Bloomberg.com • 15th June 2025

Pell Grants Are an Engine of Social Mobility. Don’t Cut Them.

To preserve tax cuts for the wealthy, the Republican budget reconciliation proposals moving through Congress cut programs for the neediest in ways that will lead to higher costs for everyone in the long run. The plans include not only cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, but also to Pell Grants, the program that provides federal assistance for higher education.The first Pell Grant was awarded in 1973 and since then has helped millions of low-income students attend college. The grants overwhelmingly go to...

Bloomberg.com • 8th June 2025

US Democracy Is Sicker Than Many Realize. Look at These States.

Political scientists are issuing stark warnings about the way they see President Donald Trump’s second term pushing the US into authoritarianism, with its sweeping executive orders, defiance of court rulings, threats and coercion to enforce ideology, and steamrolling of a Congress that appears only too willing to give up its power.But to focus only on the White House ignores the broader picture: the gradual rise of illiberal instincts in US politics, and especially on the right. It began with th...

Bloomberg.com • 20th May 2025

Musk’s AI ‘Colossus’ in Memphis Is Everyone’s Problem

Build a massive supercomputer housed in a plant powered by methane gas-burning turbines that emit an undisclosed amount of pollutants into a disadvantaged community. Obtain no environmental permits. Ask permission later. That’s the approach Elon Musk has taken in the city of Memphis as he rushes to build two massive data centers to provide computing power for his artificial intelligence startup xAI. It’s a scenario America might have to get used to.

Bloomberg.com • 15th May 2025

Oklahoma High Schoolers Are Getting a Dangerous Lesson Plan

The state’s superintendent of public instruction wants teachers to present unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and Covid.

Bloomberg.com • 8th May 2025

Normie Republicans Like Brian Kemp Have It Rough

Even before Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced he would not be challenging Democrat Jon Ossoff in that high-stakes US Senate race in the state next year, he had already emerged as one of the most interesting Republicans on the national stage. Kemp knows what a liability Trump can be for Republicans and has learned how to choose his battles carefully. For the last four years, the two-term governor endured Trump’s threats and bullying because he refused to illegally overturn the 2020 election r...

Bloomberg.com • 1st May 2025

Who Can Save Florida Democrats? Former Republicans

Florida is becoming a testing ground for desperate centrists. The Democratic leader of the Florida Senate, Jason Pizzo, abruptly resigned his leadership post last week with just two weeks to go in the legislative session. “The Democratic Party in Florida is dead,” he said as he made the announcement on the Senate floor. “There are good people that can resuscitate it. But they don’t want it to be me.” Florida is becoming a testing ground for desperate centrists. The Democratic leader of the F...

Bloomberg.com • 27th April 2025

A Baby Boom? In This Economy?

The US birth rate is near a record low, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday, with only 1.6 children born per woman, below the 2.1 needed to sustain the population. This is no surprise — the birth rate has been falling since 2007. What is surprising is the inconsistent — and contradictory — set of policies the Trump administration is employing to try to address it.

Bloomberg.com • 23rd April 2025

GOP's Voting Reform Is Paperwork, Not a Solution

Listen closely to the arguments of the House Republicans pushing the so-called “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act” and you realize they aren’t interested in solving the problem the bill purports to address: non-citizens voting in federal elections.If you take the proponents of the bill at their word — that the measure is needed “to increase integrity of elections” because “non-citizen voting decreases confidence in our elections” — you’d expect a targeted proposal aimed at increasi...

Bloomberg.com • 17th April 2025

Harvard Proves the Only Choice Is to Fight

School districts across the US are now facing the same decision as institutions of higher learning: allow the government to censor their instruction or stand up for themselves and lose federal funding. As Harvard and Columbia demonstrated by taking opposite approaches, there is really only one choice: fight.That’s because the Trump administration has demonstrated it’s not negotiating in good faith. Each time an educational institution engages with the White House, the White House shifts the goal...

Bloomberg.com • 12th April 2025

The Florida Entrepreneur Suing Over Tariffs Is Right

When Emily Ley started her stationery business 17 years ago in Florida, she felt like it was the embodiment of the American dream. Today, she’s the unlikely face of opposition to a trade war against China instigated by the American president. Those tariffs threaten to extinguish Ley’s business and the operations of millions of companies like hers.

Bloomberg.com • 8th April 2025

North Carolina Courts Are Too Close to Undoing an Election

A state appeals court just dealt a blow to North Carolinians still waiting for their 2024 Supreme Court election to be resolved and, in the process, provided a template for election deniers to create mayhem in the midterm elections next year.

Bloomberg.com • 6th April 2025

This Marco Rubio Is Unrecognizable

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele may have found the best description for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s new approach to dictatorial regimes: a laughing emoji.

Bloomberg.com • 2nd April 2025

Democrats Wasted Donors' Money in Florida

Tuesday marked the most consequential political report card yet in President Donald Trump’s second term. Voters in Florida gave him lower than expected — but passing — grades. It was Democrats who failed the test.

Bloomberg.com • 27th March 2025

Forget Polls. Watch the Florida Special Election Results.

Florida holds two special congressional elections on Tuesday in districts where President Donald Trump won more than 60% of the votes. They’ll be closely watched to see if that margin — which months ago seemed effortless for Republicans to sustain in the president’s home state — has melted away.

Bloomberg.com • 21st March 2025

Cutting the Department of Education Is Theater, Not a Plan

Late on Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to “begin eliminating” the US Department of Education. It was exactly as expected: a performative exercise that will achieve none of the president’s stated campaign promises, ​including shutting down the agency.

Bloomberg.com • 20th March 2025

North Carolina’s Ongoing Election Dispute Is Dangerous

The 2024 election still isn’t over in North Carolina. On Friday, the state Court of Appeals will hear arguments in a dispute over a judicial election for the state Supreme Court.

Bloomberg.com • 17th March 2025

Are GOP Leaders Afraid to Listen to Their Own Voters?

No politician will ever admit they have zero interest in hearing what their constituents have to say. But from Washington, DC to Wichita, Kansas elected officials are cancelling meetings with constituents and systematically undermining citizen-led ballot initiatives — the one tool the public has to make change when elected officials won’t listen.It is profoundly hypocritical — and dangerously shortsighted.

Bloomberg.com • 22nd October 2024

This Is Why You Don’t Recognize Your State Government

The nation is going in two different directions. That’s because more states have fallen under one-party control — either Republican or Democrat — than at any time in modern US history. We examined a trove of legislative and electoral data and found that when one party secures control, representative democracy erodes, voters get ignored, and the gaps are wider under Republican control.

Bloomberg.com • 11th March 2025

This GOP Fight Will Determine How Many Kids Go Hungry

A group of Republican lawmakers in the White House and Congress don’t believe it’s the government’s job to feed people. But at the state level, the GOP is heading in a different direction.

Bloomberg.com • 7th March 2025

Florida Deserves Better Candidates for Governor

For nearly half a century, Florida has been America’s ultimate political bellwether. Now, the race to replace Governor Ron DeSantis in 2026 is flashing a warning sign about the influential state’s shallow leadership pool.DeSantis can’t run again because of term limits, but he wants to run for president again so he’s looking for a way to stay relevant. He’s propping up his wife Casey and President Donald Trump endorsed Congressman Byron Donalds. Florida can do better, and it should.