Voters in Kansas overwhelmingly voted against stripping protections for abortions. Meanwhile, Indiana became the first state to pass abortion bans. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion is no longer a federal right and it is up to states to decide how to handle abortion. To discuss, we FEATURE Jennifer Dalven. In her role as Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, Dalven oversees and directs the ACLU’s litigation, state advocacy, and communications work on issues affecting access to reproductive health services. That work runs the gamut from legal challenges to laws that would ban abortions and shut down women’s health centers to initiatives to stop state legislatures from passing further restrictions on access to reproductive health care to communications strategies to move public opinion and galvanize supporters. Prior to becoming Director, Dalven was a staff lawyer for more than 10 years. In that capacity, she successfully litigated numerous reproductive rights cases around the country, including state laws denying Medicaid coverage for abortion, laws permitting health care providers to refuse to provide reproductive health services, and bans on abortion procedures. Media includes: Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, The New York Times, Reuters, Huffington Post, NBC, CNN.

WMC SheSource has a list of additional experts for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

As monkeypox spreads around the U.S., federal officials are struggling with a vaccine shortage. U.S. health officials recently authorized a plan to stretch the vaccine by reducing the dosage. To discuss, we FEATURE Dr. Elena Conis. Dr. Conis is a professor in the Graduate School of Journalism and the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also directs the joint graduate program in Journalism and Public Health. A former journalist, award-winning columnist, and historian, she studies how culture, values, politics, and media have shaped modern American medicine, public health, and environmentalism over time, and how scientific ideas about health and medicine are communicated to and received by the public in the present. Her book Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization received the 2015 Arthur J. Viseltear Award from the American Public Health Association. Dr. Conis is an expert on the history of public health, vaccines and vaccination, epidemic diseases, and scientific controversies. Media includes: Time, Bloomberg, NPR.

The three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery received additional sentences for federal hate crimes on Monday. Greg McMichael and son, Travis McMichael received second life sentences. William Bryan received 35 years. All three are already serving life sentences for their convictions in state court. They will serve their time in state prison. To discuss, we FEATURE Jilisa Renee Milton. Milton is an Alabama-based civil rights attorney, policy analyst, social worker, racial justice activist, community organizer, and relational strategist. She has nearly a decade of experience working at the intersection of racial equity, critical race & feminist theory, poverty, criminal justice reform, mental health, and reproductive justice. Her work is rooted in the message that people do not fit in boxes or labels, inspired by Milton’s own personal story and the barriers she has broken to create a uniquely multi-sector career. Milton is a leader in major social justice initiatives and organizations demanding transformative change on a local and regional level. She became one of the founders of Black Lives Matter Birmingham Chapter, namely as a survivor of police violence. She is a media expert on racial justice, police reform, social policy, intercultural communications, and social movement strategy. She has spoken at events and been interviewed by media sources in the South, nationally, and internationally. Media includes: Bloomberg Law, Birmingham Times.

Over the weekend, a fourth Muslim man was killed in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Local police suspect that these are targeted hate crimes against the Muslim community. To discuss, we FEATURE Nadia Aziz. Aziz serves as Senior Program Director, Fighting Hate and Bias Program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Previously, she was Policy Counsel of the Stop Hate Project with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where she works to ensure individuals and organizations targeted by hate have the resources they need to confront hate in their communities. Prior to joining the Lawyers’ Committee in 2017, Nadia worked at the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC as Director of Government Relations where she represented the interests of nearly 3.7 million Arab Americans, and encouraged their direct engagement in civic and political life. She has previously worked with America Votes, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic National Convention Committee. Media includes: The Hill, The Huffington Post, The Ed Schultz Show, CNN.

On Monday, the FBI raided Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in order to seize boxes of documents. The search is part of a long-running investigation of whether Trump removed documents (some classified) from the White House, and took them to his private residence, thereby violating the Presidential Records Act. To discuss, we FEATURE Danielle Brian. Since 1993, Brian has been the Executive Director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). She frequently testifies before Congress and regularly meets with Members of Congress and officials at the White House and federal agencies to discuss how to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government. Under Brian's direction, POGO exposed wasteful spending, which led to the cancellation of some of the government’s largest contracts, including the Boeing tanker lease, the $13 billion Superconducting Super Collider, the $11 billion Army Crusader, and the Army’s Sergeant York DIVAD; filed and won a lawsuit against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft for retroactively classifying FBI documents; and successfully pushed for reforms that bolstered both the independence and accountability of the federal Inspectors General system. Brian was inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame, was ranked by Ethisphere magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in business ethics, and received the Smith College Medal. Media includes: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, USA TODAY, CBS, NBC, NPR.

Russian rockets were fired at a Ukrainian power plant over the weekend, damaging three radiation sensors and injuring a worker. The act has some officials worried about a possible nuclear disaster. To discuss, we FEATURE Sara Z. Kutchesfahani. Dr. Kutchesfahani is Director, N Square DC Hub. She has over 17 years of professional and academic experience in the fields of nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear security, holding research, analysis and managerial positions at a national nuclear weapons laboratory, an NGO, a university and at various think tanks around the world. Kutchesfahani is the author of Global Nuclear Order and Politics and the Bomb: The Role of Experts in the Creation of Cooperative Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreements. Media includes: Financial Times, The Hill.

Israel and Palestine have reached a ceasefire deal which took effect on Sunday. To discuss, we FEATURE Noura Erakat. Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick Department of Africana Studies. Her research interests include humanitarian law, refugee law, national security law, and critical race theory. Noura is the author of Justice for Some: Law As Politics in the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). She is a Co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya e-zine and an Editorial Committee member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. She has served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, as a Legal Advocate for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Erakat is the coeditor of Aborted State? The UN Initiative and New Palestinian Junctures, an anthology related to the 2011 and 2012 Palestine bids for statehood at the UN. More recently, Noura released a pedagogical project on the Gaza Strip and Palestine, which includes a short multimedia documentary, "Gaza In Context," that rehabilitates Israel’s wars on Gaza within a settler-colonial framework. Media includes: Al Jazeera, The Hill, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NPR.

Former major league baseball player Pete Rose was dismissive of questions regarding accusations that he had sex with underaged girls in the 1970s. The accusations originally came out in 2017. To discuss, we FEATURE Jocelyn C. Anderson. Anderson is a nurse researcher and forensic nurse. She has spent her career working to improve the lives of individuals who have experienced violence - focusing on sexual and intimate partner violence. She has both a Master's degree and PhD from Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. As a researcher, she has examined both health outcomes of violence - such as HIV, strangulation, and traumatic brain injury, and how health care providers can respond to violence - including interventions to assess for and prevent sexual violence among college students. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the International Association of Forensic Nurses, and Sigma Theta Tau International. Media includes: Pennsylvania Capital Star, Scarleteen, WPSU Penn State.

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, some women are looking to "self-manage" their abortions through online sources that provide abortion medication outside the healthcare system. To discuss, we FEATURE Sophia Yen. Yen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Pandia Health, an Executive Committee Member (Adolescent Health Section) at the American Academy of Pediatrics and an Associate Professor at Stanford Medical School in the Division of Adolescent Medicine, Department of Pediatrics. Her research interests are: Emergency Contraception knowledge, use and practice of patients and physicians, reproductive health needs of adolescents and college students, accuracy of reproductive health websites. Yen's goal in life is to prevent all teen pregnancy - "No teenager should want to get pregnant. She should have higher aspirations for her teen years. and No teenager should get pregnant. If they have sex, they should have access and education to birth control." She hopes to be the first surgeon general to say "masturbation" without being asked to resign. Yen founded the Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women in 2010. She served on the boards of the Center for Reproductive Rights, the C4 of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate and the California Abortion Rights Action League. Media includes: Oprah Radio, Refinery 29, Ms. Magazine, Business Insider, The Hill, NBC.

The U.S. is facing a teacher shortage as many teachers have either retired or quit as a result of burnout during the pandemic. To discuss, we FEATURE Emma García. García is a Senior Researcher at the Learning Policy Institute. She has extensive research and teaching experience in the fields of economics of education, education policy, and quantitative methods. Before joining LPI, García held research positions at the Economic Policy Institute, the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education, the Campaign for Educational Equity, the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education, and the Community College Research Center. García has published academic and policy studies on a range of issues, including production of education, impact evaluation, educational equity, teacher labor markets, human development, international comparative education, and cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analysis. Media includes: USA Today, The New York Times, NPR.