Nation Mourns Justice Ginsburg as Successor Fight Heats up
On Wednesday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts eulogized his colleague, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died from pancreatic cancer last week. Chief Justice Roberts said that the nearly 500 opinions and dissents she wrote in her 27 years on the bench will “steer the court for decades.” Encountering gender discrimination herself in academia and in the workforce, Justice Ginsburg was an ardent champion of women’s rights. As an attorney, she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court in the 1970s, winning five of them. Meanwhile, a political fight is heating up on Capitol Hill over her successor. President Trump and top Republicans are aiming to nominate and confirm a new justice in the coming weeks, despite objections from Democrats. Late on Friday, media outlets began reporting that President Trump will nominate U.S. Appeals Court judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy.
Guests:
- Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Dean, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and professor, Harvard Law School
- Lanhee Chen, fellow, Hoover Institution
Education: A Month in, Lessons Learned and Reopening Challenges
For millions of public school students in California, the fall semester kicked off roughly a month ago virtually to keep kids and teachers safe during the pandemic. Online lesson plans and digital assignments are the new normal. But now, more schools can apply to reopen for in-person instruction. Under a statewide, color-coded monitoring system, schools can apply to reopen if they’re in a county in the red tier which indicates substantial transmission — as opposed to “widespread transmission” — of COVID-19, for at least two weeks. Most Bay Area counties are in the red-tier, including San Francisco which launched an online dashboard to track which schools have applied to and received permission to reopen. Meanwhile, a school district in Marin county has already been holding in-person classes for nearly two weeks, with students wearing masks, staggering arrival and departure times and social distancing on campus.
Guests:
- Julia McEvoy, KQED senior editor of education and equity
- Itoco Garcia, Ed.D., superintendent, Sausalito Marin City School District
“Something Beautiful: fnnch”
This week, we end the show by sharing the work of fnnch, a San Francisco muralist and street artist. You may have spotted his recent, pandemic-inspired artwork featuring honey bears wearing surgical masks looking out from windows or painted on the sides of shuttered businesses. Although he first started painting them years ago, he sees them as a way to put a smile on people’s faces during the pandemic. This spring, fnnch raised nearly $130,000 for Bay Area charities through online sales of his artwork, a reminder of the power of art to unite and uplift, especially during a time of shared struggle.