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You're on Your Own: MAHA Dismantles Public Health / Rob Wallace & Rita Valenti

Aug 7 2025
Public health is not something that can be sectioned off from one group of people to another group of people, to one institution, to to one corporation, etc. How do you section off viral diseases and pandemics? They don't know anything about borders or what's rural and what's urban. They do know certainly about inequities that exist. Always there are sections of our working class that are most impacted because they come into the crisis already heavily impacted by years of neoliberalism and by the structures of the medical industrial complex.

Rob Wallace and Rita Valenti join us to discuss their recent articles at Truthout that cover the Trump administration's dismantling of public health in the United States. These include "Trump Is Trying to Dismantle Public Health — and Replace It With a Police State," "'Make America Healthy Again' Aims to Make Public Health Your Responsibility," and "Labor Was Crucial in Building Public Health Institutions Trump Wants to Destroy."

"This Day in Rotten History" from Renaldo Migaldi follows the interview.

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Guest

Rita Valenti

Rita Valenti is a retired nurse and a member of the Coordinating Committee of the People’s CDC.

 

Guest

Rob Wallace

Rob Wallace is an evolutionary epidemiologist who has consulted with the Food and Agriculture Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

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