The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. The Watts Riots, sometimes referred to as Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising, took place in Watts neighborhood and surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11th and 16th from 1965. The rise was motivated by anger at racist and abusive practices of Los Angeles Police, as well as his grievances over unemployment discrimination and residential segregation of property. The backdrop of it was that they arrested our individual that they claimed didn’t pass the drunk driving test. Out of that grew a conversation about police kicking a pregnant woman. At any rate, the spontaneity of the watch riot reflected overall heavy handed police, Freddie Gray, heavy handed police, when you see Michael Brown, heavy handed police. So we know what heavy handed policing looks like, and we’re trying to establish why do we find ourselves in an environment where you had the presence of over policing militarization, but the conditions are not the same as the conditions that gave birth to Freddie Gray or gave birth to the wash Rod. Joining me today is Stephen Janis and Taya Graham. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, thanks for having us. We appreciate it.

Mansa Musa:

I introduce Jan, you start introduce yourself to the audience.

Stephen Janis:

Oh,

Mansa Musa:

So for those who don’t know you,

Stephen Janis:

My name is Steven Janis. I’m a reporter for the Real News Network. I do two shows. Please count a report and the Inequality watch. And we just finished a documentary on cop watching called I’m But The Mirror, the story of American Cop Watching

Mansa Musa:

And Taya,

Taya Graham:

My name is Taya Graham. I’m an investigative reporter. I also a member of the Senate Press Gallery, so I’m go to Washington DC with Steven all the time.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, that’s true.

Taya Graham:

I’m a co-host of the Show Police Accountability Report and the Inequality Watch report, and I was also the primary cinematographer and I’m, but the Mirror, the story of American Cop watching

Mansa Musa:

And for the benefit of our audience, my favorite people to talk to about all things police, all things fastest, all things racism. Yeah, the general good conversation where you fireside chat type of, so let’s dive right into it. We was talking earlier off camera, and so we find ourselves in a situation in this country right now where you hear these terms and these terms. We normally would hear ’em as it relates to third world country, totalitarianism, fascism, oppressing, and it’s like a common topic. Now let’s talk about what is totalitarianism and how do we see it in connection to what we’re seeing today?

Stephen Janis:

Yeah, I mean authoritarianism or totalitarianism would be anything that circumvents the democratic process is supposed to govern. We are governed, and I think it’s an interesting conversation that’s come up recently because of what we were going to talk about, which is the National Guard deployments and Trump’s use of troops, federal troops in American cities. And I think America has always had sort of a latent authoritarianism

In its political and economic structure. And I think that has always been executed by policing. So when you want to talk about Authoritarians America, have we had it before? We’ve had it in different variations, but a lot of times it’s been executed by policing. And that’s why I think we see, we’re at this point where the National Guard has become this tool of the idea of imposing authoritarianism, even though Tay and I have covered it. And the reality is much very distinct from the politics of it. But nevertheless, that has always been part of our culture and look at policing as slave catchers, for example. And then we look at policing in American cities during the war on drugs, specifically in black and working class neighborhoods throughout it. The idea has been to impose some sort of latent authoritarianism on people who need to be economically exploited in one way or another. And that has kind of been the overarching principle, I think. Okay.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Answer this though, in each one of them narratives that you painted, right? It’s always been something a pretext like drugs, violence, gangs. But in this regard, how do we get to this space when you’re saying, I’m coming to get immigrants because the pretext for coming in this space is illegal aliens, but how do you see that?

Taya Graham:

Well, you know what, when you were describing the Watts riots, I was flashing back to October 1st, Chicago South Side Drive, that apartment building that was just hit by immigration enforcement officials by ice, that apartment building was 95% African-American. They used flashband grenades to startle people. They blew people’s doors off the hinges. They grabbed children who were barely clothed and dragged them into the street. They zip tied their parents and separated them from their children. To see this happen in United States today in the year 2025 is horrifying. And it’s being done on the pretext of getting undocumented folks. And on the Department of Homeland Security website, which I spent some time on today getting ready for your show.

It says that the goal is to get murderers, rapists, pedophiles, and people who are gang members. We already have laws for those people.

Mansa Musa:

Okay

Taya Graham:

No matter if you’re undocumented, documented, lifelong resident, we already have laws for that. But that’s the pretext you were talking about. You said, what’s the pretext? It said, we’re going to make everyone safer, but in the process we are destroying people’s civil liberties.

Stephen Janis:

Well, the idea, I think, too that’s important to remember is that that pretext relies upon a spectacle.

The spectacle that’s always explain, well, the spectacle mostly that has been sold to white people is the spectacle of disorder coming from African-American communities or coming from poor communities. So they use the spectacle of disorder. In this case, they use the idea that people are flowing into the country over borders and invading our cities in some way. And so that spectacle is extremely important to communicating the necessity for latent authoritarianism that we were talking about. And that rate is all part of it. Somehow, some way this threat, this externalized spectacle threat basically justifies any sort of action, any sort of action, any sort of action by policing. And what’s really interesting, well, not interesting, but really unsettling is how ICE has taken this to the next level in the history of American federal law enforcement or law enforcement in general.

Mansa Musa:

So as we see, let’s keep stay on the spectacle because the narrative that they initially painted was when they talk about bringing the national guards in and federalizing bringing the federal government in ice. They were saying that during this campaign, the Trump administration said that immigrants are creating crime or making the cities unsafe and he going to deport ’em. But the underlying thing was that these people are the score to the earth and that they’ll creating so much crime that people can’t even look out their doors without getting shot in the head. And so then when they deployed the troops in the District of Columbia in particular, they said that the initial thing was we are getting illegal aliens out or immigrants out. So they was going Home Depot and they was rounding up they labors. Then they shifted and said that they started logging ’em homeless people. But how do they maintain this narrative when the facts don’t add up? How do we gel with that?

Stephen Janis:

Well, the thing is, it’s spectacle has always been very unspecific. So the thing that’s really interesting, or I guess troubling about the dynamics of policing is that when you go and you chase people at Home Depot, you create a spectacle of disorder in and of itself, right? Because, so really law enforcement becomes self self-reinforcing in the sense that the very actions that they do, like in Chicago actually create a spectacle disorder that they can then use to fuel even greater assaults on our civil rights. This has been history of policing. I mean, think about it, in Baltimore, Martin O’Malley and the Democrats here use the spectacle of disorder to impose zero tolerance, which was probably one of the most severe cases of police violating the mass civil rights of African-Americans in the history, well, in the recent history of this country. And he did it. You do it by mainstream media every night showing a crime, anecdotal things that happen, and then police themselves going in creating confrontations, right? And I mean, that’s what ICE has been great at. They create confrontations that then become fodder to increase the presence of ice or to justify ice to the people who think for some reason that immigration is only equivalent with disorder.

Mansa Musa:

And then in terms of, would you just say the website says all the elements that they talk about, rounding up is crime is a criminal intent behind it. I kidnapped somebody, I carjacked somebody, I’m an organized crime putting drugs in, but talk about what the people they’re actually going to

Taya Graham:

Get, the people that they’re actually getting. Okay. And this is according to the statistics that we are getting from the government. 70% of the people who are sitting in detention centers right now do not have any sort of criminal record. Some of the people who do have criminal records, that can be traffic tickets that weren’t paid off, that could be traffic tickets. So these detention centers are not full of murderers and gang bangers. They are grabbing people who were looking to do construction work and we’re waiting outside the Home Depot. They’re grabbing people who worked in the fields and on people’s farms. They’re grabbing people who work in factories. They’re grabbing people who work in food processing and meat packing plants. They’re grabbing people who are workers. And so they’re pouring, I think it’s like 45 billion. They’ve tripled the amount of money

Mansa Musa:

That’s

Taya Graham:

Going to ice 45 billion.

And instead of using that money to find a way to make sure that these people who are working hard, who are paying taxes into our system have a good pathway to legal citizenship, instead, they’re grabbing all these people and it costs money. And what’s terrible is that they’re deputizing other members of law enforcement to be a part of this. So we spoke, we did a story on the National Guard and we reached out to their press information officer to get some information about it. And they did not deny that the National Guard could be used to assist ice in detentions and arrests. Now, what’s really quite troubling is this 2 87 G and what 2 87 G does it essentially deputizes law enforcement to be ice. So that for example, it’s a partnership program and this partnership program is profitable. Okay? The police department, for every officer that becomes part of this program, their salary is completely paid. Their overtime is paid to up to 25%. Also, there are monetary rewards for the police department when they do really well in giving ice tips. So essentially they are incentivizing grabbing people.

And when you put a profit motive behind it, what’s going to happen? You got the private prisons, it’s going to be over-policing, going to be policing that is abusive, it’s going to be policing that uses profiling, and they’re going to be grabbing people who don’t in any way deserve to be deported without due process.

Mansa Musa:

So talk about this. That’s an interesting point she made about how they incentivize and become more facet. Talk about why in DC they had same narrative, but in DC they just completely say the police chief is no longer the police chief. So why in DC did they take that approach? Where in other cities they might take the approach like Ted was just saying like, look, we going to give y’all some money, we going to ize you, we going to give you some money, and we’re going to let you be Rambo or Clint Eastwood or whoever else. Whoever your fantasy is in your head, you can go out and do

Stephen Janis:

That. Well, it’s interesting that because if an American policing that latent authoritarianism is a result of policing, then the best thing to do is completely take control of policing in a community means that you have authoritarian power in some ways. Now, in the DC case, it was very weird that they actually set the police. I think that was more of what I would like to say is a spectacle than having a meaningful impact. I mean, just really quickly on the ground, as T and I have interviewed the people and talked to the people, these people who represent the National Guard do not have local policing powers. They are not trained as police. They don’t understand the law. They don’t know the law. They’ve been trained on law. Completely strange. So this gives me the feeling that it is about the spectacle because the reality is they aren’t doing that much. Let’s face it, I’ve seen much more aggressive policing here in Baltimore. We have a specialized units running around, and every time we drive to work here, we see one pulling some poor person over and pulling the car apart. So the reality is, so this must be about the spectacle of power. So Trump has been able to make this spectacle where you have disorder on one side and him on the other, and he can constantly encroach upon the civil rights of Americans by convincing us that this disorder is so systemic that only he can fix it.

And so I think part of seizing control of the police department through the police chief was part of that spectacle. Okay, we’re just going to come in. And of course he can cite statistics, but his basic idea was, I’m going to come in and take control of everything and therefore I will fix this disorder that I’ve in fact created,

Mansa Musa:

And I think we should stay on the spectacle. I think that’s the underlying thing. The illusion of the illusion of disorder creates the disorder in and of itself and allow for them to be able to establish a police state. So talk about that. Talk about where we at now because okay, in terms of their attitude following a spectacle, a narrative. So they said, we are going to Chicago, going to Memphis, going to Portland, and in each one of these cases, creating the narrative is Trump says, yeah, well, the town is in the uproar. When you go there, people like gang in New York block me, stop you from coming into town. So stop. Only I can open the highways up for you.

Stephen Janis:

That’s true.

Mansa Musa:

But talk about how is it that we don’t see this, but he’s still paying this nerve and he’s getting away with it, or is he getting away with it?

Taya Graham:

Well, the thing is, to a certain extent, he is getting away with it. And part of the reason I believe is because of the anti-blackness. Okay? So there’s a section of where this immigration enforcement, where people are not receiving due process, they’re experiencing cruel and unusual punishment. They’re being put, for example, in solitary confinement for 15 plus days. There’s roughly 65,000 people in detention center right now. And over 14,000 of them have been put in solitary confinement. Just for the record, just talking about the carceral aspect, 20 people have already died this year in ice detention custody in Biden’s four years, 26 people died within a year. He’s going to have more people die than did in the entire four years of Biden’s term. So these places are known, these Department of Homeland Security, the actual office of the Inspector General actually told Department of Homeland Security, your places aren’t safe. People are suffering from medical neglect, you’re torturing people, putting them in solitary confinement to belong, et cetera, et cetera. The office of the Inspector general gave that report. So they know that people are going to get sick and they’re going to be harmed and they’re going to be tortured in these detention centers. But the anti-blackness aspect of it,

The racial profiling that comes with it, we saw it happen. Chicago. Chicago, okay. I’ll give you another example of the anti-blackness aspect of it. Roughly 5.4% of black immigrants have been detained, but they represent 20% of deportees. So, excuse me, black immigrants are 5.4%, but they represent 20% of the people who’ve been deported. That is highly unusual. And racial profiling is going to be one of the methods that they continue to use in order to find people and round them up. So essentially, if you have an accent or you don’t pass a brown paper bag test, you are going to be going into those carceral systems. And when the worst aspects of these carceral systems, besides the fact that it’s core, civic, and geo group, these private prisons

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely.

Taya Graham:

That do not have the same levels of oversight. Exactly. There’s no recourse for people. People are simply being disappeared into these detention centers. And when you are made invisible, when you make a population of people invisible, you make them powerless and talk about the cause.

Stephen Janis:

Talk about the, oh, well, there was just a story that broke today that so far the cost of deployment in DC is $200 million. And the estimates are that the total deployments that have been either projected or promised so far would be three quarters of a billion dollars. Now, this is on top of the amount of money that these cities like Baltimore and Washington, DC pay for policing, which is usually in Baltimore and in most major American urban cities, policing is already the highest priced program within the city budget. So you’re talking about three quarters of a billion dollars added onto the tab for American policing in these cities. So it is an insane amount of money because they’re bringing people in from other cities, housing them, feeding them, and all the logistical costs. It’s extremely pricey in an era when we can’t even afford healthcare for our American citizens. So it’s really, but it shows you the priorities

Mansa Musa:

And talk about this because we seeing that, okay, we got this spectacle that this country is in civil war, that people can’t come out, cars burning everywhere. But in terms of the populous response, because in DC for example, when they deployed the National Guard and ICE was already running amuck, the narrative that Trump was using initially was we’re rounding up immigrants, illegal, just committing all this crime that didn’t quite gel. So then he shifted these gigs and say, crime is outrageous in dc. So once he said that, then people started to respond, well, now crime is going down. Statistically crime is down, crime is down five years low. So his next response was, okay, I go back to my next, I got to go back to immigrants because I’m not getting no traction. But in terms of how did he maintain, I illusion the spectacle because every time he, it’s nonsense. He come out every day. He just say in Chicago, black, beautiful black women, women asked me to come and clean up the city. I mean,

Stephen Janis:

The thing is, a spectacle of disorder has been so ingrained into our history of our country that it’s hard. It’s a very easy thing to manipulate, but it’s grounded in economics, right?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, c’mon. Talk about that.

Stephen Janis:

Well, slave catchers caught people that were considered property. And so the idea of property were perpetuated the people property. And then of course, African-Americans in cities like Baltimore now have been depicted as elements of disorder. But always that’s been tied in the fact that you have to keep people performing for this economic system. If you look at Mark NIUs who wrote a political power of policing or political theory of policing, he talks about how vagrancy laws were used to keep people working’s, right? Where you arrest people if they don’t work. But the economy and capitalism has evolved, and now we’re in a different stage where I think the economic system is really just extractive. We don’t even need people to work anymore. The richest of the rich just want to extract more from the porn. If you don’t believe me, look at the way income inequality has changed in the past 40 years.

So now it has to be a little different. It’s not just about capturing someone or not just about forcing ’em to work. It’s about depriving them. Any agency. And that’s why it’s evolved, right? You have to make sure that people, like there’s no consumer protection bureau, you have to strip them of every aspect of agency so you can exploit them to the court. And that’s why the narrative, this narrative of disorder has evolved and continued to evolve. And we see it a lot when we cover cop watching cop watchers kind of expose what this is because they’ll confront police by just filming them, and then police will come and grab their camera or arrest ’em. And this happened in Baltimore City too. When people first got cameras, police were so upset about cameras because they were upset about cameras because it took away their control of space. And by taking away their control of space took away their ability to simply take away the agency of working people, African-American people. So this has gotten very sophisticated, the ability to paint this spectacle so that people literally will give up their rights or literally will be economically exiled, has become very potent and Trump knows how to manipulate it, and Democrats don’t really have an answer for it sometimes,

Mansa Musa:

Which is my next point, the response from local governments and state government because, okay, let’s start with we know DC was under home rules, so they basically a colony. So they had very

Stephen Janis:

Limited, very limited

Mansa Musa:

Response, and the mayor don’t have got a spine of a jellyfish. So she was, and she going to go with it way, but let’s look at states where Chicago, where the governor Maryland said no, and then the governor of Illinois saying no, regardless of that, they still holding fast. And how do you make that distinction? How do you get in that space to where they counter it? That’s my point. Okay, you got me you saying this, but okay, I’m now telling you no, this is not happening. Talk about that.

Taya Graham:

Well see, one of the issues is, and basically any Democrat who has dared to speak up to President Trump publicly has essentially put crosshairs on themselves. They put crosshairs on themselves. And if they made, let’s say they said, my city is going to be a sanctuary city. They put crosshairs on themselves, just that. And that’s one of the reasons when President Trump speaks, he mentions our city, Baltimore city, because we’re one of the cities, we’re blue state, and we said, we’re not going to do this to our immigrant neighbors, documented or undocumented. We don’t want to see that type of policing here. And so anyone who stood up, as a matter of fact, I think it was in Illinois, unfortunately, I can’t remember her name, but a government official who was trying to get into a detention center, an ice detention center, just to oversee it was arrested and she was temporarily cuffed. So what’s happening with President Trump interacting with these Democrats is he’s doing his darnedest to intimidate them.

And one of the best ways you can do that is by having mass men come into an area as essentially his federal enforcers, mass men who come in who aren’t accountable to anyone, no one knows their names. There’s no transparency around it. If you have a complaint against one of those mass men, do you know where it goes? I can tell you it doesn’t go anywhere anymore because the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties has been absolutely stripped and defunded. Also the office of, I think it’s the Ombudsman, immigration Detention for Immigration Detention. There’s no one there. So if you have a complaint, it’s going to the circular file. It’s going to the trash can. So this form of intimidation, it’s another part of that spectacle. Steven was talking about mass men with no accountability, rushing in. And there’s very little you can do about it because legally when they brought it up to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh and the rest of the crew kicked it down, kicked it down the road.

Stephen Janis:

But I think also Democrats have made their own bed, unfortunately because they have used policing as a similar tool

Mansa Musa:

To the way Trump is using it in their city.

Stephen Janis:

That’s

Mansa Musa:

True.

Stephen Janis:

So they don’t really know how to respond rhetorically because anyone can just point to them. We did a story about this, about how blue cities were kind of the incubators for some of the most authoritarian practices of policing. It was a idea that for Hopkins, professor Lester Spence shared with us and we wrote a whole story about it. It worked out pretty much. And I think Democrats have put themselves in this position, but I mean, the Constitution says that any powers not afforded the federal government goes to the States and they really have legal power to push back against it even if the Supreme Court isn’t willing to do so. So they’re kind of in, I think, a difficult position because they have taken up the wrong policies in terms of addressing crime. Crime has been going down, but they still have, you can take anecdotally something happening and then you can, Trump knows expertly how to manipulate that for, like we said, the spectacle before.

Mansa Musa:

And you can way back in on hist made a good observation, and I think all of us can agree on this, that prior to doing what they did, those came in. Those came in and killed every oversight. So all your oversight, did you talk prior to launching this SVO right here? Those came in and killed every oversight. So now I killed every oversight. So now when it comes down to a complaint, like the federal Marshals, you got the federal, whenever the federal marshals is involved in something, it’s a serious affair. But you got the federal marshals coming to get, I was in dc, I was in DC the other day, and I’m down at the parole and probation for DC residence, and they had called for Homeland Security to come and pick up one guy to come and get this guy. When they came in there, look, when you thought that somebody had a bomb, they came when they pushed the code.

Stephen Janis:

Were they masked?

Mansa Musa:

Yeah. The ones that came, the ones that came from off the street was, man, all of this is federal property. But everybody’s reaction was like, yo, no, go back on the other side of the door. No stand right there. Everybody is around. So we sitting there and they come and get this one guy, they had four. Oh

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Mansa Musa:

Homeland security individuals. So talk about that. Talk about how they was able to do that and how that plays into this overall narrative.

Stephen Janis:

Well, one of the things they’ve done, as Taya has pointed out, is they’ve exempted people who are here under contested circumstances. They’ve exempted them from the legal process of due process, and they have exempted them from, as part of what I think that latent authoritarianism policing is always about, which is limiting people’s constitutional rights. But a big part of that, and something I think we should talk about is the masking. The masking is really critical to this. Absolutely. And I’ll tell you why. We cover Cop Watchers for six or seven years. These are people who go out from police posted on YouTube channel. The underlying principle of that whole enterprise of holding police accountable is that people’s faces are on camera

In a body camera. You can see the police, you can see the cop that did it. The police officer shot someone is public. It’s not something private. You can’t privatize that kind of power. And that’s what they’re doing. And that’s why it’s so critical they being able to use this iteration of policing to mask and to begin this idea that somehow it’s okay. I push back against a lot of people and say, you really think we should have mass police? And they’re like, well, they’re being victimized. Or people are attacking like regular police get attacked and victimized by that, but they have ways to enforce that. I see. We know people have been arrested for harassing or doxing police. They know how to protect themselves.

Taya Graham:

Yes, they do.

Stephen Janis:

Are you saying they can’t protect themselves? But I’m telling you, this masking thing is a prelude to much, much worse abuse of power.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Stephen Janis:

It’s scary because if you can’t see who the freaking person is, you can’t hold them accountable for their actions. It’s underlying basic transparency. And it bad. I mean, it’s bad and it’s going to get worse. I think they’re going to start using it more and more. Maybe say local police departments start using it. Why not?

Taya Graham:

What’d you say, Taylor? I was just thinking of the horror of these masked men coming into communities. And the thing is, is they use all types of different ROS in order to deprive people of their civil rights, their fourth amendment, their first amendment, their eighth amendment, their 14th amendment. They use so many different ways and they violate people’s rights. And these mass men, as Steven said, quite clearly, cannot be held accountable. And I say, if they’re not ashamed of what they’re doing, then take off the mask

If you’re not ashamed. And the thing is, it really does concern me though, these mass men who are receiving just not even enough training to give someone a cosmetology license, they are not getting any sort of serious training. And then to tag in police officers through that 2 87 G program that I was talking about, the number of, I think the number of police agencies has increased like 600, over 600%. The number of police agencies that have agreed to be part of this 2 87 G program. And that means that police officers now are going to be, let’s say it’s a DUI checkpoint, and they’re going to be looking at people, they’re going to be racially profiling them. Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh said, okay to racially profile in the line of ice duty, so to speak. So essentially these people are going to be racially profiled and then that police officer is going to give ice a tip and say, you know what? You should come here and grab so-and-so.

Stephen Janis:

It’s going to be a tipping point for latent authoritarianism because I do believe we will have a secret police force, not in the near future.

Taya Graham:

We do have a secret police force. We have

Stephen Janis:

Ice. Well, yes, we have ice. And it will become more and more involved and more aspects of law enforcement and we’ll arrest opponents of President Trump.

Mansa Musa:

And that’s other part that’s coming out is this is what he’s saying, the illusion staying on that. He’s saying that Antifa, so he’s saying he throw out these terms, absolutely dumb ball basketball team is terrorists and they’re being sponsored by, and I’m being facetious, and they, I’m being facetious and they’re being sponsored by this and it’s being sponsored by Rich, rich.

Stephen Janis:

But that’s how absurd

Mansa Musa:

It’s right, right. So then he say, so now the narrative is is that this group right here is being funded by the enemy within. Talk about the enemy

Stephen Janis:

Within. Well, the thing is, like we said before, the main thrust of this is economic to deprive people of their economic rights to deprive people of their healthcare. So you got to keep the fire burning. If the fire dims down and people start to look and they say, wait, I’m worried about Antifa, but I go to the doctor and I can’t pay my bill and I have to die, then people are going to get upset. So you got to keep throwing fuel, you got to keep burning, you got to keep the whole spectacle going. And the fuel is these kind of, what would be the way to describe Antifa isn’t even an organization.

Taya Graham:

Yeah, I mean by the very nature, if they’re anarchists, they don’t really get together

Stephen Janis:

Intrinsically, nearly prone to organizations. So it’s so utterly. So I think the point is to keep the fire burning so people don’t know what’s really going on. I think that’s the point of it. That’s why he keeps doing it. He will continue to do it and he knows how to do it. And

Mansa Musa:

Talking about the Klan Destin nature of the police, one of the techniques they do the masks and they also ride around in box trucks. So they come around, they be like Homeland Security, they be in a box truck and we open up the box truck, like 20 of ’em jump out in these areas where they so-called illegal immigrants and they round them up. But I was sitting back thinking about this when I thought about they started out with the immigrants and the fact that they’re not looking at giving them due process. If I say you committed a crime, then now you don’t have the right to pass the citizenship. If I say that the reason why I’m locking you up is one of them things that you say, I kidnapped robbed rape or murder, so you got a warrant for me. So now you locking me up and put me in a detention center pending the outcome of my case, determine whether or not I’ll be able to file for citizenship. But now they even took that out the equation and saying, when I put handcuffs on you, if you try to defend yourself against this, I’m going to put unconscionable charges on you

And then send you to Somalia. But talk about, alright, at the end of the process, what is the response? What is this I common?

Stephen Janis:

Well, the idea is to eliminate due process because due process is probably one of the things that ties up the power of the government a little bit. It’s just one little break that says you have to present evidence in court, whatever it might be, whether you’re a US citizen, you’re not here legally or you’ve been charged with, they charged what the guy was charged with throwing a sandwich.

Taya Graham:

Yes, assault with sandwich.

Stephen Janis:

And they have said explicitly that they will start charging people for filming.

Taya Graham:

Yes,

Stephen Janis:

Filming ice. Do you realize what the precipice we’re on if they successfully prosecute? So the idea is to get rid of those, I guess would be pesky civil

Taya Graham:

Liberties. Those guardrails, those guard

Stephen Janis:

Rails. Let’s call ’em guardrails. Yeah, just to eliminate them. Go ahead, I’m

Taya Graham:

Sorry. Oh no, I was just going to say early on, anyone who spent time like perusing through project 2025 or even took a look, just took a really in-depth look at President Trump’s first four years. They would realize that the seeds were here to weaponize law enforcement against Americans that he either finds disfavor with politically that journalists, nonprofit organizations that, I mean, it sounds like George Soros is funding everything

Stephen Janis:

Apparently, but it’s going to be very really incredible to see what happens with the George Soros investigation. I mean, that is a scary, what if they do a rate on all the offices of the Open Society Institute cross

Taya Graham:

Country just because they’re receiving money and no one of course is counting the record number of billionaires that are funding various writing.

Stephen Janis:

All this doesn’t work if you can’t get around the court system. And that’s the problem because the court system is still somewhat of a buffer.

Mansa Musa:

Of

Stephen Janis:

Course, we all understand how the court system worked in Commut like Baltimore. It was not a very good buffer. But There’s still rich people who still don’t like people like George Ros, have lawyers that can fight back. And what Trump wants to do, I think, is to disengage the legal system.

Mansa Musa:

Absolutely. And that’s the other part. That’s what I think that we need to really emphasize that they’re dismantling all checks and balance and they systemically doing it. So if you systematically, you got the Supreme Court, if I can get a sum up the Supreme Court, it might just dismantle the saying that what they can do, they having their intent might be able to try to do something and they might just try to get a case up there to get that ruling and say, we can do that.

Stephen Janis:

I agree with the

Mansa Musa:

Test case. We can say stop people saying that we can round them up because they’re illegal immigrants and they don’t have, we can racial profile.

Stephen Janis:

If

Mansa Musa:

We can get the racial profile, then we can say from that we go into something else. And I think that’s where we find ourselves at this juncture right there, that we need to really emphasize the point that a lot of this is misdirection. Agreed. A lot of us miss that because to go back to your point, Janis, that if you got me constantly on the defense about you coming around me up and getting me, then I’m not looking at the price at the grocery store. I’m not looking at when I’m paying $5 for 10 pieces of bread, I’m not looking at like I’m paying $20 for 12 eggs. I’m not looking at the fact that I’m paying damn near $40 for a tank of gas

Stephen Janis:

Because

Mansa Musa:

You got me under the impression that

Stephen Janis:

The Yeah,

Mansa Musa:

Yeah.

Stephen Janis:

Saying the real problem is some spectacle of

Mansa Musa:

Some

Stephen Janis:

Disorder.

Mansa Musa:

Disorder.

Stephen Janis:

Absolutely. Or the fact that I can’t afford to go to the doctor, which every other country pretty much guarantees who it’s citizenry. We just gave 20 billion to Argentina. And Argentina has free healthcare for all their citizens. And we

Taya Graham:

Don’t, I mean American citizens need to realize if they didn’t see it before by reading Project 2025 and they didn’t see it in the first Trump administration, they need to see it now. Okay. Chicago was proof that these law enforcement agencies ice these secret police type tactics will be weaponized against US citizens, whether they’re journalists, for example. Actually right now there’s a database where people are collecting social media information from people who allegedly said something negative about the Charlie Kirk assassination, right? Allegedly. And then those people are being targeted to lose their jobs, to be docs, to be harassed, to receive death threats of their own. So this is all part of a piece so that there is a certain group of people who thinks they’re sitting home on their couch, they pass a paper bag test, they don’t have an accent, and they think it’s not going to be me. Don’t think that way. Once due process is gone for some, it’s gone for all. We forgot to talk about the elephant in

Mansa Musa:

The room. The government is shut down.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah,

Mansa Musa:

That’s right. The government being shut down. How do that impact what’s going on?

Stephen Janis:

It’s really interesting because we’ve been covering it, Tana, I’ve been on Capitol Hill and it means that a lot of interactions that might lead or a lot of presence. Okay, so here’s a perfect example. The Epstein victims, we covered that. They came to Capitol Hill, it was revelatory and it had a big impact. They had scheduled something for this Wednesday to bring them back. However, because the government was shut down, they did not do that. And I think the Epstein victims are some of the few people that could bring down President Trump or bring down this authoritarianism. Their stories are extremely powerful until you can talk about it. But the government being shut down means they weren’t on Capitol Hill. And that’s just one of many processes and discussions. I mean, I haven’t been able to find a Republican to put on camera since the spring since they passed a big beautiful bill. They just disappeared.

Taya Graham:

They’re hiding from their constituents. They’re not having town halls anymore. And to try to catch one interview on Capitol Hill is near impossible. It’s like they evaporated.

Mansa Musa:

My consternation is, or my apprehension is about this whole thing, is how they position themselves to take over the midterm, how to solidify, which goes back to why a lot of Republicans is not being proactive. Because if we see where they gerrymandering, we see more importantly that the conversation is constantly being said about they stole the election, they going have ballot. So you had the National Guard, you had ice garden ballot boxes. Oh God. So as we close out, can we find sos in this? And it was one time a time in this country where they had a Republican president, tricky dick, Richard Nixon, and they was doing all the things that we see now. And they had, Hoover was doing everything he could to destabilize any type of opposition. But it came to pass. And it came to pass because during that period, now remember, and James, you might remember this, the war in Vietnam was going on and you had protests after protests after protest. You had, regardless of what you had, civil disobedience in peaceful forms and not so peaceful forms. So can we say that this too shall pass? Or do we find ourselves in a space where we better get our passports and head for the board?

Taya Graham:

That’s a really good question, and it’s something I’ve actually really thought about in depth, and I would say this for an optimistic way of thinking of things that people just like the Vietnam War brought people out to protest because everyone had a chance of being conscripted. Black, white, didn’t matter. And so that sort of brought the American people together in a unique way. By the same token, economic hardship is bringing us all together in a unique way. So for example, the healthcare credits, the a c credits that are about to expire, that means someone who has a healthcare or Obamacare who was paying $600 a month or $800 a month is now going to be paying $1,900 a month. Okay? And your average American can’t afford that. I know, I show that. So I think when people see how his policies are really panning out, how it’s hitting them in their pockets, how they can’t afford to get sick, how they can’t afford to buy a new car, how they can’t afford to do any house repairs, if they’re lucky enough to own a home, when they feel that the true economic impact terrorists make it so that they can’t buy the toys they wanted for their kids in this Christmas, that then we might have a chance of being able to push back with unity. That’s what I’m hoping.

Stephen Janis:

I mean, I agree with you. I think that when the economic reality of our unequal system is manifest in ways that people really truly understand the gravity of it, I think they will rise up. I hope we have a no Kings protest again coming up,

Taya Graham:

Which

Stephen Janis:

Was we covered the first one. It was huge.

Taya Graham:

Yes,

Stephen Janis:

It was. It was huge. So I like to have hope because I think Americans have a history, like you said, of rising up when things are really bad. And I think we’re going to continue to do that.

Mansa Musa:

And I think I agree with both of y’all, and I think that really this system in and of itself, it creates a sense of security based on the constitution in our heads. So regardless what anybody else think in our heads as citizens of this country, right? We come to a point where, no, I got a right to say something

In our head. So it don’t make no what you say. If I say what’s going to happen to me in my head in this country being birthed in this country, I feel a certain amount of liberty. And I think that because of that, the pushback going to come because at the end of the day, economic hardship or they talking right now as we speak, they’re talking about that’s why they’re holding out because of the medical. And he said, Trump even said, I’m going to look at that again. Not because poor people in urban centers is filled, but your constituents, the ones, your mega folk, the ones that’s so delusion about, I ain’t got a pot to piss and the one and throw it out, but somebody took my job, they started to say like, well, hold, wait a minute, couldn’t you take anybody, take my job? They ain’t round up everybody, including my neighbors. So why I don’t have no medical.

Taya Graham:

Right.

Mansa Musa:

So as we close, y’all got the last word. What y’all want to say in close?

Stephen Janis:

Well, I think we need to be instrumental about understanding that this idea of mass police and secret police is probably one of the pernicious political concepts in American history. And that we have to stop it,

Taya Graham:

I guess I would say, to try to continue to be hopeful that most of us who are born in this country have some form of legacy in our blood of resistance, whether it’s civil rights movement in my family, or actually I have some family that were around at the American Revolutionary War on the other side of my family. So most of us have some form of resistance in our ancestry tree that we can point out to. And now it’s our turn. Now it’s our turn to step forward.

Mansa Musa:

There you have it. Now it’s our turn to step forward. We have to look at this in the context that’s being offered us. We have a lot of illusion and disillusion and we have the magic show going on right now where you pull the rabbit out the hat. But now somebody is coming up and saying like, hold up. Let me get the hat the rabbit and put handcuffs on you because you created this illusion that people are actually doing things that they’re not. You’re rounding people up and saying that they’re a threat to society that they gangs. But each time you change a narrative, you expose yourself eventually everybody going to say, oh, the kings don’t have no clothes on and you going to be exposed. So we asked you to continue to look at this report and look at this information. Don’t believe the hype as public enemy enemy would say, this is a real, we find ourselves in a situation where we have to get up, stand up and don’t give up the fight. Thank you Steve and Janis for joining us.

Taya Graham:

It was a great conversation, was a pleasure.

Mansa Musa:

And as always, these my favorite two people to interview to talk with. I consider more just conversation than the interview. I’d like to double your knowledge about this stuff. And it’s more important, it gives people the opportunity to have information that they can evaluate and not be caught up on fake news or misdirection. So thank you. We ask that you continue to support real news and rattling the bars because guess what? We actually are the real news.