Writing fellow Emma Janssen looks back on her reporting this year.
Emma Janssen
Emma Janssen is a writing fellow at The American Prospect, where she reports on anti-poverty policy, health, and political power. Before joining the Prospect, she was at UChicago studying political philosophy, editing for The Chicago Maroon, and freelancing for the Hyde Park Herald.
Posted inPolitics
Chicago Story: Corruption and a Family Legacy Are on the Ballot
Jesse Jackson Jr.—convicted, unpardoned, and unrepentant—is running for Congress again.
Posted inPolitics
The Beautiful Game Is Getting Ugly
Soccer fans braved a winter storm to demand FIFA President Gianni Infantino reject Trump’s white supremacy, using the slogan ‘No ICE in Our Cup.’
Posted inEconomic Policy
Selling the Poor on Spending Like They’re Rich
How plutonomy, premiumization, and social media squeeze the middle class
Posted inEconomic Policy
New York Gets Serious About Food Prices
State lawmakers could work with Zohran Mamdani’s administration to tackle high food prices through a combination of his public grocery proposal and a proposed antitrust law.
Posted inHealth and Social Policy
The Shutdown Is Over. SNAP’s Struggles Aren’t.
Turning off the logistically complicated SNAP system—which relies on the federal government, states, and private companies to function in concert—and then trying to turn it back on quickly is no easy task.
Posted inLaw and Justice
Two Months of ICE Terror in Chicago
Chicago is a notoriously segregated city, which means that some neighborhoods have been completely transformed by ICE’s presence, while in non-Latino neighborhoods, it’s mostly been business as usual. But the response to the federal incursion knows no boundaries.
Posted inHousing
The Lost Dream of Obam-a-Lago
Long before the September 30 ICE raid, Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood had been ravaged by a series of sprawling apartment building pump-and-dump schemes, aided and abetted by industrial-scale mortgage fraud, old-fashioned government inaction, and a smattering of Venezuelan gangsters.
Posted inPolitics
After First Missed Paycheck, Federal Workers Call for Solidarity
With no end to the government shutdown in sight, federal workers are drawing down their savings accounts and retirement plans, and getting help from family members, food pantries, credit unions, and a variety of other sources.
Posted inLaw and Justice
How ICE Hides Detainees From Their Lawyers
CHICAGO – On September 12, attorney Kevin Herrera walked up to Chicagoland’s main Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, passed a crowd of protesters who didn’t know what to make of him, and knocked on the building’s boarded-up front door. No reply. Another knock; nothing. Then Herrera walked to the side […]