That Texas' discriminatory and partisan voter ID law was allowed to continue is evidence of the Supreme Court's failed understanding of its constitutional responsibilities.
Connecticut’s investment in higher education has decreased considerably over the past two decades, and its financial aid programs, though still some of the country’s most expansive, fail to reach many students with financial need.
For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college?
When people like me write about the middle class, it has nothing to do with envy or class warfare—two shopworn epithets that should be retired from the political lexicon. The condition of the middle class—its size, income and self-confidence—reveals the extent to which economic growth increases opportunity. When the middle class is shrinking, when incomes of middle-class families are stagnating and when the heart of American society is losing hope in a better future, then the U.S. economy is in trouble. And so is the political system. [...]
On Election Day, Montana will host one of the country’s key voting rights battles as voters decide whether to preserve or eliminate the state’s Election Day Registration (EDR) law, which permits citizens to register (or update their registration if they’ve recently moved) when they show up at the polls.
Democrats in tight races have found a new villain this election cycle: student debt.
“It totally limits your options of what you can do,” said one student in an ad from Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, who accuses Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of having “turned his back on the students” for blocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s student loan refinancing bill.
A number of states have laws demanding citizens produce documentary evidence of citizenship to register to vote. These laws have far-reaching implications for voter participation in our democracy.
There's little debate that college costs have risen over the past decade and that the increase has hit the wallets of families hard — especially those in the greatest need.
Reformers in Washington are looking for a few good scandals.
Watergate led to the biggest overhaul of campaign finance law in the past century. Outrage over donors sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom and Enron influence peddling helped spur the 2002 McCain-Feingold overhaul. And the Jack Abramoff affair got Congress to act quickly on lobbying and ethics reform.
Once upon a time, America invested in its young people so that they could enter the world without debt. College was meant to provide opportunity and strengthen the overall economy by creating a better- educated workforce. Looking at the numbers today, I can only think that our current system has failed this generation.
Nate Silver has already dubbed the 2014 election as "the least important in years." But this year's midterms are still breaking records for at least one thing: Secret political spending.
This week, President Obama ordered changes to the federal student loan program that could help millions of borrowers make their payments more affordable starting in December 2015.
President Obama signed an executive order Monday that could extend student debt relief to an additional 5 million people — a move aimed in part at better educating young borrowers of their rights while jumpstarting a moribund debate on the issue in Congress.