A family comes out of the (racial) closet.

The Takeaway

Coming up on today’s show:

  • After the House passed their version of an Obamacare replacement bill, the legislation went to the Senate. In order to get a healthcare bill through the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can only afford to lose two Republicans, and may have to make moderate concessions. Takeaway Washington Correspondent Todd Zwillich explains. 
  • Waves of violence and protests continue to rock the nation of Venezuela in opposition to President Nicholas Maduro. On Monday, a Venezuelan court rejected efforts to stop the president from rewriting the constitution. Hannah Dreier, the former Venezuela correspondent for the Associated Press, with the latest from Caracas. 
  • As part of The Takeaway’s series on obesity, “Weight a Minute: Why Obesity in America is Not What You Think,” Host John Hockenberry talks with Louis Peitzman, a senior editor at BuzzFeed News, who discusses the challenges of being overweight and gay. “For me, it was a lot harder growing up fat than it was growing up gay,” Peitzman says. Takeaway listeners from around the U.S. also reflect on the challenges of obesity. 
  • On Monday afternoon, Jerry Hatfield was released from Hutchins State Jail in Dallas, Texas after serving 41 years behind bars for murder. In 1980, he was supposed to get a retrial after a court threw out his murder conviction and death sentence. But he never got that retrial. In 2006, 26 years later, he began to file new motions, asserting that his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been denied. It took another 11 years for the courts to agree. Andrew Cohen, senior editor at The Marshall Project and author of Case in Point, and Jeff Newberry, Hartfield’s attorney since 2012, examine the details of this case. 
  • In the latest installment of The Takeaway’s “Uncomfortable Truths” series, Alison Fornes, a counselor based in Salem, Massachusetts, sits down with her mother Julia Fornes, who kept her Puerto Rican identity closeted for years due to the discrimination she received when she moved from the island to Connecticut. Alison also reveals how her mother’s actions affected her own perception of race and identity.
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