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 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Or at least how do they start a conversation in a way that reminds us all of our high school bio classes?
So part of the genius of Project 2025 and the effectiveness of the Trump administration approach is that by targeting everything, our attention has nowhere to focus and it's nearly impossible to concentrate. And that is especially true in this assault on health. Because HHS is such a mammoth agency with so many responsibilities.
I gave a little bit of a primer at the top of the episode, but I want to spend a few minutes with you really making sure we understand what the Department of Health and Human Services is and why these attacks matter. So number one, can you break down what we need to understand about the agencies within HHS? And what are you most closely paying attention to?
So let's go back to the CDC for one second. When we hear about dividing the CDC, what does that mean and why should we be worried?
When I think about all of these agencies and how they intertwine, one of the conversations then is how easy is it to do this? And I know you focus on public health and not necessarily the ins and outs of congressional action, but how easy would it be to divide the CDC or to allow the FDA to rescind the polio vaccination authorization? Yeah. Are those things that take a lot of time?
Are those things that are imminent? Is it something that happens by executive order? Can you talk a little bit about how public health actually gets changed in this country?
And I would also throw out there that there are budgetary implications, and that means Congress gets involved. And when someone, let's say Mitch McConnell, flags that he is very unhappy about the threat to the polio vaccine, his lever of power is whether or not something moves through. Even though he's not going to be the majority leader, he has a vote in the Senate and a little bit of influence.
So I want folks to understand that the straightforward decision demand for action does not necessarily translate into immediacy of that action being taken. Would you agree?
Fantastic. So health is not simply the ability to know what diseases and threats are out there. You know, it's also about the ability to get help. And that means we also have to pay attention to the healthcare access side of things. So, for example, Project 2025 proposes to roll back the progress that the Biden administration has made in reducing drug prices.
It also wants to accelerate the privatization of Medicare, which older and disabled Americans rely on. And they want to break up Medicaid into block grants, which will set fixed amounts that go to states, regardless of the actual cost of health care or the size or needs of the population. Okay. What are you concerned about when it comes to this administration's impact on health care access?
And how would you process this information as a layperson?
So you know a lot and you have been all over the world, all over the U.S., You decided to take your experience in epidemiology, but you've really channeled it into sharing information in a way that is extraordinarily accessible.
You and I met actually in the midst of the COVID pandemic and you invited me to be on a podcast, but it was such an important conversation because you're just a really fantastic communicator on really complicated issues. Was there an inciting incident for you that made you decide, I not only have to know what I know, I need other people to understand what I know?
Which brings us to the doing section of this conversation. You have been such a thoughtful partner to powerful people. But as you pointed out, you've also been doing that work with local organizations, with town hall meetings, helping citizens understand their power. How do we as individuals push back and meet this moment?
We know there has been a recent tragedy where vigilante justice seemed like a solution to someone. But we know that that's not the answer. So how do we think about what else we can do? We know we talk about voting, and for some that didn't seem to work this time. It does work. It just doesn't work all the time in the ways we want it to work.
But how do we talk about starting at the local level, using public health as the point of entry? Give us our marching orders. What do we do?
Dr. Celine Gounder, thank you so much for joining us here and informing us here at Assembly Required. At Assembly Required, we encourage the audience to be curious, solve problems, and do good through a segment we call Our Toolkit. Now, we're going to fight the allergy to science and information by being curious.
During my time in the Georgia State Legislature, I relied heavily on KFF News, and it's still my go-to. KFF News is an independent source with news and health policy research. So sign up for their newsletters at kff.org slash email. For regular listeners, you're going to notice that today I'm doing things a little differently.
You see, we've gotten quite a few listener questions that have a running theme. First, Ed Bogue wrote an email titled, How to Be an Activist with Social Anxiety. He writes, since the election, I have felt energized to help defend human rights, but severe social anxiety has been a major barrier for me. Even when it's just low stakes, small talk, my throat gets so dry that I can barely speak.
And years of customer service work hasn't helped me overcome this. How do I get involved and make a difference when so much of the work is about connecting people? Number two. Muyan Chen wrote about wanting to be politically engaged even though she just has a green card. I came to the U.S. from China more than 10 years ago and now work as a researcher in a national lab.
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