Economic Insecurity

The Office of the Comptroller of Currency is responsible for ensuring the safety, soundness, and broad accessibility of financial institutions. President Biden must choose someone to lead the agency who brings expertise and relevant lived experience to the job.

The California city began distributing out up to $600 monthly to low-income residents.

It’s the latest bill in the state legislature’s long history of meddling with voter-approved amendments.

The intense backlash to his recent comments criticizing $2,000 stimulus checks signal the growing momentum for guaranteed income programs—and the emerging power of voters who care more about substantive results than partisan skirmishes.

It’s time for political leaders, no matter their party, to listen to voters—and provide financial relief from the pandemic.

Civil rights organizations and Democrats in Congress are calling on the president-elect to provide relief to millions of borrowers once he takes office.

Eric Garcetti, who may be considered for a position in the administration, is out of touch with the city’s working class and poor people, activists say. And they fear he’ll bring that sensibility to national politics.

Progressive lawmakers and activists say Cuomo has failed to adequately protect those who are out of work, at risk of losing their homes, or living behind bars, where the virus has spread rapidly.

Since the pandemic began, vital programs that enable children to receive free meals, such as the National School Lunch Program, haven’t been reaching the families in need of support.

Passing the HEROES Act would provide crucial protections to some of the most vulnerable essential workers, they say.

Food insecurity is not an acute emergency, but rather a chronic condition for low-income Americans that existed long before the current public health emergency.

Baby bonds are a good start toward changing the discriminatory status quo, but limiting it to New Jersey is shortsighted.

Antitrust law, which was once a top line cause of populist and progressive movements fighting for a fair and democratic society, did control corporate authority in the past and can do so again.

Researchers say that programs like the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, which gives Black women $1,000 a month, could be crucial in reducing the racial wealth gap.

With states’ revenue streams drying up, state employees have been laid off and core services cut. This has increased the number of residents needing aid while reducing state aid available to vulnerable people when they need it most.

Tenants and progressive leaders who cried out for a national action must now grapple with two truths: This eviction moratorium will save lives, but everything about it is a page out of Trump’s re-election playbook.

Tom Wolf said Tuesday that legalizing and taxing recreational use of marijuana could help solve fiscal woes that arose from the pandemic, and address long-standing racial injustices.

The committee signaled an unprecedented desire to break with one of the most durable, and damaging, economic frameworks of the last 50 years: the 1970s-era, hands-off antitrust ideology that helped bestow these titans of tech with such extraordinary power to begin with.

The Doe Fund says it pays homeless and formerly incarcerated people New York City’s minimum wage of $15 per hour. But the nonprofit charges weekly fees that can drive their wages below the federal minimum of $7.25.

Housing rights activists in California are pushing for taxation of rich residents to help the hundreds of thousands of people who may be at risk of losing housing after COVID-19 eviction restrictions end.

Hundreds were forced from an encampment to fenced-in, asphalt parking lots with no shade in Phoenix’s triple-digit summer heat. At least three people have died.

Through this mechanism, communities can accept accountability for the racism they allow to flourish by failing to disrupt it.

Tens of thousands of people in Los Angeles County are at high risk for becoming homeless after the temporary halt on evictions is lifted—one of the largest mass displacements the region has ever seen.

Organizations in New York City have stepped in to help families with funeral costs and related matters in communities hit hard by the disease, but their money and resources are strained.

The frustrations of residents in the Powderhorn neighborhood, not far from where George Floyd was killed, have gotten some national coverage. But the homelessness crisis in the city isn’t new, and it could soon get worse.

As a ‘heat dome’ descends on much of the country and local governments scramble to provide safe refuges, concern grows over the effect of a disease that has ‘totally demolished the homeless people.’

You can’t incarcerate a public health problem. It doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t repair harm.

A survey published by the National Domestic Workers Alliance in April found that 55 percent of respondents were unable to pay April’s rent, and 84 percent were either not able to or didn’t know if they could afford food.

The nation has an opportunity to take advantage of this transformative event and pursue an alternative to the current system.

From grocery store workers to nurses, from home care workers to janitors, from teachers to delivery workers to domestic workers — there is an invisible, undervalued army of people who make our lives possible. Their work is essential, and it always has been.

The July 4th event will only serve to endanger the Black Hills National Forest, spread contagion, and continue the president’s pattern of sowing hatred and division.

Workers report facing a difficult choice between earning a living and feeling safe and healthy at their job.

Yes, we must radically transform policing in America. But we cannot stop there. We must transform the pervasive systems of economic and carceral injustice that are choking our common life.

The lawsuit says the Small Business Administration overstepped its authority by imposing ‘arbitrary and capricious’ restrictions on a loan program passed by Congress.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis are both provoked by natural phenomena, the dangers they present are just as political as the crisis of police violence.

This research and analysis is part of our Discourse series. Discourse is a collaboration between The Appeal, The Justice Collaborative Institute, and Data For Progress. Its mission is to provide expert commentary and rigorous, pragmatic research especially for public officials, reporters, advocates, and scholars. The Appeal and The Justice Collaborative Institute are editorially independent projects […]

While 80 percent of state health departments are recording race as part of their COVID-19 statistics, around half are not including Natives and are simply labeling them as “other.”

The City Council must not let Mayor Eric Garcetti’s unconscionable priorities dictate how Los Angeles responds to the COVID-19 crisis.

Advocates say states aren’t doing enough to close the gaps in the federal stimulus bill.