Alabama Banned Abortions. Then Its Lawmakers Remembered Rapists Can Get Parental Rights.
Stock photoRyanKing999/iStock/Getty A few months after Jessica Stallings’ 13th birthday, her uncle raped her for the first time. He was 20 years old, and he lived with Stallings and her mother in their Alabama home. He kept raping her, she claimed in court documents, and by the time she was 19, she had three children…
Controversial State Department Program Backing Trump’s Iran Policy Draws Congressional Scrutiny
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives at a closed briefing for House members on Iran on May 21, 2019.Alex Wong/Getty Images House Democrats are investigating the State Department’s use of a program originally set up to counter terrorist disinformation so the Trump administration could fund attacks on critics of the president’s Iran policy. News broke…
Raw Data: Who’s Winning the War on Poverty?
As an old saw says, we’ve been fighting the war on poverty for half a century and poverty won. But is that true? The poorest households have an average market income of $20,000. After means-tested assistance programs and tax credits are included, their income is $36,000. Working-class families see an increase from $44,000 to $49,000.…
Judge Deals a Blow to Effort to Block Census Citizenship Question at Supreme Court
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross listens as President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on August 27, 2018.Alex Brandon/AP After the startling news broke last week that Tom Hofeller, the architect of Republican gerrymandering efforts, was behind the push to add a question about US citizenship to the 2020 census, the plaintiffs challenging the question…
No One Has Any Idea If Joe Biden Really Is “Electable”
John Kerry and Joe Biden in the Oval Office in 2014.Andrew Harrer/picture-alliance/dpa/AP The watchword of the 2020 Democratic primary so far is “electability.” As a Hill column recently put it, “Democrats have 23 candidates but just one issue: electability.” Boiled down, that means Democratic voters are likely to choose among the candidate who they believe…
No One Says “Global Warming” Anymore
Our president explains why he doesn’t believe in climate change: “I believe that there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways,” he said in a wide-ranging interview with Piers Morgan on “Good Morning Britain” that aired Wednesday morning. “Don’t forget it used to be called global warming. That wasn’t working. Then…