Savannah Edwards is a TikTok influencer, blogger, and YouTuber. She had the nerve to push back on some of the race narratives, Savannah s Black, that were being fed by people like Alyssa Milano. And guess what? TikTok banned her.
00:27:07.020Can we talk about cultural appropriation?
00:27:09.660Because that's another big thing that I'm so sick of people lecturing me on.
00:27:12.600It's like we have a, like there's a costume party in our neighborhood here at the beach.
00:27:16.420Uh, we had it a couple of years ago where five families chose a different region of the world and offered one drink and one appetizer from that region.
00:27:26.700And people would dress up as the region.
00:27:28.780You know, our one friends did Russia in the 1980s and they were wearing like the babushkas and they had a bunch of red and they had pictures of Gorbachev and Reagan.
00:28:00.960And I'm like, I don't even know how to explain this to you without introducing concepts that you're too young to understand, but let's just do something else.
00:28:07.600And you tried to get at this after there was a white woman who was asking whether it was cultural appropriation to do something.
00:28:14.880Would you remember what it was that she wanted to do?
00:28:17.000I think she wanted to wear waist beads.
00:29:49.520If you go to different coastal areas like South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, like where I'm at in New Orleans, you can see a lot of that here.
00:29:55.480We've all brought pieces of culture from other places and created something that's uniquely American.
00:30:02.220And you have a lot of young people, I think, weren't taught the melting pot aspect of America, which is so strange.
00:30:10.080But with this particular video, I've seen a lot of people try to equate being Black in America to being Black in Africa.
00:30:20.760This isn't, you know, 1619 where slavery was just started and we were, you know, fresh out of Africa.
00:30:28.660You know, it's been several centuries.
00:30:30.440We have our own culture here in the United States that's completely separate from whatever goes on in Africa.
00:30:36.540It's 54 countries, 54 multiple different cultures.
00:30:40.740But I just keep seeing this trend where you have young white people who want to explore something different than what's their norm and then they get shut down.
00:31:21.380That it would be inappropriate of me to accept the offer.
00:31:23.880If a white woman decides she wants box braids, more than likely she's either going to go to a friend to get it done or she's going to go to an African hair braiding salon.
00:31:31.260Are you going to tell those African women they're not allowed to share their culture because it offends you, because you're bothered, because you're ignorant?
00:31:37.540I mean, a lot of these things that we're trying to gatekeep, like box braids, it's not even American culture.
00:31:43.980This is African culture that has been shared with women all over the world.
00:31:48.260African hair braiding is an entire industry over in Russia.
00:31:50.800And they've taken what was once just a traditional African hair braiding and turned it into something funky.
00:32:49.060Are they taking you to exhibits and shows?
00:32:52.100Are they taking are they are y'all traveling?
00:32:55.040Do they take you to the movies where you see something that's completely culturally different?
00:32:59.200When someone like you, you know, this that you're just bold in your thinking and your and your behavior and you look around, you see all this stuff happening with the culture,
00:33:06.100the cultural appropriation and the body positivity and the crackdown on, you know, all the monuments have to go.
00:33:22.260It drives me nuts, honestly, because it's like it's almost like all of this happened overnight.
00:33:27.240I don't remember the world being like this as I was growing up.
00:33:29.900I felt like I had freedom to kind of just be myself with like stuff like Alyssa Milano and even Black Lives Matter.
00:33:35.960I was having a conversation with some of my friends a couple of months ago, just catching up because I'd moved.
00:33:41.300And they asked me how I was feeling about all of the things and, you know, the different protests and George Floyd and all that.
00:33:49.220And I told them, I said, one of the most depressing things for me is before all of this happened, when people looked at me, I was Savannah.
00:33:56.360But now when people look at me, I'm Black girl.
00:34:00.420The first thing they see is the color of my skin and they wonder how to act accordingly.
00:34:13.380And it's like I just want to get back to the point where I can literally just live my life.
00:34:18.000I could travel and explore new things and buy artifacts and come back to my house and share it with my roommates or my mom or my brother and share people what I've learned.
00:34:27.900And then just I feel like we're not living.
00:34:44.800And they'll be tougher on the opposite end of it if they don't curl up into a ball and just give up, which is 99% of the time not what people do.
00:34:52.420They make it through and they're stronger.
00:34:53.880That's sort of the point I was making about Naomi Osaka, the tennis player.
00:34:58.800I know you don't like to talk to the press because they're annoying.
00:36:45.860So they permanently shut down my account.
00:36:48.420What happened was, because here's the thing with TikTok, is they're trying to make, they're trying to create ways they can better enforce their community guidelines.
00:36:56.780But what I think they're actually trying to do is to find more efficient ways to enforce their community guidelines, which has created an opening for people who can't handle discourse.
00:37:06.940So what people did was they mass-reported my account.
00:37:10.500And if you mass-report an account enough times, it triggers a ban.
00:55:02.060And so we will breed cows and we will get calves and then we will raise those calves on the cow.
00:55:10.540And then generally in the fall, some people will hold onto those calves after they wean them, which means, you know, separate them from their mother.
00:55:50.040So you're a rancher, you're in this business.
00:55:51.840It's not an easy business and it certainly hasn't been an easy business over the past year and a half for any rancher or farmer in the United States.
00:56:00.540But when, just talk to us before we got to the COVID year, how are you doing?
00:56:06.100So our markets are always affected by literally everything.
00:56:11.300Um, and so one of the biggest points that I would like to point out to the cow-calf and anybody in production cattle, um, is that our market is basically controlled by all the meatpacking industry.
00:56:23.980And so our market is, our packers, there's only four of them that make up over 80% of the meatpacking industry.
00:56:32.580So they can control our prices on what we get.
00:56:35.640And so, um, we've had a lot of weird things happen with the packing industry.
00:56:42.000And so prior to COVID, there was a fire at one of the packing houses and it sent our cattle prices through the floor.
00:56:51.960And it was just one packing house that was affected.
00:56:54.860And so, you know, it's wrong how many packers, how the four packers are basically gaining up and saying, you guys only get this much money, but we can make over a thousand dollars per head.
00:57:06.940And that's during the COVID year, yet we are struggling to even get a dollar profit on our cattle.
00:57:13.300And so, um, so prior to COVID, we had very up and down markets.
00:57:19.840And so like that year I'm referencing with the fire in Kansas at that production facility, um, or the processing plant, it really, it really kicked us in the knee and it hurt.
00:57:31.920And so we were going to having to deal with that and our market hadn't really recovered.
00:57:36.480And then we also are really affected by drought conditions.
00:57:40.000And so when mother nature doesn't give us the rain, the snow, any of the necessary water to grow plants on a rangeland or even growing crops, um, it affects our cattle market.
00:57:52.720And so when everything is extremely dry, producers are selling these animals to the market.
00:57:59.440And so our supply drastically increases.
00:58:02.340And so our price per head goes drastically down as well.
00:58:07.500And so in a few years, if people keep selling and selling, then of course, according to the law, supply and demand, your prices will go up, but we haven't seen that.
00:58:16.240And so the Packers are just making a killing and, um, it's wrong.
00:58:23.880So, so the government is looking at this and I know that there was some COVID relief in the, in the Trump plan, uh, that went out.
00:58:32.800But the, the argument here has been no matter what the relief is, whether it's COVID relief for ranchers and farmers, or it's been prior efforts to do something about the racial discrimination that's historic in this industry, it never quite works.
00:58:48.480It never quite winds up helping in particular black farmers.
00:58:52.840And so Biden comes in and says, all right, it's actually based on a bill that Raphael Warnock, the, the guy who won in Georgia, who everybody thought was going to lose, but he won, uh, and those runoffs, he submitted this bill and said, we, we got to give about $4 billion, uh, to black farmers and, and other farmers of color.
00:59:12.680As a remedy, as a remedy, as a remedy for past discrimination and, and really this law doesn't pay any attention to whether they are hurting economically today.
00:59:24.680So just by way of example, Megan Markle could turn some of her $16 million estate in Montecito into farmland and apply for relief under this, this law.
00:59:38.220And she would, she would get it because she has the right skin color.
00:59:40.840You, however, who've been in this industry for six generations, you know, you're, you've got a young kid, you've been struggling financially going into this.
00:59:49.020You can't get it because you have different melanin, even though you don't have Megan Markle's money.
00:59:53.800So let, let, let, let me bring in your lawyer will, because well, as I see it, you know, the justification from everybody is there have been decades, decades of discrimination, uh, by these federal programs.
01:00:08.140And there's no matter what they try to do, the funding never reaches farmers of color.
01:00:14.900And so this is going to allow them to go directly to the farmers of color and not only pay off their loans, but apparently they get 120% of their loans paid.
01:00:27.340So as we were reading the statute, we were thinking, okay, well, you know, I guess they're going to get their loans paid off.
01:00:32.280And then we saw the 120% number, which you'll notice is higher than a hundred percent.
01:00:37.620And the agriculture department has said, well, that's to cover the taxes because when we pay off your hundred percent of your loan, that's a taxable event.
01:00:46.040So now we are going to subsidize your tax bill as well.
01:00:50.260Uh, so that was interesting that you actually get a windfall from owing money to, uh, the farm service agency.
01:00:58.960This is just about whether or not you meet one of these racial classifications that has nothing to do with whether you contracted COVID, whether your farm or your ranch suffered from COVID, whether you suffered from discrimination by the USDA.
01:01:15.040Uh, you could have taken out your loan last year and all of a sudden you would be eligible regardless of circumstances for forgiveness now.
01:01:22.320So even in the heyday of affirmative action, I don't think I've ever seen a program that is this blunt and is this designed to divide us by race and treat us differently on the basis of that race.
01:01:35.660I mean, I learned back in law school that when you've got a program like this, if you've got, if you're trying to openly discriminate on the basis of race, which is definitely what they're doing, you have to pass.
01:01:49.500It's called strict scrutiny in the law in order for your behavior as the government to be upheld, to be allowed.
01:01:56.720And that is a very tough standard for someone to pass by design.
01:02:02.180It's basically there's a presumption that you've done something unlawful, right?
01:02:07.240If you're if they're applying strict scrutiny and you're making a race based classification, the laws is basically going to presume that you've done something you're not allowed to do.
01:02:17.140Um, and I'll analyze the law under basically you need a compelling state interest for doing it and has to be very narrowly tailored to the specific problem you're looking at.
01:02:32.100It's very hard to get your law upheld under that standard.
01:02:34.900So you tell me whether all the courts so far, these four courts, and I know you haven't yet got a ruling, but have applied this strict scrutiny and.
01:02:46.580And has it survived that initial scrutiny in any one of these cases?
01:02:51.900Well, the answer is no, it hasn't survived, which is which is good news.
01:02:56.420And I'll talk a little bit about a Tennessee case that my firm is also involved in a second.
01:03:01.220But the key there is that you and I took very similar law school courses because those cases all say that you cannot get out of this very, very demanding review just by pleading that your program is beneficial to minorities.
01:03:16.140So my firm, Mountain States Legal Foundation, litigated a case called Adirant in the 1990s where the government was saying it's OK to give preferences to minorities when handing out federal contracts because it benefits those minorities.
01:03:29.940And so that shouldn't be subject to the same type of review.
01:03:33.720That argument lost. It lost in the 90s.
01:03:37.160It has been the law for over two decades that regardless of whether you say your program is good or bad for minorities, it is subject to this very demanding strict scrutiny review.
01:03:48.880And the courts that have looked at this in Wisconsin and Florida and Texas have all said that's the law that applies.
01:03:56.160The government, to its credit, has acknowledged that, although they have resisted the idea that it's presumptively unconstitutional.
01:04:03.660They keep saying, no, we meet strict scrutiny.
01:04:07.020This is a very compelling interest and we are very narrowly tailored to it.
01:04:11.500So they are fighting back even on those grounds.
01:04:14.660That's the only that's really all they can say, because there is a constitutional ban on race discrimination.
01:04:20.800You're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race in the United States.
01:04:25.900But let me put it to you this way, Will, because I think some of our listeners will be thinking, well, we know that, for example, at the college level, some race discrimination is allowed.
01:04:35.540Right. Some not quotas, but race has been upheld by the Supreme Court as a factor, a sort of plus factor that colleges can use in deciding who who gets in.
01:04:47.280So it's not banned in all circumstances.
01:04:49.520And so why why couldn't you, you know, credibly say this is this is like an affirmative action program?
01:04:55.980Yeah, well, it's true that race considerations in higher education, for instance, are in some very narrow cases permissible.
01:05:05.980So in the Texas case a couple of years ago, where the University of Texas has a small racial preference, the Supreme Court said, you know, it's such a small preference and so unique to the student that we will go ahead and uphold it.
01:05:18.940In a Michigan case 20 years ago, they said the same thing.
01:05:22.100But those are cases where it's a factor of a factor.
01:05:26.180And the court has been very clear that you cannot have a quota.
01:05:29.380You cannot say, OK, we're going to admit 20 percent Asian-Americans and then 20 percent African-Americans and go on down the line.
01:05:36.720You have to give each person their unique evaluation before you can make a decision.
01:05:42.000So this program for farmers and ranchers throws caution to the wind and says, no, we aren't going to make any individual determinations.
01:05:49.060We aren't going to even look behind the curtain at what actually happened on your farm or ranch.
01:06:59.620So if you can't pass a law saying, OK, forgive the loans of the black farmers, because there really aren't that many, maybe 14000 in the United States.
01:07:29.140And in that case, they issued millions of dollars in payments to black farmers who had suffered direct discrimination.
01:07:36.060And so I'm not opposed to payments like that.
01:07:38.960The government says, well, yeah, but that payment wasn't enough.
01:07:42.200And state taxes ended up consuming a lot of those payments.
01:07:47.120So if they wanted to supplement the settlement agreement, that would be one thing.
01:07:50.980Or if they were saying, well, last year's aid, even though Nancy Pelosi's house was part of that process, didn't go to African-American farmers.
01:09:08.400That's not something that our Constitution permits.
01:09:11.040So you can be a black farmer who's who's doing well right now, who maybe just launched a year ago and you'll get the money.
01:09:19.000But you can be a white farmer or rancher who's been suffering for years, trying to make ends meet, trying to help Americans put food on the table and nowhere near as well off as my imaginary black farmer.
01:09:44.320So the loan had to had to have been taken out last year before.
01:09:47.600But yes, the answer is any any person could have been eligible for this loan, regardless of their individual circumstances.
01:09:55.600So what I mean, you tell me, Liesel, because I read that you wrote an op-ed in the New York Post and you said this law, Biden's law, is seemingly designed to racially humiliate Americans like me.
01:10:21.180I mean, you've been talking about the USDA's past discrimination.
01:10:24.880Well, a big part of it is women like me have been discriminated against, not me specifically, but women in the past.
01:10:33.780And they're completely overlooking that aspect of it.
01:10:37.080And so being a white woman who's recognized as being socially disadvantaged, it does humiliate me because I should be a part of that group.
01:10:46.100And then, you know, I look down at my neighbors who are struggling, who are barely getting by, and I don't know if they're going to make it another year.
01:10:54.140And it's humiliating to them because they don't feel like they deserve it enough either.
01:10:58.500And, you know, it's just completely wrong that they are doing this.
01:11:04.860And, you know, humiliation in so many ways of this is it's just wrong.
01:11:12.580And I wish that they would have done a better job of structuring this so it doesn't put us in this position to make us look bad, to make us look like we're needy, to make us look like it's a welfare payment or any of that.
01:11:38.840Well, I'm sure you didn't expect to be fighting a race war on top of, right?
01:11:44.060It's like no one wants to bring a case like this and sort of you're not trying to take away anything from black farmers and ranchers.
01:11:51.660You're trying to, as I understand it, to make this a more need-based analysis, which would ignore skin color, right?
01:12:00.820Or at least maybe it could be a factor, but you wouldn't be ruled out right from the get-go just because you weren't born with the right skin color.
01:12:08.840Well, the nature of these lawsuits is that sometimes you only have certain tools in your toolbox.
01:12:13.860So we've asked for the program to be stopped currently.
01:12:18.460And at the end of the day, if the government wants to expand the program to everyone, regardless of race, that's something that they could also do.
01:12:24.860Okay, but here's how Secretary Tom Vilsack of Agriculture has responded.
01:12:30.280And this guy, people should know, has his own history.
01:12:33.260He's been accused of not doing enough when he was in this role under Obama, and they don't think he was particularly supportive of the African-American community back then, including in this role.
01:12:43.600This is how he has responded to people like you, Liesl.
01:12:48.380It's a wonder where these farmers, or in your case, ranchers, were over the last 100 years when their black counterparts were being discriminated against.
01:12:56.860And we didn't hear a peep from white farmers about how unfortunate that circumstance was.
01:13:02.520He goes on, now we're having white farmers stepping up and asking why they're not included in the program.
01:14:46.380And so they're just picking and choosing.
01:14:48.220Yeah, they're choosing among different minority groups or historically disadvantaged groups in the agriculture industry,
01:14:53.880based on, you know, what Raphael Warnock proposed is essentially it.
01:14:59.040Can I ask you about this, though, Will, because you see this stat a lot that they say the vast majority of prior COVID farming aid
01:15:07.240and the Trump's and Trump's CARES Act went to white farmers.
01:15:10.660Historically, the loans have gone to white farmers.
01:15:15.840You know, the numbers are are overwhelming that it's been white farmers who have been helped
01:15:22.280instead of black farmers by the government.
01:15:25.580And when I look at the percentage, like you look at it on a percentage basis, it's never going to end well for the black farmers
01:15:33.620because black farmers, if they only make up two percent of agriculture, then they wouldn't get much more.
01:15:39.680I mean, the ninety five to ninety ninety five to ninety eight percent of the aid is going to wind up in the hands of white farmers and ranchers
01:15:44.960because that's how the industry looks.
01:15:47.260Fans of the new term that's going around called equity like to point to statistics like this,
01:15:54.720where it's like X X percentage of something went to non-whites and that's disproportionate.
01:16:01.980But here you're exactly right, where the vast majority, I think something like ninety five percent of farmers are white and ninety seven percent of CARES Act aid went to whites.
01:16:11.380But again, that was a racially racially neutral program that Speaker Pelosi had a strong hand in.
01:16:18.060I don't think there's an allegation that, you know, Speaker Pelosi's house was full of white supremacists when they passed the CARES Act.
01:16:24.320The argument about the hundred years really gets on my nerves, though, from Secretary Vilsack.
01:16:30.300You know, Liesl's twenty nine years old.
01:16:31.880She she wasn't around a hundred years ago to raise an objection when USDA was discriminated against discriminated against an African-American.
01:16:40.740But the program goes far beyond African-Americans.
01:16:43.660It also covers Asian-Americans and Native Americans, Alaska Natives.
01:16:48.120You know, it's hard for me to imagine the the mismatch that's going on between what Congress says actually happened and what this program does.
01:16:57.480Remember, these are people that actually got the loans.
01:16:59.460It's you know, it's very possible that people who suffer the discrimination don't have farms anymore.
01:18:11.860As I understand it, there are the four lawsuits.
01:18:14.400There was the one in Florida, which granted a national preliminary injunction.
01:18:20.060And that holds until there's a trial in the case, because the judge there, Marsha Morales Howard, said the Constitution's promise of equal justice under the law is that the government will treat people as individuals, not simply as members of their racial group.
01:18:33.460Citing a Supreme Court case from 1995.
01:18:36.200So if if this happens, like what what's going to be the first thing to actually throw out the law?
01:18:42.000When does the law actually get thrown out and redone or, you know, they try to do it need based however they need to save it?
01:18:49.140So to be clear, Mountain State Legal Foundation, my firm and another firm called the Southeastern Legal Foundation out of Atlanta have teamed up in both Liesel's case and then a Tennessee case called Holman, where we continue to await our own ruling on a preliminary injunction.
01:19:04.040So the Florida and Texas courts have issued preliminary injunctions.
01:19:07.900We would be the third out of Tennessee.
01:19:10.200So those orders, as you point out, Megan, do halt the program temporarily until the end of the case.
01:19:19.800And so the end of the case could involve discovery, whether that's interviewing Secretary Bilsack or trying to discover evidence from from the FSA itself in terms of what sort of money is in the pot, has to go through the legal process.
01:19:34.960And at the end of the day, you have a trial and and then you have a ruling from a judge.
01:19:40.020So if the judge says, yeah, there's no change, this was an unconstitutional program all along, all you do is make that preliminary injunction, a permanent one.
01:19:48.060And the program is halted. Congress or sorry, the USDA can't go forward.
01:19:53.220And then we have justice, you know, quote unquote justice.
01:19:56.860We we worked really hard. We spent a lot of time putting ourselves back to square one.
01:20:00.740Now, of course, the government could say, OK, we want to do something else with aid like a racially neutral policy based on need.
01:20:09.880But, yeah, the idea is that this program can't go forward as it is written.
01:20:14.660And the preliminary injunction preserves the status quo, the current status quo, until a judge can make a ruling on the program itself.
01:20:23.120So up next, we're going to talk to Liesl about how her ranch is actually doing and whether she's in danger of losing it if they don't see this relief law turned around or expanded to include those who are suffering financially.
01:20:38.320Keep in mind, suffering financially in large part because of what the government did.
01:20:42.100Right. So why isn't it helping all of them, at least those who need it?
01:20:46.400That's next. But before we get to that, we've got an exciting real talk for you today.
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01:20:53.600Which, if you're listening, you may care about as well.
01:20:56.440You may have heard that this week we announced an exciting partnership with SiriusXM.
01:21:02.020And I am really excited about this and I'm really excited about SiriusXM.
01:21:05.860So first and foremost, the show is is still the show.
01:24:07.400And I just want to say thank you, because without all of you guys, we wouldn't have been offered this opportunity.
01:24:12.540And, you know, the show, you know, you've heard me say it's doing well, but it's literally one of the top podcasts in the country, not just for news.
01:24:18.760One of the top podcasts in all of the United States.
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01:24:27.760And our exciting platform only grows as does our power, our influence and just the good times that we're going to continue having together.
01:24:37.280If they had to redo the law, you know, Biden and this Congress, could they could they pass something that is just need based that hat that allows a plus in the way the college programs can for race to acknowledge the history here?
01:24:56.480Would that, in your view, be constitutional?
01:24:58.160You know, I would need to see something before passing judgment on it, even though I'm a very judgy person.
01:25:09.240So it would definitely have a greater likelihood, again, given those affirmative action precedents where we saw courts say, well, you can put a tiny thumb on the scale for race if it's really related to a compelling interest and a narrow tailoring.
01:25:23.880There are the interests about diversity in college education.
01:25:26.860So I don't think you could you could use the same thing if a program were really about, you know, we want a diversity of farmers or diversity of ranchers that I'm just not sure how persuasive that would be to report.
01:25:39.660Well, you know, it's an interesting debate because now you get back into can you today remedy the harms of the past by some form?
01:25:47.740I mean, still, that is some form of discrimination against white farmers and ranchers who won't who won't get the thumb on the scale through no fault of their own.
01:25:57.080They're not the ones who made those decisions.
01:25:59.680You know, look at Vilsack when he was there under Obama.
01:26:03.220Right. So, like, Liesel made none of these decisions and she might benefit because she's a woman and she's hurting financially.
01:26:10.300But I do wonder, is it is it problematic to try to remedy historical discrimination in this way by making the current generation by dividing them based on skin color?
01:26:23.220Yeah, you know, there are court cases that say if it's really recent in time, then we might give you a little bit more leeway.
01:26:29.080Obviously, when you need to desegregate the schools, right, because they've been segregated, you might have to take into account race right after in order to desegregate.
01:26:40.060You know, Liesel is not responsible for decisions made in the Carter administration or the Johnson administration.
01:26:45.720Liesel is trying to do the best she can for her ranch right now.
01:26:49.080And even a minor preference, I think, would be objectionable for her.
01:26:52.900You know, I think that she ought to be considered at the front of the line because of the actual suffering that has happened on her ranch due to COVID-19.
01:27:02.860So if you're going to pass a COVID-19 relief bill, you ought to direct it at the people who suffered from COVID-19.
01:27:09.840Right. Let's not forget, that's what this was.
01:27:11.880This wasn't just general, you know, just a gift of money.
01:27:17.960And just before I go back to Liesel on that, a question for you, because it seems to me the precedent being set in your case, Tennessee and elsewhere, Wyoming, Florida and so on, could relate to the debate that's happening on reparations in the country right now.
01:27:34.540Where we're talking about future reparations programs based entirely on a person, on a person's race.
01:27:43.680I mean, it's essentially collective guilt, collective innocence, collective punishment and rewards, you know, over 100 years after the Civil War ended.
01:27:53.220And I do think the law that you guys are going to create here, or at least have affirmed if the Supreme Court follows precedent, could put an end to those types of bills or laws working their way through right now.
01:28:09.860You know, I have a feeling the government will do a better job trying to be a little bit more clever if it tries to do reparations than it did in this sort of last minute rush to get the American Rescue Plan Act signed in March.
01:28:23.680You know, I could see them saying, well, okay, we're only going to give the money to a descendant of a slave who, you know, was a slave from this year to that year.
01:28:32.520And maybe they'll try to say what's more connected to some of the past discrimination.
01:28:36.960I don't think that's going to hold up.
01:28:38.480You know, I do think any reparations plan is going to be subject to the same sorts of legal challenges that we're bringing here.
01:29:19.380Women were second class citizens and have been, it was reflected in the way we lived and the laws that we had.
01:29:23.560And there's only so much we can do about that now.
01:29:26.740You know, it's tough to go to this sitting government with people who were not born or around during those times and say, fix it just as a legal matter.
01:29:47.220And as you point out, you know, there have been lawsuits.
01:29:49.320Women have filed lawsuits in the past.
01:29:50.780And we had black people file lawsuits in Pigford 1 and 2.
01:29:55.040And that's a good way of trying to redress it.
01:29:58.080It doesn't always work in the moment, especially when you're dealing with a racist society or sexist society, which we were back then.
01:30:04.820So, yeah, I see the frustration of those weren't cure-alls because, you know, they were operating in a system that was against them to begin with.
01:30:14.400You know, you make progress bit by bit and it's tough to look back in a sweeping manner and say, you know, with a magic wand there, it's solved because we have this little thing called the Constitution that doesn't allow you to do this stuff.
01:30:25.740It's just because it wasn't allowed back then and they did it doesn't mean that we should now do it today out in the open.
01:30:45.620I was really, really nervous back in March when we were looking at our markets and they were going through the floor.
01:30:55.320And I was really nervous because, you know, we make our money on selling calves and providing beef for consumers.
01:31:03.840And when we have nowhere to market our animals, what do you do?
01:31:07.980You know, like you can only hold on to them for so long or because it's going to cost you too much money or you haul them to the auction house and you lose every penny and then you have bills to pay.
01:31:20.280And, you know, our industry is extremely hard because we literally buy everything at retail and we sell our animals at wholesale.
01:31:30.120And so, you know, that's really hard to, for the person who's not involved in our industry to understand because, you know, we have to buy vaccines, we buy medications, we buy feed, we pay for pasture, we pay for water, we pay for electricity, we pay for tractors, we pay for literally everything.
01:31:50.920And so many people benefit from our industry because we are constantly putting money into our local economies.
01:31:58.580And so when we had COVID happen, we still had to go buy everything, we still had to go do everything on a daily basis in hopes that our cattle would be worth something.
01:32:10.740And, you know, we were really rolling the dice, hoping and praying that the markets, we had at least hopefully make zero, you know, which is a terrible thing to hope, but, you know, you hope to break even.
01:32:26.780And so I'd like to tell you an example.
01:32:29.340So for the same time period last year at COVID, our animals were about 30 cents per hundred weight or $30 per hundred weight, which is like 30 cents a pound lower.
01:32:43.060So if you sold a calf that was 550 pounds, you would have lost, you know, a lot of money.
01:32:50.240And so to put that into perspective, like a calf was sold for $1.47, a hundred weight and at 550 pounds, that means we lost $110 just on that calf alone without factoring into any other expenses and crude that year.
01:33:10.420And so, you know, that's really hard to fathom.
01:33:12.420And so if you have a hundred calves that you lost $110 on, that's $11,000, that's a lot of money.
01:33:21.260And for most people, that's enough to make them completely go under and not have money to make those payments.
01:33:27.380And so last year, if the government did not have that CFAP money, I know us and a lot of producers would have really struggled because that gave us a little extra.
01:34:29.540And when you sell down an animal that you buy for a long-term investment, you lose so much money.
01:34:36.780And we were selling them in an extremely low market for those cows.
01:34:41.180And so just on the cow side of it, there's the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and Oklahoma State University put out a figure that for 2020 and 2021, you lost at least $250 per cow.
01:35:17.980And it's tough decisions that we don't like to make because what we have made our decision today will affect us five years down the road, 10 years down the road.
01:35:28.080It's not just this year that it's affecting us.
01:36:22.600And a few years ago, there was a horrendous blizzard in the fall and so many people lost their entire herds.
01:36:29.420And so every day we wake up, we are always at the risk of going out of business.
01:36:33.480And then when you throw the market issues in, of course, it's it's a real risk because you can't just keep throwing money at an investment and expect it to just keep losing money and losing money.
01:36:49.000Because if you're losing money, how do you feed yourself?
01:36:52.480And so, you know, it's extremely scary.
01:36:55.480And, you know, I am fortunate, like I said, to have a ranch that's been in our family a long time.
01:37:02.320But even though it's been in our family a long time, it doesn't mean that our family never struggled financially because my grandparents, they had to take out operating loans just to pay their to pay for groceries and to pay for fuel and to pay for all the other expenses.
01:37:18.180And they never were able to pay it off.
01:37:20.140And so those debts accrued through generations.
01:37:24.120And and that's what I get to take over is their debt.
01:37:27.360And, you know, I'm not just paying my debts.
01:37:30.320I'm paying their debts that have been for 30 years.
01:37:35.880You know, what what Vilsack is basically saying to you now is that where were your grandparents when it was even tougher for their black counterparts who weren't getting any loans at all?
01:37:44.660They just sat there and they they reaped the rewards of their skin color and they said nothing about how unfortunate it was for their black counterparts.
01:37:55.220And that's why he and the government are in the position that they're in today and having to pass a law like this.
01:38:01.520Think about how how silly that is to say that Liesl's grandmother, a great grandmother, should have been going to officials 75 years ago to complain about USDA discrimination when it was happening.
01:38:13.140And that's why they need to suffer discrimination, why Liesl needs to suffer discrimination today, even though the pandemic didn't discriminate when it affected Liesl's farm.
01:38:22.820Now the government says we have to discriminate because your grandparents didn't do enough.
01:38:27.640Now, like what if your grandparent did complain?
01:40:12.780And my experience is just having listened to Morgan, you get a lot of interesting insights on Marcus's background and their family when you listen to him and the two of them.
01:40:32.800And in the meantime, have a great weekend.
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