West Virginia lawmakers reach a deal granting teachers a 5 percent pay raise

After nine school days of strikes, West Virginia lawmakers reached a deal Tuesday to provide a 5 percent pay increase to teachers, with both chambers of the state legislature voting unanimously to pass the agreement.

We have reached a deal. I stood rock solid on the 5% Teacher pay raise and delivered. Not only this, but my staff and I made additional cuts which will give all State employees 5% as well. All the focus should have always been on fairness and gettin...

Kansas Secretary of State seeks to deliver a devastating blow to voting rights

When Tad Stricker moved to Kansas from Illinois in 2013, he procrastinated getting a new driver’s license. He was busy with work and settling into his new city, and wasn’t eager to spend a day at the Department of Motor Vehicles. But when the registration deadline for the upcoming gubernatorial election approached, he decided it was time.

When he first arrived at the local DMV, he was told he didn’t have the proper documentation to get his license, so he hurried home to collect seve...

A new bipartisan Senate bill tackling the opioid crisis still falls short of what’s actually needed

A bipartisan group of eight senators unveiled legislation Tuesday that addresses an opioid epidemic that killed nearly 64,000 people in 2016 alone and shortened life expectancy by about three months.

CARA 2.0 — advertised as a sequel to the last major bill to address the opioid epidemic, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of late 2016 — would impose new rules to prescribing opioids and dedicate $1 billion to addiction treatment and recovery programs. The bill a...

‘They’re hungry for it’: Democrat Randy Bryce says Medicare for All will help him defeat Paul Ryan

Randy Bryce has a plan to take down House Speaker Paul Ryan. It all boils down to this: be everything Ryan isn’t and promote everything he refuses to promote.

“I’m the kind of person that we need to get rid of him… I’m the opposite of what he is,” Bryce, a Democrat who’s challenging Ryan in Wisconsin’s first district, told ThinkProgress on Tuesday.

Bryce outlined what he sees as the path to unseating the speaker, touting a new, 18-point po...

White House tells $7 trillion lie about Trump’s budget proposal

Deputy White House Press Secretary Raj Shah appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning to defend President Trump’s 2019 budget.

“So it’s a great plan, but it also has serious deficit reduction […] It has over $3 trillion dollars in deficit reduction, which is the largest deficit reduction of a budget in terms of a 10-year outlay that we’ve ever seen,” he said. “It lays down a path toward fiscal responsibility, it allows us to kee...