06/18/26

Good morning! It’s Thursday, June 18th.

National Sushi Day. Fun fact – I’m allergic to wasabi paste. Write that down in your fun facts about Kim journal. Put it on the Reddit threads. 

Tomorrow is Juneteenth and it’s a National Holiday so, spoiler alert for the end of the show when I tell you this, there won’t be a show tomorrow. So let’s put National Sushi Day on the back burner for just a second, it’ll have its day another time (actually, ideally it won’t – it should stay in cooler temperatures or eaten immediately) and talk about Juneteenth.

On January 1st, 1863, in the third year of the Civil War, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which meant that all enslaved people in Confederate states were free.

And on that, Union soldiers, many of whom were Black, spread the news, reading the Proclamation, in Confederate states. 

But in the Confederate states, there was (I presume) a lot of, like, “oh no”-ing going on. 

So that was January 1st, 1863.

The Civil War ended April 8th, 1865. It wouldn’t be until June 19th, 1865, when 2000(ish) union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas and VERY surprised to see over 250,000 enslaved Black people there. 

They read the now 2-and-a-half-year-old Emancipation Proclamation. And thus a quarter million Black people, who were free but their enslavers never allowed them to be, finally had that freedom enforced. 

Reconstruction followed from 1865 to 1877, during which 1,500 Black Americans were voted into different political offices in the country. 

In 1877, we saw the beginning of Jim Crow laws and poll taxes and literacy tests, specifically designed to keep Black Americans (mostly, although really anyone except for non-poor white people was treated to these laws) from casting a ballot.

Then, after protests and marches, a church bombing that killed four young girls, people being beaten within an inch of their lives on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and inches further in restaurants and shops and back alleys all around the country… the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups from being something that prevented folks from being able to cast their ballot. 

And that was great.

That was 1965. 

In 2004 we elected our first Black president, and in 2013, because it was the first chance they got, the Supreme Court cut a key piece of the Voting Rights Act, making it so much easier to create race-neutral discrimination laws. Which means like – “hey. We’re not trying to prevent non-white Americans from voting! We can’t do that! All we’re doing is… closing the only voter registration and DMVs in areas where we don’t see enough white people to feel like we won’t lose the election.”

Hours later, Texas implemented a voter ID law that the Justice Department previously said was illegal. Multiple times, actually. But previously they never could because the VRA had a provision that said if you’d ever disenfranchised voters before, you need to come to us before you make a change to your voting laws. Just to make sure they weren’t doing it again.

But cutting that section of the VRA, the math section of it, suddenly made it so Texas didn’t have to ask anymore. It wasn’t that the voter ID law suddenly didn’t disenfranchise voters, it was that the Supremes just made it easier to do so. 

And once that happened? Well, they were off to the races.

It’s 13 years later, and once again the Supreme Court has taken a giant axe to the VRA by making it all but impossible for minority voters to challenge racially discriminatory redistricting.

That’s the court this President built. This president that’s allowing UFC fighters to be wildly racist on the White House lawn while he tries to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion and pretend like Black history is not the history of America. 

But it is.

Black history is the bones and marrow of this country.

And nobody, certainly not a small, sad, petty man, and an administration too pathetic to stand up to him, will ever be able to erase that history. 

And now, the news.

Kohen Wiley

-via NY Times, National Diaper Bank, Michigan Law,

I have two stories today. There is more news, yes. But I have just two stories that I’ll be covering. I’ll cover the Iran deal on Monday – he’s already gotten a week of wall-to-wall press out of something that has been signed but really all it is is a memo for ending the war and a 60-day extension of the ceasefire, which includes the US lifting sanctions and unfreezing funds while Iran must open the Strait of Hormuz.

The story will keep until Monday.

Until then, this is an important story right now.

I want to start with an apology. I should have covered this yesterday. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t. Honestly, and this isn’t an excuse, I didn’t even find out it happened until my mom told me about it because hardly anyone else covered it. It’s not an excuse, it’s just more like… hey, everyone else should also be embarrassed.

On Sunday Kohen Wiley, a 1-year-old baby boy, was shot and killed by police who shot at a vehicle while they responded to a shoplifting call.

And I’m going to tell you that Kohen, as well as his mom and family friend, are Black and the officer is white, but I think you probably could have guessed that from context clues.

Given that Black people are 2.8 times more likely than white people to be killed by police. Despite making up about 13.6% of the US population, Black people account for 27% of those shot and killed by police. Of that 27%, 8% are unarmed (for context, 5% of white people shot and killed by police are unarmed. And for context on that context, white adults are roughly twice as likely as Black adults to own, or live in a household that owns, a gun.)

That data shows that police inherently view Black people as more violent. That’s not true, they’re not inherently more violent obviously, but the data shows that that’s how police view Black Americans.

And if your first thought is “Oh Kim, not all police.” Then hang on one second – why doesn’t that correlate to “not all Black people”?

To quote the inspiration for this show:

“Not all police.”

Well, enough police.

Also, enough police. 

Going back to Kohen. 

It’s not entirely clear what led to the shooting except that police were responding to a shoplifting call. What was his mom supposed to have shoplifted?

Diapers?

Cause man these god damn food stamps won’t buy diapers.

But it’s not even clear that the diapers were stolen – because the mom and her friend haven’t been charged with a crime.

And even if they did – what in the Les Mis are we doing? Let them have the diapers! Not only are there immediate physical risks when a baby is left in a diaper too long (including rash and infection), there are also long-term physical and psychological effects to not only the baby but the caregiver when a baby is left in a diaper too long. 

And we know this because there have been studies. Why? Because according to the National Diaper Bank Network, nearly half of families in America struggle to afford diapers.

“Well it’s their choice to have a baby.”

Not in 13 states! Love the fetus, hate the baby.

But again, going back to this story, we don’t know if Wiley’s mom stole the diaper. She wasn’t charged! She was just accused. 

And since apparently this episode is heavy on the data (hey if you’re new here, I have a Masters in Political Science so like… I do, sometimes, know what I’m talking about): while there’s no way to know, for sure, how many Black Americans are falsely accused of crimes, we do know that, while they, again, make up 13.6% of the population, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, they account for 53% of the 3,200 exonerations as of 2022.

And a peer reviewed paper from University of Michigan found that Black Americans are seven more times more likely to be 7 ½ times more likely wrongfully accused of a serious crime than anyone else. 

So again – we don’t know but, looking at the data, taking emotions out, it would be wrong to assume she stole the diapers. 

Now, there is a chunk of time that remains unclear (and the defense will likely try to make this period of time their whole defense but, as a nonlawyer, this time doesn’t really matter) between the mom being accused of shoplifting, getting into her car, and then police rushing towards the passenger side of the car, where Kohen and his mom were.

Before officers opened fire, the mom tried to make it clear that there was a baby in the car. 

There’s a small bit of footage that shows the passenger-side door opened for a moment but then shut as it drives off with officers after after it.

Chasing after it.

However, police say that the friend, who was driving, drove towards the police (stop me if you’ve heard that one before. Is that in the training manual at this point?) and that’s why they shot at the car. 

Full footage has not yet been released, and there are a lot of details missing. For example – how many shots were fired and how many officers shot? The friend that was driving was also critically injured, so at least two shots were fired. 

Police are generally not allowed to fire at moving vehicles unless the driver poses an imminent threat of deadly force.

I’ll again remind you that the shooting took place as the officers were chasing after it. 

In a statement, the wife of Kohen’s grandmother said, “Justice for Kohen.”

This case needs to play out fully through the court and the officers involved, especially the one that pulled the trigger, should never be allowed to wear a badge again.

But a 1-year-old was shot and killed by police because his mom was accused of stealing diapers. There is no justice here.

Georgia Republicans Push Back

-via AP News

And then the other story I want to cover is out of Georgia where Georgia Republicans—wait wait, I promise you don’t know what I’m going to say.

Georgia Republicans protected voters! Well, kind of. I’ll explain.

After the Supreme Court decision out of Louisiana, which said that now, as long as you just say you weren’t being racist when you were doing racial gerrymandering, the racial gerrymandering can stay, Brian Kemp called a special session and asked Republicans to redraw the Georgia maps. Kemp said these maps wouldn’t have taken effect until 2028. 

But then he also said state lawmakers should redraw their own districts. So, you know…

Shortly before the special session began, State Speaker of the House Jon Burns told Kemp that the vote would not take place.

Now, I want to be clear. 

The didn’t not take place because they suddenly had a change of heart and remembered they love democracy.

This happened because people spoke out. Privately, Republicans have worried that redrawing the districts would cause a backlash and they’d end up losing seats in the House. 

We have the power here. We have the power in November, where every single seat in the House, every single one of them, is up for grabs. And well as 33 Senate seats.

We’re fighting for every single one of them.

But before November. Right now. We have the power right now too. 

We have a voice. 

If Republicans in Georgia thought they could have gotten away with it this time, they would have redrawn the maps, they would have. But they would have done it in front of the hundreds of protestors that showed up to the state capitol on Wednesday.

And in Mississippi, a one-year-old baby boy was killed by police on Sunday. It didn’t make the news until Tuesday. And we still don’t have all the answers. But we will, because right now there are crowds outside of the Walmart where the shooting took place, and those crowds are demanding answers.

Because injustice doesn’t get to hide when there are millions of us pointing our lights at it.

In Galveston, Texas, around 2,000 union soldiers showed up to find 250,000 enslaved people. Legally free, but cut off from the rest of the world by geography and too small a Union military, a quarter million Black people continued to be enslaved.

They knew they were free, but no one had enforced the Emancipation Proclamation until then. 

My favorite quote is from Martin Luther King Jr – “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

But I think more apt, right now, is this from his first big antiwar speech, called “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

We have all the power.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of us. And our voices. All cute and standing up for each other. How about that.

But more than… no no. That would be WILD!

Hey, today is also National Martini Day and wow… after this episode, I definitely need one. 

But more than martinis. Because I love an olive, and I love that sometimes you’re a little salty, but no one has ever said “oh kim don’t you think it’s a little too early” when I order up one of your for breakfast (in this scenario, order up means just… you’re crossing my mind)… I’m proud of you.