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Doing “everything right” — making all the optimal life choices to build wealth and get ahead, despite obstacles — is still not enough for black and Latino households to accumulate as much wealth as their white counterparts.

When it comes to jobs, the fast food industry represents the worst of our economy: paying poverty wages; offering irregular, part-time hours; and providing few benefits. Wage theft and workplace safety hazards are rampant. An executive who has built his personal wealth on a fast food business model that treats working people as cheap and disposable is among the worst possible choices to lead the Department of Labor. Yet Donald Trump has selected fast food CEO Andrew Puzder for the responsibility of protecting American workers.

You can be sure that communities are fighting back against the far-reaching, multi-headed, xenophobic and draconian first wave of Trump’s immigration enforcement apparatus. Everyone who believes in equality and justice can assist in this community-led battle for the soul of our democracy.

Judge Neil Gorsuch’s overall record reveals that time and again he sides with the wealthy and powerful over ordinary Americans.

President Trump called last night for “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” He has proposed increasing the military budget by $54 billion—a proposal that would require great sacrifice from working people in the form of cuts to vital health care, education and environmental services.

Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration apparently believe that extremely basic workplace protections are too onerous to ask U.S. businesses to uphold.

1. Do you agree that wealthy donors translating their massive economic power directly into political influence is a problem that should be taken into account when considering rules governing spending on elections?

Whomever is confirmed to the lifetime appointment will have a decisive vote on whose voices carry weight in our democracy. 

We’ve created our own bracket here, matching up colleges not by the number of McDonald’s High School All-Americans on their roster, but by whether or not they provide access to an affordable education and whether they are engines of upward mobility for working-class students.

Today the Election Law Journal published Beyond Corruption, a peer-reviewed symposium on money in politics and the Supreme Court. The symposium was guest-edited by Professor David Schultz and contains pieces by several Demos attorneys, including a Foreword by Demos President Heather McGhee.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) confronted Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch about the vicious cycle facing our democracy: of severe concentration of economic power yielding severe concentration of political power. 

Nearly a year ago, a colleague (Taylor Lincoln, the research director of Public Citizen) and I made five recommendations for then-candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to run a transparent presidential transition.

There’s a lot happening in the sanctuary movement. These are defining moments in our democracy. 

Last week I had the privilege of testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch. Wth the Court split four-to-four on so many critical issues, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

But even beyond issues, what’s at stake with this nomination is the very shape of our democracy: the way we make decisions about everything from who gets health care to whether working families will live in poverty—and whose voices are heard in that process.

What a time for democracy. Scan the front page of any national newspaper these days, and even the most optimistic of #resistors can feel overwhelmed. The Russian government, say intelligence reports, conducted an “influence campaign” against Clinton and in favor of Trump. Now, the FBI is investigating whether President Trump and/or his associates had ties to such a campaign. Decades ago we feared the Reds infiltrating our land. But top-level collusion between our government and theirs? Not even “The Americans” portrays that scenario. 

Smart climate rules can have substantial job-boosting potential.

Gorsuch, simply put, is not up to the job. His record suggests that he will side with big money over working families.

With so many eventual graduates starting at community colleges, we should take a hard look at institutional aid policies, which reward incoming freshmen much more than transfer students.