Heidi Pascual's web site

By Hannah Malus, Margaret Cooney, & Carolyn Alt

By Rachael Eisenberg, David Muhammad, & DeVonne Boggan

Communities across the country, both big cities and rural areas, are grappling with rising gun violence. While overall crime rates in the United States have declined, violent crime increased 5.6 percent between 2019 and 2020. Furthermore, 79 percent of all U.S. homicides in 2020 involved a gun. This increase in gun violence is in large part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced a spike in gun sales, great economic and social instability, and breakdowns in police-community relations. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Tom K. Wong & Nicole Prchal Svajlenka

In March 2020—as the first COVID-19 cases were reported in the United States—the Trump administration pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to invoke Title 42, a little known provision of the U.S. Public Health Service Act of 1944 that would allow federal officials to ban people and goods from entering the United States when doing so is required in the interest of public health. Issued under the public health authority—not an immigration authority—this order barred individuals without documentation from entering the country, meaning that even those seeking asylum at U.S. borders were denied their rights to have their cases heard. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

From CAPAC

May 20, Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, the Senate

passed H.R. 3525, Congresswoman Rep. Grace Meng’s Commission to Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture Act, which will now be moved to the President’s desk to be signed into law. The bill will authorize a commission to study the potential creation of a national museum dedicated to Asian Pacific American history and culture. The authorization of a commission study is the first step in the process for creating a new national museum, potentially as part of the Smithsonian Institution. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Aimee Barnes, Meredith Alexander, Maggie Jo Buchanan, Osub Ahmed, Marina Zhavoronkova, Chris Chyung, Elisia Hoffman, Hannah Argento-McCurdy, and Diana Madsen

Since taking office, the Biden administration has outlined clear and ambitious climate goals: reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and 50 percent emissions reductions by 2030 decarbonize buildings prioritize environmental justice and recommit the United States to global climate diplomacy. Real momentum exists for job growth in the transition to a clean energy economy, from the administration’s climate investment agenda and the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL), to ambitious state climate action. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Nicole Lee Ndumele and Eugenio Weigend Vargas

Once again, the deadly combination of virulent white supremacist ideology and gun violence has wrought terror on an innocent community. On Saturday, May 14, the alleged gunman drove more than three hours to a supermarket located in a largely Black community in Buffalo, New York. There, in just a matter of minutes, 10 people were murdered and three more were injured—the overwhelming majority of whom were Black—in a brazen white supremacist terror attack. .-- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE