UNDISTRACTED: May 14, 2026

Don’t Mansplain to Us, with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: We as women of color are always put in this situation where people think we’re dumb, we’re naive, we don’t know what we’re talking about. They try to attack us, and look, you can’t take on every single one, but you get pretty darn good at figuring out when it is time to take it on.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Do y’all know what time it is? ‘Cause I do. Now, if you had asked the first guy to say, “Make America great again,” one Ronald Reagan, he would say it’s morning in America. He’d probably show you another commercial like he did in the ’80s of happy white people buying homes and you know, getting married to one another, and continuing on to the pursuit of their great American dream.

If you asked Trump 2.0, the second guy to say, “Make America great again,” he’d probably tell you it was morning in America, c- too. ‘Cause you know, the immigrants are being arrested and detained and deported, and the voting rights are being taken away, and women are being shoved back into the ’60s. But if you ask me, it is midnight in America. And I don’t know about y’all, but I only wanna be surrounded by, led by, and vote for people who get what time it is. It’s time to make sure we show up. It’s time to get out in these streets. It’s time to stop playing around like the rules of the game still exist. The playbook has been thrown out. The rule book no longer exists. They’ve wiped their behinds with it, so there’s no point in being cordial and civil about it anymore. Do y’all know what time it is? ‘Cause it’s time to get busy, and it’s time to stay undistracted.

All right, y’all, our guest today knows what time it is and definitely has a working clock. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington’s 7th District is here to talk to us about how she’s been holding feet to the fire in DC, especially for the survivors exposed by the Epstein files. Then we’ll be linking up with our group chat bestie, Dr. David Johns, to get into this week’s untrending news. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal represents Washington’s 7th Congressional District, the heart of Seattle, Washington. She’s the first Indian American woman to serve in the House of Representatives, and she’s become one of the most fearless voices in American politics.

Since taking office nine years ago, she’s led the charge on Medicare for all, immigrant protections, and holding the powerful to account. I’m extremely eager, as you can imagine, to talk to her today, because lately she’s been at the center of major stories, including a confrontation with the DOJ over their handling of the Epstein survivor stories.

Congresswoman Jayapal, welcome to Undistracted.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Brittany, it’s so good to be with you. Thank you so much for all you are doing to lift up the issues.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Thank you so much. So first off, we ask everybody, in three words, how are you doing today?

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: good You’re trying to stick to your three words. One more, yeah.
Look, I think it is the people’s power that lifts me up, and every time I am home in particular, my district is so engaged. People are ready to do what they need to do. They are not… They understand that trying to make us hopeless and powerless are just tools of the oppressor. That’s right. And so they are ready to stand up and build our power to take on all the corruption, all the outrageousness, the destruction of our democracy.
So it makes me feel good when I’m at home.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: I love that. I’m glad that you’re home. I’m glad that you’re feeling good because frankly, if you feel good, that makes me feel a little bit better. You’ve been one of the most vocal lawmakers really pushing for the unredacted release of the Epstein files. During a f- now Former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s congressional hearing, you very famously asked if she would turn around and face the survivors and…
Apologize

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: for what your Department of Justice has put them through with the absolutely unacceptable release of the Epstein files and their information.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: I think that it’s really important that we pause there. There are so many issues right now that confront us. What makes this particular one so deeply important to the American people, but also to you?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Well, I think that, um, the idea of an Epstein class, the idea of rich and powerful predators and pedophiles getting away with anything that they want, and obviously the, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, uh, Ghislaine Maxwell, and all of those that were a part of that ring are just in some ways the tip of the iceberg.
And I think what has really resonated for people across the country is how depraved and prevalent this kind of behavior is. You can’t read those Epstein files and see how they talk to each other with zero attention at all to morals, basic morals, humanity. You know, uh, it, it was really like a playground for abusing little girls and women, and I think there are many across this country who resonate with that.
And so the courage of the Epstein survivors, I worked very closely with them in the lead-up to that hearing. I wanted to make sure that they were okay with standing up behind Pam Bondi, the head of DOJ. Um, that they were okay with, you know, with, uh, sort of being asked the questions of whether they had tried to reach out.
And I will tell you- To a single one, every one of them was ready to do what was necessary because it isn’t just about them. They understand it is about the country, it is about survivors across the country. So she had a chance to redeem herself. In fact, I had taken myself through situations where she might turn around and apologize.
Hmm. And, uh, had she done that, I would’ve said, “Thank you. That was an important and powerful moment.” But of course, she didn’t, and it was just a reflection of how these survivors and many survivors across the country are always told to sit down, shut up, move on- Right … and forget about it, and that is not gonna be the case anymore.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: That’s absolutely not gonna be the case anymore, and I’m guessing that their courage continued to inspire your own because, of course, then Attorney General Bondi came to those hearings with, uh, copies of your search history, and I’m curious how you thought about that surveillance, really how we should be thinking about the kind of surveillance you were under simply for standing up for survivors.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Yes, that was a stunning moment that I learned about from a reporter actually who called me and asked me about a couple of the searches I had done, and I said, “How did you know?” And she said, uh, “Because there was a photograph of your search history, DOJ’s surveillance of you,” in her binder. And I think what we should think about this, Brittany, is that this DOJ and this Trump administration is willing to weaponize every single tool that they have- Yeah
including the ability to surveil each of us, to, um, get information on us, to find out what we’re doing, to use our histories against us, as is happening in the immigration world with social media posts that people are posting and suddenly that turns into, uh, an opportunity to say somebody doesn’t get to be in this country.
Um, and this was another example of that. I will tell you, it wasn’t widely reported, but after I took Pam Bondi on on that as well and I called Speaker Mike Johnson, she called me and I had over an hour-long meeting with her and Todd Blanche.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Wow. Um,

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: just me and the two of them, where I raised all my issues with the lack of release of the files, with the way in which they were targeting survivors, and of course, their own surveillance of me.
Wow. And, um, they made a lot of, you know, sort of statements that they were gonna fix it, and of course, nothing ever happened, which is what we’ve come to expect from this DOJ because they are acting solely as the attorney for Donald Trump, not the attorney for the American people.
Brittany Packnett Cunningham: So having reviewed, uh, the non-redacted documents and having apparently follow-up conversations to still push this issue, what do you think is the most p- urgent piece of news that you’ve seen in those documents that should be pursued by the law?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal: It really is the cases, um, and the evidence against a number of powerful predators. Look, uh, other countries have taken on ki- you know, princes, kings, uh, you know, big business people and started investigations. Our DOJ has done none of the above, and there are predators in there with such damning evidence against them, Leon Black, others, um, who there’s correspondence that backs up these cases, and yet we have done absolutely nothing.
Now, the Oversight Committee Dems are doing a phenomenal job. Summer Lee, Robert Garcia, and others on that committee have demanded that, uh, you know, they subpoena some of these people, so they are coming before them now. But we need the DOJ to actually investigate. I am not holding my breath for that, but I think that the public pressure- Mm
is, uh, still resulting in real results. And once we take back the House- Mm-hmm … um, you know, next term, I think we will be able to really hold many of these individuals accountable because that, in the end, that is the only thing that’s gonna change what’s happening, is people see these folks being held accountable.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Absolutely. So play that out for us. So we do our part as the public. We keep up the pressure. We get out and vote and take back the House, then what? What’s the next card that you all will play?

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Well, you know, of course, everything depends also on the Senate, but I will say on the Epstein issue, this is a bipartisan issue.
I mean, we have bipartisan members in Congress but also a bipartisan public that wants accountability. And so I do think whether or not we take back the Senate, what we will be able to do is pursue those subpoenas and the investigations from the House and force it on the Senate. It’s only because we passed the Epstein Transparency Files Act that the Senate unanimously on a voice vote passed it, right?
Because it was such a big majority because Trump and, and his cronies realized that they were not gonna be able to back off of this, and Republicans in tough districts stood with us. You know, we have a whole lot of accountability to do when we get back in because so much of our destruction of our democracy is happening because people see all the things that are happening around us, and they see no accountability.
And so that lends, you know, a, a, a thing of, well, if they’re not gonna be held accountable- Then I don’t need to worry either, and I can do whatever I want.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: This is one of the things that I really love about you because you’re so relentless about the issues that you care about, especially issues that affect women.
You’re incredibly honest about it. We’ve been spending today talking about being clear exactly what time it is in America, right? So Trump might say it’s morning in America like his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, before him. I feel like it’s midnight in America- That’s right … and people are gonna have to be serious about the nightmare that we’re living in if we’re going to get out of it.
Recently, you stood up for domestic violence shelters in a debate about defunding them in states that don’t cooperate with ICE, and then one of the Republican congressmen had the bright idea to try to shut you up. Doug, roll this clip ’cause I wanna see it. So thank you for mansplaining to me. It didn’t work.
It never will work. Period, okay? We love that kind of urgency and clarity. Where does that no-nonsense urgency come from for you? ‘Cause this is, this is what we wanna hear.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Well, I’m speaking to you, so you know where it comes from. We, as women of color, are always put in this situation where people think we’re dumb, we’re naive, we don’t know what we’re talking about.
They try to attack us. And look, you can’t take on every single one, but you get pretty darn good at figuring out when it is time to take it on. And this guy, Darrell Issa, was still smarting over the fact that when I was a first-term member of Congress, he called me naive, and I pushed back on him, and the clip went viral, and I think it played into his losing that election.
Now he came back and won a couple of years later, but he was holding onto that from nine years ago, raised it in this context, and in doing so, exposed exactly what it is about way too many Republican men and some Democratic men who- Yeah … refuse to actually take seriously the issue of sexual assault.
‘Cause look, at the end of the day, this wasn’t just about insulting me. What he was saying is that I was trying to make everything a women’s issue because I raised the fact that their bad policy around immigration was gonna strip states of- Right … funding for sexual assault, which is already very limited- Mm-hmm and sexual harassment cases. And so I was saying that we needed to exempt those funds from being stripped. I had an amendment to do that. That turned into, “You’re making everything a women’s issue,” to which I was able to then point out that- Sexual assault and sexual harassment are happening across the country, and it’s men like him that refuse to pay attention to it, that have continued to exacerbate the issue and make it seem like somehow there’s nothing there.
There’s a lot there. And every woman and every person who cares about sexual assault, sexual harassment was gonna watch that clip, and in fact, it did go viral, uh, as well. And, you know, I think it’s given second thought to those guys who wanna try and challenge me on these things, ’cause I am gonna stand up for our people across the country.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: And you stand up so consistently. What do you think it is going to take for some of your colleagues, on either side of the aisle, who understand that what the American people are enduring is so deeply evil, what is it gonna take for them to find that righteous fire in their belly and, and get real about what time it is?

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: You know, I think that there is still this leftover hangover of a time in this country where people on both sides worked together and were reasonable and kinda came forward to put forward solutions that benefit the American people. Maybe that time was there. Frankly, by the time I came into Congress, there’s very few issues.
There are some, surveillance, um, you know, a couple of other issues where I work closely with people that I disagree with on everything else. But the reality is that this Republican Party is a cult party largely. Hmm. They have ceded all the constitutional authorities that are in Article One of the Constitution for Congress, and they are literally stripping healthcare, stripping voting rights, stripping, uh, you know, the right to be who you are- Mm-hmm stripping, uh, rights to privacy. You can go through the entire list and you can see that these are not people who are standing up for their Constitution. These are not people who are willing to be reasonable. And for us, as members of Congress, we have a platform to express the frustration, the anger, the fury that people have when they watch this happening.
And also the fact that, you know, we don’t have a tremendous number of tools at our disposal in the minority- Mm-hmm … but we have some. And our platform to express that fury and anger and the solution for that, both the opposition but also the proposition of what this country really is about, um, is very, very important in this moment.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: The opposition and the proposition, when we talk about that, I have to squeeze in a question about the way in which the Supreme Court just gutted the Voting Rights Act. I mean, we certainly are in opposition to that, but what is the proposition? What should we, the people, be doing, and what should we be expecting Congress to do in this moment where we’ve been dragged back to Jim Crow America?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal: For years since I got into Congress, I have been saying that we need to pass what we, uh, passed in the House, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Mm-hmm. Um, we needed to get big money out of politics. We needed to reform the Supreme Court so it actually represents the people of the United States.
Now, all of these things are blocked by the Jim Crow legacy filibuster in the Senate that refuses to allow the majority of the will of the people to come through in any of these things. And so the Supreme Court has been, you know, the highest court in the land, the only court with no ethics, no transparency at all, and, um, they have continually been doing whatever they can to turn back the clock.
And so if we don’t understand the consequences of that, and to our previous conversation, if we keep going back to say, “Well, we keep the filibuster in place because it allows us to be, you know, you know, thoughtful in our deliberations in the Senate,” we are missing the fact that 40 mostly white men who represent 12% of the country’s population in the United States Senate can block us from actually reinstituting voting rights, reforming the Supreme Court, and doing all of the things that are required for us to uphold our democracy.
And so, you know, this voting rights, I, I read through the whole thing. I’m on the Judiciary Committee, as you know, and what was so offensive to me in addition to the ultimate argument, the most offensive thing, is all of the presuppositions that went into that decision. Mm. The idea that s- you know, that we’re all fine in the South.
There’s no Civil rights problems in the South anymore. Everything’s good. And the idea that you can’t even look at past discrimination, you have to look at current discrimination in any voting rights case. Like, all of these things make it impossible for the Voting Rights Act to be real in this country, and what an insult that is, not only to Black and brown folks, to the people of the Civil Rights movement and many generations before that fought for this, um, for us to have a different kind of country, but really for all of America.
What do we become if we eliminate voting rights for people across this country?

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Certainly not a democracy, I know that much. Yeah. Uh, before I let you go, you joined the House two years before the so-called beloved Squad. You mentored so many of them. You all have become a really important sisterhood to those of us who are watching and seeing you lead.
These times have gotten darker since- Yeah … you all started. Um, political violence is high. Members like Representative Omar have faced, um, serious threats. Congresswoman McIver from New Jersey is facing retribution from, uh, this administration. What are your conversations like now versus then?

Rep. Pramila Jayapal: Well, I think we really understand the need to rally around each other and to provide support for each other and lift each other up in a way that perhaps wasn’t quite as clear, um, when I first started.
Um, you know, I’ve had to move houses because a man with a gun showed up at my door. Um, but that experience of going through it has, in many ways, strengthened the bonds that we have. And for Representative McIver, who’s just so amazing, um, you know, we’ve all been there for her. We’re there for Representative Omar, for, uh, all of those of us who face so much increased violence and threat, not only to ourselves, but to our families and, um, and to our staff, you know, to the members of our team.
You know, it’s mostly interns or junior staff that are answering the phones and hearing the absolute disgusting, xenophobic re- And look, as an immigrant woman of color, I get xenophobic, racist, and sexist all lumped together- Yeah … in this toxic stew that is so horrific. And so, you know, I think what we’ve learned is we gotta stand up for each other.
We gotta make sure that we’ve got each other’s backs. We gotta be the first ones to speak out when one of us is hurt. It hurts all of us. And we’ve taken that as a credo now. Um, and I think that that is a really beautiful thing to have that sisterhood and for other people to see it on the outside as well, and to realize that that’s what we have to do for each other, not just in Congress, but in our districts, in our communities, in our country, is stand up for each other and refuse to allow an injustice to happen to any one of us, because it could happen to all of us, and it matters so much.
That’s right.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Well, we appreciate the way that you all stand up for each other. And let me tell you personally, I deeply appreciate the way you stand 10 toes down for us. There are a lot of people who are on the same side of the aisle as me even who aren’t s- acting like they’re very clear on what time it is.
So I thank you for always saying the thing, and then more importantly, doing the thing. So thank you so much, Congresswoman Jayapal, for joining us on Undistracted. We’d love to have you back soon. I’d love to come back. Thank you so much for having me. You know, here at Undistracted, we’re all about staying, well, undistracted, finding the balance between being informed, empathetic, and open, and staying, you know, sane.
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Trust me, your inbox deserves it. That’s wearethemeteor.com/newsletters or the notes on this episode. You can thank me later. All right, y’all, I am very glad to have one of our group chat besties, my sibling, your sibling, in today’s untrending news conversation with Dr. David Johns, CEO and executive director of the National Black Justice Collective.
DJJ- Yes Sibling,… let’s talk about the things. Okay? So first of all, uh, let’s talk about the drama surrounding the rescheduling of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Yeah, that dinner. So after a gunman reportedly opened fire at the event in April, uh, that guy over there who lives in that house announced that he was going to host the same dinner with the same invitees, and just reschedule it, uh, quote, “Within 30 days.” The dinner hasn’t been rescheduled yet, but all this talk about it has really dusted up a whole lot of debate online about whether it even makes any sense, David, to continue with this tradition of journalists and politicians hanging out when politicians are contemptuous of the press and call them enemies of the people.
Former Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter, who used to host an exclusive after party for the event, told The New York Times that he, quote, “Would’ve put a fork in it a long time ago.” But it’s also the only fundraiser event for the White House Correspondence Association nonprofit, and that’s generally been a staple in American culture.
Okay, so David, should we be rescheduling this dinner this year or ever?
Dr. David Johns: So Sibling, I want my above the fold, uh, headline to read, “The man who called journalists the enemy of the people does not get to be the hero of press freedom. That’s not defiance, that’s a photo op.” So, um, as you, uh, built a bridge that I’m gonna walk over, the whole conversation right now for me is being framed wrong.
Trump didn’t suddenly become a champion of press freedom the moment that a gunman opened fire, right? And we should be clear about that. This is the same man who spent years calling journalists enemy of the people. Uh, and, and the defiance of violence argument is real, but it doesn’t belong to him, and, and we shouldn’t let the framing erase that.
Um, and the tell for all of us should be the $400 million ballroom. One breath after the shooting, before the funerals- Yeah … before the trauma could even settle, somebody floated a plan to build a $400 million event space on taxpayer dime. That’s not grief, that’s a grift. And so we should be clear that this administration is doing what it always does, it is finding the wound and making money off of it.
And I also wanna talk about the timing of this, because the Juneteenth adjacency is, uh- Come on … unsettling for me. It’s suspicious. Late June is when… Right, it is suspicious, right? It, it is suspicious as they say. And so they’re floating late June as the redo, which is too close to June 19th, a Black freedom celebration that this same administration has done everything it could to erase from the federal calendar, and now we’re gonna schedule a Washington insider dinner that, within that same sacred window?
No. They built this before, they can build it again. The White House Correspondence Association has a real question to answer, at least for me, and it’s, is this event about press freedom, or is it about proximity to power? Because if it’s the former, you don’t need old boy’s blessing, felon 47, as somebody said on your, on your show.
Um, you don’t need this venue, you definitely don’t need him and, and, and this ballroom. So what you gonna do?

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: What you gonna do? And I could not agree with you more. Listen, I believe that the White House Correspondents’ Association is a really important organization. It’s had Black leadership, it’s had, uh, progressive leadership, thoughtful leadership, uh, that has been critical to preserving, protecting, and maintaining the importance of a press voice in the White House, press voice in politics.
Yeah. And yet, if this press corps is going to truly commit itself to making sure that the press remains free, then I got five on it. You don’t have to do that little dinner to fundraise for nothing. I promise you we’ll put some money in the collection plate. But, like, cozying up to the guy who- Right … put all of your lives in danger in the first place- Absolutely not just at that dinner, but long before- Mm-hmm … I have a problem with that. And if we have a way to, to move on from this, I mean, even the head of Vanity Fair is like, “It’s time to be done,” and you know they love a glitzy party over there, okay? They do. They do. If they ready to, if they ready to hang it up, then so am I.
Let’s keep talking though, because in other news, we gotta talk about what’s coming up this Saturday, speaking of the afflicted. For those of you who don’t know, there’s a sizable coalition of local and national civil rights organizations who are planning a big, and I mean huge, yuge as the other guy would say, National Day of Action for Voting Rights in Montgomery and Selma, Alabama.
It’s gonna kick off at the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge at AM on Selma. Some faith leaders are going to surround that space in prayer. And then from to PM in the afternoon, folks are going to Montgomery. Yeah, you heard that route right, that famous route of the fight for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery.
Well, to PM on Saturday, May the 16th, folks will coalesce in Montgomery to demand that we get our voting rights back. Now, I’m of course glad to see and in support of this really serious response to a serious attack. David, you and I have been to a lot of protests, a lot of rallies, a lot of marches, a lot of events, a lot of activations.
Why is this one so important?

Dr. David Johns: Yeah, I’m really excited about this one in particular, and I want everyone to understand why. This march isn’t just a protest. It is a statement about who we are. Yes. Uh, Black people in this country have never not once just accepted terrorism or stochastic or state-sanctioned violence laying down.
Every time they have tried to use fear, uh, the courts- Um, dogs, uh, whatever they have at their disposal, we organize. Every single time they have tried to steal our power to hoard more in defense of whiteness, we build more of it, the very same thing they try to take. That is our tradition, and that’s the tradition that this march is standing in.
And so this is a, a, a moment within a larger movement, and this energy building right now, uh, people showing up on Saturday reminding this country that we don’t need anyone’s permission to affirm our own power is exactly what we need. And while we’re in this space, for anyone, uh, listening or watching, uh, wondering where you can go and how you can plug in beyond the march, NBJC is hosting Equity Week the week before Juneteenth.
It’s a gathering for equity-minded people who are ready to move from conversation to action. And if you believe in all of this work, NBJC, in addition to All Roads Lead to the South, is where you need to be.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Listen, these people are clearly trying to pull us back to Jim Crow, which is why we all need to pull up to allroadsleadtothesouth.com.
Period. Let’s talk though about why this is, uh, the same play from an old playbook. I mean, you- Yeah … Coop and I talk all the time about how white supremacy is not particularly clever, it’s not inventive. This is an old play. This takes us all the way back to, uh, Reconstruction and Jim Crow. So Black representation increased swiftly under Reconstruction.
Um, and that representation got all the way up to 22 Black men who were elected to Congress, and then Jim Crow was designed to pull all of that back, just like the redistricting is designed to pull us back now. Yep. It took, and I wanna be really clear, 72 years. 72 years from the beginning of Jim Crow until 1973 to get another Black member of Congress from the South.
1901 to 1973, that’s how long Congress went without anybody speaking up and showing up for Black people all across the South of this country. If we say they’re trying to drag us back to Jim Crow, it’s not because we’re being dramatic, it’s not because we’re prone to hyperbole, it’s not because we are doing the most, it’s because it’s true.
But on a lighter note- And for- … Dave. Uh-huh?

Dr. David Johns: I was gonna say, and for folks who wanna do additional research on that, look up the Southern Strategy, right? Yep. This is a, a documented strategy that the Republican Party, uh, designed to increase political support amongst white voters in the South by appealing- Yeah
to racial tension. So, uh, again, for those who think that us naming what people do that is defined by, uh, Webster’s as racist, uh- Mm-hmm … as hyperbolic, it’s grounded in reality, um, and in this case, citable sources, not just, uh, concepts of ideas or plans.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Receipts. And by the way, if you think this is just gonna impact Black voters, think again.We all know that they treat us like the lab rats, and whatever they experiment to do on us, i.e. taking away our rights, humanity, dignity, and democracy, they’re planning on doing to you. Period. But speaking of the South, David, I gotta have a conversation with you, because all of it is, this discussion about redistricting the South is actually revealing that some people don’t actually know where the South is.
Like, people really genuinely do not agree. There’s been a whole debate online, Threads, TikTok, Twitter, about whether Virginia is actually in the South. And even whether Texas is in the South. Uh-huh. Now, our good sis, yours and mine, Nikole Hannah-Jones, had to snatch a few people up on Threads, writing, quote, “It is wild to see people arguing that Virginia- Right literally the first Southern colony- Right … capital of the Confederacy- Right … home of the Confederate White House- Right … isn’t the South.” Right. “I see we still out here posting based on vibes.” I mean, she told us what needed to be said. Uh-huh. And I get it if we don’t all wanna define the South by what enslavers had to say, but it’s a whole lot of white people in the South who wanna deny their own history.
What is going on with people these days, and just, like, the children being left behind?

Dr. David Johns: Yeah, this is where we should cue Nippy, uh, T- uh, “I believe the children are our future.” T said, “Well, then let them lead the way.” Love. Love. And what you and I both know as educators is that a whole lot of y’all, uh, didn’t get schooled.
And so what I remember is that anything below the Mason-Dixon is technically in the South. And because I don’t wanna be drug on Twitter or Threads or wherever we gather- … uh, let me say this. For me, the South is not a place, it’s a frequency. Oh. Right? Ooh. And- That’s good … some people carry it with them wherever they go.
So here’s my rubric. If the music is in the air, like you can hear it without trying, then you’re in the South. Right. I’m talking about blues bleeding into gospel, bleeding into country- Mm-hmm … bleeding into hip hop, because- Mm-hmm … that’s the actual origin story. The South didn’t just make one genre, it made all of them.
That’s right. But it’s not just the music, it’s the food. I’m talking about specific pots of collard greens that have been on the stove- Mm-hmm … since before you woke up, right? Like, come on. I’m talking about… hot water cornbread- Mm-hmm … that somebody made from memory, not from recipe, because the recipe lives- in their hands.
I mean, sweet potato pie, before anybody says anything- I’m hungry … pump- sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie are not the same. That, that we, that we don’t have to debate about. If you’ve had the real one, then you already know. So the South says, “I love you,” by feeding you. Mm. Um, that’s the thing that people miss.
You don’t get a card. Yeah. You don’t… You, you get a plate. You get somebody who got up at in the morning because- Yeah … they knew you were coming over, and that’s just what they do. And that’s the feeling BPC- Yeah … it’s, it’s the feeling. And the South has a particular weight to it. Yeah. Not a heaviness, but a substance.
Like- Yeah. Yes … the air is thick with everything that happened in it. And people move differently in the South. I’ll land here. Um, in the South, you give permission to be slow. Mm. Um, to move slow. Uh- Mm … and I don’t think that that gets enough credit in a culture that worships urgency. And what I know- General is that when the man that I love opens his mouth, sometimes the South just drips out.
Brittany Packnett Cunningham: It’s pretty good. Right? It drips out. It’s slow. And we love Dre for that.

Dr. David Johns: It’s certain. It’s warm. And it was always there, just waiting for the right moment to show up. And so I, I just wanna end with the South is more than a location, it’s more than a region.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Um,

Dr. David Johns: it is, it is a feeling and it is a frequency. Yeah.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: It’s a feeling and a frequency that we have to continue to show up for, right? Because sometimes this argument, this, this conversation feels like all funny jokes and games- Yeah … on the timeline. But what it’s really rooted in- honestly, is a lot of transfer depression, that northerners feel more im- more important, more dignified, more educated, more sophisticated than southerners, and we feel perfectly okay, um, diminishing people who, uh, never, quote-unquote, “Came up north,” right?
Never evolved. The truth of the matter is plenty of our ancestors did not have a choice Yeah … uh, my, um, grandfather on my maternal side never– The story I was told was that he never saw his brother again after a certain point because he was falsely accused of talking to a white woman- Got it … uh, in a romantic way, and therefore had to flee, right?
And so there’s no– They called my, my granddaddy Arthur Shaft, uh, when he was raising, uh, a, a large family in St. Louis, Missouri, where a lot of folks im- uh, migrated to, rather, from the Deep South, um, because he had to carry that same sensibility of protection for his daughters and one son, um, knowing full well that even though folks had gotten on the train in Alabama and Mississippi and made it, made their way to St.
Louis and Chicago and other places, um, that the racism was no different. Period. Um, the threat was no different. Period. And that the need for protection and safety was just as strong. Yeah. And so I think it’s important that however we have this conversation, however much we argue about whether it’s called Hoppin’ John or rice and peas, and whether you like mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens- I love greens mixed greens, whether you make it with bacon, ham hock, smoked turkey or no meat at all ’cause you wanna be a good vegan, listen. The point at the end of all of it- Shout out to Beyonce … it’s, shout out, right, is that we need each other. And the South, it’s, shout out to 3 Stacks, has always got something to say.
And right now- It is … it is telling us to come back home and protect one another. So we hope to see y’all out there on May the 16th, because all roads lead to the South. Dr. David Johns, as always, I love you. Thank you for your brilliance. Love you too, sis. That has been our Untrending News. I asked the congresswoman a question that I’m gonna ask each of us.
What is it gonna take for us to get that fire in our belly, for us to realize what time it really is? What’s the answer? The answer is us getting out there in the streets like on May 16th in Montgomery. The answer is us making sure that politicians who claim to represent us know that we want them to get in the ring and the arena and stop acting like they’re asleep.
It’s gonna take us, each one teach one, showing up, making sure that people are informed, aware, registered to vote, and getting active. It’s midnight in America, y’all, and the only way we are going to wake up from this nightmare is if we stop waiting on somebody else and do it ourselves.

Thanks for listening, thanks for being, and always, thanks for doing.
I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.

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Thanks for listening, thanks for being, and thanks for doing.

I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.