Brian Lehrer: A Daily Politics Podcast

The dean of Harvard's Public Health Institute wants the CDC to be part of the nation's COVID response. So why isn't the Center for Disease Control playing a starring role? Our expert guest talks about the disbanding, and subsequent un-disbanding of Trump's Coronavirus task force, talks about how to re-open the economy, and learns a thing or two about elevators of all things from a particularly insightful caller. On Today's Show:Dr. Ashish Jha, professor of Health Policy at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, explains the relationship between the Trump administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and how it may impact the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The virus is a virus. It can't discriminate. So why are people of color being hit harder? And how should we think about the inequities playing out in the COVID-19 pandemic? In this episode, we look to the lessons and icons of the civil rights movement. On Today's Show: Peniel Joseph, professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (Basic Books, 2020) talks about his new book, plus the racial disparities in the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Most college students didn't expect to spend Spring semester off-campus. Now, amid much uncertainty, higher-ed administrations nationwide are scrambling to plan for the fall semester. On Today's Show:Lilah Burke, reporter at Inside Higher Ed talks about the varying plans and possibilities and takes calls from parents, educators and students concerned about the upcoming academic year.

Workers at companies like Amazon, Shipt, Instacart and Walmart are walking out Friday to protest working conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic. Jane McAlevey, organizer, senior policy fellow at the University of California at Berkeley’s Labor Center, The Nation's strike correspondent and the author of, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing & the Fight for Democracy (Ecco, 2020) talks about how they are organizing, how the companies are responding and what may come next for these essential workers plus, Chris Smalls, whistleblower and former Amazon employee, talks about the planned strike.

Joe Biden has promised to tap a woman for his VP pick. But allegations against him by a former staffer are creating a difficult situation for those hoping to share the ticket. On Today's Show: Rebecca Traister, writer-at-large for New York Magazine and the author of, most recently, Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (Simon & Schuster, 2018), talks about Biden, his yet-to-be-selected VP candidate and the known unknowns of Tara Reade's claims.

Congress is hammering out the details of COVID Relief/Stimulus 4.0. Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D NY-8th, Brooklyn and Queens) updates us on those talks, the meatpackers who could strike over a Trump order to keep working, and the latest national political news.

This is an unprecedented election year in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean history can't be a good teacher. Today, we look at how Biden is squaring up against Trump for the election in November. On Today's Show:Julian Zelizer, professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, CNN political analyst, co-host of the podcast Politics and Polls, and author of the forthcoming Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party (Penguin Press, 2020) , offers historical context for the current crisis and the upcoming election.

If widespread testing is the first step toward getting control over this pandemic, then the second step is contact tracing. But a virus that can spread without symptoms poses special challenges. With sexually transmitted infections, the list of potential contacts is finite, and mostly knowable. With COVID-19, that list would include people who visited the supermarket at the same time as you, people who have touched your building's doorknob. So the teams of contact tracing investigators being amassed around the country have their work cut out for them. On Today's Show:David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD), talks about what the plan entails, and how contact tracing has been used to stem other diseases like HIV, Zika and Ebola.

As New York City announces the results of their first phase of antibody testing, and plans for future phases. So what do we know now, and what's left to learn? On Today's Show:Apoorva Mandavilli, science journalist, frequent contributor to the New York Times, and the 2019 winner of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Reporting, talks about New York State's preliminary antibody test results and what they may mean for the future of the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown. 

Rather than giving assistance to state, Maj. Leader McConnell says he'd prefer to make states whole by letting them declare bankruptcy. On Today's Show:Sen. Chris Murphy (D CT), member of the Foreign Relations committee and author of the forthcoming book The Violence Inside Us: A Brief History of an Ongoing American Tragedy (Random House, 2020), discusses the latest relief package, Connecticut's plans for reopening, the need to support the WHO, and Mitch McConnell's statements on states hard hit by the pandemic to declaring bankruptcy, rather than receive federal relief.