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We remember media scholar Robert McChesney, the co-founder of the advocacy group Free Press, who died on March 25 at age 72. McChesney was a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a prolific author, with nearly three dozen books on media, democracy and digital rights. He warned decades ago that corporate consolidation of the press was putting too much power in the hands of wealthy interests, and was an early critic of Big Tech’s control over online communications. “What we’ve seen is that the internet was promised to be this great engine of economic competition. It was going to spur economic growth, create all these new businesses, huge amounts of jobs. Remember the term 'new economy' from the late '90s? And instead what we've seen is the internet is arguably the biggest generator of monopoly in history,” says McChesney in a 2013 excerpt from one of his many appearances on Democracy Now! over the years. We also speak with his longtime friend and collaborator John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. “Bob McChesney was one of the great public intellectuals of our era,” says Nichols. “He could have easily lived in the ivory tower. Instead, he chose to become an activist.”

President Donald Trump’s efforts to take over cultural institutions and attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs has centered on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the venerable arts institution in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center was established by Congress and has been run by a bipartisan board since it opened in 1971, but Trump upended that in February when he moved to install his loyalists in key positions and make himself chair. Last week, the Kennedy Center’s new leadership fired at least seven members of its social impact team that worked to reach more diverse audiences and artists, including the vice president and artistic director of Social Impact, Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The acclaimed artist and playwright joins Democracy Now! to discuss Trump’s changes at the Kennedy Center, which he criticizes for destroying a “sanctuary for freedom of thought and freedom of creative expression.” Joseph notes that while the Kennedy Center has not yet made drastic programming changes, the rhetoric from Trump and others “severely restricts and almost criminalizes demographic realities outside of white, straight, male Christianity.”

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On today's BradCast: The Trump Administration may have chosen the wrong group of Americans to launch a "war" against, including taking jobs, benefits and health care from them. But that's just one of the reasons Republicans now seem to be running scared of their own voters in upcoming special elections. [Audio link to full show [...]

The Trump administration has made the targeting of transgender people a central tenet of its approach to government. A transgender teen reflects on the importance of resistance.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has arrested two abortion providers, a new stage in a crackdown against reproductive rights, after the state enacted its near total ban on abortion.