Donnybrook is made possible by the support of the Betsy and Thomas Patterson Foundation and the members of Nine PBS.

Well, thank you very much for joining us.

Hope you're enjoying our annual St. Louis Humidity Festival.

We have lots to talk about on this edition of Donnybrook.

Let's first meet the panelists starting with the media veteran herself, Wendy Wiese, along with Sarah Fenske from the 314 podcast, her morning newsletter, and St. Louis magazine, Joe Holleman from stltoday.com and the Post Dispatch.

And from the St. Louis American, we welcome Alvin Reed.

All right, Joe, we're gonna start with you uh with a story that you covered yesterday for the host Dispatch.

It was uh rather well surprising to me.

Bob Ander, who's a freshman lawmaker in Washington DC, Dr. Bob and filed legislation to rename and he's the local one of our local Missouri congressman.

He filed legislation to rename the Kennedy Center in Washington DC the Donald J. Trump, right, center, you know?

Yeah.

The press release went out to like everybody and I remember my first reaction when I got it was I read it and I thought I'm going to wait about 10 minutes before I do any work because my guess was was that some people in Anders's office were goofing around and kind of wrote up this press release thinking wouldn't this would be funny and then somebody accidentally hit the send button.

So, I was waiting 10 minutes for we get the one where it said, "Sorry, we'd like to pull back that press release."

It was inadvertently sent.

And then I'm realizing I think they're serious.

So, I wrote it up and it was to, you know, it had started, you know, Donald Trump is the chairman now of the Kennedy Center board.

And then there was hidden in a bill was a move to rename the opera house within the Kennedy Center after Melania Trump.

Okay, it's a small area in the Kennedy Center.

This was Bob Ander, a freshman from Lake St. Louis in St. Charles County, to name the entire Kennedy Center after Donald Trump and goes on and cites his contributions to the arts, which included not one but two appearances on Saturday Night Live.

Well, he hosted it.

Oh, host it.

Yes.

And and was in, you know, and hey, I'm a big fan of the uh Macaulay Caulkin movies.

Uh Home Alone Home Alone.

He was had one of those.

But uh yeah, I it apparently is serious that they want to rename the Kennedy Center after Donald Trump.

Well, the question really is is are are they serious?

Are they just trying to make Democrats and many other Americans bloods boil?

No, because see that that game has played.

Okay.

And I know there are a lot of people say, "Oh, he just likes to make liberals mad."

Stuff like this.

It's Jack Kennedy.

Come on, you all.

And like just the decency, whatever the line was.

said like there's it's already been crossed a few times, but this clown show stuff is what is going to turn the house over to Democrats two years from now or a year and a half from now or however many months it is because I just think there are enough people out there that hear and read this stuff and they say like, "Okay, now you're just trashing out American history and it's one thing and I'm not saying it's good, bad, or or indifferent.

I'm not bringing race into it, but it's one thing to trash black history, but now we're trashing out the honor in the name of Jack Kennedy.

There are enough Americans that say like enough is enough.

Ellen, I don't I don't know.

I don't think there are enough Americans who are going to say enough is enough.

I think there's a large group of Americans who think this kind of thing is really funny.

And the group that doesn't already think it's funny, they're never going to vote for Donald Trump.

They're not going to vote for a lot of Republicans.

They're not going to hold this against Anne Wagner.

Um I you know I I don't think this will be a big thing and it's it's so annoying to a lot of people but those people are already in a camp.

But what you could say now that all of a sudden I guess not the argument but the political aspect is said like if you want to I don't care how you feel about Anne Wagner people technically in her district or whatever.

But if you want to stop this stuff then she has to go.

And that might be enough for people to say like, "Hey, wait a minute."

You know, you're right.

And Wagner never really did anything to me.

And I go and I go, "The stock market's up."

And it is.

It's a record level.

I think a lot of people are going to say, "Hey, name the Kennedy Center anything you want.

I don't care.

I never go there."

I mean, seriously, Charlie, are you I mean, my prediction, this is just the first of many.

I mean, Mount Rushmore, and I'm not joking about that.

I think there will be a move to put Trump on Mount Rushmore.

I think there are going to be federal buildings like the Eagleton which they're going to rename or the Ray or uh highways will be renamed highway or the clay bridge or whatever is going to be renamed for Donald Trump.

It's it's it smacks of or hearkens back to the days the glory days of Manuel Noriega.

You know what I mean?

Like but this is Banana Republic stuff when you think of wasn't Robert Frost John Kennedy's poet laurate.

Okay.

Um, and then you think of Leonard Bernstein, and you think of all of the great artists who have made their way through the Kennedy Center, Pablo Cas, and then you think of appearances in Home Alone.

Just the fact that he could just the fact that with with a straight face, clearly he's I think he's very serious about this.

Um, Mr. Ander, Congressman Ander.

Um, but uh this is what's next?

The Washington Monument, you know, the the Lincoln Memorial just put Donald Trump's face on the statue.

I'm not kidding.

I'm not kidding.

I I think you'll be surprised where this goes.

And I I don't think we've seen the end of it by Well, I mean, look, if they push it that far, you can't put his face on the Lincoln Memorial without a backlash.

But I think they can go up just about as far as that.

I don't think Well, I think if there's anything that's safe, it's the Lincoln Memorial.

Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

Sure.

Okay.

So, you're probably not going to mess with that one.

I I I sort of lean toward Charlie a little bit that part of it's the joke factor of this.

I think where they may, if it is, I think where they misplayed their hand is if you wanted to rename a building that was named after Tom Eagleton or whatever, this was an assassinated president.

So, I think it was so tonedeaf in that sense.

I think that if this was a joke, it was a tasteless joke.

These things change.

Remember the um Gateway Arch National Park used to be known as the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and that was changed just what three four years ago.

These things happen because of his history.

I will also say they didn't say that.

They said they changed it for branding.

Yeah.

They didn't say that.

Like I grew up in a Republican household.

Uh my parents are very, you know, staunch Republicans.

And there was so much eye rolling in this house about, you know, oh, they've lionized Kennedy.

Kennedy was just kind of this crappy president and he was a womanizer and why do we have to treat him like a saint?

I think this plays very well to the base.

I think a lot of people feel that way.

But I want to and I don't think Robert Kennedy Jr. is helping the Kennedy legacy much.

Fair.

Well, maybe he is in certain circles.

I don't know.

Alvin Reed, I want to ask you about a story you reported on uh this week and that is that the St. Louis school board is being presented with a proposal by a consultant to close 37 of 68 schools within the city.

That's more than 50% of course that we'd go from 68 to 31.

Currently we have about 16 18,000 students in the city.

That's going down because of tornado uh the tornado May the 16th.

But the average building's 80 years old.

There are 23 buildings with less than 200 students.

Um, administrators complain they don't have enough social workers or counselors or coaches or bus drivers to go around.

But boy, this would really hurt education in the city, would it not?

Well, it would, but I don't think that many schools will be shuttered.

I think a number of them will.

And I think probably about this time next year, some schools will not be reopening that are open this year.

It depends on how I guess not the population but just what schools can be fixed.

All right.

And I think if you're going to save Sumar High School, which was tornado uh damaged by the tornado, and I think it will be okay.

If you're going to save Sumar, you got to start thinking about, well, what is going to go and let's get that out there.

Now, I don't think anywhere near that many schools will be closed, but if you're going to close some, you got to start somewhere.

And I do want to put out, but uh all they did was listen to a report on Tuesday.

This is not really close to happening.

I will restate again.

I have no confidence in the superintendent and I think it would be much better off if somebody else was was making the announcement that we're going to be about $70 million short this year in part because of the tornado.

I I think people hear it's from her and just think it's like, well, that's a disaster because she's involved.

But this is a step that SLPS is going to have to take.

I thought it was a really at first I thought it was a really gutsy move because we've seen other school districts not only here in St. Louis but around the country you know where they are facing staggering losses but they still don't want to start closing the schools.

So in in that regard, I thought, okay, maybe they are, as you said, this is just a shot across the bow, getting everybody, you know, used to the idea that there's going to be quite a few closures.

But the the the challenges that are faced by the school district, the board, the families who are part of the school district are so numerous that to throw this out at this moment.

I'm just not sure about the timing of it because it's going to create hysteria.

We've been talking about it for a while.

And I don't know, Wendy, I got to disagree here.

I think we keep kicking this can down the road.

I mean, as long as I've lived in St. Louis, we have known we have to deal with this.

and there's never really the political guts to deal with it.

And so, yeah, I have great sympathy for these neighborhoods that were affected by the tornado, but we can't use that as an excuse to not deal with this problem.

If we don't deal with this problem, St. Louis public schools are just going to get worse and worse, and it's going to become a death spiral.

I hate to say this, but I think this opening gambit, I think we need to do something that's pretty close to this.

And the school board is going to take so much heat for this.

I don't think they can stand it, but they're going to have to.

Well, that's their job.

That's what they ran for.

And I mostly agree with Sarah in that I think the saddest thing would be is if they ignore the report because this is a company that came in and they said study our system and they said you're losing students you need to close some buildings now whether it ends up like Alvin said is it going to be this many do we negotiate it down whatever but anybody who doesn't think they aren't going to have to close buildings are just not paying attention do I believe do I believe they could have waited until the school year started before they dropped this.

Yes, but no longer than that because eventually they're going to have to grab a hold of this report and they're going to have to close schools.

It's just that simple.

But closing the schools is going to encourage people to move out of the city.

So, we're going from 18 lose 2,000 with tornado.

That's 16 and then we're going to go down to what 15,000.

Whereas in the 1960s we had 125,000 people in the school district.

Charlie, I think, you know, it's not going to help retain families.

That's for sure.

I get that.

But I think you're going to see charter schools move very aggressively and in some cases try to figure out a way to get their hands on some of these buildings, which has been a fraud issue in the past.

You will see them soliciting families and trying to show them that there are options where you can get a free education in the city.

I understand there's a lot of people who have mixed feelings about that, but you're going to see people try to come up with solutions that won't be just you have to be shipped to this school that is not anywhere close to I don't think anybody was happy with the school system.

and then this made them unhappy.

So I don't think this is going to be the best reason I think it might be because do you know right now there are 220 bus routes in the city of St. Louis.

Yeah.

And you got to you have to cut this down.

I mean but the people like their but where where are they going to go if they have they're going to go to school someplace else?

Yeah.

But if the distance is that long?

Well, all right.

Let me put in it real quick that also I went to press conference and you know the the local 420 uh AFT they were not happy with the decision of where kids were going to be you know going to school where they were mixing the school populations together.

They got with the school school board worked it out and came to uh an agreement.

They should be applauded for that.

So there is a plan that the union is supporting as to you know the the co-mingling of the schools.

So they worked that out.

They did it over about a week or two.

Kudos to both for making that happen.

Uh Wendy, I want to talk to you about a bad week for DEI and its supporters in the region, at least in the city of St. Louis.

Let's start with Washington University story in the Post Dispatch that uh the school has wiped away a lot of the DEI language throughout its website.

uh schools like the McKelby School of Engineering, the Fox School of Arts, uh the math department, no long I think the law school, no more DEI language, although it remains apparently on the medical school pages.

At the same time, the city's community development corporation announced that it's no longer going to certify minority and womenowned firms for the contracts that are set aside for people who are in the minority or female category.

What do you think about this?

the the uh the latter I I thought that seemed to be a very fluid situation and that there were still some things to be worked out uh in terms of the minority contractors and and the the the womenowned businesses as far as Washington University goes uh in terms of DEI to me after I read the story I just thought and she's a fabulous reporter Monica I I'm sorry I can't avoid um she's a great reporter but I I just thought it was a little over wrought uh because this is this is a this is a we're talking about we're just talking about language and I think that to equate in the minds of some readers uh Washington University with the new Bob Jones I just I just thought that was unnecessary.

I mean I would tend to agree it is a you know dire situation for many programs across the United States.

I will say that um many cities who do this certification process, they didn't back down off of that because basically you're saying like look, all we're doing is verifying if it truly is a womanowned business or a minority owned business.

There is nothing wrong with that, you know, like I said like like we're not and then now who gets the jobs if you want to attack that or say like no, you're basically got a quot system for something like that, that's another thing.

But the certification, I don't know why they ran scared on that.

As for Washington University and a lot of other ones, Harvard's putting up a fight.

Some people are just not putting up a fight.

But I mean, one thing that I think Donald Trump and the rest of the gang understand is a whole lot of money.

And Washington University has a ton of money in their endowment.

And they said like, look, whatever we lose, we're going to pay for it because you know what?

You're not going to be president forever.

And in fact, you might not once again have the house in two years.

And some of this nonsense is going to stop.

So I don't know why everybody feels like they have to just just crumble.

Just just yesterday, Colombia paid $200 million in a fine and Harvard lost $2.2 billion in research.

Doesn't want to stop the research.

They don't want to lay off people.

Well, pay for it yourself.

And say this, we are going to pay for it through our easy to spend someone else's money.

No.

No.

Washington University has all this money in the bank.

Okay.

Billion, right?

Okay.

until you're gone, we're going to pay for it ourselves.

And you know why?

Because we love democracy in the United States.

And if we have to be the bastion that puts the money up and says like, "Leave us alone."

Then you have to do that.

Somebody has got to we you got to stop running.

And I I'll agree with you, Charlie, about it's easy to spend someone else's money.

A lot of universities have been spending our tax money.

They they find it real easy to spend that money.

So now they have these endowments break into it a little bit.

I don't think that's unreasonable.

of the research of the medical school is to fight Alzheimer's and ALS.

I'm happy that they're spending my taxpayer money.

But maybe so, but now, okay, so now you don't have the federal dollars.

And the first thing I hear like, oh, we won't be able to do the Alzheimer's uh research anymore.

Why not?

Why?

Well, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars here.

This isn't something where you can just be like, okay, we're gonna just find this little pot of money.

They have a huge pot of money.

First of all, it's not a rainy day.

They get from the NIH $750 million a year.

That's a big chunk of change.

Billion round it off, gang.

I'm talking to I've talked to board of trustees, Washington University graduates, everybody.

We might not go 750, but we're going to go 350 and we're taking it out of endowment and we're going to keep curing disease and we're going to keep hiring students to be doctors and we're going to be the best school in the United States of America if we have to pay for it ourselves.

I just don't understand why everybody like just quakes and fears and so like it's like anything else.

We have families, we have responsibilities, and the day happens and somebody loses their job.

So like, hey, we got to we got to figure out what we going to do.

I mean, I just don't get it.

Way too much common sense in that solution.

Elvin, I want to ask you um Sarah Fensky about Sonia Jenkins Gray who uh was the embattled personnel director.

She lost her job I think in March when she was fired by the mayor of St. Louis and then she got a job or at least a position on the new St. Louis police board appointed by the governor.

Turns out this week since our last program, she took a job in the sheriff's in the embattled sheriff's office.

Uh Alfred Montgomery hired her at what, $95,000 a year, something like that.

Now, the governor who appointed her to the police board is reportedly upset that she has taken this job because of a possible conflict of interest.

Do you smell something wrong with Sonia Jenkins Gray taking a job in the sheriff's department?

I mean, it doesn't look good.

You know, this is a guy where the attorney general is trying to remove him from office for male feasance.

So, you don't necessarily want your police board member to go like hop into this sinking ship.

And I'm no big defender of Sonia Jenkins Gray.

I think I said before that I thought that this was not a good choice on Kho's behalf.

That said, I see this as a smaller conflict of interest than say a police board member who co-owns a private policing company.

Like, we know the sheriff's sole job under the city's charter is that he is supposed to get prisoners or detainees in and out of jail.

That's it.

He shouldn't be out there doing policing.

So, I don't see a big conflict here.

I see conflicts with other police board members.

It's still nonsensical.

It is nonsensical.

I mean, that part of it is like, you know, that's that's big.

Um, but I I I totally agree with you that there are certainly bigger there are bigger components to this.

Well, I just think that and this once again, I said it all alone.

I don't think a lot of thought went into these people that they picked down there in in in Jefferson City.

I really don't.

I think they got handed a list of what the police officers wanted and he just said, "Doom, there you go."

And now all this stuff is blowing up.

And I'm I really get a feeling that the governor didn't know that Don Brown did millions of dollars of business and that the private security firm was of one of the board members and but now you had to know that Sonia Jacobs Gray was kind of like, huh?

Right.

Right.

And now now you're surprised that she did something.

Huh?

Right.

I'm just I don't think a lot of thought went into this and now it's kind of starting to blow up.

What you're both saying though is that Sheriff Montgomery is actually playing chess.

I or I don't know that I know that far.

Well, now I think is this a playing checkers at a higher level?

Governor Kho, let me let me just say that if I was involved in any kind of way, two suggestions I would have said like, hey, first of all, I would get David Mason to represent me.

Okay, retired judge.

All right, of great stature.

I'd get him.

Now, this move sounds like somebody said like, "Hey, you really want to like gigg them?

Hire her."

And then that throws the whole police board into this like, "What do we do?"

Now, what kind of confuses me is her husband, Daryl Gray, is on the civilian oversight board for the jail.

Right.

Right.

And yet here's a sheriff that she's now working for that refuses to transport sick prisoners to the hospital, which I think is in of itself is the most offense I've ever heard.

Okay.

But now David Mason made the argument in this writ or whatever he had to put forth that technically by definition that isn't the the doing it.

I know.

I know.

But in a court of law like you really can't prove anywhere that this is my responsibility.

If the sheriff had trouble with that, he should have gone to court.

Well, I understand sick and dying prisoners in jail who need to go to BJC or to Mercy or St. Mary's.

I agree with that.

And I think the real conflict here is that the Reverend Daryl Gray needs to get off that oversight board.

His wife can't have this job and he be on that board.

That board, however, a different news story, is in the process of getting disbanded.

There will likely be a new oversight board.

He should not be appointed for it as long as his wife has any association or is seeking employment with the sheriff's office.

Well, as long as we're taking people off the board that oversees the police.

How about one Keith Rose who might be best known for uh destroying property in Ferguson during a riot last year.

And then about 2017, he took a bicycle chain and he chained his neck to the front door of a building at Bonaman Hanley where Senator Roy Blunt had an office.

And now he will be sitting in judgment of the police on this police review board.

No, that's the the civilian oversight board for the jail that he is on.

And that's the one that the city is in the process of saying you're not allowed.

That's correct.

That's correct.

That's correct.

That's correct.

Thank you.

I also don't believe he's been found guilty yet.

Unless you know something I don't know.

Oh, well, I do know that he changed his neck to a Well, that is so I just think that he's another clown that has gotten a position of importance within the city of St. Louis.

We talk about this, you know, we're talking about the sheriff's department.

This man literally had a guy roll a pair of dice to keep his job.

So, this is clown shoes.

Okay.

So, there's nothing anymore that's surprising me about So, when I saw Sonia Jen is great, I was like, "Yeah, okay.

Sure."

Yeah.

All right.

Sarah, final topic.

Uh there was a press conference this week with the mayor and um other organizations touting a newly redesigned Seventh Street, which is a north south corridor connecting now.

Actually, it always did.

It's got bigger sidewalks now, uh the convention center to Busch Stadium.

But as far as I can see, it's just uh really um a street with boarded up windows and parking lots.

There's no bakeries, there's no coffee shops, there's no restaurants, there's no alfresco dining.

But what helps change that is to have a street that feels walkable and safe.

And what makes a street feel walkable and safe are things like it has great a great tree canopy.

It has a narrower street.

It has these kind of features that make it easier to walk without feeling like a car going 80 miles an hour is going to jump the curb and mow you down.

I was in downtown last night and they had added a bunch of these trees also on Washington Avenue and I thought this looks so good.

It's that kind of small stuff that we're not talking zillions of dollars here.

It makes a big difference about how people feel about hanging out on a given block.

And I mean hanging out in a constructive way, not being there setting off fireworks and causing mayhem.

Right.

Well, there's a Hooters that just closed a month ago on the corner of 7.

You know what?

Good riddance.

That is not the kind of restaurant.

You want to know something we used to have?

Sorry, Charlie.

We used to have Sixth Street, which was a gray street.

I don't know why we didn't adopt that.

It had Joseph's, it had Cheetos, it had Panera, it had uh other little restaurants along the way, and then it got no attention whatsoever.

And now we're like going from Sixth to Seventh Street and kind of we're we're spiking the football as if this is a victory.

Well, we're we're doing all these little projects all over town.

This is what all the ARPA money that we kept saying, when is that ARPA money going to get spent?

It did not get spent fast enough to save Tashara Jones's career.

All these little improvements are happening here and there.

It's going to make it a better city.

I'm very excited about it.

Well, you know, it kind of like also Oh, Busch Stadium just happens to be there, too.

Yeah.

You know, hey, but that is the place that most visitors to the city who don't live in the city see.

So, if there's not a better place to spend it, I don't know what is.

Okay.

All right.

Well, her optimism your your optimism is a tonic because for the No, seriously, for the rest of us, it's you know, you think trees, okay, but you're right.

It's like those baby steps that will eventually I don't think 11 people to be in a ribbon cutting or however many people.

You know, you got those big scissors.

You got to use them, you know.

All right, that's enough out of you, Joe.

Let's go to the old mailbag and see what people had to say about last week's program, shall we?

It takes many years and millions of dollars to build nuclear plants.

However, in the past 3 to four years, solar has become the cheapest, fastest, and easiest way to generate electricity.

Why did our decision makers throw out incentives for solar and wind in the new budget?

That from Sue Noart of St. Louis.

We also heard from anc Miller who wrote nuclear power.

No thanks.

How tonedeaf.

We're still suffering and dying from Cold Water Creek and the radioactive dump in Bridgeton.

You all show except Wendy no concern whatsoever to our suffering.

Well, come live in Bridgton or St. Anne for a few years and make sure to play in the creek.

Thank you, Miss Miller.

You can write us care of KETC.

That's Nine PBS 3655 Olive Street, 63108.

We love those emails at donnybrook at9pbs.org.

On social media, use donnybrookst.

And don't forget to call the nline, won't you?

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Wherever you are this summer, listen to us on your favorite podcast source.

And don't forget to tune in to Last Call.

It's our program on the Nine PBS YouTube channel where we discuss topics we couldn't get to in the first 30 or so minutes.

And Joe and I are going to have a disagreement, I think, on uh a judge's decision regarding firearms in the city of St. Louis.

So, we'll get to that and some other topics as well.

Thank you so much for joining us.

We'll see you next week at this time.

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