Several policy organizations have urged that institutions be held more accountable for the success of their students who get Pell Grants. [...]
Many who do enroll end up worse off than they started out, struggling to repay loans they took out to pay for educations they never finished; Pell recipients are nearly twice as likely as other students to borrow, the public-policy organization Demos says.
President Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court could have broad implications for civil and human rights at home and abroad. From the use of wartime powers like torture, to the regulation of business, to gender and racial equity, the lives of many can be decided by the Supreme Court. Yesterday, Kavanaugh and the Senate Judiciary Committee gave opening statements amid protests from Democrats, who believe President Trump is deliberately withholding access to vital documents.
[I]n Demos’ analysis of the case, the public policy organization focusing on issues of political equity, highlights that Kavanaugh, in joining this opinion, appears to question the idea of disparate impact, which maintains that a facially neutral policy can still have an adverse impact on a protected class.
The White House also withheld over 100,000 pages of information linked to the judicial nominee. That, said Chiraag Bains, the director of legal strategies at the think-tank Demos, is “something that’s never happened before.” About 42,000 pages of White House documents were released just hours before the questioning started.
"Today's decision affirms what we have said in this case — that Puerto Rican citizens must be given full and equal access to the franchise. Individuals who are still dealing with devastating losses from Hurricane Maria should not also have to contend with discrimination at the polls," said Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos, one of several groups that filed the motion for the preliminary injunction.
"Individuals who are still dealing with devastating losses from Hurricane Maria should not also have to contend with discrimination at the polls,” said Stuart Naifeh, senior counsel at Demos. “The court’s order protects the right of Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican citizens to meaningfully exercise their right to vote this fall.”
[D]emos, another liberal think tank, sees things differently. Recent research by the group finds support for putting more of the emphasis on race. [...]
Stuart Naifeh, one of the attorneys pressing the lawsuit against Reagan, said the ruling was deeply flawed, but the groups haven’t yet decided whether to file an appeal.
“Voters should go out there and check their registration to make sure they are update to date, since the secretary of state is not going to do anything about it,” Naifeh said.
Naila Awan, a counsel at Demos — one of the legal firms representing the groups in the lawsuit — said Friday's ruling "sides with democracy and promotes a more robust and inclusive democracy. The state of Missouri has been failing to provide address update services required by the NVRA.
"This disproportionately impacts people of color and low-income individuals, who tend to move at higher rates."
The prospective testimony of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford may be our best chance yet at a democratic process in the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. To date, Senate Republicans have tried to railroad through his confirmation, withholding an unprecedented number of documents from the committee and the public. Their cries of urgency ring hollow, as they blocked President Barack Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland from receiving any proceedings for 10 months.
“It’s political stubbornness,” said Stuart C. Naifeh, senior counsel for Demos, a national voting rights law group that is working with the League of Women Voters of Arizona, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund, Promise Arizona, the American Civil Liberties Union and others on this lawsuit and related NVRA issues.
Chiraag Bains of the advocacy group Demos that has monitored the activity of Pilf and its allied groups for several years, said: “Their aim is not to ensure the security of our elections, but to intimidate people from going to the polls. They are promoting purges that prevent eligible voters from participating in our democracy.”
Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, argues: “We cannot rely on states to fund education on their own or even allow for collective bargaining in many states. So I think that the federal government has to step in and provide some real financial leverage in order to raise the number of teachers, raise the job quality for teachers and raise, even if it’s nonteaching jobs, the positions that have been eliminated, particularly in two-year colleges but across the education system.”
“When we’re talking about elite schools and, certainly, free medical schools, I don’t think that’s what’s going to be driving the policy process,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a think tank with operations in three cities including Boston that advocates for a diverse, expanded middle class and racial equality. [...]
In Ohio, registered voters who do not vote in a two-year period are sent a mailing asking them to confirm their address. If they do not respond to the mailing or vote in the subsequent four years, they are purged from the rolls. Represented by Demos and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the Ohio chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute -- an organization of black trade unionists and community activists -- has been fighting these purges in court since 2016.
The American education system is defined by its decentralization; states, local areas, and schools wield considerable power over how students are educated, from preschool through college. But federal government's role in education is to still make sure American students have both a champion and a protector, an agency dedicated to the notion that when all students are able to thrive, our communities, our economy and our civic life become stronger.
This unfinished legacy is what makes the tenure of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education so tragic.
Despite elite colleges’ efforts to diversify, they are still limited in their ability to serve as true engines of economic mobility, said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank.
“It does go against what we think higher education should be and it goes against our belief in a meritocracy,” he said. [...]
In 2013, President Barack Obama ordered a review of election procedures after the 2012 presidential election was plagued with long lines. One of the “signal weaknesses” of the U.S.