Stacey Abrams

speaker

334 appearances 6 recordings 5 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard 8 May

Stacey Abrams’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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Pod Save America · Introducing: Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams · 1 Jan 2025 podcast

I'm here to help us prepare for when and how we engage and insist. That begins by understanding what's really at risk versus what's just hateful, wishful thinking. What impact can these proposals have and what's not being said? And as always, how do we fight back? So let's get straight into it with our interview today.

Dr. Celine Gounder is an infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist, and a science communicator. She is the editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News. She produces podcasts and other content to help us understand what's going on in public health, and she was a regular guest on news shows during COVID-19.

bringing us grounded, reasonable, and actionable information when misinformation and disinformation met a wave of panic and worry. Does that sound familiar to anyone? So here to keep us all informed and sane is Dr. Gounder. Thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Gounder, I have a public health crisis question for you. Are American politicians and policymakers allergic to science?

That language is perfect, that it's when science is politically inconvenient. And it's actually a perfect encapsulation of one of the reasons I started with that question. There was the letter from the over six dozen Nobel laureates about RFK Jr. 's appointment. Thank you so much for having me.

These Nobel laureates, though, these chemists and medical professionals and economists are very deliberate about pointing out that RFK Jr. has no credentials or relevant experience, quote unquote, in science, public health or medicine or administration. And as you pointed out, this is a question of value.

So how important is it to not only have values-driven decision-making and science-driven decision-making, how important is it to have science-driven and scientific knowledge and experience to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Well, that brings us to the other nominees. So while a lot of attention has focused on RFK Jr. heading HHS, the two of the top jobs are also under consideration. And one of the pending nominees is Mehmet Oz. The other is Matt McCurry, both of whom are physicians, but who each have had controversial experiences.

And there have been questions about their fealty to scientific principles in their work or the implications of their policy proposals. So what do their nominations tell you about the incoming administration's thinking about this?

So to your point about combining the need for science and for policymaking, what happens when you have a scientist who doesn't seem to believe or at least live those beliefs?

And you just pointed out that we are already on shaky ground. And this administration is not only rejecting expertise or bringing in people who have demonstrated a flawed use of their expertise. But there's also, as you said at the top of the conversation, this intent to replace civil servants who have that expertise with hires who are based on loyalty and not capacity.

You mentioned H5N1 as one of the possible outcomes. Can you talk a little bit more about the implications of this lack of capacity when it comes to public health, not just in terms of pandemics, but just the larger public health universe?

Can you talk a little bit more about state and local public health preparedness? Because that's one of the issues we try to focus on here on Assembly Required. We have a lot of attention... that necessarily needs to be turned towards the federal government. But often the real levers of power, and particularly the accessible levers of power for our listeners, happen at the state and local level.

So can you talk a little bit more about how state and local public health works and how public health preparedness works at that level?

Can you think of an example or a time when citizens or local citizens sort of raised the alarm and had an effect at the local or state level? Because sometimes it can feel like industry is too big and the problem is too big. We can't do anything about it. You've spent a lot of time advising local and national policymakers. When have you seen citizens actually take what you use and have an effect?

Well, let's stay there for a second because, you know, I talked about the allergy to science among policymakers. But there's a second strain that seems to have affected segments of the general public. And, you know, Project 2025 and its acolytes, they tend to harp on the uncertainty of COVID and the changes we adapted to. And as you described,

the uneven and sort of patchwork response, which seemed to prove that nothing was true, therefore nothing would ever be true. You know, there was the, you know, first we all wiped down every surface, and then we realized wiping down every surface wasn't necessary. And opponents of science hold this up as proof that the public should turn against the scientist.

How do you respond to people who might be convinced that no one is right without invalidating how difficult that time was?

So basically, I'm going to translate this into television. We need to be more like Dr. House than we are like Law & Order.

So as a practical matter, as a practical translation, if I'm having a conversation over the holidays with someone who tells me, well, we didn't get it right in COVID and that's why I'm not paying attention to H5N1. That's why it doesn't matter who's in charge. What's the pithy response that we want listeners to be able to give?

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