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However generous Amazon's new benefits are, whether employees actually use those benefits will depend a lot on the culture they work in and the social pressures they face.

"Amazon is notorious for its competitive work environment, and simply having access to leave may not be enough if workers feel they will be penalized in their careers for taking it," said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos.

I worked with a New Jersey coalition to pass this bill, and we watched it quickly move through the state legislature and reach Governor Chris Christie’s desk this past June. Even though the bill was supported by the vast majority of Governor Christie’s constituents, the bill then languished for over half a year before yesterday’s veto.

As you read this, workers across the country from retail, fast food, home care, and the federal government are launching one of the biggest strikes yet, calling for $15 an hour and collective bargaining rights. Together, they make up the American working class, the backbone of our economy, and they are sounding the alarm that they will no longer stand for meager wages and poor working conditions.

This time next year, the election of 2016 will be over and America will have chosen its next president.

But how many Americans will have actually participated in making this decision?

In the 2012 presidential election, 1.3 million votes decided the winner in the ten states with the closest margins of victory.  But nearly 20 million eligible citizens in those states—Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin—are missing from the voter rolls.

According to Sean McElwee, a researcher who studies voting rights at the progressive think tank Demos, some studies suggest up to 2.5% of the population is unable to vote thanks to such laws.

Connecticut is poised to undo a signature accomplishment—the Citizens Election Program. Facing budget cuts, some legislators in Connecticut have proposed allowing wealthy donors to, once again, dominate the state’s elections.

"The Administration strongly supports the goals of the NVRA and is committed to enforcing its requirements, as applicable," the agency said in a statement.

Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, senior counsel at Demos, called this an "almost hidden voter registration question" that does not satisfy the NVRA.

To comply with the NVRA, she said, the exchange would need to directly ask applicants if they want to register to vote because applicants are less likely to see registration information if they aren't forced to answer a question about it. 

 But there was a time when Republicans took diversifying their base much more seriously.

Police reform in New York City just took a significant step forward, and the voices of the people most affected by unlawful and discriminatory stops are front and center.

When a federal court ruled in Floyd v. City of New York that the NYPD’s stop and frisk practice violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, it was a tremendous victory. We knew, though, that the victory was not yet complete: The task of reforming the NYPD’s practices and ending racial discrimination in the use of stop and frisk remained.