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The law creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program (TANF) turned 23 years old on August 22, and it has not improved with age. At the national level and here in Wisconsin, TANF is now serving only a very small fraction of the families who are living in poverty and may be eligible for assistance. In Wisconsin, if we compare the share of families with income below the federal poverty level who got direct cash support in 2017 to the ratio in 1996 when TANF began, 52,000 fewer families are now getting that assistance. The erosion of direct...

By Robert Myers, Professor of Anthropology & Public Health, Alfred University In a manifesto posted online shortly before he went on to massacre 22 people at an El Paso Walmart, Patrick Crusius cited the “invasion” of Texas by Hispanics. In doing so, he echoed President Trump’s rhetoric of an illegal immigrant “invasion.” Think about what this word choice communicates: It signals an enemy that must be beaten back, repelled and vanquished. Yet this sort of language – what I call “warspeak” – has relentlessly crept into most aspects of American life and public discourse. After the Columbine shooting, I...

“The sufferings of the many pay for the luxuries of the few.” – Greta Thunberg Sunday, September 1 marked the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II. On that day in 1939, German troops crossed the border into Poland, setting off the greatest war the world has ever known. No war—and maybe no event of any kind—has been so thoroughly chronicled, both at the time it occurred and after the fact. But, like so many of the iconic events in America’s past, the rendering that endures in the culture is a stew of fact, fiction, and fairy...

By Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College Nasty, divisive elections are nothing new in the United States. As someone who teaches and writes about the importance of historical memory in American law and politics, I believe the 2020 election will rival the ugliest America has ever witnessed. There are lessons that can be learned from examining this election’s parallels with two previous presidential elections – 1860 and 1968 – both of which left America deeply divided. Slavery and geography in 1860 In the lead-up to the 1860 election, the nation was splintered by the question...