The Takeaway

Emmy nominated actor and Grammy award winning poet and musician Malcolm-Jamal Warner has spent over 40 years sharing parts of himself with the public. His latest album Hiding in Plain View is also nominated for a Grammy and it’s some of his most vulnerable work to date. In it, he shares reflections on his journey to radical self-acceptance and explores his hopes and dreams surrounding Black masculinity and Black futures. 

The Takeaway checks back in with stories we’ve covered before. We look at updates on The House of Representatives.

It’s been more than 3 weeks since the Taliban government in Afghanistan announced that women were banned from attending colleges and universities. It’s yet another gut-wrenching — but not unexpected — reversal of the regime’s initial promises to respect women’s rights. The college ban effectively means that the highest level of education most Afghan girls will now be able to receive is 6th grade.

We speak with Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder and president of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA), a girls’ boarding school, about Afghan women and girls' determination to continue their educations. SOLA is now based in Rwanda, having moved after the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

When Derek Lowen was 14, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and underwent surgery to remove a tumor the size of a baseball from his brain. He soon discovered that he was one of many Tartan High School students in Oakdale, Minnesota, to be suffering from cancer. In the 18 years since, Derek and the rest of the Twin Cities East Metro community have been left to wonder how much a local manufacturing plant has to do with it. 

Manufacturing giant 3M dumped industrial waste in the area surrounding its Cottage Grove, MN plant for decades — some of which contained PFAs, so-called "forever chemicals" that have been linked to adverse health effects including decreased fertility, decreased immunity, and certain cancers. The state settled a lawsuit against 3M in 2018 without establishing a definitive link between stories like Derek's and the plant. But recently, more states have followed MN's lead, suing companies alleged to be responsible for PFAs contamination. In December 2022, 3M announced it would end the production and use of PFAs by the end of 2025.

We speak with Chloe Johnson, environmental reporter at the Star Tribune, about the scope of PFAs pollution and the lingering impacts on Minnesota residents.

For more accounts from residents, read the Minnesota Reformer's story, "There Must Be Something in the Water."

3M responded to The Takeaway's request for comments with the following statement:

Margaret Cho began her comedy career 40 years ago.

Now, after groundbreaking TV shows, Off-Broadway debuts, sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall, Grammy nominations, Films, and Reality TV shows– just to name a few– the outspoken Comedian is celebrating 40 years with a comedy tour: Margaret Cho is Live & Livid.

On Sunday, thousands of supporters of Brazil’s far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro attacked the nation’s highest seats of power in the capital Brasília, just a week after President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated on Jan. 1. They were protesting what they falsely claim was a stolen election. Pro-Bolsonaro protesters stormed Brazil’s Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace in striking similarities to the U.S.'s Jan 6. Insurrection.

We speak to Mac Margolis, contributing columnist focusing on Brazilian and Latin American politics for The Washington Post Global Opinions, and author of Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier, and Yascha Mounk, professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University, and author of The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.

"Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng" is a podcast that features intimate conversations with men and women who have spent years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Some have been fully exonerated and reunited with family and friends while others continue to languish in prison with some even facing execution on death row.

MHP talks with Maggie about wrongful convictions. 

Last week, marked the 100-year anniversary of the race riots of 1923 in Rosewood, FL.

After a white woman accused a Black man of assaulting her, a white mob destroyed the town and displaced hundreds of Black middle- and working-class families. This rural town was one of several Black communities in the US that suffered racial violence and destruction, and the violence resulted in the loss of economic opportunity and inequality for generations of people of color. 

The massacre was dramatized in the 1997 film “Rosewood” by director John Singleton. Direct descendants of the families who once lived in Rosewood led the fight for reparations in the 1990s and are continuing to fight to reclaim their families' legacies.

In St. Paul, Minnesota (the same state where George Floyd was killed by police) the fight for reparations to address systemic racism is happening as well. 

The state of Minnesota has the third largest racial wealth gap in the nation, and the state’s income gap is the 5th largest. When it comes to health disparities, Black and Indigenous babies in Minnesota die at a rate twice that of White babies. According to the 2021 State of Black Minnesota Report, Black residents lived 7 years less than white residents.

In response, the city of St. Paul moved forward with its plan to address systemic inequities and racism against Black residents through the formation of a permanent 11-member reparations commission. The group will work to advise the city council on measures to address systemic racism faced by Black residents in the city.

Trahern Crews, a social justice advocate who was a Co-Convenor of the St. Paul Recovery Act Legislative Advisory Committee, and Councilmember Jane Prince, St. Paul City Council member for Ward 7, join us to discuss this new commission and why reparations are still necessary today. 

The race for Kentucky governor is one of the most closely watched contests in the nation. The popular incumbent, Democrat Andy Beshear, hopes to repeat his upset victory of 2019 against a crowded primary field of twelve Republican hopefuls. 

Running to secure the Republican nomination is Kentucky State Attorney General Daniel Cameron whose platform includes his support of the state’s near-total abortion ban.

If Governor Beshear is reelected, his strategy could provide insights to other Democrats running in highly Republican and conservative states.

We speak with Divya Karthikeyen, Capitol Reporter at Kentucky Public Radio.

To read the full transcript, see above. 

Earlier this week, Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives backed Democratic State Representative Mark Rozzi as their candidate of choice for Pennsylvania House Speaker.

The move shocked many analysts across the state, given that Pennsylvania Republicans had a slight numeric advantage going into this deliberation. Gillian McGoldrick, Harrisburg Reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, joins us to discuss this surprising bi-partisan collaboration.