This week on CounterSpin: The Republicans have unveiled their long-promised replacement to what they presented for many years as the disaster of the Affordable Care Act. Now the Washington Post says the most “serious” threat to the passage of the GOP bill is that conservative Republicans don’t like it. How well does that framing set us up to talk about other concerns, like what the Trump-backed changes could mean for the millions of people with disabilities and senior citizens who rely on Medicare and Medicaid—social security programs that are relatively starved for press attention as it is. We’ll talk about media coverage of Trumpcare with Nancy Altman, co-director of the group Social Security Works, and author of the book The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble.
Transcript: ‘Trumpcare is Very Destructive to Both Medicare and Medicaid’
Also on the show: The Supreme Court has just announced it won’t hear the case of Gavin Grimm, the transgender boy seeking the right to use the boys bathroom in his high school and will kick it back to a lower court. That may sound like a non-event, but the Court’s refusal to offer a full-throated defense of transgender rights right now is yet another signal that transgender people, already extremely vulnerable, can count on less protection from state institutions. We’ll talk about the court decision— and resistance to the message it sends—with Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center.
Transcript: ‘That Violence Against Our Community is Often Not Told by Media’
First we take a quick look back at recent press, including the rehabilitation of George W. Bush and the International Women’s Strike.
