The NBA has announced an ambitious plan to restart the season more than 4 months after it was abruptly halted due to the coronavirus. 22 teams have entered the COVID-free “bubble” at Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando, Florida — a state with some of the highest cases of coronavirus in the country. As long as players and staff remain in the bubble, they will undergo regular coronavirus tests and face strict campus rules. So what’s life like inside the NBA bubble? And what does this experiment say about who gets access to coronavirus testing and results?
Guest: Ben Golliver covers the NBA for the Washington Post.
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Sarah Zhang wrote about it for the Atlantic: a decades-long scientific operation in Central America that keeps flesh-eating screw worms effectively eradicated from every country north of Panama. Sarah tells the story of the science behind the effort, and the man who came up with it.
Trump signed a memo yesterday that aims to omit undocumented immigrants from the census count. It seems like a way for Trump to side-step a Supreme Court ruling that removed citizenship questions from the census, and it's unclear how or if he'd even be able to do it.
Protests in Portland have only increased in response to the presence of federal agents. Democrats in the House are working to take powers away from these so-called “rapid deployment teams."
And in headlines: a Michigan judge denies the early release of a student jailed for not doing her homework, Joe Biden’s plan for caregiving, and big-city corruption from Ohio state Speaker Larry Householder.
If there is one expert Andy could talk with about coronavirus and how we are really doing, it is epidemiologist Larry Brilliant. Larry, who helped eradicate smallpox and is hard at work on coronavirus, grades our performance on a scientific, sociological, and political basis. He also shares everything that science knows, and doesn't know, about the way the novel coronavirus is transmitted and infects us. Larry doesn’t mince words about political leadership or the CDC.
Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.
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"If we tear down every statue of every person whose viewpoints and whose behavior wasn't always ideal, wasn't always perfect, we're ... not going to know about many of the historical figures who, for better or for worse, shaped who we are and how we got here," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, says.
That's his perspective on the tearing down of statues such as Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. Protesters have vandalized and attempted to topple statues in the weeks since the May 25 death of George Floyd. Lee says peace is a more effective plan than violence, and even introduced a resolution condemning mob violence which was rejected by the Senate. He joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss.
We also cover these stories:
Two Chinese hackers have been identified and charged with stealing large amounts of data and information, including COVID-19 research, from the U.S. government.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that the next coronavirus relief package will include stimulus checks, similar to the package passed in March.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., asked Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., to apologize to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for reportedly calling her "disgusting" and an expletive.
Samsung’s founder, his son, and his grandson turned a vegetable and dried fish shop into a global superpower and a symbol of South Korean success. But their fight to keep the company in the family has also landed it at the center of some of South Korea’s biggest corruption investigations. Now, Samsung and South Korea have to figure out what comes next: Can the company continue without its founding family at the helm? And what would that mean for the country Samsung helped build?
Well, as a result of our near pitch black psychopasses, we've both been pressed into service by the AI sovereign to continue to talk about free will for all eternity. We got some great questions from folks about the relationship between free will and the justice system that pair nicely with the virtue ethics version of Minority Report.
On the Gist, Trump attempts to convince the MAGA nation to wear masks.
In the interview, journalist Anne Applebaum is here to talk about her new book Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. She and Mike discuss how democracies can give way to authoritarian leaders, the delicacy of political systems, and how essential our institutions are for protecting a functioning government.
In the spiel, what’s happening in Portland, Oregon.
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Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder and Margaret Kelley.
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