How Covid-19 and Deaths of Despair Combine to Affect Communities

The Covid-19 pandemic has torn through the United States in the last 12 months, leaving more than half a million dead and the nation’s economy in tatters, but the virus didn’t arrive on a blank slate. Long before Covid, the Deaths of Despair epidemic was already taking a massive toll […] Read more »

The Biden Agenda Doesn’t Run Through Washington

… Cities and their inner suburbs need an immediate lifeline from Washington to stabilize their finances after the devastation of the pandemic. But once those communities regain their balance, they could become crucial allies for Biden. By working with big metros, the president would be aligning federal policy with powerful […] Read more »

The Southern state where Black voters are gaining in numbers, but not power

… If Georgia is the epitome of the “New South,” Mississippi remains very much still the old South: a conservative stronghold where the GOP is composed almost exclusively of white voters, and the Democratic Party of Black voters. At first blush, Mississippi would seem to be fertile terrain for Democrats. […] Read more »

The ‘urban myth’ behind the GOP claims of voter fraud

The Supreme Court’s rejection last week of the lawsuit from Texas and 18 other Republican-led states effectively ended the legal efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn his election defeat. But the case likely marks the start of a new round of Republican efforts to challenge the […] Read more »

Density as Destiny?

There were lots of mixed messages that came out of this election. Pres. Donald Trump’s divisive and polarizing style cost him the White House, but his unpopularity didn’t doom down-ballot Republicans. Trump’s attacks on Joe Biden as a secret supporter of socialism fell flat, but that didn’t insulate House Democratic […] Read more »

Trump is leaving minority votes on the table

President Donald Trump appears determined to end this stage of his political career the same way he began it: by promoting a racist conspiracy theory. Just as he began his long march to the White House by touting the racist “birther theory” that Barack Obama was not an American citizen, […] Read more »