This week on CounterSpin:

Elon Musk reportedly told Tesla investors that he’ll be amping down his role with the Department of Government Efficiency to, one guesses, bring his big brain back into their service. Like the “War on Terror,” “DOGE” is a thing that was in part spoken into normalcy by the corporate press.

Media seem ready to, if not embrace, to make respectful space for whatever hot nonsense is proffered — if it fits within their political template. In this case, it’s a thing — not officially a new Cabinet-level department, but acting like one — wildly powerful, yet utterly opaque and run by an unelected billionaire. DOGE sparked lawsuits about its legality from day one, but today’s news is about, legal or not, what it’s doing and how we can respond. The Revolving Door Project is tracking all of that; we hear from executive director Jeff Hauser.

There’s no reason you need to know that Selena Chandler-Scott is a 24-year-old woman from Georgia who had a miscarriage last month; pregnant people lose those pregnancies routinely. You should know that Chandler-Scott was sent to jail for her miscarriage, and though later released, she won’t be the last. “Fetal personhood” may sound abstract or legalistic; but this case brings home vividly how granting legal rights to embryos and fetuses doesn’t “potentially” “open the door to,” but concretely means undermining the rights of people who carry pregnancies, leaving them open to surveillance, suspicion, and prosecution.

U.S. media seem uninterested in Chandler-Scott’s story and its implications, but we hear from Karen Thompson, legal director at Pregnancy Justice.

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of Pope Francis.

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