Closing the Deal on Healthcare, Police Accountablity, A Changing Planet

Coming up on today’s show:

• Today, House Republicans are hoping a vote to pass their healthcare bill will move forward a day after President Trump was on Capitol Hill to help close the deal. But there has been a slew of last minute changes made to the bill in order to help secure its passage, including a placeholder fund for older Americans’ tax credits and providing states more flexibility on Medicaid. For details we turn to Margot Sanger Katz, healthcare correspondent for The New York Times.

• The right to remain silent is the subject of this week’s Case In Point from The Marshall Project. The case involves a father who was referred to in court documents as S.S. In New Jersey, he was accused of molesting his four year old daughter. During the interrogation, S.S. repeatedly made comments that his lawyers say were ambiguously invoking his right to silence. WNYC’s Sarah Gonzalez sat down with Andrew Cohen, author of Case In Point, and Rebecca Livengood of the ACLU of New Jersey, to discuss the case. 

• On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of County of Los Angeles V. Mendez, and will decide whether the county and two police officers must pay $4 million to a couple shot during a search for someone else. This case will determine if police can be held liable when they needlessly provoke a violent confrontation. Ryan Lockman, a civil rights attorney at Mark B. Frost & Associates in Philadelphia, and writer for the Lock Law Blog, analyzes the case.

• Who is Alexander Acosta, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Labor? A former member of George W. Bush’s National Labor Relations Board and clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, Acosta, who is unknown to most Americans and even many senators, goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Seth Harris, an attorney, a former deputy secretary and acting U.S. Secretary of Labor under the Obama Administration, looks at some of the big issues Acosta is likely to come across if he is confirmed. 

• Ranchers in Kansas that were hit hard by wildfires earlier this month are feeling left behind by President Trump, who they helped vote into office. Wildfires have charred 2 million acres across the U.S. so far this year, with more than 650,000 acres being scorched in Kansas alone. Garth Gardiner, who runs Gardiner Angus Ranch in Kansas, weighs in. 

• Between 2008 and 2016, the Yale program on climate change communication gathered data on how Americans’ think about climate change. Jennifer Marlon, an associate research scientist at Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, shares the findings of this years long research project.