The American Prospect

It’s been four years since the Supreme Court struck down the right to abortion. The 6-3 decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed nearly 50 years of legal abortion and returned the issue to the states. Today Americans live in places that are moving in two diametrically different directions. Some of the strictest bans on abortion went into effect in Texas and 12 other mostly Southern states, while ten states, including California and Montana, pursued constitutional amendm

With the Iran war a failure on all fronts, Trump predictably has tried to change the subject yet again. His abrupt imposition of tariffs on some 60 nations generated the desired headlines. But every aspect of Trump’s new tariffs is a fraud, from the professed justification to the supposed economic benefit. The Supreme Court held last February that Trump’s earlier round of tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act was an illicit use of executive power. There was no eco

When the news broke that U.S. attorney and nominee for director of national intelligence Jay Clayton subpoenaed New York Times journalists whose reporting embarrassed the president, press freedom advocates were quick to criticize the Justice Department for weaponizing the grand jury process. They also questioned the timing of the subpoenas, which Clayton issued just two days after the Times published its story on security concerns involving President Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One.  It w

Carola Hagenau of Castle Rock, Colorado, was out of work but not out of hope. Her corporate employer eliminated her job during the COVID pandemic and offered to find her something else within the organization. But Hagenau, who was 56 at the time, didn’t welcome a lateral move. “I said, ‘Goodness, I’m of the age where I really feel I can do something great!” she told me with a bubbly confidence that seemed like her permanent attitude. Both of Hagenau’s kids were electricians and she had been a

At the end of June, crypto super PAC Fairshake had almost $127 million cash on hand, second among outside campaign groups only to the primary Republican PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund. The crypto industry has already spent $189 million on House and Senate races this year on top of $133 million spent during the 2024 cycle, according to campaign finance disclosures. While they struggle to maintain consumer interest in their product, crypto has gone all-in on political spending as a top business s

This piece is part of our Trump’s Beautiful Disaster series about the consequences of the mammoth budget law, one year later. You can see all stories in this piece here. Children in the U.S. receive far less governmental assistance compared to other wealthy nations. This is particularly true for youth from disenfranchised backgrounds, with research showing that systemic racism perpetuates national poverty rates. As a result, experts have long called for government-sponsored programs that targ

Yesterday, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani provided a defining example of real-world democratic socialism by appointing both Anthony Shorris and Lina Khan to jointly head the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC). Shorris’s resume includes not just his work at McKinsey, the world’s foremost corporate consultant, but also being first deputy mayor under Bill de Blasio and having led the Port Authority (where he kicked out every lobbyist); Khan chaired President Biden’s Federal Trade Commissi

Troy Jackson, the North Woods legislator-logger, has snatched up Graham Platner’s mantle of Maine authenticity and anti-establishment populist cred, a dazzling profile that blinded almost an entire state to Platner’s catalog of personal defects. Backed by Platner’s enthused volunteers, Jackson harnessed those grassroots organizers to his union supporters and crushed the statewide caucus game. Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state; Nirav Shah, the former state public health leader; and other Sen

It says something about the state of the Republican Congress that their big feat this week was getting the House to hold votes. Dissident members of the House Freedom Caucus were so adamant about passage of the voter suppression bill known as the SAVE Act that they had shut down the floor for the prior two weeks. The unlocking was secured after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) agreed to put a version of SAVE into a “reconciliation 3.0” package the party has been working on for months.  This bill,

This piece is part of our Trump’s Beautiful Disaster series about the consequences of the mammoth budget law, one year later. You can see all stories in this piece here.July 1 marked the beginning of two significant yet distinct shifts in student loan repayment. The first encompasses sweeping statutory changes to the federal student loan system that Congress set into motion when it passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. This structural overhaul involves consolidating many existing

Much of what you need to know about who rules America can be found in two Supreme Court opinions released today. They reinforce how the law as interpreted by this Court is malleable depending on whom it’s applied to. If you work in the executive branch, you can now be fired by the president for whatever reason or no reason at all, even if you were appointed to what was once called an independent agency with quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative functions like the Federal Trade Commission, even

A bill to update the antitrust laws in the nation’s most populous state faces a critical legislative hearing this week. At a time when California is among the states being relied upon as a substitute for proper antitrust enforcement, which is moribund at the federal level thanks to Trump administration corruption, advocates say the state must have a full suite of tools to succeed. Monied interests are working diligently to stop the bill, but it gained important momentum late last week when a

You might say that the combination of the victories of DSA-backed congressional candidates in last week’s Democratic primaries in New York with last week’s placement of a billionaire wealth tax on November’s California ballot constitutes a come-to-Jesus moment for the oligarchs of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Then again, it was Jesus who reportedly said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” so coming to Jesus may not b

When Donald Trump won the 2024 election, many Russian nationalists celebrated. The support provided by the Biden administration would be ended, and Russia would be able to stomp on a helpless Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s war on the Ukrainian people, which Russian forces have carried out in the areas they occupied, through mass murder, rape, and kidnapping of Ukrainian children, could continue apace to a full obliteration of the nation. Trump did indeed cut off aid to Ukraine. He and Vice Preside

President Trump petulantly sidelined major housing legislation Wednesday, holding it hostage for his SAVE America Act, a measure that the Senate will never pass for lack of votes. The legislation, which would give the federal executive branch control of voting rolls, the better to conduct illicit purges and add barriers to registration and voting, is also likely to be held unconstitutional. That was underscored by several separate lower-court rulings this week. On Wednesday, U.S. District Jud

Sponsors of a ballot measure in California that would place a one-time 5 percent tax on the wealth of the state’s billionaires, raising approximately $100 billion to offset devastating federal cuts to health care for the next five years, announced on Thursday that they would go forward to the statewide ballot this November. The announcement came despite fierce opposition from, well, billionaires, as well as Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has sided with the 250 richest people in California and will no

Thursday was a decision day at the Supreme Court, and the American people got to enjoy the familiar experience of waiting on tenterhooks yet again to see which rights were going to be deleted this time. The answer was residency rights for hundreds of thousands of nonwhite immigrants. The most important of Thursday’s decisions was also the worst one: Mullin v. Doe, which overturned a lower-court order barring the Trump regime from removing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from hundreds of thou

At least 20 people have died in Donald Trump’s concentration camp network in 2026 as of Wednesday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced. Sixty-three-year-old Felix Alcorta-Rodriguez, a Mexican national, was unconscious when guards found him the night of June 19 at the Webb County Detention Center in Laredo, Texas, a facility CoreCivic runs. Staff sent him to the Laredo Medical Center, where he died less than an hour later. ICE listed no cause of death, saying only that an autopsy is

As startups, they were financed by federal grants and bailed out with federal loans. As fledgling private companies, they soaked up state and local tax credits and cash subsidies to become dominant market actors. After capturing huge swaths of the market, pumping money into elections, and lobbying concessions out of lawmakers and agencies, they reinvented themselves as the federal government’s contractors of choice. Now, as the Prospect has been reporting the past month, Elon Musk’s $2 trillion

The national housing crisis sets many college students up for failure before they can get their diplomas. On-campus dorm rooms can be pricey or, worse, substandard. Off-campus options aren’t always better. Rising market rents mean additional financial pressures and competition with individuals and families in a foundering economy. Multifamily housing production hasn’t kept up with demand, so moving from university housing to a private off-campus rental can be just as expensive. A 2023 Nationa