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On today's episode of Loud & Clear, John Kiriakou is joined by Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician and vice chair of the Infectious Disease Society of America’s Global Health Committee.

The House of Representatives today is voting on a landmark bill to make Washington, DC, a state. The bill won’t pass the US Senate, and President Trump has vowed to block it due to the additional anti-Trump representatives the measure would bring. Georgia Republican Rep. Jody Hice said of the vote “The District is not prepared to shoulder the burden of statehood. This would apply economically, fiscally as well as a host of other ways.” This is an extension of the long racist history of the federal government’s rule over the District of Columbia. Maurice Cook, the founder and executive director of Serve Your City and a co-founder and co-chair of March for Racial Justice, joins the show with Brian Becker.

Russians have begun voting on a wide range of constitutional reforms that would rebalance the relative powers of different branches of the government. The vote is taking place over the course of a week as a measure to reduce overcrowding during the pandemic. What do the constitutional reforms tell us about the future of Russian politics? Brian speaks with Bryan Macdonald, a journalist who specializes in Eastern Europe and Russia.

It’s Friday! So it’s time for the week’s worst and most misleading headlines. John speaks with Steve Patt, an independent journalist whose critiques of the mainstream media have been a feature of his site Left I on the News and on twitter @leftiblog.

Friday is Loud & Clear’s weekly hour-long segment The Week in Review, about the week in politics, policy, and international affairs. Today they focus on the near-record-breaking surge of Coronavirus infections being detected across the country, protests against racism and the brutal police repression of those protests, the controversy over racist statues and monuments, the latest attack on the Affordable Care Act, and moreSputnik News analysts and producers Walter Smolarek and Nicole Roussell join Brian and John.