Evening Roundup, January 29
Jared Bernstein, Garry Kasparov, and Dr. Julie Sweetland break down and parse the threats of economic negligence, rising new oligarchs, and the bloated disinformation we're facing today
Good evening, Contrarian community!
With today marking the first day of Robert F. Kennedy’s confirmation hearing for health secretary, Jen Rubin had a timely conversation with Dr. Julie Sweetland, a sociolinguist, about the proliferation of disinformation and its impact, specifically on the scientific community. (video)
Chess grandmaster and political activist Garry Kasparov writes on the dangerous erasure between capital and decision-making in his cautionary piece, The New Oligarchs.
Jen Rubin engaged in conversation with Jared Bernstein, the former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Biden, addressing some of the vulnerable communities and pressure points that will be most affected by President Trump’s unconscionable “freeze,” should it go through. (video)
And in case you missed it this morning,
Jen Rubin and Meghan Houser looked at the looming crisis of missing grants for healthcare research, in lost science and lost lives: The Human Cost of Frozen Funds
Ilan Goldenberg, Special Advisor on the Middle East under Vice President Kamala Harris and author of Dialogue and Dissonance, joins us with an elucidation of just how much can go wrong in a 90-day pause to foreign aid—and what damages are already underway, from an endangered ceasefire to intentionally destroyed HIV/AIDS resources. Read Trump’s Foreign Aid Spending Freeze – a Combination of Chaos and Cruelty
Of course, with the Trump administration one crisis is never enough. This morning we also featured a vital conversation between Jen Rubin and Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss about the pardoning of the January 6th rioters and its impact on domestic terrorism and extremism: Jen Rubin and Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss (video)
My friend is an administrator for six hospitals and said the Drs are freaking out without access to NIH and CDC. They refer to them daily for case study and mysterious issues they need further discussion on. It is a life and death situation but these monsters have no empathy and people are nothing. That is their true nature. Evil.
Please have more written work and less videos, or if you insist on videos, the provide a transcript. I'm a very fast reader and it makes my head explode to listen to a 30 minute video that I could read a transcript of in 5 minutes at most. I value Jennifer's opinion on things, but only in written form. I really miss her post in the morning both at WaPo and here. That was always a must read. I'll give the Contrarian another month and then evaluate if 1 post a day from Jen is worth my money.