Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Beyond the Headlines: SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

In this edition of Ballotpedia's Beyond the Headlines, the Ballotpedia team reviews the U.S. Supreme Court's 2021-2022 term, including accepted cases, upcoming argument sessions, rulings of the court, and some important statistical data.

Read More

Girl in a Christian school
Half the students benefiting from ESAs never attended public school — they were always privately educated.
Jonathan Kirn

Trump’s Plot Against America’s Schools Sparks National Outrage

This essay is part of a series by Lawyers Defending American Democracy where we demonstrate the link between the administration’s sweeping executive actions and their roots in the authoritarian blueprint, Project 2025, and show how these actions harm individuals and families throughout the country.

Our public education system is under attack. On March 20, after only seven weeks in office and without input or approval from Congress, President Trump issued an executive order instructing the Secretary of Education to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and give the states sole responsibility for educating our nation’s children.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Jennie Spanos (left) and Alfonso Saldaña (right), co-directors of Move to Amend.

Photo provided

How Move To Amend Is Challenging Corporate Power, One Resolution at a Time

Alfonso Saldaña entered political activism during the early years of the Obama administration, motivated by a sense of optimism for real change in healthcare reform, addressing economic inequality, and reducing corporate influence over politics.

“I was excited when he won,” he said. “I thought things were going to get fixed.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Worst Gerrymandered States Face Redistricting Showdown As Trump Pressures Texas

Anti-gerrymandering protest

Sarah L. Voisin/Getty Images

Worst Gerrymandered States Face Redistricting Showdown As Trump Pressures Texas

President Donald Trump is actively urging Texas lawmakers to redraw congressional districts in what’s fast becoming a national showdown over electoral fairness. If successful, the effort could yield five additional safe Republican seats — boosting the GOP’s control to nearly 80% of Texas’s 38-member congressional delegation.

Texas already ranks among the worst offenders in the country for gerrymandered districts. As The Fulcrum reported in December 2024, two of its congressional maps are textbook cases in manipulated representation. The latest maneuver threatens to deepen that problem.

Keep ReadingShow less
Even With Limited Energy, I Resist
File:ICE.Arrest lg.jpg - Wikipedia

Even With Limited Energy, I Resist

Each of us follows a unique destiny, even as we know we will each wind up dead one day. Some people afflicted with a life-ending disease keep it to themselves. They would rather soldier on as though everything were normal. Maybe they tell a trusted friend or two, but they don’t broadcast it. They prefer not to have to deal with the sometimes halting words of empathy from strangers. Many people don’t know what to say, so in some sense, the sick person is relieving others of the need to commiserate publicly. To find suitable words. They talk about the weather or the Chicago Cubs. Anything but disease and its cousin, death.

As someone whose life has followed an unconventional path, I felt it was important that when I was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and lymph nodes, I not keep this to myself. I didn’t know the difficult path that lay ahead, but since all of my family had died, I knew that I would have to rely on the support of friends (my chosen family) to make it through it. After a brutal surgery to remove the cancerous parts of my tongue, the surgeon took nerves from my arm to reconstruct a new tongue. This was followed by 33 targeted radiation treatments that left me unable to swallow solid food and the loss of my taste buds. Doctors thought I might regain those abilities and sensations, but alas! They have never returned.

Keep ReadingShow less