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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, June 10th, I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that is paying tribute to the great Sly Stone, who passed away Monday at the age of 82. To quote Questlove, who directed a recent documentary about the music luminary, he dared to be simple in the most complex ways, using childlike joy, wordless cries, and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths. His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life, and demanded we do the same. [music break] On today’s show, National Institutes of Health researchers rebuke the Trump administration in a public letter. And why King conspiracy theorist Alex Jones supports a private company mining your data for the federal government to use. But let’s start by talking about race. In 2025, that’s become a weird thing to do. And you’ve noticed it, right? How the companies and personalities who were happy to talk about race and discrimination five years ago, after the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, would suddenly rather do literally almost anything else. Funny how that works. For their part, the Trump administration has decided that diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, both in government and in the private sector, are themselves a form of discrimination. And last week, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that members of majority groups can also experience discrimination, in a case in which a straight woman argued that she’d been passed over for a job because of her sexual orientation. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote the majority opinion, stated that how courts should understand federal discrimination laws shouldn’t vary, quote, “based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.” But what if the entire frame of discrimination is the wrong one? That’s the argument Brando Simeo Starkey is making in his new book, Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of the Racial Caste System. He argues that by embracing both a form of contextual ignorance and a discrimination framework, The Supreme Court has worked to ensure that Black Americans stay at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. Here’s my conversation with Brando Simeo Starkey. Brando Simeo Starkey welcome to What a Day. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Hey, thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: In your book, you focus on the conflict after the Civil War, between preservations of the racial caste system and caste abolitionists, using the law as a background. In your view, what’s the difference between those two groups, the caste preservationists and the caste abolitionists? 

Brando Simeo Starkey: So yeah, the caste preservationists are those who want to preserve the racial caste system. And the racial cast system is just a racial hierarchy enforced through law policies, and norms that confines the Black population to a subordinated caste from womb to grave. And caste abolitionists are those who want destroy that system. 

Jane Coaston: You refer to the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution to 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments as the trinity. What did they do and what do you think we are getting wrong about them? 

Brando Simeo Starkey: So I call, as you said, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments the trinity. We kind of think of them as individual planks or individual amendments, when in reality I think we should think of them holistically and they have the power to protect freedom from caste. And that’s what I think, we get wrong. We typically think of them as anti-discriminatory amendments and I think a better framework to discuss them and envision them as anti caste amendments. 

Jane Coaston: We’re going to get to the difference between anti-discrimination and anti-caste, but in your book you talk a lot about the term ignorance, and you apply the term to the Supreme Court when it comes to civil rights cases. I think most people think that Supreme Court justices of almost any ilk are pretty learned people. So–

Brando Simeo Starkey: Right. 

Jane Coaston: What do you mean when you talk about ignorance in the court? 

Brando Simeo Starkey: The Supreme Court does use ignorance. And it is kind of a weird thing to discuss in terms of having these really intelligent people use ignorance, but they often do use ignorance. In one case from the 1890s, a Black man was sentenced to death by an all white jury in Mississippi. And Mississippi was obviously discriminating against Black people. They made them non-voters. They eliminated Black people from politics in the state. And one of the offshoots of that is that Black people couldn’t serve on juries because they couldn’t register to vote. And a Black attorney by the name of Cornelius Jonas Jones, he brought a case to the Supreme Court in 1898. He had proof that Mississippi was eliminating Black people from juries, and the Supreme Court just pretended as though what he proved wasn’t proven. And that’s just one example of the many examples where the Supreme Court has used ignorance to further and sconce the racial caste system. 

Jane Coaston: It’s not just ignorance of the law, it’s ignorance of the context. It’s looking at what was happening in 1890s Mississippi and saying like, we don’t see it and we don’t know anything about that. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Right. 

Jane Coaston: And that’s not our problem. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Right. They understood at this time that Black people were being eliminated from politics, eliminated from civil society. Everyone knew this. But in order to help preserve the racial caste system, the Supreme Court just pretended these facts away, pretended as though they didn’t know what was going on when they clearly did know what was going on. 

Jane Coaston: I thought it was really interesting that you point to that case and two other cases from 1896 and 1898. And it’s always interesting to me because I think that we talk about the failures of reconstruction uh which is taking place in the 1870s, but the 1890s are to me when America’s racial understanding is really developed. These three cases, and you’ve already talked about one of them, were these the moments in which racial ignorance became enshrined in the Supreme Court in your view. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Hmm. I never really contemplated when this kind of hardened, but yeah, I do believe that in around the 1890s, the same time as Plessy v. Ferguson is being decided, in that case, Justice Brown pretended as though a separate train law, was just some law, it didn’t really do much of anything, it just separated the races, when in reality, we know that that law was premised on the belief that Black people were unfit to occupy white spaces. But the Supreme Court pretended as though they did not know that. That’s ignorance, using an absence of knowledge to further the racial caste system. 

Jane Coaston: You’ve mentioned earlier, and I’m excited to get to this, because you talk about wanting to jettison the anti-discrimination framework. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: And embrace an anti-caste framework. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: What are the differences between those two and why is it important to embrace anti-caste? 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Right, okay. So anti-discrimination just focuses on whether a law or a policy is race-conscious. Anti-caste laws or anti-caste viewing of the Constitution focuses on the extent to which a law or policy helps entrench the racial caste system. The best way of explaining this is through a um situation that’s going on today. Diversity, equity, inclusion. Uh. The Trump administration is saying that this is discriminatory. And in certain ways, by taking account of race, diversity, equity, and inclusion is discriminatory. It’s race conscious. But to most people, or to those people on the left side of the political spectrum, diversity, and equity, and inclusion seems right. And why does it seem right? Why does why does it seems fair to take account of race to help eliminate racial oppression? And the answer to me is obvious. If one law is doing the work of uprooting the racial caste system, and one policy is doing the work of ensconcing the racial caste system. That’s really the dividing line that we should be concentrating on. So a lot of times, um people on the right side of the political spectrum, they will say, by taking account of race, you’re denying equal protection to white people. Diversity, equity, and inclusion denies white people equal protection, when the truth is that diversity, equity and inclusion provides equal protection to minority groups, provides equal protection to oppressed identities. 

Jane Coaston: You finished your book proposal in 2020 during the height of civil unrest and protest following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. We’re five years out from that. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: And a lot has changed. Um. You have the same president in office again. But–

Brando Simeo Starkey: Yeah. 

Jane Coaston: What changed over that time in how you see your work and what it might mean more broadly? 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Hmm. Um. I think that the broader society is probably less receptive to talking about race. I would say that perhaps like particularly mainstream media outlets might not want to discuss race as much anymore. They think of it as a distraction. When in 2020, when I sent my book proposal out, it was kind of top of mind. Everyone was talking about race and people were more willing to talk about it. In that sort of scenario it is easy to get your um your voice heard. It’s harder to get your voice heard now because a lot of people just don’t wanna talk about it. So it just definitely is a more difficult environment to talk about race, but that doesn’t make the mission any less severe. 

Jane Coaston: Brando Simeo Starkey, thank you so much for joining me. 

Brando Simeo Starkey: Thank you for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Brando Simeo Starkey, author of Their Accomplices War Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of LA Mayor Karen Bass] People in the city have a rapid response network. If they see ICE, they go out and they protest. And so, it’s just a recipe for pandemonium that is completely unnecessary. Nothing was happening here. Los Angeles was peaceful before Friday. When we find out when and where the other raids are gonna happen, that will determine how the police respond. 

Jane Coaston: A lot has happened in Los Angeles since last Friday, when immigration and customs enforcement raided workplaces and protesters resisted. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass blames the federal raids for ratcheting up the tension. A union leader got arrested for, allegedly, conspiring to impede an officer. He was released on Bonds Monday. Oh, and um the National Guard. Yes, the National Guard. President Donald Trump deployed National Guard members Sunday and on Monday continued to deploy armed forces to Los Angeles. All without California Governor Gavin Newsom’s consent. So on Monday, Newsom sued over use of the guard. He hit Twitter asking the Trump administration to quote, “end the illegal takeover of the California National Guard, which has escalated chaos and violence in LA.” And amidst all that mayhem, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, warned of possible arrests for anyone obstructing ICE’s efforts, including Newsom and Bass. Newsom told MSNBC, Homan can try. 

[clip of CA Governor Gavin Newsom] He’s a tough guy, why doesn’t he do that? He knows where to find me. But you know what? Let your hands off four-year-old girls that are trying to get educated. Let your hands off these poor people just trying to get, live their lives, man. Trying to live their lives, paying their taxes, been here 10 years. The fear, the horror, the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me, let’s just get it over with, tough guy. 

Jane Coaston: Trump later appeared to egg Homan on when speaking to reporters. He said, quote, “I’d do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great.” He added later that Newsom’s crime was running for office. Let’s admit that this situation is overwhelming for us, and we’re here. Things are still fluid, but there is a big picture emerging, too. Matt Berg at the What a Day newsletter interviewed Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker during the January 6th riot. Pelosi wants everyone to know that the president sending the National Guard to LA for some relatively minor protests is the very same one who turned down the opportunity to use the National Guard to protect the national capital during an insurrection. Pelosi said quote, 

[clip of Nancy Pelosi] Well, we used to have a [?] because he wanted to put a bullet in my f-word head and they were going to hang the vice president of the United States and this guy is uh, you know, not sending in the National Guard and then lying about it to the public saying, oh, whatever, they turned it down. 

Jane Coaston: She is not wrong. Hundreds of scientists at the National Institutes of Health issued a public letter Monday, condemning the Trump administration’s massive cuts to the agency. They called the letter the Bethesda Declaration after NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. They addressed it to Agency Director Dr. J. Bhattacharya. I like to think that this Bethesda Declaration is a reference to Bhattacharya’s Great Barrington Declaration. That’s the controversial letter he co-wrote during the pandemic in which he argued against continuing lockdowns. Anyway. The Bethesda Declaration asks Bhattacharya to fight Trump’s attacks, writing quote, “We dissent to administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.” Most signatories are anonymous, but dozens of NIH workers signed with their names despite fears that they could lose their jobs. Bhattacharya responded to the declaration in a statement Monday. Saying that it has, quote, “some fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken in recent months.” Also on Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it fired an expert panel of vaccine advisors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal Monday, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, quote, “a clean sweep is needed to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.” Public confidence he has spent like decades undermining, but whatever. What happened to R.F.K. Jr. saying, my opinions about vaccines are irrelevant? Can we go back to that? 

[clip of President Donald Trump] This is a pro-family initiative that will help millions of Americans harness the strength of our economy to lift up the next generation, and they’ll really be getting a big jump on life, especially if we get a little bit lucky with some of the numbers and the economies into the future. 

Jane Coaston: President Trump touted Trump accounts at a White House roundtable with CEOs from Uber, Dell, Goldman Sachs, and others Monday. The accounts are part of his big, not very beautiful bill, and they would provide every American newborn with an investment account. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] Here is how the accounts work. For every U.S. citizen born after December 31st, 2024, before January 1st, 2029, the federal government will make a one-time contribution of $1,000 into a tax-deferred account that will track the overall stock market. In other words, it will be pegged to an index that we’ll pick. 

Jane Coaston: Trump says family, friends, parents, employers, and others could collectively chip in $5,000 to each account per year. This is one case where Trump’s idea happens to overlap with a Democratic one. You might remember Cory Booker running on the idea of baby bonds back in 2023. Russia launched nearly 500 drones across Ukraine Monday, the largest overnight drone attack since the war started more than three years ago. Ukraine’s air force said it shot down and deflected most of the drones. The Associated Press reports that one person was injured. Well, the New York Times says a drone blast killed at least one Ukrainian. Russia has ramped up its attacks on Ukraine despite facing pressure from the US to agree to a ceasefire or peace deal. Crazy timing. This comes the same day Ukraine and Russia began another prisoner swap. The two countries agreed to the exchange during negotiations in Istanbul last week. It’s unclear how many prisoners were released Monday, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address that this marked the first stage of the exchange, and that, quote, “more stages will follow.” And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. Alex Jones is an anti-government conspiracy theorist, except if that government is run by Donald Trump and his best friends and corporate allies. You probably know of Alex Jones. He’s the Infowars guy, ranting about how frogs are turning gay and claiming that the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012 were faked and that the children murdered there were actors, a claim he still owes the families of those children $1.3 billion for. Late last month, the New York Times reported that the company Palantir is getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government to merge together all of the data available on American citizens using a specific Palantir product called Foundry. Quote, “widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies,” the government official said. “Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream.” Now, understandably many people are concerned that the government could use this data for surveillance purposes, particularly against perceived enemies of the state. And as currently, the President of the United States thinks arresting the Governor of California for the crime of running for governor would be a good idea, and the Vice President of the United State is posting on Twitter about how a menswear blogger should be deported, yeah, I can see how someone might think that. As New York Magazine put it, quote, “The government would officially like to obliterate the already inadequate rules for compiling and sharing data about citizens and non-citizens, and is seeking the help of a politically loyal firm to carry out its plans.” Now, if you know anything about Alex Jones, you know that he is generally very, very worried about the federal government doing nefarious things like combining intelligence on millions of Americans to do well. Something. He has been yelling about one-world governments and the new world order for like 30 years. Rolling Stone called him the most paranoid man in America for a reason. But actually, Alex Jones says that this Palantir news is fine. 

[clip of Alex Jones] The point is, is who else is Trump going to go to in Silicon Valley to try to surveil the government deep state and all the stolen money? 

Jane Coaston: Who indeed? Yes, the man who said the shooting of a Democratic member of Congress in 2011 was a government plot because, quote, “the government employs geometric psychological warfare experts that know exactly how to indirectly manipulate unstable people through the media,” says that the federal government funding a private company to do work even employees of the company think is wrong is not really worth getting upset about because deep state something something. Alex Jones is a leading member of what I’m calling the full-of-shit brigade. You know, the people who yelled, do not comply during the Biden administration because of alleged governmental overreach, but think that Trump trying to deport a Turkish PhD student who co-authored an opinion piece for her student newspaper is fine. They were anti-government free thinkers who embraced freedom of speech until January 20th, 2025, on which date they decided that actually, the government is amazing and cool, and anyone who speaks out against it should be thrown into a super prison or out of a helicopter. It’s not hard to understand. This is what pure, unfettered, 100% [?] hypocrisy looks like. And at least Steve Bannon had the chutzpah to be straightforward about how this works, especially regarding Palantir when talking to journalist Chuck Todd. 

[clip of Steve Bannon] I think everybody’s got to take a step back. Let me tell you about this Palantir stuff. If a democratic administration had done this [?]–

[clip of Chuck Todd] I think we’re in a level of outrage. [indistinct banter]

[clip of Steve Bannon] We’re putting together a database. 

[clip of Chuck Todd] I think war room would open the–

[clip of Steve Bannon] Right. 

[clip of Chuck Todd] –every show every shore about it.

Jane Coaston: Of course. Before we go, there was an outpouring of overwhelmingly peaceful protests in Los Angeles this weekend to respond to ICE kidnapping community members. Donald Trump is gleefully escalating the situation by deploying the National Guard into LA in hopes of seizing more power for ICE. It’s a blatant abuse of power designed to intimidate families, stoke fear, and break the spirit of the community. Our friends at Vote Save America are fighting back and supporting immigration defense groups. To get involved, head to votesaveamerica.com to learn more. Paid for by VoteSaveAmerica, votesaveamerica.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. [music break] That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, avoid eating at the New Jersey Trump National Golf Club and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about how the Trump National Golf Club got a score of 32 out of 100 on its health inspections, one of the lowest ratings earned by any establishment in Somerset County, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. And if you love expired milk, you will love the New Jersey Trump National Golf Club. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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