The Takeaway

While various trackers put the United States near 1 million deaths due to Covid, the numbers are most likely much higher, according to the CDC. Fatalities around the world are close to 15 million. In spite of this staggering death toll, chief medical adviser to the president Dr. Anthony Fauci says we are no longer in a pandemic phase here in the U.S.. Access to vaccines, boosters, and antiviral medications have also shifted attitudes and behaviors. To discuss what we have learned these past two years and what we need to do to prepare for the next pandemic, we speak with Dr. Bhakti Hansoti, associate professor of emergency medicine and international health at Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

According to a 2020 study by The Williams Insitute, an LGBT think tank at UCLA Law School, 19% of transgender adults are parents. Many are parents to biological children. But for transgender people who choose to adopt or foster, the process can be particularly challenging. Laws vary by state, and while 28 states prohibit adoption discrimination on the basis of gender identity, 19 states do not.

Octavia Lewis is a transgender Health Coordinator at Montefiore Health System and she's navigated the foster and adoption systems in New York state. The Takeaway spoke with her about her constantly evolving relationship with motherhood. 

Motherhood and its many meanings and expectations are created and experienced within the particular realities of our society and history. And to better understand some of our shared national history with mothering we sat down with Professor Michele Goodwin of the University of California-Irvine who is author of the book Policing the Womb:  Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.

We discuss what motherhood looks like when mothers and children are separated by borders, and how these families challenge Western stereotypes about what good motherhood is. We speak with Gabrielle Oliveira, associate professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and the author of "Motherhood Across Borders: Immigrants and their Children in Mexico and in New York City."

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, over half of the women who are in federal prisons and 80% of women in jails are mothers. The National Bail Out Collective is an organization fighting for pretrial reform to remove these mothers and caregivers from behind bars instead of allowing them to sit in jail cells while awaiting adjudication. The National Bail Out Collective also coordinates Mama’s Day Bailouts to bail out Black mothers and caregivers on Mother’s Day.

We speak with Rodreshia Russaw, Executive Director of The Ordinary People Society and Qiana Johnson, Founder of Life After Release about their work to support incarcerated women and mothers and their participation in Mama’s Day Bailout. 

But the truth is, that almost all of us, even the richest and most well-off, benefit from government services and programs.

There are services that most of us can recognize as government programs: food stamps, welfare, Pell Grants, Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security retirement benefits. Maybe you’ve used some of these.

But there are also not so visible government programs that we might benefit from without realizing. These are usually hidden in the tax code or through subsidies through private organizations. These include the home-mortgage-interest deduction and tax exemptions you may get on employer-provided health and retirement benefits. You might have used some of these as well without even knowing it. 

We speak with Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell University, calls this the "submerged state." She is also the author of the book “The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy.”

Julius Jones was convicted in the 1999 killing of Paul Howell in Oklahoma and was sentenced to death. He proclaims that he is innocent and first saw Howell on T.V. when his death was reported on the news.  After new evidence and a long legal fight, on November 18th, the day that Jones was set to be executed, Governor Kevin Stitt commuted his sentence to life without the possibility of parole less than four hours before he was set to be executed.

We speak with Antoinette Jones, the sister of Julius Jones and Reverend Cece Jones-Davis, the campaign founder/director of Justice for Julius to discuss the latest in Julius’ case and their ongoing fight to prove his innocence.

J.D. Vance won the Ohio Republican Senate primary after an endorsement from Donald Trump signaling that the Republican party may still be beholden to Trump and his loyal followers. While the battle over the Republican party plays out state to state, both Democrats and Republicans fight over state and congressional maps, which have been redrawn after the 2020 census. We look at primary elections across the country and how redistricting may impact the results with Amy Walter, Editor-in-Chief of The Cook Political Report.

May the forth be with you today, on this May 4th!

 Culture critic Maya Phillips has been a major Star Wars fan since she first saw the original trilogy on VHS as a kid. She even has a soft spot for some aspects of the prequels! But as she’s gotten older, some of her opinions on the franchise have soured, both when it comes to its politics and the recycling of ideas that has taken place since Disney acquired Star Wars. We speak with Phillips about her connection to Star Wars and whether the franchise can be saved.

On our special May the Fourth episode, we start the show talking to two NASA astronauts about their experiences in space.

We speak with Chris Hadfield, who was an astronaut with NASA for 21 years, a colonel in the Canadian air force, and he is also an educator, a musician, and Chris was the first Canadian astronaut to walk in space in 2001 and is the only Canadian to command a space station. He retired from NASA in 2013, and since then, he helps run several space companies, and has become known around the world for his internet presence and videos that have made space science fun and accessible. He’s also an author of several books and his most recent novel, “The Apollo Murders” is a Cold War-era thriller.

We also speak with Sunita Williams, an astronaut at NASA and the second female commander of the International Space Station. She’s also been training commercial space crews for private companies like SpaceX and Boeing. She spent 322 days in space aboard the International Space Station and performed 7 spacewalks, spending a total of 29 hours and 17 minutes strolling around in the cosmos.