28:34.479 --> 01:28:44.399
That's what Abbott and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton have proven to us, and so many of you Republican elected officials who've gone along with this agenda.
01:28:45.359 --> 01:28:50.800
The post asks, America is the greatest country in the world, hence why everyone wants to migrate here.
01:28:50.880 --> 01:28:52.479
So why do you want to change it?
01:28:52.720 --> 01:29:05.199
Well, I'll answer it this way: because everything that so supposedly makes America great came through people fighting for freedom, fighting for equality, fighting for equity, fighting for inclusion.
01:29:08.720 --> 01:29:15.920
It was the people, the flag left out, who nonetheless dragged it here.
01:29:16.319 --> 01:29:24.960
The enslaved who ran and fought and fought in World War I and World War II for freedoms that they didn't even enjoy in their own country.
01:29:25.199 --> 01:29:32.239
It was the black legislators of Reconstruction that brought about the public education system that benefits us all.
01:29:32.800 --> 01:29:43.680
Native nations that never surrendered their sovereignty, Chinese and Mexican and Filipino workers who struck and organized, Badi Lou Hamer, who was beaten for trying to register to vote.
01:29:43.840 --> 01:29:49.119
So loving humanity has never meant leaving this country as we found it.
01:29:49.359 --> 01:29:54.079
Because if we did, most of you watching this would have no rights.
01:30:02.399 --> 01:30:07.039
He answered that it was a day that revealed more than any other the injustice and cruelty done to him.
01:30:07.119 --> 01:30:08.960
And he did not stop with that indictment.
01:30:09.119 --> 01:30:10.399
He kept organizing.
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That is our tradition.
01:30:12.479 --> 01:30:15.600
And then the pulse last line: God bless America.
01:30:15.760 --> 01:30:17.439
Now can America bless God?
01:30:18.159 --> 01:30:25.119
The prophet Micah, since we're going to the Bible, answered long ago, do justice, love mercy, walk humbly.
01:30:26.560 --> 01:30:30.319
Jesus said, Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to him.
01:30:31.439 --> 01:30:50.720
Pardoning men who beat police, caging police, I'm sorry, caging people without a hearing, selling bombs, raiding churches that shelter the poor, slamming the door on Haitians while opening it for white South Africans, cutting people's access to food, cutting people's access to health care, tell me where the justice is and all of that.
01:30:50.960 --> 01:30:53.199
And show me where the mercy is.
01:30:54.479 --> 01:31:03.920
And while America is imposing its will on other countries, including walking in and taking out the president of another country, tell me where the humility is.
01:31:06.720 --> 01:31:09.680
So here's my challenge for the voting vote tomorrow.
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For those of you who have not voted yet, the writer of this poll said it best, possibly without meaning to.
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Then vote on the record.
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Vote on the slogan.
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Sorry, vote on the record, not the slogan.
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Vote for the human being who has the least power in the room.
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Examine who benefits and who pays.
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Freedom that is reserved for just some and not for others is no freedom at all.
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And the work of rethinking freedom, why I started this radio show, this YouTube channel, why we have now listed ourselves in all podcast platforms, is because when we are willing to tell the truth, even when it challenges the people and the parties and the flags we've been taught to love, then we can really start building a society that is free for all.
01:32:17.680 --> 01:32:18.720
Thank you for listening.
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Thank you for watching.
01:32:19.840 --> 01:32:22.159
Thank you for sharing and liking and subscribing.
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Leave your comments, be respectful.
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And I look forward to seeing you next week.