As if the threat of nuclear crisis with North Korea, and the presumed failure of a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare wasn’t enough on the president’s plate– now Donald Trump has decided to wage a fight with the NFL. While using some colorful language at a Friday rally, Trump decried NFL players who knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racial injustice. Trump called the protests disrespectful to the country as well as to its military and encouraged fans to protest teams whose players participate in the protest. But that didn’t stop hundreds of players from either locking arms or kneeling during the start of their games Sunday. Even some team owners joined in defiance of the president’s language and Patriots Quarterback Tom Brady called the president’s words “divisive.” Ron Sullivan, a law professor and director of the Harvard Criminal Justice Institute; Joe Malone, former Massachusetts state treasurer and Trump supporter; and Stephen Freyer, president of the sports, entertainment, and broadcasting agency company Freyer Management, joined Jim Braude to discuss whether Trump’s comments will have a lasting impact on the game or if it will soon become a forgotten headline.
On Thursday, Boston University’s CTE center announced the results of an autopsy on Aaron Hernandez’s brain. BU researchers say the former Patriots player had stage 3 CTE when he died, a level of the neurogenerative disease usually seen in players in their late 60s. Hernandez’s fiancé has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of her daughter- against the Patriots and the NFL. Ron Sullivan, part of the team which successfully defended Hernandez in a double murder trial earlier this year before the football player was found dead in an apparent suicide in his cell in April, joined Jim Braude to discuss the lawsuit.
Should terminally ill people have the option of to end their own lives with the help of a doctor in Massachusetts? It's a question we've asked before - and this week, it's coming up again. Right now, six states — California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington - plus Washington D-C allow physicians to prescribe lethal drugs to terminally ill patients who ask for it. A ballot measure to make it legal in Massachusetts was defeated back in 2012, with subsequent failed attempts to advance a bill on Beacon Hill. The latest version – known as the End of Life Options Act – has a public hearing Tuesday. Two people who plant to testify on the bill – Dr. Mark Rollo, an opponent of the bill and Dan Diaz, whose wife, Brittany Maynard, was diagnosed with a terminal brain and chose to take advantage of Oregon’s dignity law – spoke with Jim Braude.
