President Donald Trump’s latest budget blueprint is out, and it again calls for eviscerating nearly every program that helps families afford the basics, including cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—the United States’ largest food assistance program, which helps nearly 39 million people get enough to eat—by a staggering $220 billion, literally shri

INDIANAPOLIS - A plan to put work requirements on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - formerly food stamps - would cost the American economy nearly $180,000 jobs, according to a new analysis.

From the moment the Mueller investigation began to the moment Attorney General William Barr released his “summary” of Mueller’s labors, Donald Trump acted like the guiltiest man on Earth.

Donald Trump’s budget calls for cutting funding for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program by $3.5 billion over the next decade. WIC is a program that serves over 8 million low–income children and pregnant women; it has been shown to improve health for children, as well as educational outcomes as they grow older.

While a lot of states are turning blue, Ohio is one of the few states getting redder---but that is only because so many people are leaving.

Over the weekend, Fox News published a story (3/17/19) on a recent Gallup poll that asked the public about their opinions on Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The headline claimed that her unfavorable rating had “skyrocketed”—rising 15 points since last September—and that “most people” now viewed her negatively.

It was a "boys afternoon" at home; my wife and daughter were off making the world a better place, leaving my 2- and 5-year old sons and I at home to cause trouble. A whirlwind of wrestling, playing Legos, and making a mess just small enough we could successfully clean it up before anyone noticed.

This study led by researchers at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine should be appalling to any American who hasn't been socialized into a state of numbness and apathy by the unrelenting torrent of gun violence in this country,

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! 
 

Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro has made a very courageous career reporting on Russia’s propaganda apparatus for years, including the online “troll factories” that Americans learned all about at the close of the 2016 election cycle. Aro has been attacked and slandered with great force by the very machine she has exposed. She has received death threats, been slandered as a drug addict, and had her personal records exposed online.

On March 4, the European Union voted to abolish the twice-yearly clock change – i.e. no more daylight saving time. Similar discussions are occurring in Utah, Michigan, Florida, New England, etc. - but not in Indiana where, once again, our leaders have disallowed the discussion of our time zone situation. They simply ignored SB 542 until the time for talk ran out. This means that students will continue to travel at risk in morning darkness.

It’s hard these days not to focus on what’s stupid, corrupt and/or depressing. In fact, I find it hard to avoid news that gives me heartburn.

Nevertheless, there are also nuggets of hopefulness available, as I was reminded when I came across this announcement from the Knight Foundation.

I’m not one of those old people who is always looking back in time through rose-colored glasses–“remembering” that families were closer, people were friendlier, children were seen and not heard, etc. etc. Those memories are highly suspect, if not deliberately dishonest.

That said, I do miss the Republican Party of my younger days. It’s true that it always had a right-wing fringe, but before that fringe took control and ran reasonable people out, the GOP I worked for was filled with admirable, public-spirited men and women.

I was sitting in my apartment in Caracas, Venezuela, reading the online edition of Time magazine (5/19/16), which carried a report that there was not even something as basic as aspirin to be found anywhere in Venezuela: “Basic medicines like aspirin are nowhere to be found.”

The US media chorus supporting a US overthrow of the Venezuelan government has for years pointed to the country’s economic crisis as a justification for regime change, while whitewashing the ways in which the US has strangled the Venezuelan economy  (FAIR.org, 3/22/18).

America woke up on Monday to new, and dire, climate news: A new scientific study suggests that we have been vastly underestimating the climate feedback loop caused by reduced cloud cover in a warming world. Clouds, being reflective, reflect sunlight that would otherwise warm the planet; as temperatures and carbon dioxide increase, cloud cover decreases.

I know I harp a lot on the importance of accurate, credible journalism–especially at the local level, but it is really, really important.

Believe it or not, the ongoing scandals in Virginia, which have embroiled the top three state officeholders, are illustrations of what happens when local coverage goes missing.

As Amanda Marcotte observed in Salon, 

In the recent book, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, Nancy MacLean traces the intellectual development of the libertarian right and its connection with the Koch Brothers and state programs to promote an ideologically-driven policy agenda.  She argues that many of the libertarian right’s policy proposals would be opposed if public discourse and majoritarian democracy prevailed.

Laurie Laybourn-Langton, Lesley Rankin and Darren Baxter Februhe at the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain are warning in a new study as frantically as they can that “the extent, severity, pace and closing window of opportunity to avoid potentially catastrophic outcomes has led many scientists to conclude that we have entered a new era of rapid environmental change.

A Center for Public Integrity analysis suggests the timing of big donations may be more than a coincidence.

This story was published in partnership with Mother Jones.

The Freedom to Export to Cuba Act would pave the way for new economic opportunities for American businesses and farmers by boosting U.S. exports and allowing Cubans greater access to American goods

Socialism—whatever that means—is in vogue right now. A recent Gallup poll (8/13/18) found that a majority of millennials view socialism favorably, preferring it to capitalism. Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States, while new leftist Rep.

Donald Trump says his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening will be about “unification”. But Trump discussing the state of the union is like pyromaniac discussing lighter fluids.

Across much of the central and eastern United States, people are waking up on Wednesday to extreme cold. Extreme cold. Minneapolis is gripped in iron cold approaching 30 degrees below zero, and temperatures in Chicago are lower than they are for most of the Arctic Circle as the polar vortex, the counterclockwise low-pressure system that usually spins around the North Pole, detaches and swings across the upper Midwest.

After the 2016 presidential election, teachers across the country reported they were seeing increased name-calling and bullying in their classrooms. Now, research shows that those stories — at least in one state — are confirmed by student surveys. 

Trump voters in Indiana fear the administration’s drive to weaken restrictions is hurting children with cancer.

President Donald Trump may be losing support in at least one county that he won during the 2016 presidential election — and it’s all because of his administration’s anti-environmental agenda.

Led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis say they are battling to rescue Yemen from a hostile faction backed by Iran. But to do it, the Saudis have used their vast oil wealth to outsource the war, mainly by hiring what Sudanese soldiers say are tens of thousands of desperate survivors of the conflict in Darfur to fight, many of them children.

A major beer company will be replacing traditional plastic 6-pack rings with biodegradable rings that are not harmful to wildlife and the environment. Good News Network reports Corona will be testing the new 100% plastic-free 6-pack rings in Mexico at the beginning of 2019. If successful, the company hopes to expand its product, and its use, to the U.K. 

[…] Kavanaugh is, to put it bluntly, an anti-worker radical, opposed to every effort to protect working families from fraud and mistreatment.