Is it Time to Change Age-of-Consent Laws?

Coming up on today’s show:

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in chaos this week following a leadership showdown. Pete Schroeder,financial regulation and legislation reporter for Reuters, has been reporting on the CFPB since its inception. He looks at the history of the CFPB, and why the agency is in turmoil. 

• All this week, The Takeaway is looking at the current state and future of the Democratic Party. Today, The Takeaway hears from Andrea Jenkins, the first openly transgender African-American woman elected in U.S. history. She won a seat on the Minneapolis City Council earlier this month, and discusses the challenges facing Democrats in 2017 and beyond. 

• Is the Democratic Party adequately responding to sexual harassment allegations against Minnesota Senator Al Franken and Representative John Conyers? Marcy Stech, a Democratic Party strategist,joins The Takeaway to weigh in on how the party has handled the recent allegations. 

• Baltimore homicide detective Sean Suiter was killed last week in The Charm City. The timing of the murder is raising eyebrows. Suiter died a day before he was scheduled to testify before a federal jury that’s investigating an elite city task force. Justin Fenton,a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, has the details. 

• Many police departments are grappling with how best to effectively do their jobs, while at the same time not alienating the people they are sworn to protect. In Hartford, Connecticut, cops are aggressively seeking to engage their community through open dialogue and transparency. Deputy Chief Brian Foley tells us about his department’s efforts.

• Jennifer Drobac is a professor of sexual harassment law at Indiana University, and author of “Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination & Consent Law.” She says we need a radical change to our consent laws: let teens offer “assent,” which they can subsequently revoke. This, she argues, would protect teens legally, and keep men like Roy Moore from going after them in the first place.

This episode is hosted by Todd Zwillich