Latest Cabinet-Level Shakeup at White House Ousts V.A. Secretary Shulkin

Here’s what you’ll find on today’s show:

— Last Thursday, the city of Atlanta was largely taken offline by a sophisticated ransomware attack. While critical services like 911 remained uninterrupted, non-essential systems that manage the city’s bureaucracy were rendered unusable. The group responsible for the attack demanded a ransom of $51,000 in order to have those systems restored. The Atlanta cyberattack is believed to be one of the biggest and most sustained attacks against a major American city.

— It’s been rumored for weeks in political circles, and on Wednesday evening President Trump made it official: Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin is out and will be replaced in the coming weeks by the president’s physician, Navy Admiral Ronny Jackson. Shulkin was an Obama-era holdover, who quickly became the target of accusations of spending abuses, mismanagement, and suffered a staff rebellion within the agency.

— Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker appealed a court order on Wednesday that required him to call special elections to fill a state Senate and Assembly seat, but his appeal was rejected. The legislative seats were previously held by Rep. Keith Ripp and Sen. Frank Lasee who both quit in December to join Walker’s administration. Now the governor has responded by calling for special elections to be held in June, after initially trying to delay the court’s mandate.

— Tucked away on page 1,967 of the omnibus spending bill that President Trump signed on Friday is a provision called the “Save America’s Pastime Act.” It allows minor league players to, in effect, be exempted from federal labor law requirements, meaning that players stand to make well below minimum wage where before that would have been prohibited. Thousands of minor league players may be impacted by the new rules.

— Today, we turn to the realities of research and testing in medicine that has often excluded women. Take high-profile drug disasters like Thalidomide in the 50s. That was a drug given to pregnant women to combat nausea, which left more than 10,000 babies deformed. While that tragedy yielded important FDA regulations, it also made drug researchers nervous about using women of childbearing age in their studies at all.