Imagine your life if your boss could arbitrarily—and legally—take away chunks of your paycheck after you earned it and keep that money for him or herself. As strange as it sounds, that was the basic idea enshrined in a recent Trump administration scheme to let restaurant owners take control over their employees’ tips – a scheme that ultimately went too far even for Republicans in Congress.
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65 - number of days since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in which 17 people were killed
57 - percent of Americans who say enacting new laws to try to reduce gun violence should be a priority (according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll)
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Public education in North Carolina has its share of challenges, not the least of which has been the state’s ongoing failure to make sure that school systems in poorer communities receive the financial support they need. But in one major respect, the pattern by which most of our school districts are organized helps them serve all their students, no matter their circumstances.
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Men and women doing the same job over the same time period should be paid equally. But in the United States, women on average don’t earn the equivalent of their male counterparts—forcing them to work longer and harder to earn what white men make doing the same job. The recent attacks on women’s health care, including President Trump’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, roll back the no-cost birth control provision, prioritize abstinence-only sex education in the budget, and defund Planned Parenthood create even more barriers to equal pay, ensuring that women won’t reach economic equality anytime soon.
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It was perhaps the N.C. Supreme Court’s finest hour. In 1997, the high court held unanimously that North Carolina public school students are entitled under the state constitution to the “opportunity to receive a sound basic education.” In other words, it’s the state’s responsibility to make sure that all children – even those living in communities dogged by poverty – have a fair chance to learn what they need to learn in order to make their way in the world and become productive citizens.
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Last week, legal experts and families spoke with NC Policy Watch about how state law is not keeping pace with science and the non-traditional family unit.
The American family two generations ago was portrayed as a married heterosexual couple living with their genetic offspring, and family law was promulgated to accommodate those relationships.
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There are a lot of compelling reasons to be deeply concerned about ICE – the federal immigration agency that’s acting more and more like a rogue national police force. From the midnight raids to the lack of due process afforded detained individuals to the downright cruel and inhumane destruction of families...
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Recently I was having dinner with friends and the topic of sexual violence came up. One-by-one we went around the table recounting the first time we remembered feeling unsafe because of our gender. Each and every one of us had a story to tell. For most, our first #MeToo moment predated even our first kiss.
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Ordinary Americans – those of us not allowed to know the secrets of high-level espionage work – at this point find it hard to judge accurately the accomplishments of Gina Haspel as she climbed through the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency. President Trump, in nominating Haspel to head the agency where she now is deputy director, of course painted her in glowing colors.
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In the aftermath of recent action by state lawmakers to back down from their previously enacted unfunded mandate to shrink K-3 class sizes, education policy advocate Sarah Montgomery of the North Carolina Justice Center asked some of the parents and teachers who spoke up on the issue to share their reflections on a hard-fought victory.
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Penny-wise, pound-foolish. So declared a disappointed English lord in response to his heir’s poor financial judgement. Though coined 500 years ago somewhere else entirely, the phrase still means the same thing today in 21st century America—don’t save small amounts of money on something if it’s going to cost you a whole lot more later on.
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Matthew was struggling to keep up with his second grade classmates in reading, was sleeping in class, missing school, and getting into conflicts with peers. Matthew had some unique behaviors that his teachers had difficulty managing, and repeating second grade was becoming a possibility. He even talked of hurting himself.
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