Media

Kelli Jo Griffin will stand trial next week in Iowa for registering to vote. Unfortunately, Griffin happens to live in a state where such activity is illegal for people like her with a past felony conviction. When she registered to participate in an election last year in her small town of Montrose, she checked on the form that she was not disqualified from voting due to a felony.

Adolph Reed, Jr., has a dispiriting essay in the current issue of Harper's on the "long, slow surrender of American liberals." He argues there is no longer a "dynamic left" and charts the decline of a forceful alternative progressive vision over the past half century.

In theory, Congress should pass laws and legislation (which hit a record low in 2013)—and in a representative democracy, its members should listen to constituents and reflect their concerns and priorities.

In an economic address last year, President Obama declared that his highest priority would be addressing economic inequality and reversing the long erosion of middle-class security. “Whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I'll use it,” the president announced. He wasn’t kidding.

Anyone who wonders how employers managed to so completely rig the labor market in their favor should familiarize themselves with the research of David Weil, a professor at Boston University who's been nominated by President Obama to lead the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor.

The unprecedented bankruptcy proceedings for Detroit lay bare the witch’s brew of fiscal devastation caused by the Great Recession and poor policy decisions that plague state and local governments throughout the land.

A recent ProPublica article points to a number of pending lawsuits aimed at restoring key federal protections against racial voting discrimination. Up until last summer, certain states and jurisdictions with histories of preventing African Americans from voting were forced to have all election changes cleared by the federal government before implementation.

A coalition of progressive groups on Thursday formally began a new campaign aimed at curbing rising student debt and reducing the price of college.

The group of think tanks, student organizations, consumer advocates, and unions is targeting the country’s “increasingly dysfunctional system of higher education,” said Anne Johnson, executive director of Generation Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress, which is an organizer of the campaign. [...]