Media

June 25th marked the 75th anniversary of the federal minimum wage law in the United States, known as the Fair Labor Standards Act. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed this legislation, his vision was to ensure a “fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” and to “end starvation wages.”

Four years ago, the Center for American Progress published a report by Ruy Teixeira entitled "The Coming End of the Culture Wars." Conflict over social issues -- a defining feature of U.S. politics for four decades -- was winding down, thanks largely to demographic shifts. 

The Millennials, Teixeira said:

Talking points about immigration reform often focus on whether undocumented workers are taking jobs away from Americans who need the work. A story in the Toledo Blade yesterday draws attention to the cost to other American workers of failing to fix the immigration problem.  

The Supreme Court’s rulings on marriage will not lessen the everyday – sometimes subtle, often not – ways that many LGBT people get treated as less than equals.

Five Supreme Court Justices just rolled back the most effective civil rights provision in our nation's history. What should we do now?

One option is to declare "mission accomplished" and forget about race in politics.

That, however, will not work. Although we have made amazing progress in the past fifty years, too many state and local politicians still maintain power by manipulating election rules.

Q. How would you summarize the decision in a single sentence?

A. The court effectively rolled back an important provision of the Voting Rights Act, ruling that the act’s formula requiring federal preapproval of election changes for some states but not others was outdated because it was based on data from the 1960s and ’70s.

Q. Did anything in in it — or in the justices’ votes — surprise you?

A. I was not surprised by the votes of the particular justices.

Five Supreme Court Justices just rolled back the most effective civil rights provision in our nation's history. What should we do now?

One option is to declare "mission accomplished" and forget about race in politics.

That, however, will not work. Although we have made amazing progress in the past fifty years, too many state and local politicians still maintain power by manipulating election rules.

The Supreme Court dealt the Voting Rights Act a serious body blow Tuesday, but it did leave Congress an out. The court said, “Congress—if it is to divide the States—must identify those jurisdictions to be singled out on a basis that makes sense in light of current conditions.”

The Supreme Court just declared that the Civil War is no longer relevant to the history and administration of racial justice in America.

In a sense, the court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder validated a generations-long effort -- first by Democrats and later by Ronald Reagan and the Bush family -- to throw off the moral weight that slavery and the Civil War had placed on the South. [...]