Podcasts about American Progress

Project 2025 began not with a bill in Congress, but with a 900‑plus page playbook assembled by the Heritage Foundation and allied conservative groups, billed as a roadmap for the next Republican president. Heritage calls it a plan to “take back our government from the deep state,” while critics describe it as a bid to, in the words of the National Federation of Federal Employees, “destroy the administrative state” and replace it with loyalists.At the heart of the project is a personnel revolution. The blueprint urges reinstating and vastly expanding “Schedule F,” a Trump‑era job category that would let presidents reclassify tens of thousands of career civil servants as at‑will employees. According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress, one architect of the original order, James Sherk, projected roughly 50,000 positions could lose civil service protections. Advocates argue this would “ensure the President's policies are faithfully executed.” Opponents warn it would allow mass firings based on ideology, undermining neutral expertise in law enforcement, public health, and regulation.The document does not stop at staffing. It zeroes in on independent agencies that Congress designed to be insulated from day‑to‑day political pressure. In Project 2025's own terms, these are “so‑called independent agencies.” Chapters urge giving the president power to remove commissioners at will and subject their rules to aggressive White House review. Analysts at the Center for American Progress note that this could let a future president pressure the Federal Communications Commission on media licenses or keep the Federal Trade Commission from issuing rules like its recent ban on most noncompete clauses.Concrete agency changes are spelled out in vivid detail. A chapter on the Department of Energy recommends outsourcing core analytical work of the Energy Information Administration to private contractors, a move Boston Review warns could turn basic energy data into an ideological battleground. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Project 2025 proposes ending the role of career staff in awarding hundreds of millions in grants and handing that power to a single political appointee. The Health and Human Services chapter calls for steering teen pregnancy prevention funds toward abstinence‑only programs, reversing a decade of evidence‑based grantmaking.Running through the plan is a view of presidential power sometimes called the “unitary executive theory.” According to the American Civil Liberties Union, Project 2025 would concentrate control of the Justice Department in the White House, prioritizing an attorney general “above all loyal to the President” and easing the removal of officials who resist politically driven investigations.Supporters frame these ideas as a long‑overdue correction to an unaccountable bureaucracy. Critics, including nonpartisan legal scholars, warn that neutral guardrails like Senate confirmation, independent data, and protected civil servants are what keep any president from becoming an “imperial” figure.With the next election cycle underway, Project 2025 now functions as both a governing manual and a political litmus test. Candidates are being pressed to endorse, amend, or reject its proposals. The real test, though, will come if a future administration tries to turn this blueprint into executive orders, agency reorganizations, and real‑world firings.Thanks for tuning in, and come back next week for more.Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3QsFor more check out http://www.quietplease.aiThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Republicans and the Supreme Court have put basically no guardrails on Trump, so he started a global war that is costing taxpayers $1 billion a day. He shrugs about soldiers dying, and he lies about the school full of children that Americans likely killed. And he's downright giddy that because he signed off on all the bombing of Iran, he may get to choose the country's new leader. At the same time, one of the few occasions when Republicans stood up to him resulted in the firing of his first Cabinet member, the scandalous Kristi Noem. Plus, new job loss numbers show how Trump continues to hurt the working class, fuel prices are rising, the administration is again helping Russia in its war on Ukraine, Rand Paul may have an issue with Noem's chosen successor, and have the Dems' chances of retaking the Senate improved?Neera Tanden, with the Center for American Progress, joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod.show notes The Center for American Progress web site Catherine on Trump's warflation NPR on Neera's OMB nomination being pulled because of her tweets about GOP senators Follow "Bulwark Takes" for breaking news coverage over the weekend Tim's playlist Tickets for our LIVE show in Austin on March 19: TheBulwark.com/Events.

In this episode of The Horn, Alan is joined by H. A. Hellyer, Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, to explore what's behind the rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and the competing visions of regional order driving it. They examine where tensions have emerged most sharply, including in Yemen and Sudan, and what these flashpoints reveal about each country's red lines and regional strategy. They look at how, despite the dispute, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are coordinating their response to Iran's attacks on Gulf states following U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran. They also discuss what Saudi-UAE détente might look like, whether Riyadh and Abu Dhabi can manage their disagreements, including over Sudan, if they are unable to fully resolve them and how countries in the Horn of Africa can avoid being drawn into the rivalry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a blueprint so ambitious it aims to remake the entire federal government in the image of one person's vision. That's Project 2025, a 900-page manifesto from the Heritage Foundation and former Trump officials, as detailed in its core document, Mandate for Leadership. According to the Heritage Foundation's plan, it seeks to restore "self-governance to the American people" by centralizing power in the presidency under the unitary executive theory, which grants the president near-total control over the bureaucracy.Fast forward to 2026, and its ideas are no longer hypothetical. President Trump's executive orders have brought them to life with startling speed. Take Schedule F: Project 2025 called for reinstating this Trump-era order to strip job protections from up to 50,000 civil servants, replacing experts with loyalists. The White House's January 2025 order, Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce, did just that, as reported by Government Executive. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has fired tens of thousands, targeting diversity offices and agencies like USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—both Project 2025 priorities—though courts have reinstated some workers amid lawsuits from the ACLU and unions.Concrete examples abound. The plan urges eliminating the Department of Education, a goal Trump advanced via executive order, challenged by teachers' unions. It proposes weaponizing the DOJ against rivals, expanding political appointees there, and ending independence for agencies like the FCC and FTC by overruling Supreme Court precedents, per the Center for American Progress analysis. DOGE has slashed Health and Human Services by 20,000 jobs and gutted IRS civil rights offices, aiming to "traumatically affect" workers, as OMB Director Russell Vought stated.Experts warn of dire implications. The ACLU describes it as a "radical restructuring" threatening civil rights, while the American Federation of Government Employees fears up to a million job losses, crippling services for rural families and seniors. Proponents see efficiency; critics, an imperial presidency eroding checks and balances.As lawsuits pile up and agencies submit reorganization plans by April, the real test looms: Will Congress rein in these moves, or will DOGE hit its $1 trillion savings goal by July? The battle for America's governance rages on.Thanks for tuning in, listeners. Come back next week for more.Some great Deals https://amzn.to/49SJ3QsFor more check out http://www.quietplease.aiThis content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI

Send a textHow dangerous is loneliness to your health? In this clip from our episode “The Wellness Industry Is Misleading You”, host John Driscoll speaks with Zeke Emanuel about the data linking close friendships to longer life, including research showing significantly higher mortality among those with few close relationships.Listen to the full episode here

Welcome to another episode of “On the Issues with Alon Ben-Meir.” Today's guest is Abdülhamit Bilici, a veteran journalist, editor, commentator, and media executive with over 25 years of experience in journalism, editorial leadership, and international affairs. He served as CEO of Zaman Media Group until its seizure by the Turkish government in March 2016, after which he went into exile in the United States. In this episode, Alon and Hamit discuss the current war on Iran's impact on Turkey, what role Turkey may play in trying to find an end to the current conflict, and how this and other regional conflicts impact Turkish domestic issues, particularly in relation to the Kurds. Full bio Abdülhamit Bilici is a veteran journalist, editor, commentator, and media executive with over 25 years of experience in journalism, editorial leadership, and international affairs. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of Zaman, formerly Turkey's highest-circulating newspaper, and later as CEO of Zaman Media Group, which included Today's Zaman (English-language daily), Cihan News Agency, and Aksiyon weekly news magazine. From 2008 to 2015, he was General Manager of Cihan News Agency, known for its extensive video news coverage and trusted election reporting across the country. As a columnist for Zaman and Today's Zaman, Bilici wrote on Turkish foreign policy, domestic politics, and broader international developments. He also hosted a political affairs TV program, Democracy Watch, and participated in many national and international news broadcasts. Following the government seizure and closure of Zaman and its affiliated outlets in March 2016, Bilici went into exile in the United States. Since then, he has continued to write, speak, and provide analysis on press freedom, democratic backsliding, and human rights in Turkey. He recently testified before the U.S. Congress, sharing firsthand experience of media repression and institutional erosion under the current Turkish government. He has also spoken at prominent platforms such as the Middle East Institute, Center for American Progress, World Affairs Councils of America, and Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. As part of his outreach, he has addressed more than 20 World Affairs Councils across the U.S. and delivered lectures at Niagara University, Clemson University, University of Central Oklahoma, Elizabethtown College, and others. In addition to his writing in the Miami Herald, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and other publications, Bilici regularly appears in international media including CBS News, NPR, Al Jazeera, Sky News Arabic, and Voice of America. He has been interviewed on a wide range of topics including press freedom, political polarization, and Turkey's role in global affairs. Since 2021, he has co-hosted the weekly YouTube program Kum Saati, where he and his guests explore political, intellectual, and historical topics relevant to Turkey and the wider region. The show provides in-depth discussions on democratic values, identity, power, and public memory, drawing a growing audience of Turkish-speaking viewers around the world. Throughout his career, Bilici has conducted interviews with high-level political leaders, including former European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, Israeli President Shimon Peres, and Moroccan Prime Minister Saad Eddine Othmani. He holds a BA in Political Science and International Affairs from Boğaziçi University, an MA in International Relations from Istanbul University, and an MBA from Fatih University. He is currently completing a PhD in International Relations, with research focusing on the intersection of media, power, and democratic institutions. Drawing on his firsthand experience as a journalist, editor, and political exile, Hamit Bilici continues to engage in public dialogue on freedom of expression, democratic resilience, and the risks posed by authoritarian governance.

Send a textThe wellness industry is booming, but is it actually helping people live better lives? With trillions spent on supplements, special diets, and longevity hacks, it raises a bigger question about what really matters for long-term health.Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Author, Eat Your Ice Cream joins CareTalk to discuss the wellness industrial complex, the health risks of loneliness, and why social connection, simple habits, and even ice cream may matter more than expensive longevity obsessions.

The UK blocks U.S. use of Diego Garcia. A British operative fights in federal court to keep a censorship nonprofit running in New York. Democrats scramble to stop ballot reviews in Georgia. And Chuck Schumer moves to elevate the Pride flag alongside Old Glory. Tara connects the dots in an episode about sovereignty, speech, and power.

A new report from the Center for American Progress projects that President Donald Trump's so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” could lead to higher federal deficits and significant losses in health care coverage. Critics argue the tax cuts primarily benefit wealthy Americans while increasing financial pressure on working-class and low-income households. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed with the latest news from a leading Black-owned & controlled media company: https://aurn.com/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this weekend's episode, three segments from this past week's Washington Journal. First: A conversation with Jillian Snider – a former law enforcement officer and senior fellow at the R Street Institute. We talk about ICE operations in Minneapolis – and best practices for law enforcement in the wake of another fatal shooting there. Then: Amid the fallout in Minnesota, President Trump tried to pivot back to the economy and efforts on affordability. We dig into the numbers with Natalie Baker of the Center for American Progress and Brittany Madni from the Economic Policy Innovation Center. Finally: President Trump may have backed off his threat to takeover Greenland – but relations are still frayed between the U-S and Europe. That conversation with Andrew Roth of The Guardian -- and Stefanie Bolzen of the German News channel VELT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Friday Five for January 30, 2026 Meta Announces Premium Subscriptions TikTok USDS Troubles & New Competitors FY 2026 Appropriations Bills 2025 Tax Season & H.R. 7006 CMS 2027 MA and Part D Advance Notice   Get Connected:

Estados Unidos se marcha oficialmente del Acuerdo de París el 27 de enero. Da carpetazo a toda la lucha medioambiental y en especial a la batalla contra el cambio climático. Aunque hay una buena noticia: acaba de entrar en vigor un nuevo pacto para proteger los océanos. Estados Unidos no lo ratifica y, sin embargo, 82 países, entre los que destaca China, se han unido para garantizar que allí donde está el futuro de lo que comamos y de mucha investigación clave no impere la ley del más fuerte. En este episodio hablamos con Frances Colón, investigadora principal del Center for American Progress, que describe los ataques contra la ciencia por parte de la Casa Blanca. El periodista de EL PAÍS Manuel Planelles, experto en medioambiente, da cuenta de los avances que se están llevando a cabo pese a todo. CRÉDITOS: Realiza y presenta: Ana Fuentes Diseño de sonido: Nacho Taboada Edición: Ana Ribera Coordina: José Juan Morales Dirige: Ana Alonso Sintonía: Jorge Magaz Si tienes quejas, dudas o sugerencias, escribe a defensora@elpais.es o manda un audio a +34 649362138 (no atiende llamadas).

Here's a shortened, tight one-paragraph summary:This episode of Living with Invisible Learning Challenges explores how rising health insurance premiums and government policy decisions affect everyone, while hitting neurodivergent individuals especially hard. Because many neurodivergent people rely on ongoing, specialized care, even small increases in premiums, deductibles, or cost-sharing can limit access to therapy, diagnoses, and mental health services. Drawing on research from KFF and the Center for American Progress, the episode highlights gaps in mental health parity, threats to Medicaid, and how policy choices directly shape who can afford essential care—underscoring the need for advocacy, informed decision-making, and community support.⁠https://linktr.ee/JenniferPTTS?utm_source=linktree_profile_share⁠Articles & Research Referenced (Links):Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) – Effects of premiums and cost sharing on low-income populations:https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-effects-of-premiums-and-cost-sharing-on-low-income-populations-updated-review-of-research-findings-table-3/KFF / STAT – Health insurance premiums continue to rise:https://www.statnews.com/2025/10/22/health-insurance-premiums-up-6-percent-kff-reports/Center for American Progress – The Behavioral Health Care Affordability Problem:https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-behavioral-health-care-affordability-problem/Commonwealth Fund – Behavioral health parity challenges:https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2026/behavioral-health-parity-takes-step-backward-under-trump-administrationAmerican Bar Association – Weakening Medicaid and health equity:https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/2025-october/weakening-medicaid-erodes-progress/Reuters / KFF Poll – Public support for extending ACA tax credits:https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/most-americans-back-extending-aca-tax-credits-kff-poll-shows-2025-10-03/

Can Therapists Start a Union? The Antitrust Trap, the Shadow Committee, and the Economic Strangulation of American Psychotherapy Analyzing America's Healthcare Regulations and Their Effect on Us: Why the Law Prevents Therapists from Organizing While Allowing a Private Committee to Fix Prices for the Entire Medical System https://gettherapybirmingham.com/can-therapists-start-a-union-spoiler-alert-they-cant/ The Monthly Rage Thread If you hang around therapist forums long enough, you will see it happen. It operates with the regularity of the tides. Someone posts a thread, usually after receiving a contract from an insurance company offering 1998 rates for 2025 work, and asks the obvious question: “We are the ones providing the care. The system collapses without us. Why don't we just all go on strike? Why don't we form a union and demand fair pay?” It is a logical question. In almost every other sector of the economy, workers who feel exploited band together to negotiate better terms. Screenwriters shut down Hollywood to get paid for streaming residuals. Auto workers walk off the line. Teachers fill the state capitol. Nurses at major hospital systems have successfully unionized and won significant concessions. So why, in the midst of a national mental health crisis, does the mental health workforce remain so politically impotent? The answer is not that we lack will. It is not that we lack organization. The answer is that for private practice therapists, forming a union is a federal crime. This is not a political manifesto. It is an analysis of the bizarre regulatory environment that governs American healthcare, a system of antitrust laws, shadow committees, and bureaucratic classifications that effectively strips clinicians of their bargaining power while empowering the corporations that pay them. If you want to understand why corporate tech monopolies are ruining therapy, or why the corporatization of healthcare feels so suffocating, you have to understand the legal straitjacket we are all wearing. And you have to understand the one group that is allowed to set prices, the one group exempt from the rules that bind the rest of us. Part I: You Are Not a Worker, You Are a Standard Oil Tycoon The primary reason therapists cannot unionize dates back to the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons. The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 was designed to prevent massive corporations like Standard Oil from colluding to fix prices and destroy the free market. It prohibits “every contract, combination… or conspiracy, in restraint of trade.” The law was a response to genuine abuses: companies buying up competitors, dividing territories, and coordinating prices to gouge consumers who had no alternatives. Here is the catch: In the eyes of the federal government, a private practice therapist is not a “worker.” You are a business entity. Even if you are a solo practitioner struggling to pay rent in a subleased office, seeing clients between crying in your car and eating lunch at your desk, the law views you as the CEO of a micro-corporation. You are classified as a 1099 independent contractor, not a W-2 employee, and that distinction makes all the difference in the world. If two workers at Starbucks talk about their wages and agree to ask for a raise, that is “collective bargaining,” which is protected by the National Labor Relations Act. But if two private practice therapists talk about their reimbursement rates and agree to ask Blue Cross for a raise, that is “price-fixing.” It is legally indistinguishable, in the eyes of the Federal Trade Commission, from gas stations conspiring to raise the price of unleaded. It sounds absurd, but the FTC takes it deadly seriously. When independent contractors organize to demand higher rates, when they share information about what they are being paid and coordinate their responses, they are engaging in horizontal price-fixing, one of the most serious violations of antitrust law. The Sherman Act provides for criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment. The law that was meant to break up monopolies is now used to prevent social workers from asking for a cost-of-living adjustment. The irony is crushing. The same regulatory framework that prevents two therapists from discussing their rates allows massive insurance conglomerates to merge repeatedly, concentrating buyer power in fewer and fewer hands. UnitedHealth Group, for example, has acquired dozens of companies over the past two decades, becoming the largest healthcare company in the United States. When they offer a “take it or leave it” contract to providers, they do so with the full knowledge that fragmented, legally prohibited from organizing therapists have no counter-leverage. The antitrust laws, designed to prevent monopoly power, have created a system where sellers are atomized and buyers are consolidated. Economists call this “monopsony,” and it is precisely the market distortion the Sherman Act was supposed to prevent. Part II: The Day the “Learned Profession” Died For a long time, doctors and lawyers thought they were exempt from these laws. They argued that they were “learned professions,” not mere tradespeople, and therefore above the grubby laws of commerce. They believed that their ethical obligations to patients and clients set them apart from the rules that governed steel mills and meatpacking plants. Medicine was a calling, not a business, and surely the government would not regulate the sacred doctor-patient relationship as if it were a commercial transaction. That illusion was shattered in 1975 by the Supreme Court case Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar. The case involved lawyers, not doctors, but its implications cascaded through every licensed profession in America. The Goldfarbs were purchasing a home and needed a title examination. The Virginia State Bar had established a minimum fee schedule for such services, and every lawyer they contacted quoted the exact same price. They sued, arguing that this fee schedule was illegal price-fixing. The Supreme Court agreed. In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that professional services, including legal and medical advice, are “trade or commerce” subject to antitrust laws. The “learned profession” exemption, which had been assumed but never explicitly established in law, was declared a myth. “The nature of an occupation, standing alone,” the Court wrote, “does not provide sanctuary from the Sherman Act.” This ruling was intended to lower prices for consumers by preventing lawyers from setting minimum fees, and in that narrow sense it was a good thing. But in healthcare, it had a catastrophic side effect: it made it illegal for doctors and therapists to band together to resist the pricing power of insurance companies. The “learned profession” exemption is dead. We are now just businesses, and businesses are not allowed to hold hands. This creates the illusion of progress: we have “free market” competition among providers, but monopsony power among payers. It is a market where the sellers are forbidden from organizing, but the buyers are allowed to merge until they are too big to fail. The result is not a free market at all. It is a market designed to transfer wealth from one class (providers) to another (insurers and administrators), with the law itself serving as the enforcement mechanism. Part III: The Cartel in the Basement If therapists cannot collude to set prices, surely nobody else can, right? Wrong. There is one group in American healthcare that is allowed to meet in a room, decide what every doctor's time is worth, and set prices for the entire industry. It is called the RUC, the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee. And understanding the RUC is the key to understanding why talk therapy is dying in the medical model, why psychiatrists abandoned the couch for the prescription pad, and why your insurance company offers you a ghost network of providers who never answer the phone. The Birth of a Shadow Government To comprehend the current crisis in mental health economics, one must excavate the foundations of the physician payment system. Prior to 1992, Medicare reimbursed physicians based on a system known as “Customary, Prevailing, and Reasonable” charges. Under this system, physicians were paid based on their historical billing charges. It was inherently inflationary; it rewarded those who raised their fees most aggressively and created wide geographic disparities for identical services. In response to spiraling costs, Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1989, mandating a transition to a fee schedule based on the resources required to provide a service. This birthed the Resource-Based Relative Value Scale. The intellectual architecture for this system was developed by a team of economists at Harvard University, led by William Hsiao. Hsiao's team sought to create a “unified theory” of medical value, attempting to quantify the “work” involved in disparate medical acts, comparing the cognitive intensity of a psychiatric evaluation with the technical skill of a hernia repair. The Harvard study was revolutionary. It promised to level the playing field, suggesting that cognitive services, the thinking and talking that comprises primary care and mental health, were vastly undervalued relative to surgical procedures. Had Hsiao's original recommendations been implemented purely, the income gap between generalists and specialists might have narrowed significantly. But the administrative complexity of assigning values to over 7,000 Current Procedural Terminology codes overwhelmed the Health Care Financing Administration. Into this administrative vacuum stepped the American Medical Association. The AMA, fearing that the government would unilaterally set prices, proposed a “partnership.” They would convene a committee of experts to maintain and update the relative values, providing this labor-intensive service to the government at no cost. The government accepted. Thus, in 1991, the RUC was born, not as a government agency, but as a private advisory body with unparalleled influence over public funds. The Architecture of Control The RUC's claim to legitimacy rests on its status as an “expert panel.” But a structural analysis of its composition reveals a profound bias that mimics the governance of a cartel designed to protect incumbent interests. The committee consists of 32 members, but power is concentrated in the 29 voting seats. Of these, 21 seats are appointed by major national medical specialty societies. The distribution is not proportional to the volume of services provided to Medicare beneficiaries, nor is it proportional to the physician workforce. Instead, it is frozen in a historical moment that favored high-technology specialties. Primary care physicians, who perform roughly 45 to 50 percent of Medicare work, hold approximately 4 to 5 seats, giving them about 17 percent of the vote. Procedural and surgical specialties, including surgery, radiology, and anesthesiology, hold 15 to 18 seats, giving them roughly 60 percent of the vote despite performing only 35 to 40 percent of Medicare work. The American Psychiatric Association holds a single seat. One seat. This lone representative must negotiate with a supermajority of specialists, neurosurgeons, cardiothoracic surgeons, radiologists, and ophthalmologists, whose financial interests are often diametrically opposed to the valuation of cognitive work. The cartel dynamic is enforced by a statutory requirement of budget neutrality. The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule is a zero-sum game. If the total relative value units projected for a given year exceed the budget, a “scaler” is applied to reduce the conversion factor, effectively cutting everyone's pay. Therefore, any proposal to increase the value of psychotherapy, which would increase the total RVU spend, effectively asks every surgeon in the room to take a pay cut to fund the raise for psychiatrists. Given that a two-thirds majority is required to pass a recommendation, the procedural bloc holds absolute veto power over any redistribution of wealth. The Secret Chamber A hallmark of cartel behavior is the restriction of information. For nearly two decades, the RUC operated in near-total secrecy. While recent years have seen minor concessions to transparency, such as the publication of vote totals, the core deliberative process remains opaque. RUC meetings are private. The public, the press, and even non-RUC physicians are largely barred from attending the deliberations where billions of tax dollars are allocated. Participants, including the specialty advisors who present data, must sign strict non-disclosure agreements. These agreements prevent them from discussing the specific tradeoffs, deals, or arguments made within the chamber. A former RUC participant described these agreements as “draconian,” designed to insulate the committee from public accountability. The Government Accountability Office and the Center for American Progress have noted the inherent conflict of interest. The individuals setting the prices are the same individuals who receive the payments. Unlike a regulatory agency, where officials are salaried and divested of industry assets, RUC members are practicing physicians whose personal incomes are directly tied to the decisions they make. This secrecy serves a functional purpose: it allows for “logrolling.” A representative from Orthopedics might support an inflated value for a Cardiology code in exchange for Cardiology's support on a Knee Replacement code. This “I'll scratch your back” dynamic creates an upward pressure on procedural values that excludes those outside the dominant coalition, specifically primary care and mental health. The Antitrust Shield Why has the Department of Justice not broken up this cartel? The legal shield is the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine. This Supreme Court doctrine establishes that private entities are immune from antitrust liability when they are petitioning the government. Because the RUC technically only “recommends” values to CMS (that is petitioning), and CMS “decides” (that is government action), the RUC is protected by the First Amendment right to petition. This legal loophole allows the RUC to operate with monopolistic characteristics without fear of prosecution, provided CMS continues to go through the motions of “reviewing” the recommendations. And CMS accepts those recommendations over 90 percent of the time. Because private insurance companies generally base their rates on Medicare, this private committee effectively sets the price of healthcare for the entire country. If independent therapists did this, if they gathered in a room and agreed on what their services should cost, they would face criminal prosecution. But because the RUC operates under the fiction of “advising” the government, it is protected. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist solidarity provides cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. Part IV: The Mechanics of Suppression To control a market, one must control its currency. In American medicine, that currency is the Relative Value Unit. Every medical service, from a 15-minute therapy session to a heart transplant, is assigned a total RVU value. This value is the sum of three components: the Work RVU, which accounts for physician time, technical skill, mental effort, and judgment; the Practice Expense RVU, which covers overhead costs like rent, staff, and equipment; and the Malpractice RVU, which reflects professional liability insurance costs. The Work RVU, which comprises roughly 50 to 55 percent of the total value, is determined by RUC surveys. When a code is flagged for review, the relevant specialty society distributes a survey to a sample of its members. These respondents are asked to estimate the time and intensity of the service compared to a “reference service.” This methodology violates several principles of statistical validity. The surveys are voluntary and distributed by the specialty societies themselves. The respondents are typically those most active in the society and most invested in maximizing reimbursement, advocates rather than neutral observers. The sample sizes are often shockingly small; RUC surveys frequently rely on fewer than 50 or 70 respondents to set the price for services performed millions of times annually. A sample of 30 orthopedic surgeons might determine the value of a procedure costing Medicare billions. The Time Arbitrage The most critical variable in the RUC equation is time. The Work RVU is conceptually derived from the formula: Work equals Time multiplied by Intensity. Therefore, inflating the time estimate is the most direct route to inflating the price. Independent studies by RAND and the Urban Institute, often using objective data like Operating Room logs, have consistently shown that the RUC overestimates the time required for surgical procedures. A procedure valued by the RUC as taking 60 minutes may, in reality, take 30 minutes. This creates an arbitrage opportunity. If a gastroenterologist can perform a “60-minute” colonoscopy in 20 minutes, they can effectively perform three procedures in the time allotted for one. They bill for three hours of work in one hour of real time. This “efficiency gain” is captured entirely by the physician as profit. Psychotherapy cannot utilize this arbitrage. CPT codes for psychotherapy are explicitly time-based in their definition. Code 90832 requires 16 to 37 minutes. Code 90834 requires 38 to 52 minutes. Code 90837 requires 53 minutes or more. A psychiatrist cannot perform a 60-minute therapy session in 20 minutes; doing so constitutes fraud. Therefore, the revenue of a psychotherapist is capped by the linear passage of time. They can sell, at maximum, roughly 8 to 10 units of labor per day. A proceduralist, aided by RUC-inflated time assumptions, can sell 20 or 30 units of “RUC time” in the same day. This structural discrepancy creates a widening income gap that no amount of “hard work” by the therapist can close. It is not a market failure. It is market design. The “Thinking” Penalty The RUC's bias is not merely structural; it is philosophical. The committee, dominated by surgeons and proceduralists, consistently values “doing things to people,” cutting, scanning, injecting, far more highly than “talking to people,” diagnosing, counseling, managing complex chronic conditions. This creates a regulatory environment that functions as a de facto wealth transfer from cognitive care to procedural care. In 2013, a major revision of psychiatry codes exposed this bias in stark relief. Previously, psychiatrists used codes that bundled the medical evaluation with the psychotherapy. The new system required psychiatrists to bill an E/M code for the medical management plus an “add-on” code for psychotherapy. While intended to improve transparency, this change exposed psychotherapy to the raw mechanics of the RUC's valuation bias. By isolating the “therapy” component, the committee could subject it to rigorous cross-specialty comparison. And the committee, dominated by surgeons, views “talking to a patient” as low-intensity work compared to “operating on a patient.” The economic signal was clear. This created the 15-minute med check culture not because psychiatrists stopped caring, but because the regulatory environment made relational care financial suicide. It effectively “illegalized” the practice of deep, slow psychiatry for anyone who wanted to take insurance. Part V: The “Messenger Model” and Other Legal Fictions When therapists ask about collective bargaining, lawyers will often point them to the only legal loophole available: the “Messenger Model.” In this model, a third party (the messenger) acts as an intermediary between a group of providers and an insurance company. The messenger takes the insurance company's offer and conveys it to each therapist individually. Each therapist must then make a unilateral, independent decision to accept or reject it. The messenger is strictly forbidden from negotiating. They cannot say, “The group rejects this.” They cannot say, “We want 10% more.” They cannot advise the therapists on what to do. They can only carry messages. This is why “Independent Practice Associations” are often toothless. In the 2008 case North Texas Specialty Physicians v. FTC, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear that if an IPA actually tries to leverage its numbers to demand better rates, it violates antitrust laws. If it follows the messenger model, it has no leverage. It is a “heads I win, tails you lose” regulatory structure designed to protect payers, not providers. The only exception is “clinical integration,” where providers genuinely merge their practices, share infrastructure, and accept joint financial risk. But this requires substantial capital investment and essentially means ceasing to be an independent practitioner. It is a legal pathway available mainly to large physician groups and hospital systems, not to solo therapists working out of rented offices. Part VI: Market Distortions and the Flight to Cash When a cartel sets a price below the market equilibrium, suppliers exit the formal market. This is precisely what has happened in psychotherapy. Mental health providers generally have lower overhead than surgeons. They do not need MRI machines or sterile surgical suites. And they face high consumer demand; the national mental health crisis ensures a steady stream of people seeking services. This gives them an “exit option” that proceduralists do not have. They can refuse to accept insurance and operate as cash-only businesses. The statistics are stark. Nearly 50 percent of psychiatrists do not accept commercial insurance, compared to less than 10 percent of other specialists. A 2023 survey indicated that 64 percent of private practice therapists planned to increase their cash-pay rates. Research published in Health Affairs Scholar found that patients are 10.6 times more likely to go out-of-network for mental health care than for medical/surgical care. This mass exodus is a rational economic response to RUC-suppressed rates. If the RUC says an hour of therapy is worth $100 via the RVU-to-dollar conversion, but the market demand is willing to pay $250, the provider will leave the RUC-controlled sector. They are not abandoning their profession; they are abandoning a pricing regime that values their work at less than half its market rate. Ghost Networks The RUC's pricing failure creates “Ghost Networks,” directories filled with providers who are ostensibly “in-network” but are functionally inaccessible. They are either full, not accepting new patients, retired, have moved, or simply do not respond to inquiries from insurance-based patients because the administrative burden of prior authorizations and clawbacks outweighs the suppressed fee. This is not a “shortage” of providers in the absolute sense. There is no shortage of therapists in private practice. There is a shortage of therapists willing to work at the RUC-determined price point. The insurance directories are graveyards of phantom availability, creating the illusion of access where none exists. The Cost Paradox The central thesis of the RUC's defenders is that they “control costs.” By strictly managing RVUs, they claim to save taxpayer money. In psychotherapy, this logic backfires catastrophically. By suppressing reimbursement rates to a level that drives providers out of the network, the RUC forces patients into the cash market. The theoretical in-network cost might be a $20 copay with the insurer paying $100. The actual out-of-network cost is $250 cash out-of-pocket, paid in full by the patient. Thus, the “cost of therapy” for the consumer skyrockets. Therapy becomes a luxury good, accessible only to those with disposable income. For the poor and middle class, the “cost” is effectively infinite, because the service becomes inaccessible. The RUC's cost-control measure for the system becomes a cost-multiplier for the patient. It shifts the financial burden from the risk pool, where it belongs, to the individual, where it causes maximum harm. The Signal to Students The RUC sends powerful economic signals to medical students making career decisions. When a student observes that a dermatologist or radiologist can earn $500,000 working regular hours, while a psychiatrist earns $240,000 handling emotional trauma and on-call emergencies, while a primary care doctor earns even less, the choice is clear for those motivated by financial security. The undervaluation of cognitive codes discourages the best and brightest from entering mental health and primary care. The cartel's pricing structure creates a perpetual labor shortage in the fields most needed for public health, while creating a surplus in high-margin procedural specialties. We then wonder why there are not enough psychiatrists, why primary care is in crisis, why mental health access is collapsing. The answer is in the price signal, and the price signal is set by a committee of proceduralists meeting behind closed doors. The Hands Are Tied The question “Why can't therapists start a union?” is not just a labor question. It is a window into the broken soul of American healthcare. We have built a system where a secret committee of proceduralists can legally fix prices to favor surgery over therapy, but a group of social workers cannot band together to ask for a living wage. We have utilized laws meant to break up Standard Oil to break up the solidarity of caregivers. The same regulatory framework that criminalizes therapist coordination provides legal cover for industry-wide price coordination by the most powerful medical specialties. The result is a regulatory environment that drives doctors crazy, burns out therapists, and leaves patients navigating a fragmented, assembly-line system that was never designed to heal them. It was designed to process them. Until we confront the legal architecture of this system, the RUC, the Sherman Act, the 1099 trap, we will remain powerless to change it. And the reality of therapy is that quick fixes, whether in treatment or in policy, usually end up costing us more in the end. Some states are beginning to push back. New York and California have implemented strict network adequacy standards requiring mental health appointments within 10 business days. These regulations force insurers to expand their networks, which means they must attract providers, which means they must raise reimbursement rates above the RUC/Medicare floor. It is effectively a state-level override of the RUC cartel, forcing capital back into the mental health labor market. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has long advocated for stripping the RUC of its power, proposing the use of empirical data, tax returns, payroll records, practice invoices, to set values automatically. But these are patchwork solutions to a systemic problem. The fundamental issue remains: we have created a healthcare system that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. We have engineered a system where the only way to survive is to stop acting like a healer and start acting like a factory. And we have wrapped this system in a legal framework that criminalizes resistance while protecting the status quo. The hands are tied. But at least now we can see the ropes. Bibliography For those interested in the primary sources and legal texts that underpin this analysis, the following external resources provide high-trust verification of the claims made above: Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773 (1975): The Supreme Court decision that ended the “learned profession” exemption from antitrust laws. Read the Oyez Summary. The Sherman Antitrust Act (15 U.S.C. §§ 1–7): The foundational text of US antitrust law prohibiting restraint of trade. Read the Document at the National Archives. North Texas Specialty Physicians v. Federal Trade Commission (5th Cir. 2008): A key ruling establishing that independent physicians cannot collectively bargain on fees without financial integration. Read the Court Opinion. FTC/DOJ Statements of Antitrust Enforcement Policy in Health Care (1996): The federal guidelines explaining the “Messenger Model” and the narrow exceptions for clinical integration. Read the Guidelines (PDF). The RUC (AMA/Specialty Society RVS Update Committee): The AMA's own description of the committee structure and its role in valuing physician work. Visit the AMA RUC Page. “Special Deal” by Haley Sweetland Edwards (Washington Monthly, 2013): An investigative deep-dive into how the RUC operates and its impact on primary care vs. specialty pay. Read the Investigation. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA): The law governing the right to unionize, which specifically excludes independent contractors. Read the NLRA. Laugesen, Miriam J. Fixing Medical Prices: How Physicians Are Paid. Harvard University Press, 2016. The definitive scholarly analysis of the RUC's history, structure, and influence on American healthcare pricing. Government Accountability Office. “Medicare Physician Payment Rates: Better Data and Greater Transparency Could Improve Accuracy.” 2015. GAO's critical analysis of RUC methodology and conflicts of interest. Center for American Progress. “Rethinking the RUC.” 2015. Policy analysis of the RUC's structural bias against primary care and cognitive services. Health Affairs Scholar. “Insurance Acceptance and Cash Pay Rates for Psychotherapy in the US.” 2023. Empirical research on out-of-network utilization in mental health care. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). “Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System.” 2024. Annual policy recommendations including proposals for reforming physician fee schedule methodology. Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, is the Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective in Hoover, Alabama. He specializes in complex trauma treatment and writes at GetTherapyBirmingham.com.  

1.15.2026 #RolandMartinUnfiltered: MLK’s Warning Comes Alive. ICE Terror in Minneapolis. Trump Chaos Mounts. Crockett Sets Jan. 6 Straight. Tonight, as we head into the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the America Dr. King warned us about is on full display. Minnesota is currently under fire. Secretary Kristi Noem defends ICE as they intimidate residents. Immigration Attorney Yesenia Planco will join later with advice on what to do if stopped by ICE. And, speaking of ICE. A recent poll by CNN shows that America is afraid of ICE, and they aren't making cities feel safer. On Monday, a Minneapolis councilman feared for his life as ICE agents assaulted him for recording them, and just two days later, an ICE raid in the same city led to a second shooting of a man on Wednesday, following protestors and tear gas. We'll be covering it all. Trump's second term is already producing more chaos and corruption than the first, and the damage is compounding fast. The Center for American Progress is tracking it all with its new Trump Global Weakness Watch--and the senior vice president joins us to break it down. And, to add more injury, the Trump administration is laying off employees who are part of a civil rights agency founded in the 1960s with the U.S Department of Justice. While maga is trying to rewirte the history of January 6, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett sets the record straight. #BlackStarNetwork partner: Fanbasehttps://www.startengine.com/offering/fanbase This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/3VDPKjD) and Risks (https://bit.ly/3ZQzHl0) related to this offering before investing. Download the Black Star Network app at http://www.blackstarnetwork.com! We're on iOS, AppleTV, Android, AndroidTV, Roku, FireTV, XBox and SamsungTV. The #BlackStarNetwork is a news reporting platform covered under Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The guest host for today's show is Brad Bannon. Brad runs Bannon Communications Research, a polling, message development and media firm which helps labor unions, progressive issue groups and Democratic candidates win public affairs and political campaigns. His show, 'Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon,' airs every Monday from 3-4pm ET. Brad is first joined by Center for American Progress's Natasha Murphy, Director of Health Policy at the Center for American Progress.The two breakdown the latest on the efforts by Congressional Democrats to get healthcare subsidies reinstated for the over 20 million Americans who purchase their health insurance through the ACA marketplace.  Since Republicans let the credits expire at the end of last month, many families have had the cost of their premiums more than double. Then, Brad's joined by Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an Immigration Attorney and Advocate. The pair discusses the shooting death of Renee Good, the unarmed civilian who was shot to death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis last week.  They also analyze the Trump administration's gaslighting of the facts about the shooting, including their unwarranted claims that the 37-year old poet, artist and Mother of three was a 'domestic terrorist.' Finally, they have a broader discussion on the topic of ICE, and how it has made America less safe, the opposite of what Trump promised it would do for the country. Natasha Murphy is the director of Health Policy at American Progress, where she develops and advances policy proposals to lower health care costs and improve health care coverage, affordability, and quality. Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch is also the Owner and CEO of Lincoln-Goldfinch Law. Their website is www.LincolnGoldfinch.com. Kate's handle is @AttorneyKLG on X, @attorneykatelg on Instagram, and @abogadakate on TikTok. Additionally, she's currently running for State Representative for Texas House district 50 as a Democrat. Brad is on the National Journal's panel of political insiders, is an American political analyst for The Times of India TV, and is a national political analyst for WGN TV and Radio in Chicago and KNX Radio in Los Angeles. Brad also writes a political column every Sunday for 'The Hill.' You can read his columns at www.MuckRack.com/Brad-Bannon. His handle on BlueSky is @bradbannon.bsky.social.

On this episode of the America's Work Force Union Podcast, Michelle Eisen, a barista and spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United, shared her experience working at Starbucks, how she witnessed the company's transformation over the years and her role in the Buffalo organizing drive that galvanized a nationwide movement. On today's episode of the America's Work Force Union Podcast, Aurelia Glass, Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress, discussed research on union support among young Americans. Glass's work focuses on the American Worker Project, which advocates for policies that make organizing easier and strengthen workers' rights.

As the number of elderly Oregonians surpasses the number of children, demand for long-term care is rising. But the workers who provide this essential care are underpaid, overworked, and leaving the industry at alarming rates. Melissa Unger, Executive Director of SEIU Local 503, which represents tens of thousands of long-term care workers across Oregon, describes the physically and emotionally demanding nature of care work, the low wages and poor benefits many workers face, and the devastating impact of high turnover on both workers and the seniors and people with disabilities they care for.The episode also explores a potential policy solution: workforce standards boards. David Madland of the Center for American Progress explains how these boards work, where they've already been implemented, and how they could help stabilize Oregon's long-term care workforce.

The Trump administration's executive order targeting state regulations on artificial intelligence is a gift to big tech. They say it eliminates a tangle of regulations that stifle innovations, while critics say gives companies freedom to do whatever they please. So what's the truth? Adam Conner of the Center for American Progress joins David Rothkopf to explore the relationship between federal and state regulations, the economic impacts of AI, and the importance of steering AI development towards a positive future for all of us.  This material is distributed by TRG Advisory Services, LLC on behalf of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in the U.S.. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Trump administration's executive order targeting state regulations on artificial intelligence is a gift to big tech. They say it eliminates a tangle of regulations that stifle innovations, while critics say gives companies freedom to do whatever they please. So what's the truth? Adam Conner of the Center for American Progress joins David Rothkopf to explore the relationship between federal and state regulations, the economic impacts of AI, and the importance of steering AI development towards a positive future for all of us.  This material is distributed by TRG Advisory Services, LLC on behalf of the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates in the U.S.. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My conversation with Dr Emanuel begins at about 34 minutes Subscribe and Watch Interviews LIVE : On YOUTUBE.com/StandUpWithPete ON SubstackStandUpWithPete Stand Up is a daily podcast. I book,host,edit, post and promote new episodes with brilliant guests every day. This show is Ad free and fully supported by listeners like you! Please subscribe now for as little as 5$ and gain access to a community of over 750 awesome, curious, kind, funny, brilliant, generous soul In Eat Your Ice Cream, renowned health expert Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel argues that life is not a competition to live the longest, and that "wellness" shouldn't be difficult; it should be an invisible part of one's lifestyle that yields maximum health benefits with the least work Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, the Co-Director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute, and the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Emanuel is an oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics. He is a Special Advisor to the Director General of the World Health Organization, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He was the founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and held that position until August of 2011. From 2009 to 2011, he served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. In this role, he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Emanuel also served on the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board. Dr. Emanuel is the most widely cited bioethicist in history.  He has over 350 publications and has authored or edited 15 books. His recent publications include the books Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care (2020), Prescription for the Future (2017), Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System (2014) and Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family (2013). In 2008, he published Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America, which included his own recommendations for health care reform. Dr. Emanuel regularly contributes to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and often appears on BBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBC and other media outlets. He has received numerous awards including election to the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the Royal College of Medicine (UK). He has been named a Dan David Prize Laureate in Bioethics, and is a recipient of the AMA-Burroughs Wellcome Leadership Award, the Public Service Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation David E. Rogers Award, President's Medal for Social Justice Roosevelt University, and the John Mendelsohn Award from the MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Emanuel has received honorary degrees from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Union Graduate College, the Medical College of Wisconsin, and Macalester College. In 2023, he became a Guggenheim Fellow. Dr. Emanuel is a graduate of Amherst College. He holds a M.Sc. from Oxford University in Biochemistry, and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University. On YOUTUBE.com/StandUpWithPete ON SubstackStandUpWithPete   Listen rate and review on Apple Podcasts Listen rate and review on Spotify Pete On Instagram Pete on Blue Sky Pete on Threads Pete on Tik Tok Pete on Twitter Pete Personal FB page Stand Up with Pete FB page All things Jon Carroll  Gift a Subscription https://www.patreon.com/PeteDominick/gift Send Pete $ Directly on Venmo  

Rural Health News is a weekly segment of Rural Health Today, a podcast by Hillsdale Hospital. News sources for this episode: American Hospital Association, “Dueling Senate bills to address health care affordability fail to pass,” December 11, 2025, https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2025-12-11-dueling-senate-bills-address-health-care-affordability-fail-pass. Chris Stein, “Senate rejects dual healthcare bills as Obamacare tax credits expiration nears,” December 11, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/11/senate-vote-obamacare-tax-credit-bills, The Guardian. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “HHS' Cleanup of Federal Nursing Home Minimum Staffing Standards Rule Expands Access to Rural and Tribal Health Care,” December 2, 2025, https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-cleanup-federal-nursing-home-minimum-staffing-standards-rule-expands-access-rural-tribal-health-care.html.  Arielle Zionts and Phillip Reese, “Rural Health Providers Could be Collateral Damage from $100k Trump Visa Fee,” December 9, 2025, https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/h1b-visa-fee-rural-hospitals-foreign-worker-shortages-north-dakota/, KFF Health News. Rick Pollack, “Exempting Health Care Personnel from H-1B Visa Fees Is Good for Patients and Providers,” October 17, 2025, https://www.aha.org/news/perspective/2025-10-17-exempting-health-care-personnel-h-1b-visa-fees-good-patients-and-providers, American Hospital Association. Federation of State Medical Boards, “Physician Licensure in 2024,” 2025, https://www.fsmb.org/u.s.-medical-regulatory-trends-and-actions/u.s.-medical-licensing-and-disciplinary-data/physician-licensure/. Scott Hulver et al., “What Role Do Immigrants Play in the Hospital Workforce?,” June 17, 2025, https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/what-role-do-immigrants-play-in-the-hospital-workforce/, KFF Health News. Visas & Immigration Team, ”$100,000 H-1B Sponsorship Fee Hits Rural U.S. Hospitals Hard,” December 9, 2025, https://www.visahq.com/news/2025-12-08/us/100000-h-1b-sponsorship-fee-hits-rural-us-hospitals-hard/, Visa HQ. Rural Health Information Hub, “In Rural Communities, Where Child Care Is Often Scarce, Healthcare Organizations Are Finding Creative Ways to Help,” December 10, 2025, https://www.ruralhealthinfo.org/rural-monitor/child-care?utm_source=racupdate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=update121025. Rasheed Malik et al., “America's Child Care Deserts in 2018,” December 6, 2018, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/americas-child-care-deserts-2018/, The Center for American Progress. Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez and KFF Health News, “Child Care Gaps in Rural America Threaten to Undercut Small Communities,” December 27, 2023, https://dailyyonder.com/child-care-gaps-in-rural-america-threaten-to-undercut-small-communities/2023/12/27/, The Daily Yonder. Rural Health Today is a production of Hillsdale Hospital in Hillsdale, Michigan and a member of the Health Podcast Network. Our host is JJ Hodshire, our producer is Kyrsten Newlon, and our audio engineer is Kenji Ulmer. Special thanks to our special guests for sharing their expertise on the show, and also to the Hillsdale Hospital marketing team. If you want to submit a question for us to answer on the podcast or learn more about Rural Health Today, visit ruralhealthtoday.com.

In the second of three episodes, host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson  explores how and why Alternative for Germany is embracing voters and leaders with immigrant backgrounds and what that means for the far-right party and the federal republic. Featuring Hesse MP Anna Nguyen, (AfD), Robert Benson, associate director at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. as well as insights from Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony.Music: "disappear" by Koi-discovery.(Source: FMA)In partnership with Checkpoint Charlie Foundation.

In our final episode of Season 4, The Best Biome team discusses the state of grasslands conservation in the current year (and what an eventful year it has been). We discuss the most significant threats and daunting challenges that we'll need to meet head on to protect our underappreciated and overlooked ecosystems. Topics include rollbacks to the Endangered Species Act, attacks on research funding, extraction on public lands, the truth behind grazing leases, and much, much more. Of course, we have plenty of good news to share as well! Join us as we bid 2025 farewell and get ready for whatever next year will bring. Note: There is some occasional strong language used in this episode, as a result of our passion about these topics. Primary Sources: Rachel's Sources: Jack Hatzimemos, Georgetown Environmental Law Review, "The Single Most Impactful Day of Deregulation in EPA History", Mar. 20, 2025 More Than Just Parks: "Mike Lee is Still Trying to Steal Your Land", Nov. 5, 2025 Inflation Reduction Act Rollback Tracker **** Columbia Law Climate Backtracker Bill McKibben: The Crucial Years, "A Different Kind of Leader Gives A Different Kind of Speech", Oct. 1, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson, "Letters from an American" Oct. 16, 2025 **** Nicole's Sources: Center for American Progress: "The Trump Administration's Expensive Push to Sell Out Public Lands to the Highest Bidder" Sep. 22, 2025 More Than Just Parks: "Trump Administration Decides Endangered Species Act Will No Longer Be Followed" Nov. 21, 2025 Works for Nature: "Voters Deliver Big Wins for Conservation Funding in 2025." Nov. 10, 2025 H.R. 1: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/trump-administration-decides-endangered?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-trump-administrations-expansive-push-to-sell-out-public-lands-to-the-highest-bidder/ Allan's Sources: ProPublica and High Country News, "Wealthy Ranchers Profit from Public Lands", Dec. 2, 2025 Center for Biological Diversity: "Trump Administration sued over attempted removal of BLM's Public Lands Rule" Nov. 10, 2025 NYT: "The US is funding fewer grants in every area of science and and medicine", Dec. 2, 2025. Union for Concerned Scientists: Attacks on Science [Lawfare Litigation Tracker]( This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Big Boss Trump, who claims the power to run the whole government via executive order and pushes all our allies around, suddenly is a man with no agency when it comes to the economy. He says the high cost of living is a Democratic hoax, or in true Christmas spirit, he's back to blaming parents for spoiling their daughters with too many dolls. And while his approval rating slips into the the 30s, voters keep rewarding Democrats at the ballot box. On the healthcare front, Republicans have been promising an alternative to Obamacare for 15 years with nothing to show for it. Plus, the corruption of Trump & Co is so pervasive, it's hard for voters to get their minds around it, and Dems have to go all-in on winning the Senate next year—which means winning independents and non-MAGA republicans in red states. Neera Tanden, at the Center for American Progress, joins Tim Miller. show notes The "Trump's Take" tracker at the Center for American Progress Tim and Andrew's 'Bulwark Take' after Trump's rally Tuesday night Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARK. Promo Code BULWARK F*%k your khakis and get The Perfect Jean 15% off with the code BULWARK15 at theperfectjean.nyc/BULWARK15 #theperfectjeanpod

The guest host for today's show is Brad Bannon. Brad runs Bannon Communications Research, a polling, message development and media firm which helps labor unions, progressive issue groups and Democratic candidates win public affairs and political campaigns. His show, 'Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon,' airs every Monday from 3-4pm ET. Brad is first joined by Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an Immigration Attorney and Advocate. The pair discusses Trump's new efforts to block immigration from 19 countries he deemed 'high risk.' Kate also explains the details of the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to take up one of President Trump's most contentious policies by reviewing the American legal principle of "birthright citizenship," potentially upending a 127-year-old understanding of who gets to be a U.S. citizen.  Kate and Brad also discussed how alarmingly frequent it has been for ICE to arrest and detain U.S. citizens for hours to even days, with some of them being assaulted in the process. Then, Center for American Progress's Natasha Murphy talks with Brad about healthcare, including premiums that are set to skyrocket at the end of the month if Republicans refuse to extend ACA tax credits. Natasha also breaks down why the Health Savings Account options, which many congressional Republicans are pushing as a replacement for ACA tax credits, do nothing to help pay for skyrocketing health insurance premiums themselves. Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch is also the Owner and CEO of Lincoln-Goldfinch Law. Their website is www.LincolnGoldfinch.com. Kate's handle is @AttorneyKLG on X, @attorneykatelg on Instagram, and @abogadakate on TikTok. Additionally, she's currently running for State Representative for Texas House district 50 as a Democrat. Natasha Murphy is the director of Health Policy at American Progress, where she develops and advances policy proposals to lower health care costs and improve health care coverage, affordability, and quality. Brad is on the National Journal's panel of political insiders, is an American political analyst for The Times of India TV, and is a national political analyst for WGN TV and Radio in Chicago and KNX Radio in Los Angeles. Brad also writes a political column every Sunday for 'The Hill.'  You can read his columns at www.MuckRack.com/Brad-Bannon. His handle on BlueSky is @bradbannon.bsky.social.

The guest host for today's show is Brad Bannon. Brad runs Bannon Communications Research, a polling, message development and media firm which helps labor unions, progressive issue groups and Democratic candidates win public affairs and political campaigns. His show, 'Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon,' airs every Monday from 3-4pm ET. Brad is first joined by Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an Immigration Attorney and Advocate. The pair discusses Trump's new efforts to block immigration from 19 countries he deemed 'high risk.' Kate also explains the details of the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to take up one of President Trump's most contentious policies by reviewing the American legal principle of "birthright citizenship," potentially upending a 127-year-old understanding of who gets to be a U.S. citizen.  Kate and Brad also discussed how alarmingly frequent it has been for ICE to arrest and detain U.S. citizens for hours to even days, with some of them being assaulted in the process. Then, Center for American Progress's Natasha Murphy talks with Brad about healthcare, including premiums that are set to skyrocket at the end of the month if Republicans refuse to extend ACA tax credits. Natasha also breaks down why the Health Savings Account options, which many congressional Republicans are pushing as a replacement for ACA tax credits, do nothing to help pay for skyrocketing health insurance premiums themselves. Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch is also the Owner and CEO of Lincoln-Goldfinch Law. Their website is www.LincolnGoldfinch.com. Kate's handle is @AttorneyKLG on X, @attorneykatelg on Instagram, and @abogadakate on TikTok. Additionally, she's currently running for State Representative for Texas House district 50 as a Democrat. Natasha Murphy is the director of Health Policy at American Progress, where she develops and advances policy proposals to lower health care costs and improve health care coverage, affordability, and quality. Brad is on the National Journal's panel of political insiders, is an American political analyst for The Times of India TV, and is a national political analyst for WGN TV and Radio in Chicago and KNX Radio in Los Angeles. Brad also writes a political column every Sunday for 'The Hill.'  You can read his columns at www.MuckRack.com/Brad-Bannon. His handle on BlueSky is @bradbannon.bsky.social.

In the first of three episodes, host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson  explores the real impact Alternative for Germany has on Germany institutions and laws as well as mainstream parties and government leaders. Featuring insights from Robert Benson, associate director at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony.Music: "Sad Boi" by HoliznaCC0(Source: FMA)In partnership with Checkpoint Charlie Foundation.

From $400 million planes to $300 million ballrooms, from cryptocurrency to just plain… currency, President Donald Trump and his family have profited massively from his return to the White House. According to the Center for American Progress, the Trump family has received nearly $2 billion in cash and gifts since President Trump won the 2024 presidential election. This week, during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to the White House, the president downplayed his family's dealings in Saudi Arabia, but the reality is that those business ties have grown significantly during his second term. For more on just how much money Trump and his family are making from his return to the Oval Office, we spoke to Andrea Bernstein, podcast host and author of "American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power."And in headlines, President Trump threatens Congressional Democrats with violent rhetoric, Customs and Border Patrol prepares more immigration crackdowns in Louisiana and Mississippi, and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is set to meet with President Trump at the White House.Show Notes:Check out Andrea's book – wwnorton.com/books/american-oligarchsCall Congress – 202-224-3121Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/3kk4nyz8What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcastFollow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today's Headlines: The House finally voted on releasing the Epstein files, and it was a blowout: 427–1, with Louisiana Republican Clay Higgins as the lone no vote. Speaker Mike Johnson is still trying to get the Senate to redact names (interesting), but survivors held a powerful press conference beforehand urging Trump to stop playing politics and just release the files himself. Meanwhile, the first real accountability domino fell: Larry Summers is stepping back from Harvard and the Center for American Progress over his deep Epstein ties — though OpenAI's board is staying suspiciously quiet about whether he's out there too. Over in the Oval Office, Trump hosted Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman for what was supposed to be a big investment-and-F-35s photo op, but it immediately derailed when reporters asked about Epstein and, awkwardly, MBS's role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Trump waved that off with a casual “things happen,” then snapped at ABC's Mary Bruce for asking why he hasn't released the Epstein files, calling her a “terrible reporter” and demanding ABC lose its broadcast license. Very normal, very innocent behavior. In foreign policy news, the UK has reportedly stopped sharing intel on drug smuggling boats over concerns about recent U.S. strikes — something Secretary of State Marco Rubio swears is absolutely not happening because “it didn't come up once.” The courts were also busy. A federal judge said the DOJ's case against James Comey may have been tainted by “profound investigative missteps,” another court blocked Texas's new gerrymandered congressional map for 2026 (pending the inevitable SCOTUS appeal), and a bankruptcy judge finally approved a $7 billion Purdue Pharma settlement after six years of legal trench warfare — money that will go to families, governments, hospitals, and tribes devastated by the opioid crisis. Resources/Articles mentioned in this episode: CNN: Live updates: Trump presidency, Epstein files release heads to House for vote AP News: Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers steps down from public commitments after Epstein emails ABC News: Trump defends Saudi crown prince over Khashoggi killing, threatens ABC News in White House meeting – as it happened | Mohammed bin Salman People: Donald Trump Lashes Out at ABC Reporter over Another Epstein Question, Saying 'Your Crappy Company' Should Lose Its FCC License NBC News: U.K. withholds intelligence on alleged drug boats over U.S. strikes, sources say CNN: Judge says James Comey indictment may be tainted by ‘profound investigative missteps' Democracy Docket: Federal Court Blocks Texas Gerrymander - Democracy Docket Financial Times: Judge rules Purdue Pharma must pay $7bn in bankruptcy settlement Morning Announcements is produced by Sami Sage and edited by Grace Hernandez-Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good policy is good politics, or so the saying goes. So, uh, how do we agree on what that is? Jane Coaston talks with three of the left's most prominent policy thinkers: Democratic strategist Waleed Shahid, Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, and writer Matthew Yglesias of Slow Boring. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On this episode of the Chuck ToddCast, Chuck sits down with Adam Jentleson, executive director of the new Searchlight Institute, to talk about how Democrats can build a broader, more durable governing coalition. Jentleson explains why Searchlight is designed to promote ideological diversity within the Democratic Party — and why policies that blend progressive and moderate ideas tend to last longer and win in more places. He warns that Democrats’ electoral path to the presidency and a 60-seat Senate majority is narrowing and argues the party’s best hope lies in economic populism — the same force that powered Trump’s rise but could be reclaimed with a focus on kitchen-table issues and fairness for working Americans. The conversation dives deep into the party’s messaging struggles during the government shutdown, the growing divide between “fight Trump” and “look past Trump” factions, and the need for Democrats to recruit candidates who can win in red and purple states — even if they don’t align perfectly on social issues. Jentleson also offers sharp insights on the filibuster’s evolution from a necessary safeguard to a legislative dead end, and why Democrats need to get more strategic — not louder — if they want to govern effectively and outlast Republican populism. Go to https://getsoul.com & enter code TODDCAST for 30% off your first order. Thank you Wildgrain for sponsoring. Visit http://wildgrain.com/TODDCAST and use the code "TODDCAST" at checkout to receive $30 off your first box PLUS free Croissants for life! Got injured in an accident? You could be one click away from a claim worth millions. Just visit https://www.forthepeople.com/TODDCAST to start your claim now with Morgan & Morgan without leaving your couch. Remember, it's free unless you win! Timeline: (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements) 00:00 Adam Jentleson joins the Chuck ToddCast 01:30 Why choose the name “Searchlight Institute? 02:30 How is Searchlight different from the Center for American Progress? 06:00 Ideologically diverse policies tend to be more durable 08:00 Democrats must embrace ideological diversity to win in red states 11:00 Democrats have to make trade offs to win in more places 12:00 Democrats electoral path to presidency gets more narrow in ‘32 12:45 What does Democrats’ path to 60 senate seats look like? 13:45 Economic populism is a powerful force, it’s why Trump won 15:00 Economic populism beat out Republican orthodoxy 16:15 Populism hasn’t been transferable from Trump, but it’s durable 17:15 This economy is ok if you have money and horrid if not 19:00 The Kerry/Edwards economic policies are what are popular today 19:45 When Democrats succeed it’s on economic ideas 20:15 Is an economic downturn the only path for Dems to win presidency? 22:15 Democrats give Republicans ammo on cultural issues 23:15 Mamdani won by relentlessly focusing on kitchen table issues 24:30 Why weren’t Democrats able to sell their decision to reopen govt 26:15 Congressional leadership & communication are different skills 27:15 No side demanding a major concession in a shutdown got it 28:00 Dems succeeded in driving a message about healthcare 30:30 Divide on left is “look past Trump” or “fight Trump” 32:00 Democrats need to find issues they can run on in every state 33:45 The litmus test for Dems should be can they take back the senate 34:45 The path for Dems to take back the senate 36:15 Dems will have to embrace candidates with different social views 37:00 Gavin Newsom has been winning lately on tactics not policy 38:00 Dem candidates need to be fighters with broadly palatable policy 39:45 Any worries about an insurgent third party? 42:15 A third party candidate could certainly cause Dems to lose 43:45 The filibuster has become a pocket veto 45:45 The filibuster should require work and not be used passively 47:15 The filibuster started as needed reform, now is a problem 49:00 The origin of budget reconciliation 51:45 The judiciary was designed to be non-partisan 53:00 Vote threshold for judges should be higher to avoid partisans 55:30 If you raise the threshold too high there will be judicial backlogs 57:45 Do you see Searchlight as an incubator for policy, tactics or both? 59:00 What does Graham Platner’s staying power say about him? 1:01:00 Democratic aligned groups need to be smarter about their asksSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of the Chuck ToddCast, Chuck unpacks a tumultuous week for Donald Trump as newly released Epstein emails reignite old scandals — and this time, they may stick. With Speaker Mike Johnson appearing to serve Trump’s interests over his own members, and a worsening economy eroding public patience, Chuck explores whether we’re witnessing the beginning of Trump’s “lame duck” moment. He draws parallels between Trump’s endless stream of controversies, his history of corrupt pardons, and how even “teflon” presidents eventually turn “velcro” when conditions shift. As the cost of living rises and swing voters tune out partisan noise, scandals like Epstein’s are cutting through both sides’ information bubbles — forcing Republicans to reckon with Trump’s baggage. Chuck argues that if Democrats manage a midterm sweep, historians might look back on this very week as the turning point when Trump’s political luck finally began to run out. Then, Chuck sits down with Adam Jentleson, executive director of the new Searchlight Institute, to talk about how Democrats can build a broader, more durable governing coalition. Jentleson explains why Searchlight is designed to promote ideological diversity within the Democratic Party — and why policies that blend progressive and moderate ideas tend to last longer and win in more places. He warns that Democrats’ electoral path to the presidency and a 60-seat Senate majority is narrowing and argues the party’s best hope lies in economic populism — the same force that powered Trump’s rise but could be reclaimed with a focus on kitchen-table issues and fairness for working Americans. The conversation dives deep into the party’s messaging struggles during the government shutdown, the growing divide between “fight Trump” and “look past Trump” factions, and the need for Democrats to recruit candidates who can win in red and purple states — even if they don’t align perfectly on social issues. Jentleson also offers sharp insights on the filibuster’s evolution from a necessary safeguard to a legislative dead end, and why Democrats need to get more strategic — not louder — if they want to govern effectively and outlast Republican populism. Finally, he answers listeners’ questions in the “Ask Chuck” segment and breaks down the latest in college football. Go to https://getsoul.com & enter code TODDCAST for 30% off your first order. Thank you Wildgrain for sponsoring. Visit http://wildgrain.com/TODDCAST and use the code "TODDCAST" at checkout to receive $30 off your first box PLUS free Croissants for life! Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/chuck. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Got injured in an accident? You could be one click away from a claim worth millions. Just visit https://www.forthepeople.com/TODDCAST to start your claim now with Morgan & Morgan without leaving your couch. Remember, it's free unless you win! Timeline: (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements) 00:00 Chuck Todd’s introduction 02:00 New Epstein emails released referencing Trump 03:00 Mike Johnson’s actions are in service to WH, not his members 04:45 Trump has a laundry list of scandals & corrupt pardons, none stuck 07:00 Presidents can go from teflon to velcro 08:30 The bad economy could make Trump less resilient to scandals 10:00 JD Vance tweet demanding Epstein transparency has aged horribly 10:45 Trump’s involvement with Epstein has been baked into public opinion 12:00 High prices and bad economy mean less public patience for Trump 12:45 Every presidency hits their lame duck point, this could be the start 14:00 Winning the midterms for the Democrats means winning the senate 15:15 Trump has treated the party like his casinos, leveraged for his benefit 16:15 Trump is only worried about Trump, not the party or the voters* 17:30 Epstein is one of the only stories that breaks through both sides’ bubble 19:45 You can’t information silo your grocery bill, or the Epstein story 21:00 If Dems sweep midterms, we’ll point to this week as start of lame duck 22:00 By going soft on Ghislaine Maxwell, it just increases suspicion 24:30 Trump would have been better off playing “he said, she said” w/Maxwell 25:45 Stock market booming, but most of the economy is not succeeding 27:00 Trump doesn’t seem well, has aged quite a bit in past six months 29:00 A steady drip of Epstein stories/files will cause R’s to distance 30:30 Trump isn’t doing what he was elected to do, makes him vulnerable 35:45 Adam Jentleson joins the Chuck ToddCast 37:15 Why choose the name “Searchlight Institute? 38:15 How is Searchlight different from the Center for American Progress? 41:45 Ideologically diverse policies tend to be more durable 43:45 Democrats must embrace ideological diversity to win in red states 46:45 Democrats have to make trade offs to win in more places 47:45 Democrats electoral path to presidency gets more narrow in ‘32 48:30 What does Democrats’ path to 60 senate seats look like? 49:30 Economic populism is a powerful force, it’s why Trump won 50:45 Economic populism beat out Republican orthodoxy 52:00 Populism hasn’t been transferable from Trump, but it’s durable 53:00 This economy is ok if you have money and horrid if not 54:45 The Kerry/Edwards economic policies are what are popular today 55:30 When Democrats succeed it’s on economic ideas 56:00 Is an economic downturn the only path for Dems to win presidency? 58:00 Democrats give Republicans ammo on cultural issues 59:00 Mamdani won by relentlessly focusing on kitchen table issues 1:00:15 Why weren’t Democrats able to sell their decision to reopen govt 1:02:00 Congressional leadership & communication are different skills 1:03:00 No side demanding a major concession in a shutdown got it 1:03:45 Dems succeeded in driving a message about healthcare 1:06:15 Divide on left is “look past Trump” or “fight Trump” 1:07:45 Democrats need to find issues they can run on in every state 1:09:30 The litmus test for Dems should be can they take back the senate 1:10:30 The path for Dems to take back the senate 1:12:00 Dems will have to embrace candidates with different social views 1:12:45 Gavin Newsom has been winning lately on tactics not policy 1:13:45 Dem candidates need to be fighters with broadly palatable policy 1:15:30 Any worries about an insurgent third party? 1:18:00 A third party candidate could certainly cause Dems to lose 1:19:30 The filibuster has become a pocket veto 1:21:30 The filibuster should require work and not be used passively 1:23:00 The filibuster started as needed reform, now is a problem 1:24:45 The origin of budget reconciliation 1:27:30 The judiciary was designed to be non-partisan 1:28:45 Vote threshold for judges should be higher to avoid partisans 1:31:15 If you raise the threshold too high there will be judicial backlogs 1:33:30 Do you see Searchlight as an incubator for policy, tactics or both? 1:34:45 What does Graham Platner’s staying power say about him? 1:36:45 Democratic aligned groups need to be smarter about their asks 1:44:45 Chuck’s thoughts on interview with Adam Jentleson 1:45:45 Ask Chuck 1:46:00 Thought’s on Netflix’s Death By Lightning? 1:53:30 Can anything be done in the short term about electricity costs? 2:00:45 What is Trump’s motivation for intervening in Venezuela? 2:06:15 Did NYC Mayoral race show Dems issue with non college voters? 2:12:15 College football committee needs to go 2:19:00 College football previewSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In our final episode, we talk about the future of New York City under Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani and who he will surround himself with to help him accomplish his vision. We're also joined by Patrick Gaspard, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, former key Obama aide and now key advisor to Mamdani, to talk about this historic moment. — FAQ NYC and Max Politics are teaming up for a limited series, coming to you every Tuesday through November, featuring special guests who will help us dig into the latest in the mayor's race – and what's at stake for New Yorkers. City Hall Free For All is brought to you with generous support from Jamie Rubin and Vital City. This week's episode was hosted by Christina Greer, Katie Honan, Ben Max and Harry Siegel. Our Senior Producer is Giulia Hjort, and Noah Smith is our engineer. Our series consultants are Jess Hackel and Courtney Harrell. Music from Epidemic Sound.

In our final episode, we talk about the future of New York City under Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani and who he will surround himself with to help him accomplish his vision. We're also joined by Patrick Gaspard, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, former key Obama aide and now key advisor to Mamdani, to talk about this historic moment. — FAQ NYC and Max Politics are teaming up for a limited series, coming to you every Tuesday through November, featuring special guests who will help us dig into the latest in the mayor's race – and what's at stake for New Yorkers. City Hall Free For All is brought to you with generous support from Jamie Rubin and Vital City. This week's episode was hosted by Christina Greer, Katie Honan, Ben Max and Harry Siegel. Our Senior Producer is Giulia Hjort, and Noah Smith is our engineer. Our series consultants are Jess Hackel and Courtney Harrell. Music from Epidemic Sound.

A group of Montana activists is pushing a ballot initiative attacking Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. While Montana's Republican Attorney General  attempted to block the ballot initiative this week, the fight is far from over. In the third episode of Lever Time's MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with political strategist Tom Moore from The Center for American Progress. That nonprofit is spearheading the Transparent Election Initiative, Montana's new plan to purge dark money from the state, which could potentially rewrite national politics. Could this effort deal a blow to the corporate takeover of politics? And could it blaze a path for other states to follow? Click here to order our new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America. To read more of Tom Moore's writing about The Montana Plan, click here. Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join. To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism.

A group of Montana activists is pushing a ballot initiative attacking Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. While Montana's Republican Attorney General  attempted to block the ballot initiative this week, the fight is far from over.In the third episode of Lever Time's MONEYBOMB series, David Sirota sits down with political strategist Tom Moore from The Center for American Progress. That nonprofit is spearheading the Transparent Election Initiative, Montana's new plan to purge dark money from the state, which could potentially rewrite national politics. Could this effort deal a blow to the corporate takeover of politics? And could it blaze a path for other states to follow?Click here to order our new book, MASTER PLAN: The Hidden Plot to Legalize Corruption in America.To read more of Tom Moore's writing about The Montana Plan, click here.Get ad-free episodes, bonus content and extended interviews by becoming a member at levernews.com/join.To leave a tip for The Lever, click here. It helps us do this kind of independent journalism.

Alexander Soros, The Center for American Progress, and others have a mission to reconstruct America. Let's take a moment to examine their mission and actually pray for them. There's more to learn, so please don't miss this episode of The Public Square®. Topic: Our Mission The Public Square® Long Format with hosts Wayne Shepherd and Dave Zanotti. thepublicsquare.com Release Date: Wednesday, October 29th, 2025

Send us a textVaccines save lives, misinformation spreads fast, and ice cream, believe it or not, might actually be good for you.In this episode of CareTalk, Dr. Zeke Emanuel joins John Driscoll to discuss vaccine myths, public health confusion, and how the healthcare system can communicate science more effectively.

Emily Bazelon talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements. Witt traces how the fund connected race and class politics, supported the intellectual groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, and anticipated today's challenges around misinformation, inequality, and political disconnection. He and Bazelon also discuss what lessons progressives might take from this forgotten story of organizing during political exile. Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Nina Porzucki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Bazelon talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements.Witt traces how the fund connected race and class politics, supported the intellectual groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, and anticipated today's challenges around misinformation, inequality, and political disconnection. He and Bazelon also discuss what lessons progressives might take from this forgotten story of organizing during political exile.Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.)Podcast production by Nina Porzucki. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emily Bazelon talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements. Witt traces how the fund connected race and class politics, supported the intellectual groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, and anticipated today's challenges around misinformation, inequality, and political disconnection. He and Bazelon also discuss what lessons progressives might take from this forgotten story of organizing during political exile. Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Nina Porzucki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Bazelon talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements. Witt traces how the fund connected race and class politics, supported the intellectual groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, and anticipated today's challenges around misinformation, inequality, and political disconnection. He and Bazelon also discuss what lessons progressives might take from this forgotten story of organizing during political exile. Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Nina Porzucki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Emily Bazelon talks with Yale law professor John Witt about his new book The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America. They explore the remarkable story of the Garland Fund—a small 1920s foundation that bankrolled early work by A. Philip Randolph, and others who would go on to shape the civil rights and labor movements. Witt traces how the fund connected race and class politics, supported the intellectual groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education, and anticipated today's challenges around misinformation, inequality, and political disconnection. He and Bazelon also discuss what lessons progressives might take from this forgotten story of organizing during political exile. Tweet us your questions @SlateGabfest or email us at gabfest@slate.com. (Messages could be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise.) Podcast production by Nina Porzucki. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Matt Duss, Executive Vice-President at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. They discuss the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the new ceasefire; changes in public assessments of Israel's standing in the U.S. and political relationships with Israel, including changing relationships with Israel among prominent Trump supporters as well as Bernie Sanders's late recognition of genocide; and what accountability looks like for the genocide, including for members of the Biden administration. Matthew Duss is Executive Vice-President at the Center for International Policy. Before joining CIP, Duss was a visiting scholar in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2017-22, Duss was foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt). From 2014-17, Duss was the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. From 2008-14 Duss was a National Security and International Policy analyst at the Center for American Progress. Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a 2025 Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.

There's a serious high-stakes policy fight at the heart of this.The Democrats didn't pick a fight over authoritarianism or tariffs or masked immigration agents in the streets. They picked one over health care. And the issue here is very real. Huge health insurance subsidies passed under President Joe Biden are set to expire at the end of this year, threatening to make health care premiums skyrocket and kick millions off their insurance.Neera Tanden was one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act and has worked in Democratic policymaking for decades. She is the president of the Center for American Progress and was a director of Biden's Domestic Policy Council. I asked her on the show to lay out the policy stakes of the shutdown and what a deal might look like.Mentioned:KFF Health Tracking PollThe Time Tax by Annie LowreyOne Big Beautiful Bill ActBook Recommendations:Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James A. RobinsonThe Sirens' Call by Chris HayesEnd Times by Peter TurchinThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Kristin Lin, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Welcome to The Zenergy Podcast! Today, Karan has the absolute pleasure of speaking with John Podesta. Mr. Podesta has had an immensely impactful career in government. He has been the Chair of Hillary for America; Counselor to President Obama; Chief of Staff to President Clinton; Senior Adviser to President Biden for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation, and much more. He is also the Founder of the Center for American Progress. Today, they discuss his journey into energy and politics, inflection moments working with President Clinton, President Obama, and President Biden, how future administrations could structure energy and climate policy to make it more resilient, and so much more. This is such an insightful episode, and we would love it if you would share it with anyone who you think might enjoy listening. Thank you, as always, for tuning in! Credits:Editing/Graphics: Desta Wondirad, Wondir Studios

Turkish President Erdogan finally made his way back into the White House last week, meeting with President Trump as issues like the F-35s, the lifting of CAATSA sanctions, and Turkey's purchase of Russian oil topped the list. Alan Makovsky, a senior fellow for the Center for American Progress and an expert on Turkey and US foreign policy, joins Thanos Davelis as we break down whether we're seeing the revival of a bromance between the two leaders, and look at what this means for key issues like the sale of F-35s.You can read the articles we discuss on our podcast here:Trump urges Turkey to stop buying Russian oil as Erdogan chases deal on F-35sErdogan hails 'meaningful progress' in his talks with TrumpLabor market opens up to refugeesPM urges Turkey to lift war threat

For decades, rural Oregon counties that contain large swaths of federally owned forest land have depended on a share of timber revenues from federal logging to fund schools, law enforcement and other essential public services. These payments were originally meant to offset the loss of property tax revenue that counties could not collect on federal lands. But when logging on these lands slowed drastically in the 1990s due to new environmental protections — like the Endangered Species Act — those payments plummeted.    In response, Congress stepped in with a temporary fix: the Secure Rural Schools Program. First passed in 2000, Congress reauthorized it multiple times over the years until it allowed it to expire in 2023. Congress which it enacted in 2000 and reauthorized multiple times until it expired in 2023. The lapse in the SRS reauthorization has triggered the default distribution of the significantly reduced timber revenue to counties.    The federal budget process has introduced new complications as well. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed into law in July, requires federal agencies to ramp up logging. But it also includes a provision redirecting all proceeds from timber sales on lands in counties to the federal government — threatening one of the last fiscal lifelines for rural governments to fund its core services.   With counties facing budgeting shortfalls that carry big consequences, questions about how to create a long-term sustainable path forward have taken on new urgency. Lane County Commissioner Heather Buch and Klamath County Commissioner Derrick DeGroot — whose counties receive the second- and third-highest federal payments in Oregon after Douglas County — join us, along with Mark Haggerty, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning thinktank Center for American Progress to talk about the challenges Oregon’s rural counties face and what a stable funding model for these counties might look like.   Curry County Commissioner Jay Trost declined to participate in the conversation but provided OPB with a statement:  Curry County has the second lowest property tax rate in Oregon at .59 per thousand of assessed value and like most Oregon Counties, we have not been able to keep up with the inflation over the past 4 years.  We had to endure a 31% reduction in the county budget for the 24/25 fiscal year, we were able to maintain that with no further budget reductions in the 25/26 budget because of timber revenues that came in and covered the annual employee role up costs.  These O&C timber funds allowed us to remain fairly status quo in terms of service delivery.  Going forward if those funds are not made available to us, we will most likely see more reductions in county services.  We are working diligently to think outside the box, identify alternative solutions that will maximize each dollar and become more efficient. These efforts will help and are necessary, however the reality remains the same, if we don’t receive timber revenues, and or PILT (payment in lieu of taxes)  payments we will have to make cuts.  We remain confident that the federal legislature will correct the language needed to ensure that counties like ours that rely on natural resources revenue will not be negatively impacted.    

Mike Johnson is racing to shut the business of the House down to avoid a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Trump's own criminal lawyer, who's moonlighting as deputy attorney general, will be minding the matter of Ghislaine Maxwell. And Texas is looking to squeeze out some more House seats to try to protect Trump from having to be held accountable on Epstein. Has any other politician ever acted so guilty? But in this moment, the Dems are finally bringing a gun to a gunfight. And for the midterms, they need to commit to Benghazi-style hearings on the contents of the files—and the Republican cover-up. Plus, securing the border without a terror campaign, and recruiting candidates to fill out a bigger Democratic tent. Neera Tanden, at the Center for American Progress, joins Tim Miller. show notes CAP's new immigration policy platform, co-authored by Neera Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for YOU, for LESS, and save more than fifty percent at selectquote.com/bulwark