July 7 – More Graphic Evidence of Dying While Black; If Trump Wins the Presidency Could He Then Walk Away?; House Republicans Make American Women Vulnerable to the Zika Virus

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest police shootings of African American men caught on video, first in Louisiana and the next day in Minnesota. Vernellia Randall, emerita professor of law at the University of Dayton and author of “Dying While Black” joins us to discuss the growing outrage at yet more graphic evidence of police shooting African American men who were killed for selling CD’s in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge in the first instance, then in the second killed after being pulled over in a St. Paul suburb for a broken tail light. We look into this persistent problem with police culture where police officers often see the neighborhoods they patrol as enemy territory with many having been recruited from the military after service in warzones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Part 2

Then as speculation grows that Donald Trump appears more interested in winning the presidency than serving as president, together with the scenario that Trump will seek an exit strategy before the election to avoid a humiliating loss, we speak with Alexander Keyssar, a Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and author of “The Right to Vote: the Contested History of Democracy in the United States”. He joins us to discuss the possible scenarios involving the Electoral College that would come into play if the unconventional candidate decided the fun was over and he did not want the grueling job of governing and would rather return to his business as an ever bigger media celebrity.

Part 3

Then finally we examine how abortion politics are preventing the urgent action needed to stop the Zika virus from spreading in the United States as House Republicans try for the fifth time in seven years to eliminate the Title X Family Planning program which provides contraception and family planning services to low-income American women. Arthur Kaplan, Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Department of Population Health joins us to discuss his article at The Chicago Tribune ”Congress Lets Abortion Politics Derail Zika Fight” and the irony that many of the 24 states trying to defund Planned Parenthood who have declined Medicaid expansion are in the South where the Zika virus will spread unabated.