He wants white men to rule and everybody else to know their place.

Yeah.

So on that point, he's created he said he's elevating the department of the chaplain to report to him.

He's getting rid of the bureaucracy.

And here's what he fails to understand.

When he starts putting his fanaticism over these chaplains, he's going to demoralize the troops.

And I don't care for anybody beginning to become a fanatic, be whatever your religion, persuasion, denomination.

When Democrats become a majority in the House, Can you do anything to restore food assistance, to eliminate some of these Medicaid cuts that are, especially the ones that are gonna close rural hospitals? Can you really make a difference there or anything you do, is it just gonna get vetoed by the president?

With this decision about at least mail-in ballots, does that offer you some hope going into November?

Very little.

I do anticipate there to be violence at the polls.

What the President of the United States has done is he has normalized having federal troops on our land.

Just less than a mile from here, you have the National Guard right out here on the federal grounds.

They've been out here for over a year.

They go to the Washington Nationals games.

But can you talk to us about the assault on the First Amendment and on freedom of the press that's happening right now?

[laughs]

I said, "That is the question, young man." And I said, "No, he's not supposed to." So when you say, what can the Democrats do when we get back in power, there's a check in the balance.

I don't know where the president finds this money.

I mean, I'm embarrassed to say.

Where do you get the demo contract to tear down the, uh, East Wing? Where do you get this $14 million to give it, uh, with a no-bid contract to go into the Reflecting Pool? Where did this $5 million come from to, like, uh, put gold on these statues? [laughs] Joy, where did the billion dollars come from to go on the upgrade of a $400 million Qatari jet? Uh, I don't know where this money is coming from, Joy, and so part of it is checks and balances.

Now, they pushed through all these cuts for women, for children, for mental health.

Um, they've held up all the contracts, and it's...

They were like, "Absolutely not." And then we're back there again.

This doesn't seem like the time to withhold money.

Well, and we also have to talk about process.

Are we in a war? Can the administration say we're in a war? If we're in a war, it has to go before the United States Congress.

Therefore, we can budget it.

We can discuss it.

It's hard to come out right once you go in wrong.

And so they have circumvented the process.

Can you talk about why? 'Cause there's a lot of criticism of this vote.

Your thoughts on this Juneteenth under this presidency?

Well, this is an American freedom story in the long annals of American history.

This was justice denied.

This is a heroic story of seeing the resilience of America get better over time.

This is such a departure from anything that's reasonable.

It's factual.

it's historical, and all Americans ought to embrace it so that we don't turn back the hands of time.

And as we watch these concentrated attacks on black progress and voting rights, what did you take from seeing this museum honoring our first black president open up in the Chicago area that you represented for about three years now in a city that your father put on the political map? nationally.

Can you talk about why this is so important, not just for the Congressional Black Caucus, but even when you consider the work that you all have done with Rainbow Push over the years?

years?Well, thank you, Angela, and once again, I applaud you, congratulate you.

Your voice is indispensable, and your courage on this issue and thought leadership I commend.

Um, here we go again.

America's going through a reprise or a backlash, and this has never been good.

Everything we've ever fought for has expanded democracy, expanded opportunity, expanded the marketplace.

When we look at, uh, people cheering for basketball teams now, you're not rooting for skin color, you're rooting for the color of the jerseys.

This is not equitable." But that was-

[laughs] And before Derrick, um, uh, joins us, I do wanna give the floor to Congressman Jonathan Jackson.

Hello.

Thank you so much.

Um, great to be back in Mississippi.

I serve from the Chicago's first, Illinois', uh, first congressional district, as Congressman Bennie Thompson, my dear friend, for the purpose of this event, I'll just call him Uncle Bennie.

[clapping]

This same spirit of voter suppression, voter denial, is under attack.

And today, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer cannot be here.

For a while, it seemed like Democrats were sort of winning this fight, so to speak, or it turned it into a wash. Um, is there real fear now that you guys are on the back foot?

Well, absolutely.

I think that the way we have to do that, we have to overwhelm the polls.

And so I'm not the big fan of the redistricting.

I hope we, uh, get to the Congress where we, like, settle this law.

It's supposed to hap- happen every 10 years.

Supposed to go through the census every 10 years, then go through the reapportionment, then the redistricting, and that map stays in place.

He felt like the sort of Bernie Sanders wing of the party was not stepping up and not talking enough about this issue.

And obviously the apple didn't didn't fall far from the tree, Jonathan.

Yeah, you know, I think it's more a...

He did his work for 65 years.

He first got arrested at the age of 19.

And I was thinking some thoughts on that, Tavis.

I grew up not necessarily being very proud of my father's work up until maybe a teenager.

Some part was exciting, but you see dad going to jail.

Not the public figure that we all know, but as your patriarch.

Where on the spectrum are you?

Just, and, it, it was inappropriate.

It wasn't racist in that regard.

I thought he was trying to make a connection.

Uh, people that have challenges, we all have challenges, so I would not hold that against him.

I don't believe that's Governor Newsom's heart.

Um, I think he might have been in the moment, and it was a joke.

But would you say that if it was a Republican?

And you were telling me during the break that people are flying in, like everyone was caught off guard and they're rushing back to Washington.

Well, it was before we went on the Christmas recess break.

We had the Intel meeting with Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hegseth and others.

And we were given a briefing, which was very inconsequential.

They shared no information.

And frankly, we were lied to.

We were told that there was no plans in action for regime change or anything.

If it's someone who the U.S. was not recognizing as a legitimate leader and has these indictments against him, what makes it illegal?

What's your response to people who say that the mayor is exacerbating the problem by saying police can't participate, saying that there are ICE-free zones?

Well, thank you so much.

Technically, it was in Congressman Robin Kelly's district.

This is the neighborhood that I've grown up in, less than a mile from my home.

And what we're seeing here is the president first said he was going after felons and the reason he needed to ramp up this money for ICE, this $150 billion budget that was passed, which makes it the 10th largest military budget in the entire world.

But he's going after families.

He's going after people that have no probable cause.

What's your response to people who look at whatever crime stats there are in Chicago, you know, take something like murders, and they say that this is justified?

I mean, is this a moment for them?

It's absolutely even more critical today.

If you think about the United States, although it's a host nation, it's in Geneva, it's in New York City, it's been underfunding the United Nations.

It's not been paying its dues on time.

So you can trace back to something as simple as the escalator not going up to why is the United States the last ones to pay its dues? It's been very much undermining the process.

Why is it taking away some of the most effective programs of USAID and aid and food? So now there's literally starvation and people are dying where the United States used to give food.

There are people that are dying where there's been medicine already shipped to the country that simply needs to be distributed that the United States has held in a cage and has seen this food expire.

Can you talk about what you saw in Kimmel's return? I mean, there's stations in Illinois where viewers are not going to see what he said on their local stations because Nexstar, Sinclair, they have that right to pull it.