On Sunday, January 10, in Manchester, New Hampshire, Planned Parenthood Action Fund will formally endorse Hillary Clinton for president-its first-ever primary endorsement. Planned Parenthood says it plans to spend at least $20 million on this election. The national women’s health organization has thrown itself ever more forcefully into politics since its president, Cecile Richards, took […]
Blog: TAPPED
Posted inLaw and Justice
Obama Orders More Research on Gun Violence. But Will Congress Interfere?
For years, one of the federal obstacles that has most frustrated gun safety advocates is an old prohibition on gun violence research. Without robust data on the impact of guns, safety advocates say, policymakers are unable to respond effectively to the epidemic of gun violence plaguing the nation. On Tuesday, President Obama issued an executive […]
Posted inElection Night Blog
Last-Ditch House Bill Would Defund Planned Parenthood
In a last-ditch effort, House Republicans are set to vote Wednesday on a bill that would include a provision to defund Planned Parenthood. The vote comes just weeks after Congress passed its $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that included no cuts to Planned Parenthood, despite months of conservative pledges to defund the abortion provider. House […]
Posted inEducation in America
In Free Speech Turnabout, Public Officials Seek to Silence Students
A spate of student protests over racial discrimination on college campuses this fall and winter has triggered a backlash from critics who cast student demands as an affront to free speech. But a dustup this week over legislation introduced in the Missouri legislature suggests that students’ own First Amendment protections may be at risk. On […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Democrats Beat Back Anti-Labor Riders
There’s nothing business-friendly Republicans won’t try in their effort to dismantle organized labor. The recent budget showdown was no exception. However, rather surprisingly, organized labor avoided a shellacking. “We’re relieved,” says Bill Samuel, the AFL-CIO’s director of government affairs. “There was a whole laundry list of rollbacks on worker rights and to the [Department of […]
Posted inCivil Rights in America
Will the DOJ’s Chicago Police Investigation Lead to Real Reform?
Earlier this month the Chicago Police Department joined a growing list of law enforcement agencies around the nation under investigation by the Department of Justice for possible civil rights violations. The announcement of the Justice probe came on the heels of the November release of a video showing white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke […]
Posted inMoney, Politics, and Power
Spending Bill Spares Planned Parenthood
Despite months of Republican threats and political bluster, a recently-unveiled $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that will fund the government until October 2016 includes no cuts to Planned Parenthood’s federal funding or to abortion access. The deal follows weeks of hostile negotiations on Capitol Hill. At stake were funds not only for Planned Parenthood, but […]
Posted inLaw and Justice
Koch Campaign Strains Criminal Justice Coalition
Until recently, progressives have largely embraced the involvement of the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch in the push for criminal justice reform, including changes in mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Before conservative activists embraced the issue, the crisis of mass incarceration had largely languished on the back burner. But the involvement of the Kochs and […]
Posted inEconomic Policy
Report: Nation’s Wealth Gap Wider Than Believed
Over the past few months, Bernie Sanders has repeatedly declared that the top one-tenth of 1 percent of U.S. earners own nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That claim has drawn the skeptical scrutiny of PolitiFact, which attributed it to a study by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman late last year. PolitiFact’s […]
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
The Colorado Shooting and the Recent Rise in Anti-Abortion Violence
On Friday, November 27th Robert Lewis Dear, a 57-year-old white man, entered a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and opened fire. It took more than five hours for Dear to surrender to the police, and when he did, the police found nine injured, and three killed, including one police officer. The following night, The […]