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First of All with Victor Blackwell

The State Of The Union, And The State Of "Black MAGA"; Columnist: It Took One Year For Black MAGA To Crater; Is Trump Starting To Lose Support Among His Black Voters? Aired 8-9p ET

Aired February 21, 2026 - 8:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:01:12]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Well, first of all, when the president speaks at the State of the Union next week, he'll be defending some policies that have been forced to look very different than what he intended a year ago. His administration is changing tactics on immigration enforcement after two shootings and countless videos of aggressive arrests led to protests nationwide. And anti ICE movement.

And an important pillar of the president's economic strategy is in limbo now that his emergency tariffs have been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. Those are two key pieces of his agenda, immigration and the economy.

Well, they're important to the president and also to people who feel the impact of those policies more than most. Right now. The unemployment rate is highest among black Americans. In part, that's due to the fact that black people have been disproportionately impacted by cuts to the federal workforce and pullback from DEI initiatives.

We'll see if the president lays out his plan to address those concerns on Tuesday. But when speaking to a majority black audience at the White House this week for Black History Month celebration, he honored the black people who have hit history with him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Mike Tyson, Boy, I tell you, Mike has been loyal to me. Whenever they come out, they say, Trump's a racist. You know, it's like a statement, Trump's a racist. Mike Tyson goes that, "He's not a racist. He's my friend. He's been there from the beginning, good times and bad."

Speaking about loyal, how good a football player was Herschel? Herschel Walker? Now he's ambassador to the Bahamas. I don't know. Bahamas, Bermuda, is he. Bahamas, whatever. It's nice, a nice place.

I love Nicki Minaj. She was here a couple of weeks ago. So beautiful. Her skin. So beautiful. I said, Nicki is so beautiful. Her nails, her nails are like that long. I said -- I said, Nicki, are they real? She said she didn't want to get into that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Now, does that resonate with his black supporters? I don't know. The president may not know either. Setting aside people in an advisory role, only two black people have served as leaders in the Trump Cabinet.

Scott Turner, serving in this current term. Dr. Ben Carson, who served during Trump's first term. Both were at that Black History Month event. Both men given the same job, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Taking all that into account, my next guest argues one year later, Support for Trump among Black MAGA is cratering. He writes in the Washington Post. "A year later, the honeymoon is over. Black supporters sought prosperity and governance, but the Trump administration has mostly delivered chaos. They needed belonging but found hostility."

Ted Johnson is a contributing columnist at the Washington Post and is the author of "If We Are Brave, Essays from Black Americana." Ted, good to have you back on the show. First, is there some distinction you make between a black Trump voter and Black MAGA?

THEODORE R. JOHNSON, CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: Thanks for having me. And technically, yes, there is a distinction. A black Trump voter could be just a black conservative, a black Republican who, and Trump just happens to be the party standard bearer now and then, Black MAGA would seem to be the more core Trump supporters who, like Trump himself would, or who were at least willing to give MAGA and Trump a shot.

And in my piece, I'm mostly talking about this latter group, maybe not the hardcore supporters, but the contingent in black MAGA that saw something of value in Trump or were for other reasons, did not want to support Kamala Harris for reasons of gender or maybe policy. And so, they gave MAGA a shot this time around. And I'm telling you that part of Black MAGA is crumbling, it's eroding. They've just not gotten what they signed up for.

[08:05:04]

BLACKWELL: Okay, so let me challenge the central premise. What caught me in the post today, well, when it came out this week was, you know, the headline a year later, Black MAGA is cratering. Let me look at some of the numbers.

The poll, approval poll from after the first hundred days, 35 percent among black voters or black respondents to the poll, the latest is 25 percent. Now, in these polls that meet CNN standards, it's softer, but does that count as crater? What do you see that defies what looks like a softening but not a bottoming out?

JOHNSON: Yes. And so really across a number of polls, when you look at job approval specifically and favorability specifically, they are about half of the level that they were last year. And YouGov polls and Harris Harvard polls from 33, 30 percent down to 15, 13 percent. And this is now around the holidays, December, January, he got his favorability was as low as 8 percent or job approval.

So this is absolutely a softening. Even -- never mind last year, the leading up to the election, his support was softer than it was in February of last year. So he actually gained support from October of 24 before the election, leading into Black History Month last year of 2025. And in this last year, that support has basically been cut in half.

Now, that doesn't mean that he's lost half of his voters, but it does mean that the softening is happening with the people that are not going to vote Trump no matter what. The softening is happening with people that wanted to give Trump a shot, wanted to give him another opportunity, maybe reprise the first administration and thought things would better this time around or better than Biden or better than Harris. Whatever the rationale, those folks are starting to walk away because of what they've gotten in this first year of Trump's second administration.

BLACKWELL: Does Black MAGA want something different than white MAGA or the rest of the movement?

JOHNSON: Yes, it's a great question. And the answer basically is no when it comes to policy. But it is yes when it comes to the other parts of belonging. That usually is central part of movements. So there are black voters, black Trump supporters, Black MAGA who don't like DEI and wanted to see it gone.

There are black voters that don't like immigration and wanted to see very strict deportation policy. They're getting it with Trump. There are black voters that thought Trump was better for the economy, thought maybe the dividends from tariff policy would end up with a stimulus check in their pockets. That's all good.

The problem is the way he's doing all of these things give them nothing to be proud of. They might support deportation, but they don't support immigration agents killing citizens to citizens in the street. That's just the two we're talking about in Minneapolis. Never mind the undocumented people or folks elsewhere.

Tariff policy has led to nothing for black voters. Unemployment is up. There's been no, you know, residuals benefit for black voters. DEI, as you said up top, the federal workforce cuts from DOGE, the federal contracting that's been bottomed out hit black folks first.

So even if you are ideologically aligned with Trump, ideologically aligned with MAGA, everything you're getting from them gives you nothing to be proud of. And on top of that, if you are black and MAGA, you are getting scrutiny from black folks who are wondering, you know, 90 percent, 85 percent of black folks still voted for the Democratic Party in this last presidential election. You're getting some scrutiny from them.

BLACKWELL: Let me -- let me read what -- JOHNSON: And then from MAGA --

BLACKWELL: What you cite here that you cite studies that quote, "MAGA's racial resentment and anti-wokeness views are particularly high and not at all colorblind.

JOHNSON: Exactly.

BLACKWELL: My question is to these studies you cite, is it more hostile in the second term than it was the first?

JOHNSON: I don't think so. But if you look at the first term, the economics are different than they are this time around. The economy was actually pretty strong when Trump took office the first time around and COVID harmed everyone and black folks most. But the government was actually pretty responsive with the vaccine creation and distribution.

There were some stimulus checks. And so, the benefits that many black voters this time around who wanted to support Trump, they thought it was going to be a second reprisal of the first administration and it has not been. And so, because you've not accrued gains or made any policy gains here and you're getting stickiness from inside the MAGA movement, now, there's nothing to keep you there, not even good policy.

And, you know, never mind the videos he's shown about the Obamas. Never mind the stuff he said about black folks, Haitians, Somalis, low IQ, black congressmen and black journalists. What keeps you in the movement if you've got nothing to show for it material.

BLACKWELL: Ted Johnson, it was a great piece that started a great conversation, I think. Good to have you on. Thanks so much for your time.

[08:10:03]

Let me take you now to the White House live. Look here for you. What do you notice?

Well, this week the Reverend Jesse Jackson died. He was a civil rights icon, two-time candidate for president and one of the last close aides to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The flags there in your shot are not at half-staff for him at the White House or at the Washington Monument behind it. The president has not ordered flags to be flown at half-staff across the country. The president's announced the lowering of flags via proclamation. Historically, this is done right after a death.

It was done most recently after the deaths of former Vice President Dick Cheney and the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Reverend Billy Graham was also afforded this visual recognition of a nation in mourning when he passed.

Jesse Jackson has not been President Trump has addressed Jackson's death and praised his legacy last week or this week, I should say. But our CNN team at the White House asked back on Tuesday specifically whether the flags there would be lowered for Jackson. The White House has not responded.

Coming up, there's a frustrating lack of answers in the search for Nancy Guthrie. And Arizona's own Native American community has a unique perspective on what that is like. We'll talk about the despair in the number of people missing and the amount of resources dedicated to finding them.

Plus, he's taken on the Supreme Court over his music. Now Uncle Luke is planning to take on Capitol Hill. The rapper is here to talk about his run for Congress. Next.

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[08:16:21]

BLACKWELL: Three weeks after her abduction, there's no breakthrough in the Nancy Guthrie case. It's been an agonizing weight that thousands of other families know too well, especially Native American families. There is a major disparity in terms of investigations when women are missing from or murdered in Native American communities across the U.S.

Let's talk about Arizona, specifically. The FBI lists five kidnapped or missing people in that state except for Nancy Guthrie. All the women you see are on your screen right now, Native American or disappeared from tribal communities. So a total of five. The other four are Native or from tribal communities.

And families say they're frustrated. Listen, no one says take anything away for the search for Nancy Guthrie. But it's frustrating watching the onslaught of resources poured into some cases while they have to fight to get resources to find their loved ones.

With me now is April Ignacio. She's a member of the Arizona Michigan Murdered Indigenous Peoples Task Force. She also works to train officers in the Tohono O'odham Nation on this ongoing crisis.

April, thank you for being with me. And I wonder just first what it looks like from your perspective and the work that you do and the realities that you know what it feels like to watch the search for Nancy Guthrie, knowing there are other families hoping for those same resources.

APRIL IGNACIO, ARIZONA MISSING AND MURDERED INDIGENOUS PEOPLE TASK FORCE MEMBER: Good morning. It's good to (inaudible), Victor, and happy Black History Month. I think -- I think maybe frustrating is the wrong term to use when we're talking about victims. I think it's more fascinating to see the amount of resources that get poured into high profile cases as opposed to cases that are ongoing, just let alone here in Arizona.

And we see that consistently. And a lot of that comes back and down to the education of the tribal communities within the states, specifically here in Arizona. In Arizona, we have 153 law enforcement agencies. And of those 153 law enforcement agencies, only 17 of them have received the Turquoise Alert system training offered by the Department of Public Safety.

So you see the disparities there already with information being inundated. That information is a direct result of laws that are changing, updating codes and making sure that law enforcement agencies understand the impact to tribal communities when it comes to missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

So the numbers are going to vary from agency to agency. And obviously we're talking about multi-layered jurisdictions. And when I say fascinating seeing all of the resources being poured into a high- profile case, you know, it's, you never want to take resources away from an active investigation, but you also see the disparities or the lack of care going into other tribal communities.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And so fascinating. And I accept that I'm going to hold on to that. Is that how it feels to watch this?

[08:20:07]

What -- how does it compare? I mean, I don't think it's a surprise or breaking news to anybody that much of the coverage of Nancy Guthrie and the search for her and her abductor is because she's the mother of Savannah Guthrie. But what does it look like for a Native woman or coming from a tribal community, when something similar happens?

What does that search look like? What's that cooperation like with law enforcement outside of the nation?

IGNACIO: That's a complicated question to ask, because obviously every case is going to differ, especially with some of the, you know, the information that's coming out in an investigation. But you also see that a lot of the cases for missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, those cases go dormant or they become cold cases.

And so they're sort of like a threshold or a stop once information doesn't seem to be coming in. And this is where the training for law enforcement is so important when they're dealing with surviving families, of just having this, building this relationship and rapport with the survivors.

So, like in Arizona, I'll give you a really good example right now. There's three cold cases for three young girls under 18 who were murdered in the last five months.

Emily Pike, which is probably that gained the most national attention, who's a San Carlos Apache tribal member, was 14 years old. That case has -- that's a cold case. Tia Colelay, who's 16 years old, who was killed in White river, that's another cold case. And these are months apart. and then recently, Mollie Boone, who was 8 years old, found on the Navajo Nation.

So these are three cases that didn't have the same resources, didn't have the same funding source. And obviously, the jurisdictional mazes that a lot of these families are navigating doesn't make it easier either. So it also comes out --

BLACKWELL: Yes. And I also want to point out here to education.

IGNACIO: Sorry.

BLACKWELL: And it comes down to education. The Tohono O'odham Police department has made the training that you offer through the missing and murdered indigenous women movement mandatory, not just for response, but for prevention, what to look for to make sure that if there's domestic violence or is there some other element here? So to prevent these kinds of cases. And we put up the four that were on the FBI list. I know you've been doing work for years, that the number beyond what the FBI acknowledges is much higher.

April Ignacio, I thank you for being on and kind of giving us that perspective. Fascinating to watch is something I'll hold on to. I thank you for your time this morning.

Listen, if you have any information on any missing person, you can reach out to the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or go online to tips.FBI.gov. We'll be back.

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[08:28:00]

BLACKWELL: I don't know about you, but I did not have member of 2 Live Crew runs for Congress on my 2026 bingo card. Now, if you're a fan of music from the 80s, 90s too, you know candidate Luther Campbell as record executive rapper, Luke Skywalker of 2 Live Crew. As a leader of the group and its record label, he fought for free speech when the album as "Nasty As They Want to Be" was declared obscene.

That ruling was overturned and left to stand when the Supreme Court refused to hear it. Now the group won a landmark victory in a case the supreme Court did hear, setting precedent for the use of samples in new music. His hometown of Miami also knows Campbell for his work with kids through his youth sports program.

And now Uncle Luke is looking to take his service to the community to the next level. He announced this week that he'll be running to represent Florida's 20th congressional district.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VOICE OF UNCLE LUKE, (D) FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: This is what we're going to take out to the community and have everybody sign one so I can qualify to be on the ballot to be a candidate for Congress. Are you going to be a part of this movement? Are you going to be a part of history?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: All right. Joining us now to talk about his new campaign is Luther Campbell, a.k.a. Uncle Luke. Thank you so much for being on with me. Listen, I know this is something you considered in the last cycle in

2024. Why is now the time to run?

LUTHER "UNCLE LUKE" CAMPBELL, ANNOUNCED RUN FOR CONGRESS IN 20TH DISTRICT SOUTH FL: Well, now is the time to run. First of all, thank you for having me on your show. It's more than time to run. I mean, you have a congresswoman, you know, that's up. You know, she has every kind of ethnic violation you can only imagine, you know, and all kind of scandals. In this community without all that, the communities are underserved, from Lauderhill, Lauderhill Lakes to Belle Glade/Okeechobee, those areas are totally underserved.

[08:30:08]

I mean, you got crime. You have families can't even afford to live in their houses because of the insurance prices. You know, it just -- it's more needed than ever.

BLACKWELL: Yes. Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick has been indicted. She has said that she has done nothing wrong, denies any wrongdoing, and that is the person who is in the seat now, ran unopposed last time around. Obviously, now she has more than just you getting into the race.

Let me ask you something about your strategy if you are elected by the voters of Florida's 20th. This is from your podcast, October 2025, your approach to getting results here. You said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Listen, if I was in Congress, I take my mother right over that White House. Knock on them. Hey, Trump, I have some things, some issues that I need to get straightened out and I need some executive orders and I need you to tell your dude boy, Mike Johnson, we need to vote on these things and for black people. Trump just want to win. I guarantee you, if I was in Congress, I go over there, knock on a door, ask for a meeting with the President, Donald Trump, and I get some shit done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: So I saw you nodding in the preview monitor during that. What is the incentive of the President or Speaker Johnson to sign executive orders, pass legislation, because you asked for it over any other Democrat?

CAMPBELL: Well, the thing is this. I mean, if you know me, I've been fighting all my life and going to the Supreme Court, fighting and winning for free speech. And as we already know, the Constitution is under attack. But the most important part of it is Donald Trump lives in Palm Beach County. He lives right there in my district.

So I don't think he wants the district to continuously look like a third world country. I don't think he wants the district, you know, to not strive. That's living. That's in the area of his famous house where he lives at. I mean, you know, again, you know, I can, I -- I feel like, you know, Marco Rubio, me and him, has been good friends for many, many years. And the matter -- the thing is in my opinion, it's just too much gridlock.

It just, look, I got tons of things passed here in South Florida, you know, whether it was to, in the county, the city, you know, working across the aisle, working with Republican mayors, working with Republican council members and things like that. And it's just a matter -- it's really just a matter of saying this is what the district needs, get out of my way, be a part of helping these people in this district.

I mean, you got TPS, you know, they're right now continuously filing appeals and trying to get TPS overturned. And we already know in this district it's over 300,000 temporary status immigrants. And you're going to need somebody to go and have a conversation with them because before you know it, those immigrants that are in this district, they're going to be the first ones to get targeted.

And I think I can have a real conversation with Marco Rubio and Donald Trump to not take these people out of this country.

BLACKWELL: Yes, the temporary protective status eliminated for Venezuelans. The administration trying to do it for Haitians, but a judge has put a temporary stay on that as well. And you said that your relationship with the president and the Secretary of State can help with that.

Let me ask one other thing, because I watched the whole podcast and you talked about politics as you often do. There's another thing that stood out to me here that I want to play.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMPBELL: Everybody keep talking about we need to have a third party. We do have a third party. We got a third party called Black Democratic Party. The black people separate and say, look, we will negotiate with anybody. Yes, we're Democrats, but we are separated. We need to negotiate with anybody for our people. Because the whites in the Democratic Party, they don't like people like that. They really black people to do what? To keep control of the party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: And so I'm trying to figure out how much of your pre- candidacy announcement to take as gospel is what your plan is, or you're just on a podcast waxing about politics. But how serious are you about this, about black politicians separating themselves from the official Democratic Party?

I don't know how that leaves Hakeem Jeffries, the head of it in the House, but that blacks separating to get something done for black people.

CAMPBELL: I mean, you have a black caucus. Blacks so called go and have a caucus. [08:35:03]

I mean, when you look here in the state of Florida, there's never been a black person elected as the head of the Democratic Party. Never been a black person, which is bananas to me. I mean, when you look at some of the things that have been done, I mean, let's face it, as a car carrying black Democrat CD20, the communities that we live in are suffering.

I mean, it's just a matter of us getting together and going to the party and saying, hey, look, you know, you guys -- these are the things that need to get done. So I don't necessarily mean separate from the party, but caucus within the party the right way.

I mean, instead of going to Washington and caucusing and having these beautiful lavish parties, really get down and say, hey, these are the things, these are the concerns that African Americans need in this country. I mean, when you look at it everywhere in America, we're getting gentrified. We're getting pushed out of our communities. Crime hasn't been solved and we have been voting Democrat for so many years that I don't think the party has done enough for African Americans. And that's just my opinion.

BLACKWELL: Luther Campbell, Uncle Luke getting into the race to represent Florida's 20th district. I appreciate the conversation. We'll be watching the campaign. Thank you for your time this morning.

Coming up, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superman. No, no, it's Captain Durag with theme music and all. But not everyone is excited to see him. How the Internet and the character's creator, how they're reacting, next.

And remember, First of All, is also available as a podcast. Just scan the QR code below for more information and you can follow and listen wherever you get your podcast.

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[08:41:14]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Have you heard about this new controversial character on a show called Hey AJ on Disney Junior?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow, it's really Captain Durag.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: For some odd reason, Disney decided to say okay to a superhero on Disney Junior named "Captain Durag."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who wears a durag in a cape to keep Slime City safe. What the --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is freaking outrageous. Y'all wrong for this one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've had enough of your trash talk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Black dark skinned men takes out the trash. Are we serious?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like in the middle of February too?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wonder who green lit that like.

UNIDENTIFEID FEMALE: It genuinely could not have been a black person. Like, I actually think it was, you know.

BLACKWELL: Well it was created by former NFL player, author, creative Martellus Bennett and he's a black man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't care who made it. Y'all going to be like oh, a black dude. That might be worse.

BLACKWELL: Bennett posted something on his social media in defense of Captain Durag and the liberation of the black image. Here's part of it. As a young black boy, my durag was my first superhero cape. I didn't need Batman's cape or dark winged ducks cape or Superman's. I had a durag and when I tied it up and that tail started flapping behind me as I ran through the house, nobody could stop me. That was my armor, my power source, my transformation sequence.

That was my black imagination doing what imagination is supposed to do, making me bigger than the world tried to make me.

He also wrote this, Captain Durag is about empowering the ordinary objects in black life like a durag. Why can't a durag be a cape? Why can't a black superhero wear a durag? Why can't an imaginative black girl on Disney have a superhero who looks like her father? A father who wears a do rag around the house? What is so bad about a whole family rocking a durag? What is so wrong with letting the durag be the source of a superpower when it has been the source of confidence and transformation for generations?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I actually think it's fly. Like that's us. Y'all telling me that ain't fly. He got the durag as a cake.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop messing on Captain Durag. It's actually a cool concept in my view.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's why I'm Captain Durag, not Captain Don't Rag.

BLACKWELL: So when it comes to Captain Durag, what do you think?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Let me know on Socials. The Department of Education is taking on a nonprofit that helps students of color get PhDs, and they just announced a big win this week in their efforts to get schools to drop their partnership with that organization. The CEO of the PhD Project is here to respond. Next.

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[08:48:08]

BLACKWELL: Question for you. You decide does this mission sound discriminatory?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The PhD Project has stayed the course for decades, and we see the impact of that in, you know, doubling, tripling, quadrupling, quintupling the number of faculty from underrepresented backgrounds who are now all over the country in the world, having an impact in the classroom where students get to engage with them, break down some of those stereotypes, hear from individuals who come from a broader range of background and experiences, and learn from them, and then take that out into the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: So that's a clip from a video promoting the PhD Project. It's a nonprofit originally aimed at helping boost the diversity of students earning their PhDs. Well, the Department of Education says what the PhD Project really does is discriminate by limiting eligibility based on race. And this week the department announced that it has agreements with 31 colleges and universities to end their partnerships.

Many of these schools dropped out when the probe was first announced in March of last year. The department says it's still negotiating with 14 other schools. Alfonzo Alexander is the president and CEO of the PhD Project. He's with me now.

These partnerships were means to an end. We heard a bit of the promotional video, but you weren't working with Yale and Duke and NYU for the panache. What is lost by the end of these partnerships?

ALFONZO ALEXANDER, PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE PHD PROJECT: Well, thank you for having me on the show, and glad to answer your question. Really, what's lost is opportunity, opportunities for individuals who are very talented that decide to come out of Corporate America to pursue a second career. And that second career being in academia, that's a loss. An additional loss in terms of opportunity would be the research that those individuals do and how they impact all of our lives in terms of their research across the globe.

[08:50:04]

And then finally, when you look at the faculty members that are currently a part of our community within the PhD Project, they touch on average about 220,000 students annually. So that diversity of thought, that unique perspective that many of them bring to the classroom, many of those things will be hampered as well when you have situations like this.

BLACKWELL: Yes, I went to your website to learn more about what you do. I'll admit this is the first time I've heard of the PhD Project after the announcement from the Department of Ed. I found that the site has been changed now from what it was pre-Trump 2.0 just two years ago. Let me read here what your mission statement was in 2024. A significantly larger pipeline of black, African American, Latinx, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Canadian, Indigenous for business leadership positions, today to expand the pool of workplace talent by developing business school faculty who encourage, mentor and support tomorrow's leaders.

Your Vision Statement 2024, to increase workplace diversity by increasing diversity of business school faculty who encourage, mentor, support and enhance the preparation of tomorrow's leaders. Today's vision statement, a broader talent pipeline of current and future business leaders committed to excellence in each other.

You took the word diversity out of your program statement. I don't cite these as criticisms, and maybe this is just self-preservation, but is it a rhetorical change or has the PhD Project been forced to change?

ALEXANDER: So we partnered with universities, with businesses, and we support faculty and PhD students that are on university campuses. And sometimes those environments can be challenging to those individuals that are partnered with us depending upon what their environment is like.

And so some of those changes we made because we needed to protect our community, quite frankly, some of those changes were made because we understand the environment that we're in. And in that in this current environment, we have to be mindful of the fact that we want to be able to create opportunities for people who normally would not get them, who in many cases normally wouldn't even know that they exist.

Just to the point that you made about having not heard of our organization before, there are many professionals that did not understand the difference in a professor, an associate professor, an assistant professor, et cetera, and what their academic credentials required based on what their matriculation was through undergraduate college. But then later they found out, you know what? I'd like to get into academia so that I can teach.

Well, being a PhD involves teaching and instruction, but it also involves research.

BLACKWELL: And so these changes -- and so these changes, though who you were in 2024. Is that who you are today as an organization?

ALEXANDER: We are -- we're very similar. However, we do not have restrictions based on ethnicity to get involved in our programs.

BLACKWELL: OK. And so what's your reaction to the education secretary saying that your practices were discriminatory and they reject judging individuals by the color of their skin. And these schools are now once again embracing the principles of merit, excellence and opportunity by separating themselves from the PhD Project?

ALEXANDER: My reaction is simply they always were embracing merit. When you look at individuals that came through the PhD Project, our individuals that we help partner and connect universities with had an average of 3.6 GPA in graduate school. 80 percent of them came out of successful corporate careers.

And so we already were hitting what it would be meritocracy. And so that hasn't changed because of restrictions.

BLACKWELL: Alfonzo Alexander, I thank you so much for the conversation. Quick break. We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:58:30]

BLACKWELL: Closing ceremonies at the Winter Olympics happen tomorrow, but there's more progress and diversity to look forward to at future games. Thank you. Thanks to organizations like Technically Doing It. TDI launched in 2023 with the goal of connecting black and brown snowboarders. I spoke with TDI's founder Luis Medearis this week and asked where this idea come from.

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LUIS MEDEARIS, SNOWBOARDER AND FOUNDER, "TECHNICALLY DOING IT": There's not a lot of people from South Central or in that case, demographically, you know, lower income areas, snowboarding continuously. You know what I mean? I'm with kids who grew up in Vail, Colorado. I'm with kids who grew up in the Swiss Alps. I'm like, this is not really my scene. So I'm like, well, why don't we just make a scene?

So one, I can feel safe. People around you guys can feel safe. And then two, like, they've missed so much connection with being with people like them and always having to hang out with, you know, white counterparts as a profession. That's a scary space to be in.

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BLACKWELL: Luis says TDI is doing events all over the world. For more information on how you can follow them on Instagram or online at technicallydoingit.com. Luis Medearis and the team at Technically Doing It, I see you.

And this morning, I also want to shout out my First of All team, now that we have hit a new milestone today, 100 episodes. You see here next to me, my executive producer, Sidney Wright. Next to him, my senior producer, Hein de Freitas. Right back in the center, my booker, Darian Billington. Here's the four of us and our cake we had this morning. So I'm on a bit of a sugar high.

Thanks to everyone who works to make this space special on Saturday mornings. A place where you'll see stories, as I say every morning, that you will see nowhere else. And thank you for joining us.