Michael Ian Black, Puerto Rican Voters, A Lost Future

Coming up on today’s show:

• Nearly five million Puerto Ricans live in the mainland United States, and their numbers are climbing as the territory struggles with a debt crisis. What role will Puerto Rican voters play in the general election in November? Julio Ricardo Varela, political editor for Futuro Media Group, and Natascha Otero-Santiago, one of the leaders of South Florida’s chapter of the National Puerto Rican Agenda, weigh in.

• Yesterday, the Senate passed a bill that ensures that Puerto Rico won’t miss a Friday payment that it’s required to make towards its $2 billion debt. The legislation also establishes a federal oversight board that has broad powers. But critics of the bill say the legislation essentially ends democracy on the island. Takeaway Washington Correspondent Todd Zwillich explains.

• Following the attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport on Tuesday, young Turkish people are being forced to confront a government that prioritizes the threat of indigenous Kurds over the threat of ISIS, and the slipping ideal of a more democratic and culturally diverse hub in the Middle East. Mine Eder, a professor at Bogazici University, says that many believe that the future is now all but lost for the people of Turkey. 

• There is a crisis of governance in the state of Illinois, which has been operating without a state budget for a year, and the Chicago Public School System has found itself caught in the middle. CPS must pay $669 million to the teacher pension funds today, and it’s unclear how much the district will have left for day-to-day expenses. Tony Arnold, WBEZ state politics reporter, explains.

• In a new book, Daniel Czitrom, a professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, links New York’s political history with the origins of progressivism across America. Czitrom discusses his new work, “New York Exposed: The Gilded Age Police Scandal That Launched The Progressive Era,” today on The Takeaway. 

• What’s a Donald Trump? In “A Child’s First Book of Trump,” comedian and actor Michael Ian Black presents a parody children’s book illustrated by Marc Rosenthal that gently explains to children who Donald Trump is and what he’s saying.