The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported that the Trump administration plans to lower the refugee cap for the next fiscal year to a paltry 45,000, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions. That figure is significantly lower than previous caps, which topped out between 70,000 and 110,000 and is the lowest since 1980, […]
The Australian postal survey on legalizing same-sex marriage is underway, and opponents are continuing to spread propaganda about the supposed consequences of marriage equality. Their latest ad relies on a Canadian extremist who tried to prevent his children from even learning that gay people exist. Steve Tourloukis, identified in the ad as simply a Canadian […]
Regulators in Washington state dealt a potentially lethal blow Tuesday to a coal export proposal in the Pacific Northwest, denying the project a water quality permit needed to move forward. “After extensive study and deliberation, I am denying Millennium’s proposed coal export project,” Washington Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon said in a press statement. […]
With multiple failed attempts at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, all eyes are on Republicans as they prepare to pass major tax reform measures that would effectively provide a hefty tax cut to the top tax bracket while lowering the corporate tax rate to around 20 percent from 35 percent. As President Donald […]
A hastily written health bill — with deep cuts to Medicaid and major hits to patient regulatory protections — ran into the same political problems as bills before it, and failed to garner enough support in the Senate. Republicans announced Tuesday the party does not have the votes to pass their latest health care bill, […]
Georgetown Law students and faculty gathered on the campus Tuesday to protest a speech by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in which he blasted college campuses that he said have allowed political correctness to erode free speech. The school did not allow many of the students and faculty at Tuesday’s protest to attend the invite-only speech. […]
President Donald Trump’s latest version of the travel ban, announced on Sunday, has already been harshly criticized by civil rights and immigrant rights groups. It also brings the Trump administration’s foreign policy shortcomings into sharp focus. The new proclamation indefinitely restricts travel from five of the countries listed on the original ban — Iran, Libya, […]
On Tuesday, the Washington Post confirmed what had previously been assumed about Russia’s campaign of buying Facebook ads to tilt the presidential election, and to stir racial tensions in the U.S. As the Post summed, the Russian ads took aim at U.S. racial divides, paralleling efforts from the Trump campaign. The efforts mirror prior attempts […]
On Monday night, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) gathered for a CNN town hall debate over a health care bill spearheaded by Graham and Cassidy. “This is a debate about who has the power, you or the federal government?” Cassidy said at one point. “I will […]
Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a controversial appearance at Georgetown Law School Tuesday to deliver remarks on free speech on college campuses. Besides Sessions’ atrocious record on civil rights, the speech prompted protests from students and faculty after many students were ironically uninvited from the event. After arguing in his speech that there were too […]
Hundreds of thousands of people of color suffer unimaginable deprivation in the wake of a devastating hurricane while the president appears both oblivious and tone-deaf. In the summer of 2005, then-President George W. Bush mounted an oblivious and tone-deaf response after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. He famously told his FEMA director he was doing […]
President Trump finally broke his silence on the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico this week with a series of tweets in which he appeared to blame the island for its own misfortune. “Texas & Florida [which suffered damage during Hurricanes Harvey and Irma] are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from […]
Marquise Harris was leaving his family’s apartment one morning in 1992 to catch the school bus when a police officer stopped him outside his door. His parents had already left for work, but Nashville homicide detective Bill Pridemore asked the 13-year-old to talk in private. According to Harris, the detective wanted him to say he […]
Uber defrauded investors by failing to disclose the legal jeopardy their defiance of local transit regulations engenders, a new lawsuit from a small pension fund for retired firefighters in Irving, Texas claims. The suit’s reasoning is a catch-all for a year of scandalous revelations about Uber’s practices. It cites federal criminal inquiries launched this year […]
On August 14, 2016, before the San Francisco 49ers’ first preseason game of the season kicked off, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick remained seated during the national anthem. It took two more preseason games for anyone to even notice. But when reporters finally spotted Kaepernick on the bench during the Star Spangled Banner on August 26, […]
Since San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and systemic racism, ThinkProgress has tracked his protest’s spread across the country — and even the world. Over the past 13 months, we have found evidence of more than 3,500 people taking steps to join Kaepernick’s […]
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke hailed President Donald Trump’s anti-regulation agenda on Monday, telling a Washington, D.C. audience that the ongoing overhaul of federal rules governing the energy industry is unprecedented. “I don’t think the country has ever had a president like this,” Zinke told a meeting of the National Petroleum Council. “Quite frankly, I’m not […]
On Tuesday morning, President Trump lied about the role his endorsement has played in the Republican primary election to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old seat in the U.S. Senate. Trump has endorsed the establishment candidate, Luther Strange. As polls open for the Republican primary on Tuesday, Strange is far behind disgraced former Alabama Supreme […]
Greater Baton Rouge Community Clinic — a virtual health clinic in Louisiana co-founded by then-doctor and now Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — closed in July 2015. It had been getting increasingly harder to get grants to fund the ‘clinic without walls,’ which connected uninsured people who needed care to providers; it was a free clinic and […]
If someone is an incorrigible sex offender—the kind of person a Kansas law labels as part of “a small but extremely dangerous group of sexually violent predators”—the Constitution permits a state to detain them for treatment that could last years. Yet, even these most reviled individuals enjoy certain protections. As the Supreme Court explained in Kansas v. […]
There are 102 countries in the world where you can buy birth control pills without seeing your doctor, but the United States isn’t one of them. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has endorsed the idea of true access to over-the-counter birth control since 2012 and 76 percent of doctors and 70 percent of […]
Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) invoked highly edited, debunked videos targeting Planned Parenthood from 2015 at a CNN town hall Monday night when a woman shared her story of how Planned Parenthood helped her have children. Graham, along with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), has been spearheading a repeal and replace bill in the Senate that would, […]
On Saturday evening, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to attack the Iran nuclear deal. “Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North Korea,” he tweeted. “Not much of an agreement we have!” Iran just test-fired a Ballistic Missile capable of reaching Israel.They are also working with North […]
On a day full of NFL players reacting to incendiary comments made by President Donald Trump, one particular image took hold among those opposed to the athletes’ peaceful protest during the national anthem: Pittsburgh Steelers left tackle Alejandro Villanueva standing by himself at the entrance to the tunnel, hand over his heart. While Villanueva’s apparent […]
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) announced Monday that she will vote against the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act following the release of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score, seemingly killing the latest attempt by Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare. The CBO didn’t have sufficient time to conduct a full analysis […]