Authentically Detroit
Authentically Detroit is the leading podcast in the city for candid conversations, exchanging progressive ideas, and centering resident perspectives on current events.
Hosted by Donna Givens Davidson and Orlando P. Bailey.
Produced by Sarah Johnson and Engineered by Griffin Hutchings.
Check us out on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @AuthenticallyDetroit!
Authentically Detroit
AntiDemocratic: The 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections with David Daley
This week, Donna and Orlando sat down with David Daley, investigative journalist and author of Anti-Democratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections.
In 1981, a young lawyer, fresh out of Harvard law school, joined the Reagan administration’s Department of Justice, taking up a cause that had been fomenting in Republican circles for over a decade by that point. From his perch inside the Reagan DOJ, this lawyer would attempt to bring down one of the defining pieces of 20th century legislation—the Voting Rights Act. His name was John Roberts.
Now lauded investigative reporter David Daley reveals the urgent story of this fifty-year Republican plot to end the Voting Rights Act and encourage minority rule in their party’s favor. From the bowels of Reagan’s DOJ to the walls of the conservative Federalist Society to the moneyed Republican resources bankrolling restrictive voting laws today, Daley reveals a hidden history as sweeping as it is troubling.
To learn more about Anti-Democratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections, click here.
FOR HOT TAKES:
DETROIT GETS $19.8M FROM KNIGHT FOUNDATION TO BOOST ART, TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNITY PROJECTS
CITY OF DETROIT SLAMS ROGERS FOR CALLING ON TRUMP TO SEND TROOPS
Up next. Investigative journalist and author David Daly joins Authentically Detroit to discuss his book Anti-Democratic Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections. But first this week's hot takes from the Detroit Free Press and Michigan Chronicle Detroit gets $19.8 million from Knight Foundation to boost art, technology and community projects. And City of Detroit slams Rogers for calling on Tripp to send troops. Keep it locked. Authentically Detroit starts after these messages. Have you ever dreamed of being on the airwaves? Well, the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network is here to make those dreams come true. Formerly known as the Deep Network and located inside the Stoudemire, the Authentically Detroit Podcast Network offers studio space and production staff. To help get your idea off of the ground. Just visit authenticallydetcom and send a request through the contact page. Hey y'all, it's Orlando. We just want to let you know that the views and opinions expressed during this podcast episode are those of the co-hosts and guests and not their sponsoring institutions. Now let's and the world.
Orlando Bailey:Welcome to another episode of Authentically Detroit broadcasting live from Detroit's East Side at the Stoudemire inside of East Side Community Network. I'm Orlando Bailey and I'm Donna Givens-Davidson. Thank you for listening in and supporting our efforts to build a platform of authentic voices for real people in the city of Detroit. We want you to like, rate and subscribe to our podcast on all platforms. We're back in the studio this week after a brief hiatus, with a very special guest joining us via phone. Today we have investigative journalist and author David Daly here to talk about his book Anti-Democratic Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections and what that means for the rest of us. David, welcome to Authentically Detroit.
David Daley:Thank you for having me on.
Orlando Bailey:We're so excited to have you on and we can't wait to get into the book. Donna, it's good to see you.
Donna Givens Davidson:It's been a while since we've sat next to each other on the couch. How are you doing? I'm doing well, although it has not been a while since we sat next to each other, right, we saw? Each other yesterday at some really exciting events. Yeah, no-transcript.
Orlando Bailey:And everybody you know came dressed. Y'all look nice, everybody looked nice.
Donna Givens Davidson:You feeling good I'm doing really well. It was a great event and and we are so blessed to have a Knight Foundation program officer like Latrice McClendon, who is not just thinking about how to do good things in our community but also how to make sure that community institutions are strong and viable to try to make those things happen. So she wrote an outstanding op-ed earlier in the week. On Sunday we had the opportunity to not only be celebrated but to, you know, talk about some real significant gifts. I think this is the largest single grant that ECN has ever received. We'll talk about that. Well, let's get into it.
Orlando Bailey:It's time for Hot Takes, where we run down some of the week's top headlines in the city of Detroit. For Hot Takes, Detroit gets $19.8 million from Knight Foundation to boost art, technology and community projects. Detroit's neighborhoods will see new investments in art, technology and public spaces as the John S and James L Knight Foundation commits $19.8 million to 12 projects across the city. Here's the quote. These are all things that we believe are really important to creating a vibrant and thriving city, said Maribel Perez-Wadsworth, the foundation's president and CEO. By focusing on these areas, we create opportunities for connection, we preserve vital history for our community, we provide ways for the community to really access one another and the downtown core. Now what we're doing with the latest run of investments is really expanding from there to come out to the next inner ring of neighborhoods around downtown and continue to build on the success we've seen. She continued.
Orlando Bailey:The announcement was made at a community celebration on Sunday, September 7th at Michigan Central, featuring grantees, community members, a performance by Detroit poet Jessica Care Moore and a Motown-inspired tribute. According to the foundation, the $19.8 million will fund many organizations and initiatives, including the Eastside Community Network's Mother Tree Wellness Campus, with a grant of $1.5 million, completing a nine-acre environmental and health-focused public space with gardens, fitness stations and solar-powered gathering areas. Decisions about which organizations or initiatives receive funding are driven by community itself. Wildsworth said the latest funding builds on more than 25 years of Knight Foundation support in Detroit, totaling $215 million through 750 grants. Much of that investment has focused on downtown revitalization. This round expands into the city's inner ring neighborhoods. The multi-year grants will be distributed over time, with disbursements expected to begin this year and continue through the grant period. The rollout schedule has not been finalized. $1.5 million to the Eastside Community Network and did I hear you say that this is the largest grant award that ECN had ever seen?
Donna Givens Davidson:I think so. I think so. It is a multi-year award, but it's for a single project, and the Mother Tree Campus is the campus design. What the campus is seeking to do is to connect our headquarters, the Stoudemire Wellness Hub, with a park that's just next to us. The idea is that man's playfield. There's a parcel of land that has never been used as a park or anything else since our organization has been here, and we're going to be activating that parcel.
Orlando Bailey:A parking lot when the extravaganzas was here.
Donna Givens Davidson:Right, sometimes we park cars there, but this is going to really open up our space, and that is a labor of love for so many reasons. One of them is when the city decided to allow Stellantis to expand without a meaningful community benefits conversation, without meaningful analysis of the environmental justice impacts of that expansion. What ended up happening is they I don't know if it's upzoned or downzoned a parcel from light industrial to heavy industrial that's right next to people's homes and that's not. Actually that's in violation of the ordinance. We removed a greenway, removed trees and bushes and really made outdoors that much more toxic in an area where we don't have enough environmental investments, and so what we're seeking to do through this is we're seeking to green the area around our building, understanding that we change the things we can.
Donna Givens Davidson:I always joke around that I'm from the change the things I can school of leadership. I can't do everything to reverse some of these decisions that are made, but what we can do is this piece We've entered into some negotiations with the city that's now working with us. We've received state funding, and then we received not one, but two significant grants. This is the second grant. The first one is $500,000 from the Gilbert Family Foundation.
Orlando Bailey:Shout out to GFF Darnell Adams board. Member of BCM. Shout out to.
Donna Givens Davidson:GFF and JJ Velez.
Orlando Bailey:And JJ.
Donna Givens Davidson:Velez JJ was the one who helped to negotiate that and then $1.5 million from Latrice McClendon At the Knight Foundation devastating loss. And so one of the things that we did was we dedicated the Mother Tree campus to Angela In her name. It is now known as the Angela Brown Wilson Gardens at the Stoudemire. Angela really was like a mother tree in this community with deep roots, who was providing nourishment and support. She gathered and supported more people. We had a tribute to Angela yesterday afternoon before we went to the Knight Foundation. How fitting that we gave a tribute to Angela and then we went to that event.
Orlando Bailey:Of course, of course, and the gathering that we gave the tribute at is a gathering that Angela Brown Wilson would not have missed. It was the first time she wasn't there.
Donna Givens Davidson:And so, yeah, so you know lots of ideas, lots of things we could do, but we now have the money to do this and complete phase one of this project, and this is an ambitious project. The total price tag for the entire project is about $5.5 million, but we're $3.5 million in which is more than 50%. It's going to be easier to raise the remaining dollars because nobody wants to be the first money in the first money in.
Donna Givens Davidson:And so we've got public money and now we have foundation money in. That's great, and we are in the very early phases of a capital campaign that's going to bundle all of this up with some of the improvements to our building so that we can have a meaningful, lasting presence in this space. And Angela, you know, someone said I know Angela's smiling down- I think she's smiling with us right.
Orlando Bailey:She's still among us, so it was a great night and I'm honored to chair the Capital Campaign Committee. It's been quite a journey. Listen, I got off the board at ECN and then somehow was pulled into chairing this committee.
Donna Givens Davidson:I can never leave ECN. You know what listen. So if you're listening, you know that Maggie DeSantis is the founder of the organization.
Orlando Bailey:I'm the immediately following her successor right.
Donna Givens Davidson:Immediate successor. And so Warren Conner has an unspoken theory of change Never let anybody good get away. And so, orlando, even though you used to work here and went on, you're still at ECN recording Authentically Detroit right now, and we pulled you into the.
Donna Givens Davidson:Capitol campaign At ECN, recording authentically Detroit right now. And we pulled you into the capital campaign and you got off all your boards and Maggie was like well, he's not getting off of this. And I said, well, you have both Maggie and me in the room. There's no way you can escape, there's no way I could escape that way.
Orlando Bailey:So, once again, congratulations to all of the grantees who were honored yesterday, to all of the grantees who were honored yesterday, eastside Community Network, of course, an organization that's near and dear to both of our hearts. But, you know, black Tech Saturdays, johnny and Alexa, turnage, give Merit, david Merit and the Joe Louis Greenway, partnership with Leona Medley and Detroit Horsepower with David Silver and, and you know, uh mocat and vanguard, and vanguard pam martin turner, was there, uh, yesterday, just just a great event.
Orlando Bailey:It was probably the most diverse portfolio um that I've seen come out of knight foundation in a really, really long time I mean it was diverse, but let's be really clear about what diversity means. Right, it was probably the blackest Black leaders exactly getting $1.5 million $2 million grants.
Donna Givens Davidson:You can go to a lot of philanthropy classes and they can talk about the challenges that black-run organizations have garnering large gifts yeah, it is documented.
Donna Givens Davidson:It's not easy, it is not, and so you know I'm always honored that somebody comes forward and sees the value of the work that I do, the work this organization does. And hats off to Latrice McClendon, who's always made me feel seen and valued, and so when she was at the Huntington Bank Foundation she made me feel seen and valued Not just me, but other people who would otherwise be overlooked in a lot of instances. She does a great job of lifting up strength inside of the community we all live in and love.
Orlando Bailey:Yeah, and you know, in preparing for all it is, both you and her had found the time to come hang out at my birthday. I just want to publicly tell everybody, including Donna, who was coming off of a grueling travel schedule herself. Thank you all for showing up to my little birthday shindig.
Donna Givens Davidson:Your birthday shindig was a. Thing.
Orlando Bailey:I was like wait a minute this is fun.
Donna Givens Davidson:It was in the living room of Shinola Hotel. If you don't know anything about the living room of Shinola Hotel. It was cool. I ran into so many people and it was so much fun. And I was sitting there with Kevin at one point and Tanya and Wayne Stapleton came and they said we're going to stand next to you because we're the oldest people in the room, unless we're next to you, and so thank you, tanya and Wayne, for pointing out that Kevin and I are a little bit older.
Orlando Bailey:Oh man. Oh man, that's so funny. All right, y'all For Hot Take. City of Detroit slams Rogers for calling on Trump to send troops. Republican US Senate candidate Mike Rogers is facing criticism from the city of Detroit and his political rivals for calling on President Donald Trump to send military troops to Detroit. This is by Sam Robinson, donna's co-host on the Black Detroit Democracy podcast. By the way on the Black Detroit Democracy podcast, by the way, rogers, who is endorsed by Trump, is urging the president to add Detroit to a list of cities, including Washington DC, chicago and Baltimore, where military troops patrol the streets.
Orlando Bailey:The numbers don't lie. Detroit has become a hub for violent crime. Rogers of a Republican said in a statement published on his campaign website Thursday these aren't just statistics. They're people and families whose lives have been flipped upside down because they aren't even safe in their own community anymore. We have got to make our city safe again. The mayor of Detroit should be on the phone with the president now, calling for backup, rogers said.
Orlando Bailey:City leaders, including the mayor's spokesperson, pushed back hard against Rogers' quotes. Rogers is proving himself just another uninformed, grandstanding politician. City spokesperson John Rhodes said in a statement If you've ever been on a receiving end of a John Rhodes read. It's always interesting. It's always fun. In 2013, the city of Detroit had more than 750 carjackets. In 2025, we had 57. As of yesterday, a 90% reduction. Our strong partnership with US Attorney Jerome Gorgon has just added several more federal prosecutors to drive violence down even further.
Orlando Bailey:The historic drop in Detroit crime in recent years has come from the efforts of serious law enforcement professionals, not from non-serious politicians like Rogers. In 2023, detroit reported 252 homicides in 2023, marking the lowest number of killings since 1966. However, the homicide rate per capita is higher today than it was then. Republican activists like 180 church pastor Lorenzo Suo and Ramon Jackson pointed to the homicide rate per capita stat last year at a campaign event for Rogers US House campaign. Us Senate Tim Scott, republican of South Carolina, sat at a roundtable with Rogers Suo and Republican activists who questioned the legitimacy of the city's crime stats. I have something to say, but, donna, what say you?
Donna Givens Davidson:I just think it's fascinating, first of all, that we have a mayor who has decided that people in Michigan are tired of partisanship, and I wonder if this does not feel like a partisan attack on the city of Detroit.
Donna Givens Davidson:And how do you defend yourself against that while pretending to operate or trying to position yourself as somebody who is neutral in this partisan battle, which is not just partisanship, it's racism, it's classism, it's, you know, nativism, it's all of these things, and also homophobia, all combined in these things.
Donna Givens Davidson:And so, you know, people like Duggan who find themselves trying to tiptoe around these truths are now facing the impact of these truths. Perhaps, now, maybe his decision I'm going to be, you know, kind of like a Republican, but not a Republican will sit well with Trump, and his allies really dislike RINOs as much as they dislike people who are on the left and RINOs being Republicans in name only. Duggan is going to be running against a Republican who is hand selected by Trump, and I would imagine that Trump is going to work very hard to make sure that his handpicked nominee wins, and so I don't know if this is going to work, and I could be wrong. I could, you know, misunderstand who's in charge of this nation. I'm really interested also in hearing Dave's perspective on all of this. Given your role, I know we're going to talk about your book or your books, actually, because you've written more than one but I'm wondering what is your perspective on this, as well as Orlando's.
David Daley:But I'm wondering what is your perspective on this as well as Orlando's? Yeah, it's a really fraught. I mean, I think what we have seen is that anybody who tries to appease pretty much gets run over. You look at the media, you look at the law firms, you look at the universities, you look at those inside the party. The rule is bend the knee and stay down Right.
Donna Givens Davidson:Yeah.
Orlando Bailey:You know, I think this is Mike Rogers also clawing for media clicks and attention, because he's running a somewhat horrible Senate campaign and it is disgusting to me that he would sort of placate this really violent act of sending in troops in the name of protecting Detroiters. He don't care about Detroiters. You know like his record will show that he doesn't care about Detroiters and he don't care about Detroiters. You know like his record will show that he doesn't care about Detroiters and he doesn't care about black folks. And so when folks threaten that kind of violence, it makes me it really makes me upset.
Orlando Bailey:Now I think you know, on part, I don't think Donald Trump has explicitly named Detroit, as he's been naming cities like Baltimore and he's been naming cities like Chicago, who are currently being in DC, who are currently being run by black mayors, who also have sanctuary city status, and he's been trying to frame his sending in of National Guard troops to sort of clean up the streets from illegal, illegal immigrants. Mike, our mayor, Mike Duggan, has made it very clear that Detroit is not a sanctuary city, that Detroit will cooperate with federal authorities and ICE and the FBI to get folks who are undocumented into that system, and so I think Mike Rogers is just sort of grabbing at straws here. I don't think right now and this could very well change because of how whimsical the president is Right now Detroit isn't big on.
David Daley:Go ahead, david. You know when Donald Trump likes to mention Detroit, november of 2016?.
Orlando Bailey:Yeah.
David Daley:November of 2020. Yep, black cities in purplish states where he has tried to call election results into question, and I would think that he might not be thinking about detroit in this moment, but wait until nove November of 2024. Yeah, we'll see If the play here is what I think it's going to be, what we're seeing in DC and what might be coming to Chicago and elsewhere. It feels to me like a dry run for next fall, yeah, for next fall, and it's a combination of guardsmen in the street, of masked ICE officers checking papers, which today the US Supreme Court 100% essentially embraced, and also these unconstitutional executive orders on voting, trying to ban mail-in voting, long lines on election day in cities to intimidate people into not wanting to leave their house because of troops and then to have them worry about immigration status, with the combination of the Supreme Court and ICE. And so the president might not be making a lot of inroads into Detroit in this moment, but just wait.
Donna Givens Davidson:Although, although, as we speak, they're at Renaissance High School, his public schools Linda McMahon is at Renaissance High School, a Detroit flagship Detroit public school today school, a flagship Detroit public school today and I believe a lot of people feel as though this is the crackdown on curriculum.
Donna Givens Davidson:And so if the school board does not comply with a crackdown on curriculum and Detroit has had an Afrocentric curriculum for over 25 years, and so I would imagine that, even though they sort of moved away from some of that language, I would imagine that even though you know they sort of moved away from some of that language I would imagine that there is a concern right now in our community, even if what Duggan does is somewhat of an appeasement, and I think there are people who believe that that's happening at all levels of leadership at the state of Michigan right now, not just with the mayor but also with the governor, there's concerns about whether or not there is a real fight back, and so the question is is it better to sort of just quietly step out of the way and let these things happen, or do you jump in the fight? And I don't know if there's a safe place for any mayor with a president who wants people to kiss his ring Because ultimately you're going to have to test your values and say are we willing to stop talking about diversity and justice and the history of the United States and the history of Detroit in Detroit public schools? Are we willing to allow the you know our city to continue to be framed in this way? Because he did call our city kind of a trashy city. He used some other terminology, I can't remember what it was During his campaign last year. That was very insulting to a lot of Detroiters.
Donna Givens Davidson:So I just think I'm going to stand guard and just say wait a minute. Are we really going to pretend like this is just partisanship or are we going to acknowledge that this is fascism?
Orlando Bailey:I don't know who's trying to pretend that this is partisanship, because I think that would be a really interesting conversation. He will never have a conversation with us. But he won't.
Donna Givens Davidson:But isn't that what he's running on? He's running on people are tired of the hyper-partisanship.
Donna Givens Davidson:The left has gone too far and the right has gone too far and you know, acting as though all of these things are the same thing, and that's why I cannot wait to have this conversation about what's really happening with the right, because I think that people look at it as a contest of ideas and their ideas and who's doing a better job talking about the economy. But it's bigger than that, and when we understand the outlines of what's happening and why the Supreme Court is so permissive of this president, then we can understand the real battles that we have to fight and it's really scary.
Orlando Bailey:Supreme Court Justice Amy Comey Barrett was on CBS Sunday Mornings being interviewed by Nora O'Donnell, and Justice Barrett really believes that the court is doing what the court has always done and is their vanguard of democracy and are independent of the executive branch and the legislative branch. And I was watching her say it and I don't even know if she believes what she was saying, she says I was watching her say this, but it really, it really, oh my gosh.
Donna Givens Davidson:I believe that she belongs to a very radical federalist society. I'm not certain if she is in the federalist society, but there's a radical belief system that has been brought forth among people who have been seeking to influence the court, and she is a representative of that, and so when we talk today about this, I think it's going to be a good conversation. I should note that we serve on a board together and I'm really honored to serve on this board with you which is voters not politicians, is voters not politicians. And so I get all the board back and forth and someone said, hey, congratulations on your MSNBC spot. And I'll be straight, I don't watch television news, so I don't know who's on NBC saying what, until I read that and I said I wonder what he said. And that's when I found out about these books and I was like, wow, I'm really connected to somebody who's been doing the work of studying this. We've got to get him on Authentically Detroit to share what you know.
Orlando Bailey:Well, we're going to do that, coming up more with David Daly when we come back. Keep it locked. Detroit One Million is a journalism project started by Sam Robinson that centers a generation of Michiganders growing up in a state without a city with one million people. Support the only independent reporter covering the 2025 Detroit mayoral race through the lens of young people. Good journalism costs. Visit DetroitOneMillioncom to support Black independent reporting. Interested in renting space for corporate events, meetings, conferences, social events or resource fairs? The MassDetroit Small Business Hub is a 6,000 square feet space available for members, residents and businesses and organizations. To learn more about rental options at MassDetroit, contact Nicole Perry at nperry at ecn-detroitorg or 313-331-3485. Welcome back to Authentically Detroit everyone.
Orlando Bailey:In 1981, a young lawyer fresh out of Harvard Law School joined the Reagan administration's Department of Justice, taking up a cause that had been fomenting in Republican circles for over a decade. By that point, From his perch inside the Reagan Department of Justice, this lawyer would attempt to bring down one of the defining pieces of 20th century legislation the Voting Rights Act. His name was John Roberts. Over 30 years later, in 2013, these efforts by John Roberts and the conservative legal establishment culminated when Roberts, now chief justice of the Supreme Court wrote Shelby County v Holder, one of the most consequential decisions of modern jurisprudence, a dramatic move that gutted the Voting Rights Act. The decision dangerously premised on the flawed notion that racism was a thing of the past and boldened right-wing anti-democratic plot to end the Voting Rights Act and encourage minority rule in their party's favor, From the bowels of Reagan's DOJ to the walls of the conservative Federalist Society, to the moneyed Republican resources bankrolling restrictive voting laws.
Orlando Bailey:Today Daily reveals a hidden history, as sweeping as it is troubling. David, we're really excited to have you here for this conversation. Listen, really, since the election of Robert Nixon and those who Richard Nixon and those who came after him, including Ronald Reagan, what we've seen is a wave, really a wave, of regressive policies aimed to dismantle all of the progress made during the civil rights era of the 1950s, 60s and even the early 70s. Talk about this uncovering of history and Chief Justice John Roberts' history, with the Reagan administration trying to bring down the teeth of the Voting Rights Act that was passed during the Civil Rights era.
David Daley:You know, the founding documents of America really should be rethought. In my eyes, it's the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution passed after the Civil War and it's the Voting Rights Act that represent the greatest articulation of the ideas that all of us are created equal, right. I mean, that's not exactly how the Constitution and the Declaration begin. They begin all men are created equal and they didn't mean all men, did they. So if we think about the Reconstruction Amendments and the Voting Rights Act as the founding documents of what it means to live in a multiracial democracy and to sort of advance the idea of whether this multiracial nation can in fact become a multiracial democracy, I think it becomes really important to look at what the reaction to those documents has been.
David Daley:And I laughed when you talked about Amy Coney Barrett, how she seems to believe that this is just the Supreme Court being the Supreme Court. And you know, I think I agree with her. I think this is the Supreme Court being the Supreme Court, because the history of this court is one of continuously standing in the way of America becoming a multiracial nation, of America becoming a multiracial nation, this Supreme Court. And I don't want to spend too much time talking reconstruction because we could do that all day, but that feels. But when you look at what the US Supreme Court did to end reconstruction and launch Jim Crow, it's the court that effectively enabled You're talking about Plessy versus Ferguson.
David Daley:Yeah, I'm talking about a series of cases. I'm talking about Plessy, but I'm talking about the Cruikshank cases. I'm talking about the Civil Rights Act cases. I'm talking about a series of cases in the late 1860s and early 1870s that basically made it impossible, that told states that they could not enforce the civil rights acts that had been passed by Congress and, as a result, those laws effectively lost their teeth almost immediately because there was no enforcement mechanism and these states were not going to enforce them. And it was the Supreme Court that did this.
David Daley:People want to blame the election of Rutherford, hebe Hayes and the compromises that were made there. That's a piece of it, but it was all set into action by a handful of US Supreme Court cases and if you look at the arguments that were being made in those cases, it is justices of the Supreme Court saying well, the Civil War was 15 years ago. The Civil War was 15 years ago. How much longer do we have to keep acting here? Can't we declare an end to this? Why are we treating some people differently? It was a long time ago. Can't we just get over this? And it's the same language. It's the exact same language and legal arguments that John Roberts is using in the Shelby County case when he puts effort to gut the Voting Rights Act that began weeks after it was passed.
David Daley:South Carolina steps forward in the fall of 1966 and says we think we're pretty much good here, and it took the US Supreme Court at the time, under the leadership of Chief Justice, by those who would stand in the way of progress. Who would stand in the way of progress? Dr King talked about an arc of the moral universe that was long but bent towards justice, and I would suggest that what we have is something a little bit different. We certainly, you know. I would suggest that the way of looking at America is that every step forward has been met with a determined backlash and that that's not necessarily an arc, as it is, lots of people putting their hands on an arc and bending and shaking and fighting about which direction it goes, but that nothing has been automatic or easy or natural.
Donna Givens Davidson:I would even say go so far as to say a lot of people felt like it was natural or felt like, look, we can kind of let up. Things are happening all on their own, and people who support multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy in this nation are people who sometimes turned a blind eye or got complacent. It's not just the Civil War, of course. You know that, you're right. The Reconstruction amendments got fought, whatever, whatever at the court level and there was all of the politicizing that went along with that. And in terms of the, was it the 1877 compromise where the troops were removed from the South and allow, you know, racism or Jim Crow to become the law of the land again? And allow racism or Jim Crow to become the law of the land again? It's not just the racial violence that black people faced in the South and in the North, but also when you look at the really good things like the New Deal right, and a lot of us celebrate the New Deal, but the New Deal included language that excluded the majority of black people from benefiting from some of the New Deal language, and so, as that got struck down and you could no longer have these errors and omissions of these groups of people. It seems as though there was a consensus that we just have to take away all of these privileges.
Donna Givens Davidson:I mean, people who were against Social Security before the New Deal was struck did not stop being against the New Deal afterwards, and it feels like there's people like Milt Friedman who were in there creating the whole, you know, neoliberal mindset that what's good for corporations is good for America, right. What's good for money is good for America for corporations is good for America, right. What's good for money is good for America. And so your book kind of starts in the 1970s when a lot of things were happening right. You're seeing all of these new rights being extended to all of these new people and also a loss of political support for corporations, a loss of confidence in the value of corporate America to the well-being of American people. Can you talk about that and what was happening right at that point of time?
David Daley:Sure. So you know it's the late 1960s, the early 1970s. It's the civil rights movement, it's the anti-Vietnam War movement, it's the birth of the environmental movement, you know, it's Ralph Nader and the consumer movement. There were a lot of things happening in American society in that moment and you know these are the days in which the American society was so focused on these issues that I mean, even a president like Richard Nixon had to create the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, in the early 1970s. So there was a lot of political energy. Campuses were alive, campuses were alive, the streets were alive. One of the things I didn't know about until I was researching this book the number of firebombings of banks and Bank of Americas around the country were targeted, uh, regularly. But not only that, but there was a poster of a bank of america in california on fire and it was one of the most popular, best-selling posters in american college dorms in the late 1960s and early 1970s. So that gives you a sense of what was happening out there.
David Daley:Um, and there were a number of pillars of the white conservative business establishment that looked at this and they were horrified, um, and they were afraid, um, and one of these men was named lewis powell. He was a corporate lawyer in the South. He had been the chairman of the school board in Richmond, virginia. He looked as if he was a measured moderate. He tried to play that role but he was really a tobacco lawyer for Philip Morris role. But he was really a tobacco lawyer for Philip Morris. He was chairman of the school board in Richmond during a Brown v Board which desegregated schools and he insisted that there would not be any massive opposition in Richmond, but he simply didn't lift a finger to change anything. That's the kind of guy Lewis Powell was, and his next-door neighbor in one of these wealthy Virginia estates was a high up at the Chamber of Commerce and they were very concerned about the news media and college campuses and the like.
David Daley:And so Powell writes a memo that he does for the chamber and what he says is we have to fight this and the best way to fight this would be to take over the courts. Fight this would be to take over the courts. And Lewis Powell puts this in a 30-page memo for the Chamber of Commerce and this memo makes its way into Washington right, I mean? And before the year is out, lewis Powell is appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Would that any of us would ever write a memo that would have this kind of significance and impact and immediacy? Right? And so Powell goes to the court, where he becomes a steady friend of big business. If you look at the cases that really launched the comeback of big business, the empowering of billionaires, the campaign finance cases in the early 1970s that would be cited and that would lead in a straight line to Citizens United in 2010, all of them are the handiwork of Lewis Powell.
Donna Givens Davidson:Can I ask a question? You know there's the whole statement that corporations are people and, as you know, there is a ballot initiative in Michigan that we are collecting signatures for many of of us to try to take money out of politics in the state of Michigan and the pushback we always hear is that these people are trying to suppress my speech. Right, and I've run nonprofit organizations since, let's see, 1999? The 90s and we've never been able to speak like that right, we don't have political speech.
Donna Givens Davidson:So I'm wondering how nonprofit speech is silenced in this moment of corporate people being able to do it, and I'm not talking about 501c4. I should say charitable nonprofits. 501c3 nonprofits don't have the same rights to speech. Is that connected? Do you know the history of that?
David Daley:You know, I think I couldn't speak to all of the legal ins and outs of it. But the big question really is whether all speech is equal, or whether some speech gets a megaphone based on the ability to buy a sound system and amplify certain voices. And what the Supreme Court has done is to amplify the voices of billionaires and those who are able to, you know, purchase those expensive sound systems to make their voices louder.
Donna Givens Davidson:Yeah, yeah. It's just interesting to me as I look at people who describe this as speech and say their rights are being taken away. So OK, so we have the reasoning. You have what was happening then and then, after the initial efforts, what's happened since? What has happened that has led us to where we are right now?
David Daley:Yeah, you know, I think that what the right understood was that they could win political victories through the US Supreme Court and through the lower courts that could never be won otherwise, build from the ground up. And the second thing they understood was that once they were placing judges and working on the courts, it couldn't just be done from the US Supreme Court down. They had to build the system from the bottom up. And so that's when you get the onset of the Federalist Society and a lot of these law school movements, very well funded by the right, in order to create the loyal foot soldiers. The Federalist Society essentially is the career building turnstile through which anybody who wants to have a job in the conservative legal movement as a lawyer, as a judge in the Justice Department, needs to walk through and sort of pledge your intellectual allegiance to and be checked out before you advance, so that they are certain that if they put you in one of these positions with a lifetime appointment or of influence, that you will not be a rhino right, that you will stand up in those moments and do what they want to be done. And so John Roberts comes forth. And John Roberts acts as if he is an umpire right, his, in his, in his confirmation hearings before the nation back in 2005, he talks like he is just a humble guy from Indiana. You know he's all about baseball and cornfields and silos that stretch to the horizon, and you can almost hear the country music song in the background. Right, um and um. You know john roberts obviously. Uh, 20 years has has taught us that john roberts is not an umpire. John roberts is a really sophisticated political player.
David Daley:I would suggest that suggest that Roberts is the most important Republican politician and political operative of his generation and our lifetimes, because what Roberts has done through the court is he has delivered victory after victory to the conservative legal movement and to the right that could never be won at the ballot box for a very simple reason that these are really unpopular policies. Whether it is granting billionaires more speech, whether it is gutting the Voting Rights Act, whether it is guturning Roe v Wade again and again, what this court has done is hand victories to the Republican Party that majorities of Americans oppose but effectively are powerless to do anything about. Roberts has he's interviewed on C-SPAN in 2009, and what he says sort of chills me a little bit, but what he says, and I quote from him is the most important thing for the public to understand is that we're not a political branch of government. They do not elect us If they do not like what we are doing. It's more or less just too bad, and I would suggest that that's where we are right now.
David Daley:Oh, my goodness, right yeah, I mean Lincoln in his first inaugural. I like to contrast these two things. Lincoln says the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government upon the vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, then the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, and I would suggest that that's the moment we find ourselves in right now.
Orlando Bailey:And we see exactly what you're saying. I mean, the president had a request for his power to be expanded to be able to fire a trade commissioner, and the chief justice granted him that power. Today it is really jarring to see, to hear, to read and to live in. How do we move on? How do we fix this? Is this fixable? Are we imploding? Are we going to let it implode? Where do we go from here?
David Daley:We need to radically reform the US Supreme Court.
Orlando Bailey:Term limits.
David Daley:I think that's a start.
Orlando Bailey:Get rid of lifetime appointments, because that's also crazy.
David Daley:I mean, here's what I would say.
David Daley:First, I think this is not a partisan question to me, essentially To me, when any nine people have this kind of power, I think we ought to feel a little bit uncomfortable with that.
David Daley:But when they are specifically these people, this supermajority that was put in place specifically to capture the court and to enact an agenda that is unpopular with the American people, that they have put themselves into place essentially as a right-wing super legislature with lifetime appointments. Their decisions are not reviewable, they have no term limits, they have no ethics code. They don't feel like they even have to explain what it is that they are doing to the public. Right, the decision that they made today that the ice raids in los angeles are just fine by them, overturning two lower court decisions you know lengthy decisions overturning what most of us would see as the simple words of the Fourth Amendment, and, you know, illegal search and seizure. They did this without any explanation at all, explanation at all. This is a court that thinks that they are kings and they need to be reined in, and we're not talking about how to do this. We need to be.
Donna Givens Davidson:Are they kings or kingmakers? It seems to me as though they believe Donald Trump is king and it's their responsibility, like they're part of the court. I mean, the court is part of the court. You know is king and it's their responsibility, like they're part of the court. I mean, the court is part of the court.
David Daley:You know, I think it's the other way around. I think I think they believe they're in charge. Trump to me is not irrelevant, but they would be doing this with any Republican president.
Donna Givens Davidson:They would be doing some of this with any Republican president, right, but I mean Trump has one tariff at 5 am, another one at noon, another one at 3 pm, so much of it feels like it is the erratic behavior of malignant narcissists and not some great big scheme.
Donna Givens Davidson:And included in his horrific schemes and whatever. I mean he is scheming, including. That is all of his ego and all of that. And then, yeah, he'll throw in some things that they also like, like let's help corporations evade any type of, you know, oversight, but it feels like he's carrying out their mission, and then all of these other things that have nothing to do with their mission. He is, you know, trying to make Jeffrey Epstein great again or something like that, or make him so the way that he can just come around and just he just doesn't seem to have a standing set of beliefs, and I think we all know that about him.
Donna Givens Davidson:Right, there's not necessarily a standing set of beliefs there is, but he's a useful idiot, I think that's what they call them, and so I think it's important to understand that this movement is not about Trump, that Trump became the face of this movement and he's moving their agenda forward, but it seems like they're jumping into some really dangerous spaces in backing everything he's doing that may actually harm the things that they most want, because it feels like there's going to be kind of some irreversible damage to some aspects of American society in the near term, if not the long term, and I think that they have these belief systems and that Trump is using those belief systems, but he's worse than those.
Orlando Bailey:He's a vehicle.
David Daley:Trump is not the president that John Roberts would have selected himself Exactly. I'm sure that Roberts finds Trump personally distasteful. I'm sure that yeah, he wouldn't want to be at Mar-a-Lago with him. I'm sure that Roberts' house is more tastefully decorated than the new gold gilded ballroom outside the Rose Garden. But I'm sure of that, of plenty of this moment, his supporters, they've been waiting for this moment and they're going to take full advantage of it.
Donna Givens Davidson:Yes, I agree with that. I have a question to ask you, though, on another level, because in reading that book I actually went to your previous book, rat F-ing. It's my name. Orlando doesn't want me to throw parental guidance on here, I don't think.
Donna Givens Davidson:No it's good. Okay, rat F, rat fucked right. Can you talk about that a little bit, Because that's such an important work and I think your work about the courts cannot be really appreciated without also looking at the partisan lines, the drawing of partisan lines, and how that actually strengthened the Republican hands that you could have this court.
David Daley:Can we go back and just spend a little time on that? Yeah, you know, I think that there's a couple of different threads in our politics and they've been woven together, and control over the courts is one of those threads, but control over state legislatures and Congress is the other, and that's one through redistricting and gerrymandering, which obviously has been in the news all summer. But there was the story I tell in the first book with the name I can't say in front of my mom is about a Republican political strategy that they launched right after the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and the big Democratic wave that year. Republicans who feared that demographic trends were going to turn them into the minority party in this country for a generation to come. They plotted their path back to power and they recognized that the 2010 election could be more consequential than even 2008 because it followed the census and what we do after the census is redistrict, except this summer when we do it in the middle of the decade, but ordinarily redistricting follows the census. So Republicans set about trying to win state legislatures in 2010. They had a strategy called the Red Map, the redistricting majority project, that they invested $30 million from all the big corporations in the Chamber of Commerce and the and Pennsylvania, wisconsin, north Carolina, texas, indiana, florida and they flipped these chambers in their direction. And the next year, with the help of very fancy, sophisticated computer mapping tools and all the voter data that's available, they drew themselves lines that they couldn't lose on for a decade. And you all saw this in Michigan, right, I mean, you saw it very, very clearly. We saw it in the 2012 election, when 1.4 million Americans voted for Democratic candidates for the US House, but Republicans still controlled the chamber 234-201, effectively ending Barack Obama's second term on the night that Americans gave it to him. And we saw it in state legislatures like Michigan, where every single election throughout the that decade, a majority of voters preferred Democratic candidates for your statehouse and the Republicans kept control every single year.
David Daley:That is the power of district lines, and I don't say this as a partisan. I say this as somebody who thinks that a majority of Americans ought to be able to change their government when they want to, that elections ought to be responsive to voters. Change their government when they want to, that elections ought to be responsive to voters. And redistricting and gerrymandering turns that around. It puts the mapmakers and the politicians in charge of who wins rather than people, and the US Supreme Court was asked to weigh in on this.
David Daley:Uh, after a moment in the latter part of the 2010s, in which federal judges around the country, appointed by presidents of both parties, looked at maps drawn by both parties by democrats in in Maryland, by Republicans in Michigan, wisconsin and North Carolina and Ohio and they said we have all the tools we need to take care of this. And oh, by the way, if we don't do this, nobody will, because the politicians can't be trusted to reform a process that allows themselves to lock themselves in office. And this went to the US Supreme Court and John Roberts says no, this is just politics as usual. This is perfectly fine about this, you know, and all these state efforts, in so many ways, were thrown out the window, and it enabled and launched what we're seeing now, which is this summer of a redistricting Armageddon, and which is just this race to the bottom and state after state.
Donna Givens Davidson:Yeah, so one of the interesting things that I mean. That was fascinating to me as well, because it really did explain how we went. And the conventional wisdom is where Republicans were talking about the economy and Democrats weren't, or that, you know, Barack Obama wasn't supporting people in down ballot elections. People have a way of attributing this to things that.
Orlando Bailey:I'm not part of Coms messaging and all of these ancillary things.
Donna Givens Davidson:Instead, there's a strategy, and we have a tendency to respond with strategy, with saying, well, how can we communicate more like them, rather than how can we strategize like them? You know what I mean.
David Daley:So perfectly put, know what I mean, and so one of the things that I get excited about.
Donna Givens Davidson:When you know the ballot initiative in Michigan to change redistricting to independent redistricting, I was really in support of that. You know I'm a poli-sci major, I get what poli-sci get. All of the meaning for that right A citizen board.
Donna Givens Davidson:A citizen board and a lot of people in our state really were threatened by these changes. The biggest thing that impacted Black political representation was this feeling that somehow Black voters had been disenfranchised by these changes, that by having elected officials that represent us in Lansing we somehow had more voice and more power. But we also know that gerrymandering seeks to give us representatives at a minority level who don't have voice and real power at the state level. Is that true in your opinion and, if so, how do you evaluate the changes to Detroit's legislative districting?
David Daley:Yeah, I think it's complicated right that were made to the Voting Rights Act in the 80s, which were designed to create majority-minority districts where possible in order to lead to a greater opportunity for Black candidates and other minority groups to have representation. And once again, there were some really smart Republican strategists who recognized that this could be used to their advantage, because whenever you have districts, you can draw districts in a way that determine outcomes, and the best way to determine outcomes is to pack all of the voters who do not vote for you into one seat. And so what you saw in the 1990s was that there was a really interesting alliance across the south, especially between conservative republicans and black democrats um and the what this you know. And you had conservative groups buying the computers and the mapping software and and saying to you know, democrats in the south go ahead and draw your districts, and whenever a politician is given the chance to draw their own district, right, they want as many voters as they possibly can. And so by taking so many Black Democrats and putting them in so few districts, you suddenly had more Black representation than ever before.
David Daley:But something else funny happened too, right. Suddenly, republicans began taking all of these states. And so in 1994, when Newt Gingrich takes over Congress, you have the largest congressional black caucus at any moment since Reconstruction. But they're in the minority. No power.
Donna Givens Davidson:Yeah, so it feels almost to me like sometimes there is ceremonial leadership, absolutely.
Donna Givens Davidson:Where you have the ability to lead and you have a ceremonial role, but you don't have an influential role, absolutely, and I've been trying to tease out the difference between voting in power, between representation in power, between representation in power that somehow what Republicans have been able to do is to take away the power behind some of these activities that we regard as evidence of our full democratic participation.
Donna Givens Davidson:Dinner with the new executive director of VMP and she pointed out she says they vote in Russia, they vote in China. That voting does not necessarily mean that you have a functional democracy, and I think that your books do a really good job of outlining why. And so I'm wondering is your next book going to give us a recipe for fixing all of this? How do we get to? Because I think, now that I know why, I don't know whether to be more hopeless or more clear in what we need to do, like, I think that we need to do some organizing. I think that we need to move beyond partisanship and really organize around the values of this nation, assuming that people really care about that anymore. But what are your thoughts before we close out? Because this is, I mean, you've written how many books now?
David Daley:Three books.
Donna Givens Davidson:Three books. Okay, what's the name of your first book?
David Daley:The first book is Rat Fucked, Okay Right. The second book is Unrigged and the third book is anti-democratic.
David Daley:So it's sort of a trilogy of where we are. You know, I think we need big structural reform and I think the very best way to fix the US House and state legislatures would be through some form of proportional representation. I mean, when you look at, we have a redistricting problem, but we also have a districting problem, right, whenever you have single member districts, what you're going to have is that the lines are going to pick winners and losers. And if we were to have a more proportional House or more proportional legislatures, I think that some of the debates we're having about representation and groups would change, because everybody would be represented more fairly according to their actual numbers.
Donna Givens Davidson:You know, I was just in Little Rock, arkansas, and so when I go deep south now, I'm like a little bit scared. And everybody was so nice right. We went to my niece, got married there and you know a whole bunch of people came from Detroit, not just me and everybody. We all remarked on how nice people were there and I don't get the sense that the people who were there were all Democrats or independents. I think we were talking to some Republicans and I don't think that hate is what they lead with. And my real question is how do you translate? How do you begin to work with people who don't necessarily carry with them hate, but a lot of times just misunderstanding or brainwashing or whatever you want to call it? How do you work with them to begin saying that there's a value in us working together to protect what we believe to be good about America? Do you see a value in that, or a possibility?
David Daley:I think it's really hard. I mean, I think we've got our fingers on so many of the big questions and problems here. One we haven't even touched upon is the news media and how we're all sort of in silos and bubbles and you know, watching different news and getting different facts and thinking different things. And then when you combine that with the gerrymandering and the redistricting in some of these states in which you have such uncompetitive elections that sometimes people don't even the other party doesn't even show up or run, that sometimes we're either not having conversations in some districts at all or they're not being heard, and I think we somehow have to find a way to talk to one another again. So while we talk about the kind of big structural fixes that we need in Congress, when we think about the ways we might reform the US Supreme Court, I think we have to also, you know, look at the role of technology and media here and you know, figure out how we can have these national conversations and talk to one another again.
Donna Givens Davidson:You know, I think about Barack Obama's autobiography Is it a Promised Land? And he was hopelessly naive in many ways. There's no red state or blue state, so I was like, OK, whatever. But the thing is that he became the first black president of the United States and he didn't win the majority of the white vote, but he ran, he. He won a good minority of the white vote, Right. One of the things I thought was fascinating is he went to places that people like him, people like us, don't always go, and he just talked to people and said hey, listen, I have the same concerns you have and the same dreams, and you know, I wonder if we need people from the federal level to do it, or whether there are things that we can do in our own states to begin bridging those divides and having those conversations, you know? So maybe I'm hopelessly naive too in thinking that we can.
David Daley:No, I don't think you are.
Donna Givens Davidson:That is really through human interaction, and we've got to stop thinking.
Orlando Bailey:We have to appeal to the humanity Media is going to fix what's broken, because media.
Donna Givens Davidson:Now, my good friend and co-host, orlando Bailey, is an award member, member of the media, he is the executive director of Outlier Media and he just won a big award for his service work as a media member. He is an Emmy award winning journalist and so and he used to work with me and you know, so I'm really proud of his rise and we have good media Right. But one of the ways that Orlando differentiates himself from many other people who represent media is he actually spends time in the community talking to folks and getting to know them. So, yeah, so I want to hope that this is encouraging us to understand that these systems that we have depended on the courts, politicians or media that it's really in our hands and if we're going to fix this, it's our collective work.
David Daley:It's up to us.
Orlando Bailey:Journalist and author David Daly, thank you so much for joining us. We could have continued this conversation, but what we're going to do is we are going to endeavor to hope. Endeavor to hope, to appeal to each other's humanity and endeavor to hope that you will come back and join us on Authentically.
David Daley:Detroit, anytime. Anytime, maybe in person sometime.
Donna Givens Davidson:Yeah, in person, you're not from here, are you? No, I'm in Massachusetts, you're in Massachusetts, so you are, you know, actually having you have a national footprint. Apparently, you are on MSNBC Maybe I'll turn it on when I know you're going to be on and you are doing a lot of media, your rounds of media. So we appreciate you coming here and having conversations.
Orlando Bailey:Thank you for spending time with us.
David Daley:My pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Thanks again.
Orlando Bailey:Bye-bye. If you have topics that you want discussed on Authentically Detroit, you can hit us up on our socials at Authentically Detroit on Facebook, instagram and Twitter, or you can email us at authenticallydetroit at gmailcom. All right, it's time for shout-outs. Let's start with you, donna.
Donna Givens Davidson:I want to shout out. Well, first of all, tonight Foundation.
Orlando Bailey:Yes.
Donna Givens Davidson:I want to shout out the staff of ECN for hosting something that's going to be really exciting. It's going to be a tailgating party for the first home game of the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Come out, there's going to be some free food and a little entertainment, the biggest entertainment being the Detroit Lions coming back from a loss to a win. Fingers crossed it's going to happen. Right, we've learned things. Listen, I am part of a fantasy football league and I'm in last. I need help, detroit.
Donna Givens Davidson:Lions because I bet on you. But no hats off to ECN. Our doors open 1130. We are going to be here until 4. If you need a ride, you can call us at 313 571 2800 or email us at tsenna s-e-N-N-A at ecn-detroitorg. Join us.
Orlando Bailey:I would like to shout out the entire team at Outliery Media. We received a local independent online news publishers award, Lion, for our work with the Wayne County Windfalls Project, making sure that, um, we did our best to contact folks who the county owed money to and so far, we've submitted worth. We submitted $6 million worth of claims, Um, just to drop in the bucket. Um, there's $20 million out there that they've profited, but we are trying to take a little chunk out of it and it was no small feat. So shout out to Kobe Levin for bringing the idea. Shout out to Darnell Adams and Gwen Jell at the Gilbert Family Foundation, who have supported this idea and, you know, did something that is sort of like antithetical to foundations. They moved really quickly because this work was really really urgent. So we're coming up on a high and I'm really really appreciative. And shout out to the Knight Foundation again, who hosted Outlier today during their board meeting. We're super, super grateful that you all took time out to hear us and about our work.
Donna Givens Davidson:All right, you know I don't want to drag this out too long, but this is a real testament to your leadership and it makes me really proud. Orlando, that's my. You know it's my joy making you cry so don't think that's going to stop me from doing this.
Donna Givens Davidson:No, because really what it takes is there is this vision behind. I think Sarah Alvarez told us about the vision, and the vision is that media doesn't just have to be informational. It's really changing conditions, news people can use, and that's always been the vision. But for you to weigh in on something that critical and understand the importance and also have the capacity to just pull something like that off really is significant. And this is how Outlier is more than just something that you read. It's an organization that's actually making a practical difference. I mean, we could talk about the fact that the city of Detroit is suing that-.
Orlando Bailey:Realty, the realty, the biggest nuisance abatement lawsuit they've ever filed.
Donna Givens Davidson:And that-.
Orlando Bailey:Based off our investigation.
Donna Givens Davidson:That your investigation kicked it off. We could talk about that, and you've only been there for a year, but I am super proud of you and I think that it's important for us to always honor those people in journalism who are making a difference.
Orlando Bailey:Thank you, donna. Thank you so much. All right, y'all, before I start crying. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time. To the east side, we could see lots of hot bloods in the sky. Moving on To the east side, we finally got a piece of love. It's so bright in the kitchen. I've seen some burns on the grill. Took a whole lot of trying. It's so bright in the kitchen. Things don't burn on the grill. Took a whole lot of trying just to get up back here.
