Today in Trump vs. Hawaii, the United States Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s Executive Order restricting nationals of eight countries, including six Muslim-majority countries, from entering the United States (“the travel ban”). Writing for a 5-4 majority, Chief Justice Roberts rejected challenges to the travel ban based on federal law and the First Amendment of the U.S.
We all deserve an equal opportunity to be hired based on our experience and abilities. Yet discriminatory hiring continues to shape the U.S. labor market in ways that systematically disadvantage people of color, women, LGBTQ workers, people with disabilities and other targeted groups. Due largely to the stigma of a conviction record, formerly incarcerated people face some of the toughest barriers to securing work.
We can’t give up on building a nation where all of us have an equal voice in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy. As Demos Legal Director Chiraag Bains points out, the legal record of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh “raises grave questions about whether he will ensure the equality and dignity of all Americans, including people of color and working-class individuals.”
For decades, black unemployment has remained roughly twice the rate of unemployment for white workers, regardless of a job seeker’s level of education. Social exclusion shows us why.
Fifty-three years ago today, a century of struggle, risk, and strategy by African Americans and other civil rights activists culminated in the Voting Rights Act (VRA), one of our nation’s most effective and fundamental civil rights laws. For centuries, elites intent on maintaining power in the hands of a few denied, often violently, African Americans the right to vote.
People of color suffer direct and damaging impacts from laws, policies, and practices that exclude them from full and equal participation in the labor market and the workplace.
One by one, the House Financial Services Committee has rubber-stamped industry approved bills that would weaken elements of Dodd-Frank designed to hem in risky derivatives trading.
Since the Rana Plaza building collapse killed more than 1,100 people in April, retailers have faced mounting pressure to improve safety at Bangladesh garment factories and to sever ties with manufacturers that don't measure up.
The world's largest retailer, Walmart, last month released a list of more than 200 factories it said it had barred from producing its merchandise because of serious or repeated safety problems, labor violations or unauthorized subcontracting.
Is the National Security Agency wasting tax dollars by paying Booz Allen to handle routine intelligence tasks, such as the systems administration work that 29-year old Edward Snowden was doing for $122,000 a year? It sure seems that way.
Evelyn Coke was a Jamaican-born, single mother of five who worked for decades providing care for sick and frail people in their homes. She came to the United States in her thirties and ultimately brought her children to live with her in New York City.
First, the American Pediatrics Association noted that poverty was the number one danger facing children today. If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems the elderly are just as vulnerable, especially in the light of potential entitlement cuts.
In the wake of the National Security Agency scandal, the mainstream media is obsessing over Edward Snowden’s security clearance. It is asking, along with Senators from the Intelligence Committee, why a systems administrator at Booz Allen Hamilton had access to troves of top-secret documents and whether or not the vetting process for the other 1.4 million people with top-secret clearances is rigorous enough. The fear, the mainstream seems to be pushing on Americans, is that other leaks are in store.
Philadelphia requires city-subsidized organizations to give employees health benefits, a living wage of $10.88 an hour and paid sick leave. But the ordinance only applies only to “businesses with direct city contracts,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and excludes subcontracted employees at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). Philadelphia Councilman Wilson Goode Jr.
Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a report on how the City could prepare for the rising sea levels that will result from climate change. A Stronger, More Resilient New York is a 438-page blueprint for climate adaptation that covers everything from coastal protection to built infrastructure, like buildings and telecommunications, and community rebuilding and resiliency. It is an ambitious plan, to say the least, and the vast majority of it, if implemented, will be under the next Mayor.
If the NSA leak had happened twenty years ago, Edward Snowden would have been defended by lots of progressives and a few libertarians here and there. But it's unlikely that any major leaders in the Republican Party or the mainstream conservative media would have come out as Snowden cheerleaders.
