[...] In short, our analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully leveraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate, strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton. Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics. [...]
“There are approximately zero students that would see a net benefit if this budget were enacted into law,” said Mark Huelsman, senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. [...]
“Consolidating or reforming campus-based aid programs is not a bad idea, but at the end of the day students have to come out ahead,” Huelsman said. “Indiscriminate cuts to work-study absolutely would harm the low income students or middle class students on campuses who absolutely do receive the money.”
The remarkable advance of same-day registration was not an accident. National organizations, including Demos and Common Cause, and numerous state organizations led the fights in legislatures around the country.
Trumpcare is dead. President Donald Trump is humiliated and so is House Speaker Paul Ryan. The Democrats can hardly believe their luck: The Republicans have hobbled their own agenda, while Obamacare, aka the Affordable Care Act, lives to fight another day. But unlike the law’s previous brushes with death—most notably its bruising encounters with the Supreme Court in 2012 and 2015—this latest example of its resilience represents a turning point, if Democrats choose to seize the opportunity.
Another question is how much the Cuomo and Raimondo plans will truly benefit low-income students. Both proposals are what’s called “last-dollar” initiatives, meaning the states would only pay the balance of tuition after students use up existing state and federal aid, including Pell Grants. These current state and federal programs couldn’t be used to fund other college costs.
Elections are decided by who votes — and increasingly, in America, by who cannot. Barriers to voting participation skew policy outcomes and elections to the right in the United States. One of the most racially discriminatory of these barriers is felon disenfranchisement.
If you’re a senior struggling with credit card debt like Green, you’re not alone. In 2012, for the first time, middle-income households headed by someone over 50 years old carried more credit card debt on average than households of people younger than 50, according to the Demos National Survey on Credit Card Debt conducted with AARP’s Public Policy Institute. Half of those over 50 had medical debt on their credit cards, and a third said they used credit cards to finance daily expenses. [...]
To win over and mobilize the public, social justice advocates must articulate what we’re for, not just what we’re against. The American people deserve better than what’s currently on offer from team Trump, but for many, the status quo also falls short. If progressives are to fulfill one of our core principles—the use of public policy to improve the lives of those left out or underserved by the market economy—we need a simple, plausible plan that excites people. Two key components of that plan are Medicare for All and a guaranteed jobs program. [...]
New York’s plan is a step forward in returning to the days when students could work their way through public college without taking on debt. But the impact on reducing the need to borrow may be minimal, especially for first-generation, low-wealth students.
New York approved a state budget Sunday that included the Excelsior Scholarship, which will allow students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year to attend state public colleges and universities tuition-free.
After a year of strikes and protests there’s a victory for many federal workers demanding that their government to pay them a living wage. President Obama in tonight’s State of the Union address will announce plans to sign an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay workers at least $10.10 an hour. The action affects workers currently earning less and will apply to new federal contracts.
Low-wage, federally-contracted janitors and construction workers will have a new minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, under an executive order announced by the White House Tuesday. Advocates said the full scope of the order, which will be formally announced during tonight’s State of the Union address, remains unclear, but could include hundreds of thousands of employees under future federal contracts. [...]
President Obama's promised executive order to raise the minimum wage for some government contract workers would likely affect less than half a million people and may face legal challenge.
What Obama is hoping is that his relatively narrow move will spur Congress to follow suit for all low-wage workers in the country.
During his State of the Union address tonight, President Obama will announce plans to issue an executive order giving a raise to low-wage workers on new federal contracts, a move that affects thousands of people in the Washington area, the White House says.
At Fox News, President Obama's push to increase the federal minimum wage for millions of American workers through legislative and executive action is merely a "symbolic" gesture.
A move by President Obama to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour is partly an act of symbolism and political tactics, but it promises to have a practical impact on the lives of as many as half a million US workers. [...]
When it comes to boosting economic opportunity, President Obama isn’t going to wait for Congress anymore.
In his State of the Union Address last night, the President made a powerful statement about employers’ obligation to reward work -- starting with his own obligation as the executive in charge of millions of federal contracts.