New York, NY - With the House of Representatives poised to vote on H.R. 10, the Financial CHOICE Act, Amy Traub, Associate Director, Policy and Research at Demos, issued the following statement:
New York, NY - Following today’s testimony by Former FBI Director James Comey on his interactions with President Trump, Heather McGhee, President of the New York-based public policy think tank Demos, issued the following statement:
We are not paying close enough attention to this poisonous phenomenon, which is upending longstanding norms and changing the very nature of our society.
The more Americans that are working, the healthier our economy. Policymakers and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve are supposed to strive to achieve maximum employment. The governors of the Federal Reserve, however, have begun to raise interest rates to put the brakes on the U.S. economy despite evidence that we are not yet at peak employment. The governors expect that inflation will increase when we reach peak employment, but inflation continues to be low. By their own standard, we are not there yet.
What happened in 2016? In a recent Monkey Cagepiece, I discussed the research Demos is performing with political scientists Bernard Fraga, Brian Schaffner and Jesse Rhodes on how depressed turnout contributed to Trump’s electoral college victory. However, the piece doesn’t discuss what caused that decline in turnout and what it means for the future of the Democratic Party.
The nation is experiencing a crisis of care. Across the country, parents are trapped in an economic bind without paid leave or affordable child care, even as older Americans and people with disabilities contend with their own unmet needs for care. At the same time, we face a desperate need for good jobs. While unemployment has fallen, millions of working people still struggle to make ends meet with low wages, precarious work schedules, and a lack of basic benefits and job security.
About a year ago this month, Trump boasted—in an effort to distinguish himself from his Republican running mates and all GOP candidates before him—that he had no intention of making cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
It's time to recognize that in a world where most students must borrow for a credential, borrowers should receive the same failsafe protections on these loans as they do on any other consumer loan.
A group of civil-rights organizations, including the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the think tank Demos, and the ACLU of Ohio, filed a lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted challenging the supplemental process’s legality in early 2016.
The Supreme Court granted Ohio’s petition for certiorari in the case of Husted v. Ohio A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI). The case addresses Ohio’s Supplemental Process, a practice of targeting voters who fail to vote in a two-year period for eventual cancellation of their registrations – even if they have not moved and are still fully eligible to vote.
Today progressive Democrats released a framework for job creation and infrastructure investment that will prepare the United States to thrive in the 21st century.
Washington, DC – Today, the Congressional Progressive Caucus in conjunction with progressive groups released a plan to create millions of jobs and rebuild our nation’s infrastructure. In response, Vijay Das, Senior Campaign Strategist at Demos, said:
The Decennial Census is one of the most important statistical tools available to Americans. It provides a snapshot of our present and helps us plan our future. Today this periodic and constitutionally mandated population count faces major threats on two fronts. The first threat is the underfunding of the program by Congressional Republicans and President Trump. The second is the administration’s attacks on vulnerable populations that are often the hardest to count.
“It doesn’t do anything to address the root problems of college affordability and of rising student debt,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. Those include state disinvestment in higher education, a trend that the federal government could help reverse, according to Huelsman, by using federal money to encourage states to up their investment in their public colleges. [...]
"From coast to coast, American families are trapped between the need to provide care for their young children or sick loved ones and the necessity of earning income. Our nation has a responsibility to address this crisis, and yet, the Trump administration’s proposal falls far short. An adequate plan would provide paid leave to working people recovering from temporary disability, offer at least 12 weeks of paid leave to new parents, and enable Americans caring for aging parents to take leave as well.
Whites are far more optimistic about progress toward equality, and I suspect it's due to that faith in a generational change among millennials.
But that idea does not hold up, according to research by Sean McElwee for Demos, a public policy organization focused on equality. "Age," McElwee concluded, "has little effect on the likelihood that whites hold racially biased feelings about blacks. ... Waiting for old whites to die out won't solve the problem, as these attitudes are equally prevalent among youth." [...]