Transgender Rights, China Worries, Understanding the Cosmos

Coming up on today’s show:

• On Wednesday, the Trump Administration announced that it in plans to overturn an Obama-era protection that allows transgender students to use the bathroom of their choosing in schools. Here to discuss the policy shift is Jillian T. Weiss, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Donna Milo, a Republican business owner and transgender woman.

• Protest camps around the Dakota Access Pipeline are expected to be shut down by the Army Corps of Engineers today. For a look at where the movement goes next and for an analysis of other grassroots protests, The Takeaway turns to Jay Caspian Kang, a correspondent for Vice News Tonight, and writer-at-large for the New York Times Magazine.

• A new study that collected data from people in 47 states over the course of 17 years reveals that teens are less likely to attempt suicide in places where gay and lesbian couples have the right to marry one another. Julia Raifman, postdoctoral fellow in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and co-author of the study, explains.

• If President Trump does end up pursuing a very aggressive trade policy with China, and the Chinese government retaliates and targets Chinese students, many U.S. colleges could potentially lose billions of dollars in tuition revenue, according to Kirk Carapezza, managing editor of our partner WGBH’s higher education desk.

• Scientists have announced two major discoveries this week that have the potential to drastically alter some of their previous held understandings of the cosmos. Jason Kendall, adjunct professor of astronomy at William Paterson University, joins The Takeaway to explain the significance of these developments. 

• Joe Feingold, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, donated his violin to Brianna, a 13-year-old schoolgirl from the Bronx. Their story is told in the Oscar-nominated documentary, “Joe’s Violin.” Today, the Takeaway hears from Graham Parker and Kahane Cooperman, directors of the film.