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First of All with Victor Blackwell

Hear What It's Like To Suddenly Have Your Life On Hold; Judge Puts Temporary Hold On Trump Admin. Cuts To Job Corps; Job Corps "Pause" Puts Lives On Hold Across The Country; H.S. Track Star DQ'ed Over Fire Extinguisher Celebration After Win; Hampton's Flood Grant On List Of EPA Projects Likely To Be Cut; New Opera Honors The Black Women Of The Civil Rights Movement. Aired 8-9a ET

Aired June 07, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

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[08:00:37]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: First of all, if you want young men and women off the corners, right, you want them away from crime, if you want them to be contributing and working members of society, they need skills to get good jobs and training, right? Is that a partisan view?

No government program is perfect. But even with its imperfections, a bipartisan group of people is now coming forward to say Job Corps is worth saving. Now, Job Corps provides training and housing to tens of thousands of young people. The Trump administration insists it does not want to shut it down entirely. Only Congress can do that. But the Trump administration does want to wind it down and move to close 99 campuses connected to the program.

I want you to watch here Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer as she's at a congressional hearing this week explaining why they want to pause their characterization Job Corps.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LORI CHAVEZ-DEREMER, SECRETARY OF LABOR: This program is failing to deliver safe and successful outcomes our young people deserve. At the same time, it costs an average of almost 20,000 more per year for a student to attend Job Corps than it does for a student to attend Harvard. Our nation's vulnerable young adults deserve better. And I am committed with all of you to achieving the safest and most successful outcomes possible. I want the best for this population because we need the skilled workforce, and they deserve it. And they deserve Congress and the Department of Labor, and every other agency head to work on this issue.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: So right now, the pause itself is on pause. A federal court temporarily blocked the feds from doing anything until a hearing later this month. But that's no comfort for the people who are facing this uncertainty about what this means for them. The program, students, and alumni. There are many different types of people, but what they have in common is their lack of income and lack of opportunity.

It is worth hearing from them, not me. I want you to hear from them about what it means to now have their lives on hold. They're in communities across the country, and let's start in San Bernardino, California.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUIS RAMIREZ, CENTER DIRECTOR, LONG BEACH JOB CORPS: They're asking if they can come home, and the situations are just not possible for some of these students and for some of the parents that also themselves might need resources. The students that did leave, we're hearing that they're reaching out to community services and that they're struggling.

DOMINIK RODRIGUEZ, JOB CORPS STUDENT: Society, like, just gave up on people in my situation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Let's go to Phoenix now, where we heard about the role of Job Corps as a lifeline.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARMELA MUNOZ-COTA, PHOENIX JOB CORPS GRADUATE: When I first came to Job Corps, I had nothing. I had nothing but a trash bag of clothes with me. That's all I had. That's the only opportunity these kids have ever received in life, and now it's getting taken from them. It's going to affect everyone because now these kids are going to go back to broken homes, they're going to go back to violence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Hawaii, where we heard about how the program is a way to find a career.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAHITI CROPWELL, JOB CORPS GRADUATE: For this, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't really have a set plan. But Job Corps provided so many opportunities, skilled training.

MARIA KUUPOMOI, JOB CORPS GRADUATE: I had the opportunity to finish. But to those other people, future generations, and all the other students that can't, that is just devastating.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Fargo, North Dakota, where we heard about what it was like to now suddenly have your life upended.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BRCE YOUNG, CAREER TRANSITION SPECIALIST, JOB CORPS: Literally

learning on Friday, I'm going to lose my job sometime this week. And then learning, literally today is the day that gives me two days to figure out my entire, and figure out how to provide for my whole family. I don't disagree with a couple of the events, but the way things have been carried out, the plans of action and the lack of help for those just affected, that's what's really affected me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Atlanta, we heard about how this limbo affects students long term.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LORRAINE LANE, FORMER EXECUTIVE CENTER DIRECTOR: This is beyond devastation. This is reinforcing trauma that some of these students have been working to overcome.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Sedro-Woolley, Washington. We heard about how success, even with the extra hand takes work.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATE CAULEY, JOB CORPS COUNSELOR: They've worked so hard to get to where they're at and they're losing it all, it's just, it's really sad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[08:05:05]

BLACKWELL: Clearfield, Utah, we heard about how it'll take even more work to succeed if the program gets gutted.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW MOSES, JOB CORPS STUDENT: You know, a lot of people, they don't really find what their purpose is in life until they have to, like, they hit rock bottom and they have to get it. That's what it is for a lot of us. Right now. We're at the bottom. Now it's time to get after it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: The National Job Corps association took legal action this week to stop the closures. Donna Hay is the group's president and CEO. Thank you for coming in. And your lawsuit is in part, why there is now this pause of the pause on the program.

Let me start here, 2023. And the job corps association named then Congresswoman Chavez-DeRemer a Job Corps champion. And here you are in a photo with her. And she posted, "I'll continue doing my part to expand education and career training opportunities for students." That was 18 months ago. What happened?

DONNA HAY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL JOB CORPS ASSOCIATION: Well, we understand that this administration has a priority in terms of ensuring that there is efficient and effective usage of the taxpayer dollars. And I don't know that there are many people that would disagree with that. And I think that it's really just a matter of understanding how that's done, right? What the decisions are and how informed they are in making that decision.

And so our interactions with Congresswoman Deremer throughout her time have shown that she is and has been dedicated to the student population, and that currently there are opportunities for us to align with her. And we're looking forward to working with his administration to really show and demonstrate the ways that Job Corps not only aligns with, but supports the economic priorities currently at place.

BLACKWELL: Let me play more from this hearing of the House Committee this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHAVEZ-DEREMER: I want to be clear. The decision was not to eliminate Job Corps. Only Congress can eliminate Job Corps.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I appreciate that, and I'm going to follow up on that. But I need to know what role DOGE had in this report, this Job Corps transparency report.

CHAVEZ-DEREMER: The Department of Labor does have the delegation and authority to halt those center contracts, including program operations for Job Corps.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What role did DOGE have?

CHAVEZ-DEREMER: I know.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sorry, Madam Secretary, I just wanted answer. What role did DOGE have in that report?

CHAVEZ-DEREMER: Thank you, Congresswoman. Based on what you just said in the last statement about the TRO that was given last night, it actually gives me great pause that I cannot discuss the details.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But did DOGE write the report?

CHAVEZ-DEREMER: The Department of Labor, the Government Efficiency employees, or Department of Labor employees. So if you're asking me about DOGE is in Department of Labor. Yes, they're in every agency.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And did they participate in writing that report?

CHAVEZ-DEREMER: We were together and working with that report.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: It took a while, but she got there about the role of DOGE there. Is this primarily a DOGE pause, as they call it, or is this a political partisan element? Because we know that President Trump wanted to shut down Job Corps in 2017. What's your view?

HAY: Our view is that regardless of what the impetus is, we're focused on the impact on the tens of thousands of students who are in limbo at this time, regardless of any other factor external to what is causing the situation. The fact of the matter is we have 20 percent of those students, thousands of students who are formerly homeless or in foster care and literally have no home to which to return.

BLACKWELL: And so where do they go now if they can't stay at these, the housing, the residential programs?

HAY: Well, over the past week, what we saw was that those who operate those campuses were very intent on trying to find alternative shelters and opportunities for those students to be housed. But the fact of the matter is that's hard to do on a short-term basis. And so it really did create a situation. And you saw some of the students speak to that, where in some cases they sent students home to those who did have a home, and found that they were put out the next day and were again homeless.

And so really what it focuses on now in terms of looking forward is that with a temporary restraining order in place, it's an opportunity for us to continue conversations with the administration about ways that we can collaborate in looking at reform, removing unnecessary types of regulations that have encumbered the program.

BLACKWELL: Well, let's talk about some of the challenges that they highlight. The Department of Labor put out this, as they call it, transparency report in which they say that the graduation rate average is 38.6 percent, far behind four year colleges, four year high school, North American trade schools, average cost per student $80,000. And they highlight 14,000 serious infractions. But 372 of sexual behavior, sexual assaults, 1764 acts of violence reported drug use, 2,700 hospital visits, 1,800. That's in the 2023 year.

[08:10:02]

So what do you say to those numbers that if you've got three out of five who aren't making it through the program, is the program not living up to the promise?

HAY: Well, I'm glad you cite the year because context is incredibly important. That data looks specifically at post-Covid numbers that are not reflective of where the program currently is. Prior to the pandemic, the graduation rate was over 60 percent. And with this student population, which in 2019, we saw 57 percent of those students come into our program without a high school diploma or equivalency, almost 60 percent. We also see that this year, 20 percent of them, as I mentioned, came in homeless or from foster care.

And so when you look at that population and see that actually looking at pre pandemic numbers, the graduation rate was over 60 percent, that's phenomenal and outpaces what would typically happen with the student population. The cost per student is also a number that, because of the year that was looked at, is incredibly inflated. During the first Trump administration, one of the own. One of the administration's own reports showed the cost per student is actually $57,000 per student, which much below what you see at community colleges or equivalent institutions, considering we house those students 24 hours a day. We feed them three meals a day, we provide them with counseling and health care and resources and clothing that they otherwise wouldn't have.

And so when we look at the cost per student, why it's inflated now, it's because, or in that report is because again, it looked right after the pandemic, after all of the students had been sent home, it was slow bringing them back. And the fact of the matter is, when you look at facilities like dorms and cafeterias, whether you have 5,000 students or 50,000 students, it costs the same amount to run those operations.

And so clearly, when there were fewer students on campus, the cost per student was higher. So if you were to look at that same data this year or the year prior, you would see much different outcomes. It really is a matter of looking at the data in proper context.

BLACKWELL: Donna Hay, thank you so much for coming in.

HAY: My pleasure.

BLACKWELL: All right. Never say never. After claiming it was impossible to bring back a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, Kilmar Brago Garcia is back in the U.S. now to face charges. There is a lot the government is alleging, and a member of Abrego Garcia's legal team is here to react. That's next.

Plus hear from a high school sprinter who lost her track title because of how she celebrated her coach and father. They think race might have played a role. They join us live ahead.

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[08:17:15]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAM BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: He's in El Salvador, and that's where the President plans on keeping him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Well, that's Attorney General Pam Bondi speaking about a man mistakenly deported to El Salvador all the way back in April. Well, now Kilmar Abrego Garcia is back in the United States, and he's facing federal criminal charges. And the Attorney General was asked Friday what changed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BONDI: What has changed is Donald Trump is now President of the United States, and our borders are again secure. And thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Abrego Garcia, this investigation continued with actually amazing police work. And were able to track this case and stop this international smuggling ring.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLACKWELL: Well, as you probably already know, Donald Trump was president in April 2. The charges Abrego Garcia faces are for conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain. But the attorney general laid out several more allegations at her news conference.

Ben Osorio is here to respond. He's a member of Abrego Garcia's legal team. Ben, welcome back to the show. I want to play more from the attorney general here from that news conference. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BONDI: The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring. They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children, and women. He made over 100 trips. The grand jury found smuggling people throughout our country. MS-13 members, violent gang, terrorist organization members throughout our country.

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BLACKWELL: Your reaction to what you heard there?

BEN OSORIO, ATTORNEY FOR KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA: So I think that's a mischaracterization of what the grand jury found. If you look at the actual indictment, there's a lot of allegations in there. But then the only charges that are supported regard to the 2022 stop, and if she's going to allege that there's more enforcement on human trafficking or human smuggling. Now, I would note that the indictment says that the start at in 2016. I'm pretty sure Donald Trump was president from 2016 to 2024 of the years that they alleged that this activity was happening.

BLACKWELL: Did you know that your client was returning to the U.S. that his return was imminent?

[08:20:04]

OSORIO: We had heard that the grand jury proceedings were taking place in the Middle District of Tennessee. They were under seal, so we couldn't necessarily confirm, but we had been told that was the likely result and that they -- that he would be extradited back to the United States as a result of the grand jury findings.

BLACKWELL: Let's talk about these charges. Two criminal counts, despite all of the things that the attorney general said at that news conference, as I said, conspiracy to unlawful transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain. Abrego Garcia's wife said back in April that her husband transported groups of workers between job sites. Did those workers pay him? Did the employers pay him? Is there a

direct line from his knowledge of their status in the country, his being paid to drive them from their homes to a job site, and supporting one of these criminal charges?

OSORIO: So I guess I want to be clear about a couple of things here. One, we only represent him on his immigration proceedings. He's currently been appointed a federal public defender to represent him on the criminal charges. Two, I am not a criminal. That's not my practice area. I practice only immigration. I did review the indictment, kind of see the allegations and the charges themselves. So I can answer sort of basic lawyer questions. But I, you know, I really defer to his criminal counsel to answer what he knows, what he doesn't know.

The last thing I would say is we are just going to be able to speak with him for the first time this weekend. So we've not had an opportunity yet to discuss the facts, to discuss history with him, and whether there's any veracity to these allegations. What was the nature of that stop on 2022? What was he doing? So we just haven't had that opportunity yet.

BLACKWELL: I appreciate the clarity there. There was this resignation from the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Tennessee. His name's Ben Schrader. Let's put up the statement that he posted on social media at about the time of the grand jury indictment.

He said, "It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing in the right way to for the right reasons." And sources now tell CNN that this resignation is related to this indictment of your client. Your reaction to that and what role will this play, if any, moving forward in the case?

OSORIO: Well, I think the timing of both the indictment and the resignation says it all. I mean, it implies that these charges were bought for political reasons and not really in the interest of justice. So, again, I hope that Mr. Abrego Garcia gets all the due process in his criminal proceedings that he didn't get in the episode he just went through, and being returned to a country he had protection from. So, you know, I think it's very obvious on its face that this is a political move, and that's why these charges are being brought now.

BLACKWELL: And as you are as immigration attorney, the attorney general says that if he's convicted, of course, he will serve his sentence in the US and then be deported to. Will that be deported back to El Salvador, where the immigration judge initially said that he could not be deported because of concerns about persecution?

OSORIO: I think that there's going to be great implications from the results of the criminal case on his immigration status. Right now, he still currently enjoys that protection from being removed to El Salvador. However, there is a process if the government wants to go through it again. That's what this whole thing has been about, due process. If you want to remove him to El Salvador, you can reopen his immigration case, remove his withholding protection, and then try to send him to El Salvador.

If you want to try to remove him to a third country, you have the right to do that. Nobody's saying that, but we're saying you have to go through the correct process. If you want to convict somebody of murder, you have a trial to do that. We don't immediately shoot them upon arrest. That's not how our constitution works.

BLACKWELL: Ben Osorio, thanks so much. Coming up, was it clever or unsportsmanlike? A community in California is rallying around a high school track star who was stripped of her because of how she celebrated that sprinter and her coach, who is also her father. They're with us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:50]

BLACKWELL: A California community is backing a high school track star who lost out on a state medal because of how she celebrated. 16-year- old Clara Adams of North Salinas High School won the 400 meter final last weekend with a time of 53.24 seconds. Now after she left the track, she celebrated by using a fire extinguisher to extinguish her spikes.

Now this was an homage to Olympian Maurice Green who first did a version of this celebration back in 2004. The crowd seemed to like it, but officials from the California Interscholastic Federation CIF, they did not. And they said the celebration was unsportsmanlike. They disqualified her, kept her from running in her next event. We emailed the CIF to get comment from them. We didn't hear back. But support for Clara and efforts to get her title reinstated, they've been building since then.

And joining me now are Clara Adams and her father, who's also her coach, David Adams. Welcome to you both. First, whose idea was the celebration?

DAVID ADAMS, CLARA'S COACH AND FATHER: There's a mutual, you know, watching YouTube, saw Marie screen. I was showing her the sprinters I used to watch growing up and that one really caught her attention. I liked it because it was one of my favorites. And at the time, I guess no one made a big deal about it. He wasn't ridiculed for it. He was celebrated for it.

And we know in this country the way people feel overall when males celebrate versus females celebrate now, they act, marketing themselves, things of that nature. And that's kind of the thing now about being marketable. Boring. Just doesn't get it anymore.

And people like to see a good show. We didn't see any harm in it for. Especially for the simple fact that Clara wasn't disrespecting anybody. She wasn't showing up her opponents because her opponents were gone off the track. This happened after the race, far after the race. So we thought were in a safe place. And I didn't have the track as well, so. Because here we are now. VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: And Clara, let me come to you. When and

how did you find out that you'd been disqualified and you want to lose that gold medal?

CLARA ADAMS, SPRINTER, NORTH SALINES HIGH SCHOOL: It's not too long ago after I did and what I did and pretty much they just told me and didn't really go into depth about it and refused to talk to my dad and just left me.

BLACKWELL: And what did you feel, Clara, when you heard that. That you'd been disqualified?

ADAMS: Just a lot of negative emotions. Just really disappointed. Didn't really believe. Was not a good feeling.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I can understand. David, you've said that you believe that this disqualification was racially motivated. And just at the start of this interview, you have invoked gender as well. So what supports first the belief that this was racially motivated?

D. ADAMS: I mean, if you're there, you look around, you look at the officials that are on the floor on the -- actually the grass area where they, you know, they walk around. They're all white. All of them are white. And I just feel like they take offense to when, you know, there's history in this country about celebration. You know, if Clara was a pretty white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, I don't think it would be an issue. They'll probably celebrate it, and they would probably say, hey, this is the Maurice Green tribute.

You know, this is what he sweetie did type of thing, you know, because when a white. When a white girl, white boy, when they -- when they celebrate, the media deems him as being passionate and it's good for the sport. But when, you know, a black kid or a black boy or girl do it, or a brown boy or girl, do it. When they celebrate, you know, it's frowned upon is it's now it's unfortunate, like conduct, you know, and it's like -- if it can't be good for one, it should be good for all.

And we know, you know, this is not something I'm just making up. It's just history in this country when it comes to celebrating. It's like, you know, when it's -- they want our -- when they don't -- they don't like when we celebrate ourselves, it seems like it triggers them when they -- when we celebrate ourselves. And those people, those officials, they're older, they're from another era. And when I say culture, I don't mean by race, I mean by another time.

This is 2025. You can tell those people have been serving and beneficial for the past 35 years just by looking at them.

BLACKWELL: And so I just want to be clear -- and I want to be clear here, just so I understand your position, is that because they were all white and because of the general, would you say, culture and history in the country, that is why you believe it's racially motivated, not because of anything they said specifically or did that day.

Not to discount your accusation, but I just want to make sure that I understand the framework in which you make that accusation.

D. ADAMS: Excuse me. Well, we didn't get into that part. They over exaggerated the way he treated her. They were screaming at her. One official grabbed her by the arm. Why are you touching my daughter for? You can say what you want, but you don't have to be -- you don't have to be grabbing her by the arm. That's already a violation right there. So why would I not think anything else? That was a white girl, you think they would have grabbed her by the arm and screamed in her face like that? Do you believe that?

BLACKWELL: I don't believe that. I don't know these people. I don't even -- I don't know the CIF. But, David, let me know -- let me ask you this.

D. ADAMS: I don't know either.

BLACKWELL: There are lots of people who now believe that the medal and the title should be reinstated. What recourse, what avenue do you have? What is next in this process more than just petitions and statements on social media? Is there anything you can do to get the title reinstated?

D. ADAMS: What we're doing right now, we try to contact CIF. Just like they didn't respond to you, they're not responding to us as well. We have a legal team now and they've taken over that part of it. So I don't have to make any phone calls or send any emails. They're doing that on our behalf for our family and for Clara. They're not responding.

And, you know, we're giving them an opportunity before we take it to the next step because we don't want to go to that next route. And then they say they didn't give us a chance to make this right.

[08:35:00]

So there is a window of opportunity. But you know, that window, with due time, that window closes. And we're trying to give them an opportunity to say, hey, maybe we overreacted, you know, maybe we took it too far. Because, you know, not only they stripped over the 400 of a celebration that was done after the race was ran. You can't take that away. You can't erase the fact Clara did run that race.

They also stripped her from the 200 where Clara was a favorite in that race as well. She was a number two seed. And they took that away from her, too. And we didn't find out about that until about maybe seven minutes before the race.

BLACKWELL: And so you say --

D. ADAMS: I thought that was so wrong.

BLACKWELL: You don't want to go to -- I apologize for interrupting that. You don't want to go to the next step. Is that next step a lawsuit?

D. ADAMS: The next step, sir. That's the next step. If they can't make this right and reinstate Clara's champion status, then we'll have to take it to the next level. But again, like I said before, there's time. There's a window of opportunity for us to make this right. That's all we want to do so we can move forward. To be honest with you, we want to get this out, you know, behind us and we can just move on and go to things we have, you know, moving forward.

BLACKWELL: Clara, I want you to hear from Maurice Green, who, as we said, sprayed down his shoes after he won the hundred meter in oh four.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAURICE GREENE, FOUR-TIME OLYMPIC MEDALIST: Was away from everyone and not really interfering with anybody. I was a reinstator.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: What's your reaction to having him say that?

C. ADAMS: I mean, that just helps. I mean, having support from the person who actually started that is very -- just gives me a peace of mind and it kind of makes me feel better about the situation. Regardless. I really didn't do nothing wrong to nobody, and I just -- disappointment.

BLACKWELL: All right, Clara and David Adams, thank you for your time this morning. We'll be following this story. Enjoy the Saturday.

A historic black community in Virginia says that their neighborhood has flooding problems. But a government grant to help fix that was just cut. Why a local leader says that what's happening is unjust unlawful, and places residents at risk.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:41:59]

BLACKWELL: You know what we spend our money on as a country, as a family, as an individual says a lot about what we care about, our priorities. Should helping a community deal with flooding be one of them? So in the city of Hampton, Virginia, there's a historic neighborhood. It's called Aberdeen Gardens. And they say it's the only community in the country designed by a black architect, built by black laborers specifically for African Americans back in the 1930s.

Now Aberdeen Gardens also has a flooding problem. There was hope that a recently awarded $20 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency would help fund solutions. But now leaders of that project say the Trump administration has canceled that grant.

Mary-Carson Stiff is here with us. She's executive director of Wetlands Watch, which had partnered with the city of Hampton to improve the infrastructure there in the neighborhood. Mary-Carson, thank you for being with me.

This funding had been paused for some time, but now it is officially terminated. Your reaction to the reversal?

MARY-CARSON STIFF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WETLANDS WATCH: Thank you. Thanks for having me on. We're devastated by the reversal. There has been so much work over the past four years to actually line up projects that the community wants to see implemented in the neighborhood to reduce risk.

We've been actively partnering with the civic organizations that represent the residents in the community to ensure that everything that's been proposed in the EPA grant was going to be welcomed by the community. And the grant was awarded in 2000, in this past December. And everything was looking good. The community has been so excited about these resources coming in.

And there was a lot of back and forth, like I think a lot of people describe right now with the administration about it being paused and then the emergency injunction kind of unpausing. And then finally we received a cancellation letter this past night.

BLACKWELL: You know, there are probably some people at home wondering why are we talking about a local flooding issue in a small community? And just as a few weeks ago we talked about a community in Alabama that for years had sewage flooding into their front yards. And that was reversed because of DEI.

This is now reversed, maybe for a different reason. But this is emblematic of what we're seeing in, you know, seven figure, eight figure projects across the country that are being reversed in the transition from one administration to another. Is it clear why this was reversed?

STIFF: Well, I think we think it's clear. I mean, I think that the administration has offered no real justification other than that the project does not go along with their, you know, their agenda, their goals for the administration.

[08:45:02]

But to us, you know, they singled out all of the EPA Community Change grants because of their focus on underserved communities, their focus on environmental justice issues, and neighborhoods that are uniquely challenged by environmental justice issues.

So to us, that's why it's been canceled. And you know, they can waiver all they want in terms of their reasoning that they send in a stock email to the grantees. But what we're really talking about is that they don't want to fund communities that are mostly.

BLACKWELL: You know, I pointed out earlier that this is the only of those New Deal communities, the resettlements of the 1930s, that was designed by, built by and built for black families. And so as this flooding continues and the damage compounds, what does the country lose more than just Aberdeen Gardens with the problems continuing?

STIFF: So one of the things that we've been really proud about, working with the community leaders in Aberdeen Gardens, is this community led approach. So, when it comes to climate change impacts, all the impacts are felt at the parcel level. They're felt by individuals like you and me, like communities where people can't access their front door because the streets are impassable, because the stormwater pipes are designed too small to accommodate this increase of rainfall.

In Virginia, it's about an 18 percent average increase in rainfall intensity, duration and frequency since 2006. They also are having issues with -- residents are having issues with erosion of their property along a creek that runs through the community. This erosion of land, which is really land loss, your private property is being lost due to sea level rise. And in coastal Virginia, we have the highest rate of relative sea level rise on the east coast.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

STIFF: So these two climate issues are felt by people in their yards. And this project was all about making sure that designs and then eventual grant applications to do projects were what the community wanted. And they actually voted on which projects they wanted the most to address their specific challenges.

And so everybody dealing with climate change everywhere is going to do neighborhood scale projects just like this.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

STIFF: And whether they're funded by the federal government, funded by the local government, funded by the state or private foundations, which we really need to step in, they're going to need to make sure the community actually wants this stuff done. And our project was led by the community and we just need to do it more like that.

BLACKWELL: Mary0Carson Stiff, thank you so much for being with us. We'll be right back with Art Is Life.

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[08:52:19]

BLACKWELL: So you know of Rosa Parks, I hope. But do you know Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Jo Ann Robinson, Mary Louise Smith, Jeanette Reese, Susie McDonald. All seven black women changed history by taking on segregation in South. And they're all the focus of a new opera, "She Who Dared." It just got its world premiere in Chicago, and I spoke to three leaders of the project for this week's Art is Life.

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JASMINE ARIERL BARNES, OPERA WRITER AND COMPOSER: I'm Jasmine Ariel Barnes, and I'm in Chicago Opera Theater. And I'm the composer of "She Who Dared."

DEB D.E.E.P. MOUTON, OPERA WRITER AND COMPOSER: I'm Deb D.E.E.P. Mouton and I am the librettist of "She Who Dared." LAWRENCE EDELSON, ARTISTIC AND GENERAL DIRECTOR, AMERICAN LYRIC THEATER: I'm Lawrence Edelson I am the artistic and general director of American Lyric Theater, the company that commissioned "She Who Dared" and the general director of Chicago Opera Theater, where we have just premiered the opera.

MOUTON: "She Who Dared" was actually inspired by a story my mother told me of how my cousin sat on the bus before Rosa Parks. Her name was Aurelia Browder, and she became one of the first characters that we infused into the piece. This piece covers seven black women who are all working together to kind of help propel the Montgomery bus boycott.

BARNES: You do hear of Rosa Parks, though, but we don't know actually that the truth about how her arrest even happened or why she did what she did, it wasn't because she was tired or she was, you know, just sick of, you know, I just had a long day. And it was nothing like that. She planned it, she trained for it. She did it 13 times before she got arrested. And these are things people don't know, that history often is made with intentionality.

EDELSON: When Deborah and Jasmine pitched the idea to me, I was shocked that I didn't know this much about American history.

MOUTON: It was equally as much about talking about how everyday people work together, how community builds together. You know, we can all work towards the same goal and not all like each other every moment of the day.

And so it really had to show that black women are not a monolith, that none of us are monoliths, right, within a group, but that still, with those differences, we can find a commonality and a way to move forward.

EDELSON: The National Endowment for the Arts provided support both to American Lyric Theater and Chicago Opera Theater received a special grant for this production. Both of those grants were cancelled, and that didn't change my intention one bit. And no one at the organization gave it a second thought. You know, we are 100 percent committed to our mission. This is about controlling the narrative, and we cannot let that happen.

BARNES: Black women have been the forefront of just about every black movement in the country, and we don't know their names.

[08:55:05]

And I think that's something that we have to really recenter how we look at history to make sure that we give the fuller picture.

MOUTON: Not only has jazz been mixed in things like gospel and jazz and thought about music that would exist in Montgomery in the 50s, but there also is a real centering of the operatic voice.

Watching "She Who Dared" is a completely visceral experience.

BARNES: I want everyone to be understanding that we the people have the power to make change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: And there's one more chance to see the show with the Chicago Opera Theater. It'll be performed again tomorrow Sunday at the Studebaker Theater at 3:00 p.m. to see where "She Who Dared" is headed next, keep up with the American Lyric Theater at altnyc.org.

Speaking of great performances, tonight, CNN presents a live broadcast of Broadway's "Good Night and Good Luck." Tune in at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN and it also stream on CNN.com and CNN Max.

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

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