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First of All with Victor Blackwell

Federal Workers Brace For Impact Of Vow To Gut Govt. Jobs; FED Oversight Of Police In Question Ahead Of 2nd Trump Term; New Push For Washington NFL Team To Use Original Logo; Memphis Reacts To Justice Department's Scathing Report On Its Police Practices; Family, Lawmakers Seek Medal Of Honor For Doris Miller. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired December 07, 2024 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Ramaswamy to cut down on government employees dramatically could have a disproportionate effect on black workers and the government services that a lot of black Americans rely upon. That union leader will join us to explain.

Plus, consent decrees are how the feds keep an eye on troubled police departments. The Justice Department this week says that the Memphis Police Department needs federal oversight, but Citi says they don't want it. Is this a sign of what's to come? With the Trump administration set to take over soon, we have an expert who has worked with the White House on police reform to join us.

And why a senator from Montana is fighting to bring back this logo of Washington's NFL football team. The personal connection to one Native American family. So that is coming up, too.

AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: Will be watching. Have a great show.

BLACKWELL: Thank you very much. Let's start right now.

Well, first of all, there is angle of this debate over federal workers and cutting or moving the workforce out of D.C. That we have not talked about. And that's the potential impact on black wealth.

Now, the wealthiest majority-black counties in the country are right in that Washington metro area, Charles County and Prince George's county in Maryland. And the proximity, it's not a coincidence.

The median annual household income in Charles County is $116,882. In Prince George's County, it's close to $98,000, far above the national average of $80,610. That's all according to the census. Federal work has long been a ladder to the middle class for millions of Americans of all races, but especially black people.

Historian Frederick W. Gooding, Jr. has studied it. His book American Dream Deferred focuses on the period of 1941 to 1981 when the mantra in a lot of black families was, "Get yourself a good government job". And he writes about how the government allowed blacks more access to higher paying professional jobs at the time, certainly more access than they had before World War II.

And he adds that such unprecedented access to economic opportunity prompted Gloucester Current, a former top official of NAACP, to fastidiously call the federal government the largest civil rights organization in the country.

Now, today, black people make up close to 19% of the federal civilian workforce. In the private sector, blacks are 13%, which is closer to the percentage of the overall population.

Now, I'm not laying all this out to champion the federal government as some great equalizer, right? There are disparities in management and at the higher ends of the pay scales. And we know what's happening with DEI. But this is the context that we should all have when politicians and Musk and Ramaswamy debate massive cuts to the federal workforce. It's going to impact every family of a federal worker that it touches, regardless of race. But as the saying goes, and it applies here, "When white folks catch a cold, black folks get pneumonia."

The co-leaders of this proposed advisory commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were just on Capitol Hill this week. They're pitching their plans to members of Congress. And a key part of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's mission statement is.

"DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees and agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions." But here's what you could call some cold comfort from Ramaswamy this week to federal workers who could face firing because this wasn't.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VIVEK RAMASWAMY, Co-CHAIR OF PROPOSED "DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY": Because this wasn't about that wasn't really about ringing the biggest source of cost saving anyway gives us a lot of latitude to be able to treat those workers and their families in a respectful way, in a way that doesn't leave them in a lurch that might even be, by private sector standards, generous in transitioning. I think those are opportunities to both demonstrate respect to the individuals while saying that you, the individual federal worker, you're not the bad guy. But the existence of the bureaucracy that involves too many of those federal workers, that is what we're up against.

And I think if we're able to separate those two things, we're going to be successful in doing this in a respectful but also aggressive manner.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Everett Kelley is the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. His union represents more than 800,000 of the nation's 2.3 million civilian federal employees.

Everett, thank you for being with me. All right, so --

EVERETT KELLEY, NATIONAL PRESIDENT, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: -- this administration, through this new DOGE effort, wants to simultaneously dramatically reduce the federal workforce and make a rejection of equity its policy. And so when you combine those two things, what is the concern about the impact on black workers, specifically who are overrepresented -- represented in the federal civilian workforce?

[08:05:25]

KELLEY: You know, thank you, Victor, for having me, first of all. It's no doubt that the actions that this administration planned to take would disproportionately affect black workers, especially in the federal government. We make up about 18 percent of the federal workforce, you know, and about 13, 14 percent of the entire nation's population.

So when you start taking away 75 percent of the federal workforce, you know, that's going to definitely impact black workers and black communities.

BLACKWELL: I want you to listen here to the soon-to-be deputy White House chief of staff for policy. This is Stephen Miller. This is -- I wouldn't call it a threat. He calls it a promise once Trump is inaugurated.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHEN MILLER, INCOMING WH DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR POLICY: When Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20 and that new golden age of America begins, he's going to tell the federal workers of this country, who are paid for by your viewers, to get back into the office and do their jobs or find another line of work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: All right, so let's look at this from two angles about the return to work five days a week for those federal workers who were full-time in the office before the pandemic. Why not return now that the health emergency is over?

KELLEY: Okay, well, first of all, I think that we need to understand that the majority of the federal workforce never left the job site. There is only less than 10 percent of the workforce that work remotely. Over half of the workforce can't even work remotely because the job skills, the job requirement will not allow them to work remotely. So that's a misnomer. It's just things that people are saying with no factual data.

BLACKWELL: The speaker of the House, Speaker Johnson, said this week after meeting with Ramaswamy and Musk that it's about 1 percent of federal workers who are setting the security aside, who are showing up five days a week. And I hear from you that number is not supported by facts.

KELLEY: It's far from the truth. I mean, I just think they're just pulling things out of the sky to have something to say because the facts are what they are. And I would suggest that the partner of Elon Musk would sit down and have some conversations to really figure out what it is that federal employees do, rather than just pulling things out of the sky to say.

BLACKWELL: And so it's not just reducing the federal workforce. There is also this move to relocate some of these jobs outside of Washington. Listen to President-Elect Trump's promise.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We will continue the effort launched by the Trump administration to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside the Washington swamp. As many as 100,000 government positions could be moved out, and I mean immediately, of Washington, to places filled with patriots who love America and they really do love America.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: So after Trump relocated the Bureau of Land Management to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019, Washington Post reports that close to 90 percent of the 600 headquarter employees here opted to leave work or work remotely, and the latter might not be an option as we listen to Ramaswamy and Miller. Is 100,000 realistic? Is a tenth of that realistic in the next term?

KELLEY: It could be. You know, and the bottom line is this, you know, is that it would be devastating to this economy. It's an economic impact that would be unimaginable. And the thing about it is it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Matter of fact, you know, they started out talking about they were doing it for budgetary reasons and, you know, to cut costs. But then they say, you know, really, it's not about that.

Well, what is it about? Right. It's just about, you know, targeting certain people. It's about cutting programs, putting them in the state. It's about privatizing so that, you know, some people can, you know, make a dollar on the back of the American people and the services that they should be receiving,

[08:10:00]

Now I'm proud of the fact that the people that I represent are very patriotic people. They care because they want to be -- they want to call them bureaucrats. They want to call them names. But what it really is about, you know, it's about taking jobs away from, you know, doctors and, you know, that treat veterans every single day. It's about the lawyers and the scientists that make sure the air quality that we breathe is correct. It's about the people that inspect the food that we eat.

A lot of people don't even realize that only 50 percent of the chickens that we eat are inspected. And do they send those to whole food, those that's not inspected? No, they send them to the poor economy, they put the poor black communities, you know, and those that's who's eating those chickens and those meats that's not inspected. That's what this is about, you know, and we need to just be realistic about that.

BLACKWELL: Everett Kelley, thank you so much for your time.

So the original logo for the NFL team now known as the Washington Commanders was dropped in 2020. Four years later, could it come back? We'll talk about the push to use the logo again with the grandson of the man who designed it. That's next.

Plus 83 years after Pearl Harbor, an update on the years-long fight to award a hero from that day the nation's highest military honor.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:05]

BLACKWELL: Well, there's a trend on this that we're covering on this show and it's continuing now undoing changes in 2024 that were made back in 2020. Here's a new example.

The old logo of the NFL team now known as the Washington Commanders. The original name had long been denounced by Native Americans as a slur, but when the name was dropped in 2020, so was the logo. And Senator Steve Daines of Montana calls that a case of really woke gone wrong.

So for months held up a vote to advance a bill that extends the lease for RFK Stadium in D.C. over the logo. The stadium used to be home field for the commanders in D.C. And if passed, the stadium could be renovated. The senator recently allowed that bill to move forward and he says after conversations with the team.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. STEVE DAINES, (R) MONTANA: We've had good discussions with the NFL and with the Commanders. There's good faith negotiations going forward that's going to allow this logo to be used again, perhaps revenues going to a foundation that could help Native Americans in sports and so forth. We're making good progress.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: CNN reached out to the commanders for their take on where this stands. Team spokesperson confirmed there are no plans to bring back that loan.

For my next guest, the fight is personal. His grandfather, Walter Blackie Wetzel, was a member of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana and helped create the original logo. Ryan Wetzel joins us now from Montana.

Ryan, good morning to you, and first I just want to be clear that you are not pushing for the return of the former team name, just of the logo that your grandfather helped to create. First, tell me why and why now?

RYAN WETZEL, GRANDSON OF LOGO CREATOR WALTER "BLACKIE" WETZEL: You know, my grandfather, Walter "Blackie" Wetzel, was a tribal leader, and he was a strong advocate for our Indian people. And, you know, the number one thing that he wanted was for the United States to pay attention to what was going on Indian country. And he designed this logo to help represent that very thing for this logo to be on platform such as the NFL, and he, you know, to separate the name and the logo.

We are all about the logo and the return of the logo and utilizing that opportunity, you know, to benefit Indian country. What great opportunity this would be to bring this logo back and put it in a place of prominence and pride, because there's a lot of Native Americans out there that really take pride in this logo.

BLACKWELL: You know, something that I learned, admittedly as not a huge football fan, was that there was a logo for the team before the one we're showing. It was an R in a circle. And then your grandfather offered this. Do you know if he ever had any reluctance, any hesitancy about pairing the logo with the name of the team?

WETZEL: Absolutely not. You know, my grandfather was a pioneer of sorts for Indian country, and he viewed that name as part of how we identify ourselves. We were brought up in the Wetzel household with the understanding that we're part of the Red Nation.

Now, I have some family members that are divided on the name, and I respect that. But it's a small group of radicals that feel that name is inappropriate, and I respect that. But the number one thing is my grandfather Blackie wanted this logo there instead of this R, because like he said when he walked into the organization back in '71.

We don't want this R representing who we are as a person, as an individual, as a culture, as a traditional culture. We want a proud rendition of an American Indian warrior on the side of these helmets. And he did that, and it was very successful.

[08:20:10]

You think about this, we call it good medicine in our world. When they had that logo on there, they won three Super Bowls and played in one. So, you know, there's good history with this thing. And it shouldn't be banned. It should be celebrated and honored.

BLACKWELL: You call it a small group of radicals who don't want the name returned. When the Washington Post put out a poll earlier this year. Fewer than 20% of respondents wanted the return of the name to the team. Just adding that as context.

Your family met with team executives, NFL executives, they traveled to Montana. They then brought many of you to Washington. Where are the conversations now about what to do next?

As I said at the top, the NFL, the team rather says that there's no plan to return the logo to the team.

WETZEL: You know, I've had this question a million times, it seems, and again, the conversations are always going to be positive with the team in the organization, the NFL. I've been fortunate to interact with some of the most professional, well rounded people in the NFL in this conversation.

And you know, they've said no, it's not returning to what degree? And they're not specific on that. They don't really explain why. And that's why I remain hopeful here. I want to make sure that, you know, with this conversation that they are able to answer these questions. So I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep standing my ground like I did promise my father last year he was on his deathbed.

I said, you know, he said, Ryan, you're the next one in line for our Indian people. Let's be a voice. Let's stand strong, just like your grandpa Blackie. And that's what I'm doing. So I'm going to remain hopeful here and hopefully, someday we can see this logo back somewhere on this platform and benefiting Indian country somehow, some way.

BLACKWELL: All right, Ryan Wetzel, I appreciate the conversation. Thank you.

WETZEL: Can I -- I want to say thank you, Auntie Lana, she beat this Blackfeet made. So I want to say thank you.

BLACKWELL: Certainly, you just did. I appreciate it. Enjoy the Saturday.

All right, so what will police reform look like under the Trump administration? We may have just gotten a clue from the reaction in Memphis to that blistering report from the Justice Department on the city's police department.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: We may have just gotten a preview of the hurdles ahead for police reform in the new year. This week, the Department of Justice released a scathing report on the Memphis Police Department.

It says that the department "engages in a pattern of practice of using excessive force, conducting unlawful stops, searches and arrests and discriminatory policing of black people and residents with behavioral health disabilities." Now the reaction from Memphis officials has been notable. The city says it will not begin negotiations for a consent decree. It essentially refuses federal oversight.

Now, the police chief said they take the DOJ's findings seriously, but she said there was a lack of transparency of the findings. Memphis Mayor Paul Young did not push back on the report, but he said the federal oversight could slow the changes Memphis has already implemented.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) MAYOR PAUL YOUNG, MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: It's crucial that the city has

the time to do a thorough review and respond to the findings before agreeing to anything that could become a long term financial burden to our residents and could in fact actually slow down our ongoing efforts to continuously improve our Police Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Memphis PD is one of 12 law enforcement agencies the Justice Department has investigated under President Joe Biden. DOJ has released reports on three other police departments and finished investigations into two more. And right now it's investigating five other agencies and a division of the NYPD.

But people who support reforms wonder what will happen with those investigations once Donald Trump takes office again. During his first term, the DOJ rolled back the use of consent decrees and slowed investigations. The Justice Department officials say the work will go on.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REAGAN FONDREN, ACTING U.S. ATTORNEY WESTERN DISTRICT TENNESSEE: The mission of the Department of Justice is to protect civil rights for all people. So the career employees of the Department of Justice, the federal prosecutors of the United States Attorney Office, will continue that mission through any administration.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Let's get perspective now on this from Constance Rice. She is a civil rights attorney and police reform advocate. She was also on President Obama's task force on 21st-Century Policing. Thank you for being with me.

We've used the term ever since this report has come out from the DOJ, but I don't think we've ever defined what is a consent decree. Before we talk about the implications. Just give me what is it for the viewer.

CONSTANCE RICE, FORMER MEMBER, OBAMA TASK FORCE ON 21ST CENTURY POLICING: Victor, thanks so much for having me. Great question. Consent decree is basically the Department of Justice saying we found deep seated problems that are a pattern of practice that warrant federal oversight and they warrant a court. And what the federal consent decree does is it's a contract. It's an agreement that the police department says, okay, we're going to, instead of being sued, we will agree to enter this agreement and we'll go to monitoring and we'll make the changes that are listed in the consent decree.

So it's basically a drop down menu of changes in training, changes in deployment, in sort of mindset. It goes through all of those sort of surface changes for a department to be able to get out of the pattern and practice of the abuses that the Department of Justice has documented in its report. BLACKWELL: And so if the consequence is risk suit filed by the federal

government against, let's say, the Memphis PD, what's your interpretation of what we heard from the chief of police and the mayor this week that said, yes, it's serious, but we're not signing that contract?

RICE: Well, I think they can read the tea leaves. I think that they know that under the Biden administration that this unit in the Department of Justice that looks at police departments is serious and was given full throttle power. I think, I suspect, given what happened in the first President Trump administration DOJ that that'll be dialed back drastically if not eliminated. So I think they're banking on the fact that there won't be a lawsuit, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Baltimore, Ferguson, Louisville, Minneapolis, Baton Rouge, on and on, these investigations into patterns and practices, they all come after the high profile killing of an unarmed black person. Why does a person, and I've had this question for years, and I guess I'm asking again because I'm never satisfied with the answer, why do these investigations have to happen after a person loses their life?

RICE: Because that's the point at which the political pressure mounts. And I think you ask a really, really important question, which is, why do we keep having these things happen? Why consent decree after consent decree, high profile incident after high profile incident, and unarmed African-Americans and others being mentally ill folks being shot by police without cause or without sufficient cause.

So why are we always back here? It's because I think that the level -- the diagnosis isn't deep enough. It's kind of like sending someone with brain cancer to the hairdresser. A consent decree can take care of the surface stuff. It can't take care of the mindset and the mission.

I think that the problem with American policing is that we ask police to do a toxic mission and we don't change the circumstances on the ground so that they can behave differently. That doesn't excuse the grotesque abuses that you saw with George Floyd and with Rodney King, I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about your question, which is, why do we always come back here? Why are we always seeing problems?

And Victor, I think we're used to doing bad apples. We want to focus on an egregious incident, but we have a problem with the whole thing of what we ask cops to do. And I think we get a lot of -- if you ask cops to do containment, suppression in poor areas, in my neighborhood, we get concierge safety, in poor areas where there's high crime, high violence, sometimes gang domination, police go into those areas and they don't feel safe enough to do safety so they do suppression enforcement. And until we change that equation, Victor, I don't think you're going to get to the deeper issues. And the consent decrees can't reach to that deeper level.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I mean, the pattern is every time and I've named all the cities and we could go through more that when the DOJ looks, they find it, they find the huge disparities in the treatment of African- Americans and in this case, other people with behavioral health issues.

Connie Rice, thank you so much for your time and helping us understand what happened this week and what potentially is going to happen over the next four years.

Coming up, strong words from the father of Sonya Massey as the now former sheriff's deputy who killed her could soon go home before trial.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:38:26]

BLACKWELL: We've got updates now on several stories that we are committed to covering on this show. The family of Sonya Massey is rallying against the possible release of the former Illinois deputy who shot and killed her. Sean Grayson was responding to Massey's 911 call for help. An appellate court has ordered Grayson released with conditions. Now, Massey's father made a strong emotional statement.

He said he will always fight for his daughter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES WILBURN, FATHER OF SONYA MASSEY: And I want to tell you all that until a undertaker put some embalming fluid in this body, I'm going to fight to keep my daughter's killer in a jail cell. I don't ever want to see him walk free amongst any of us. As long as I have breath in my body, I would encourage the Illinois Supreme Court to keep that killer locked up. That's the best place for him. Cause it might be a problem if he gets out on these streets.

I'm looking at some of my white brothers, brown brothers, black brothers, they've got a message for you, Sean Grayson, come on out. Come on out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: The state's attorney's office is challenging Grayson's release, saying they are determined to keep him detained until trial.

[08:40:02]

An officer in Oklahoma City is facing felony assault charges for slamming an elderly Vietnamese man to the ground. Now, a warning, we're going to show you some of this video, it is disturbing. Sergeant Joseph Gibson and 71-year-old Lich Vu were arguing about a traffic ticket. Body camera video shows the moment that Gibson threw that 71- year-old to the ground after Vu touched him. Now the slam broke his neck.

Prosecutors say they determined the officer's actions were unreasonable, the use of force. And Vu has been in the hospital since the incident in late October. The Oklahoma City Fraternal Order of Police President Mark Nelson said the organization is sympathetic to Vu but was called the charges disappointing. Big blow to the efforts to end affirmative action at the U.S. Naval Academy may be temporary. A federal judge rejected a challenge to the use of race in the academy's admissions. The judge found, quote, "the military's interest in growing and maintaining a highly qualified and diverse officer corps is informed by history and learned by experience, and that a highly qualified and diverse officer corps remains critical for military effectiveness and thus for national security."

But the judge also said it's ultimately up to the president, and that president will soon be Donald Trump. The group Students for Fair Admission says it will appeal the ruling if necessary, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

The Medal of Honor is the military's highest recognition, but one of the heroes of Pearl Harbor has never been awarded it despite annual push. One of that hero's descendants is with us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:46:10]

BLACKWELL: On this day 83 years ago, an act of horror led to an act of heroism and there are a lot of people who feel that it still has not gotten the full recognition that it deserves. This story was first told in black newspapers after the attacks on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The Indianapolis Recorder shared an account of what some saw when the USS West Virginia was struck by the Japanese, "The ship's captain was hit and according to the article, two other officers and a Negro mess attendant stayed with the captain. The mess attendant was firing a heavy machine gun when the captain was dead and the three tried to leave the bridge, they found the lower part of the ship cut off by fire. The officers tossed a line to the bridge of adjoining ship and went over this line hand by hand, the last just making it as flames snapped the line.

How the mess attendant got away, I don't know, but he did."

This same edition of the paper also reported on the request by the NAACP President for President Roosevelt -- identified man. The NAACP pointed out that his heroism is especially noteworthy in view of the fact that Negro volunteers are accepted only as mess attendants by the U.S. Navy and give it no training as gunners or anything else. It is the African American press that would go on to discover the name of that Negro mess attendant, Doris Dorie Miller.

Miller would go on to receive the Navy Cross in 1942. He was the first African-American to receive the highest medal awarded by the Navy. And in 2020 he was the first African-American to have an aircraft carrier named after him. Only former presidents have that honor now. And there have been many monuments and tributes to Miller in between. The nation's highest military recognition, though, is the Medal of Honor.

And according to the office of Maryland Representative Kweisi Mfume, Congress has introduced a resolution every year since 2015 to posthumously award the medal to Dorie Miller. That has not happened. Dorie Miller's great nephew, Thomas Bledsoe is with us now. He's been helping to lead the effort to get this honor for his family.

I wonder, first on this effort, the 2024 effort to get this honor for your -- for Dorie Miller, what is the progress now?

THOMAS BLEDSOE, GREAT NEPHEW OF DORIS MILLER: So as a family -- well, one, thank you for having me here. And then I do want to thank the Doris Miller family for allowing me to be the speaker of the Doris Miller Foundation. So as of this year, we have worked tremendously hard on not only doing media, but then also there are a couple of new, sorry, a couple of new documentaries and also a movie. In addition to those two things, we have worked tirelessly sending messages and e- mails and letters to Congress to really try to help push this through.

The last letter that we sent was to President Biden about three months ago. And then we look forward to, of course, working with President- elect Donald Trump with trying to push this initiative forward.

BLACKWELL: Yes, Former Congressman Joe DioGuardi, now 84, he was influential in getting the very first World War I or World War II black veteran to receive the Medal of Honor. That was in 1991, I believe it was. He lobbied five presidents and he told an outlet that it might be overkill. And what he initially heard from the DOD when he went to them for an honor for Dorie Miller, there's now a barracks, a dining hall, a destroyer, also this aircraft carrier named for Dorie Miller. What is it about the Medal of Honor that sets it apart from these other honors?

[08:50:22]

BLEDSOE: Well, first I would like to acknowledge that the family is very thankful for those honors that have been stored upon Doris Miller. The Medal of Honor is a thing that we as a family, and it starts with my great grandmother, that has really pushed and knows that he deserves. And with that, it's a generational initiative. And so although, as I said, that we are thankful for those honors, it is something that our family and through generations have really fought for and will continue to fight for in order for him to receive it.

BLACKWELL: We've discussed in other contexts incoming administration's rejection of diversity, equity and inclusion, especially in the military. Do you believe that there might be some carryover of that philosophy into the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to your great uncle?

BLEDSOE: So, as a family, we try to stay above politics because this is bigger than politics. So, we really focus on what the end objective is, which is getting the Medal of Honor. I do believe there is resistance to that. Whatever that resistance is, we don't know at this time. But we are very positive and we know that we are fighting hard and we believe in our hearts that it will happen soon.

BLACKWELL: Your uncle was sent on a war bond speaking tour, first black man allowed to participate in that. His image wearing the Navy Cross was used on recruiting posters. He was -- then in 1944 Navy created a black officers training program. Before that, black sailors were only allowed to enlist. And this was years before Truman desegregated the military.

What role do you think that Dorie Miller played in all of that and the increase of blacks enrolling or listing rather in the military?

BLEDSOE: Yes. Thank you. So Doris -- we see Doris Story as really being a door opening opportunity. And his story resonated with people. And most importantly, it's not necessarily about being first, it's about being the person -- the first to show that it is possible. And so Doris's story really opened the door to a new look at what African- Americans can do above and beyond the positions that they were placed in the Navy.

BLACKWELL: Thomas Bledsoe, thank you so much for joining us. We'll continue to follow this effort for the Medal of Honor. And we'll be right back.

BLEDSOE: Thank you again. Thank you for having me.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:57:18]

BLACKWELL: A mom in California filmed herself as she checked whether she passed the state's bar exam. But things got really emotional. And she was not alone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RHIANNAH GORDON, PASSED CA BAR EXAM: Oh, my goodness. I pass.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: That's Rhiannah Gordon and her two kids, Flinn and Rhiley. Now Rhiannah is a young single mom, a domestic abuse survivor, and now an attorney. I spoke with her just after she was sworn in by California's Attorney General yesterday. She says she passed the exam on her first try. And that's after spending three years focused on studying.

And with two kids, that meant big sacrifices for the entire family. But there was a lot of support, too, including doing her homework at their sports practices. Sometimes Flinn and Rhiley would come to her law school classes. So, Rhianna says, that reaction that we saw was more than just happiness.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RHIANNAH GORDON, PASSED CA BAR EXAM: I was so scared to have to look them in their faces and tell them I failed. And so I was like, if you all just read it with me, if I failed, I don't have to tell you. So hoping that it was the right answer when we opened the screen. And it was. And so -- and I -- you know, the sense of relief that came in that moment was, I mean, everyone felt it, right? Like everyone can feel the joy and relief in that moment. FLINN, RHIANNAH'S SON: I was relieved. It meant that we didn't have to have that schedule again.

RHILEY, RHIANNAH'S DAUGHTER: I was really happy and excited. I knew that there was a lot of things to come. So, I just -- it was really -- it was amazing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Rhiannah says she's committed to public interest work at the California Department of Justice and is excited to get started. But she says this also means she will not be making a lot of money. Rihannah has set up a GoFundMe to help with the bills after racking up a six figure debt to go through law school. So check that out if you want to support.

Rihannah, Flinn, Rhiley, I see you. And if you see something or someone I should see, tell me. I'm on Instagram, TikTok X, Bluesky. If you missed a conversation or story, check out CNN.com slash VictorBlackwell first of all to watch anytime. And you can listen to our show as a podcast wherever you get your podcast.

And one more note here, do not miss "CNN Heroes, An All Star Tribute." Join Anderson Cooper and Laura Coates and learn who will be named the CNN Hero of the Year. That's tomorrow night at 8:00 right here on CNN.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you back here next Saturday at 8:00 a.m. Eastern. Smerconish is up next.