If Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar is successful in winning the Democratic Party nomination to stand for governor of Illinois and then wins the election, he will: 1) commute all low-level drug offenders' sentences and free them from jail; 2) take educational oversight power from Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel and give it to the Chicago School Board; 3) fund schools out of a fairly distributed state pools, ending the system of funding based on local taxes, which disadvantages schools in poor neighborhoods; and 4) make access to paid sick leave and child care universal in the state of Illinois. Read the rest

The campaign ad for Retired Marine Lt. Col. Amy McGrath's run for Congress in Kentucky is inspiring: a woman who beat all the odds and covered herself in glory, standing against the cowardly Mitch McConnell's hand-picked wormtongue in a state where the GOP stands ready to snatch away health-care from thousands of voters. Read the rest

Republican Susan Collins [ME] and Democrat Jack Reed [RI] accidentally broadcast themselves saying "I think -- I think he's crazy. I mean, I don't say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy" and "I'm worried. Oof, you know, this thing -- if we don't get a budget deal, we're going to be paralyzed." Read the rest

Paul Ryan ally Rep. Mike Conaway [R-TX, @ConawayTX11, +1 (202) 225-3605] is the proud owner of $30,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth, who stand to benefit enormously from Rep Conaway's efforts to destroy Obamacare and replace it with a system that allows insurers to charge more and kick more than 22,000,000 Americans off their insurance. Read the rest

On my first day at Michigan State University in 1992, a fellow student called me a "liberal" and I was shocked: as a Canadian who was often to the left of the social-democratic New Democratic Party, I identified "liberal" with the Liberal Party, a centre-right political party that had once imposed martial law in Canada. Read the rest

Disney has denied rumors that the Trumpbot in Disney World's Hall of the Presidents would not have a speaking role due to a combination of the president's toxic reputation, Disney employees' animus for him, and Trump's own unwillingness to schedule a recording session. Read the rest

As the Supreme Court makes ready to rule on the blatant gerrymandering in Wisconsin, the AP has conducted a study using "a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage" to analyze "the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year" and report "four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones." Read the rest

Randy Bryce wants to challenge Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan for the First District of Wisconsin, where Ryan beat his most recent Democratic challenger by 35 points. Read the rest

Senator Joe Manchin [D-WV, @Sen_JoeManchin, +1 304-342-5855] is a right-wing Democrat Senator whose inglorious career includes breaking with his party to endorse President Trump's deal to sell record quantities of weapons to the Saudis. Read the rest

After video of Trump admitting to a string of sexual assaults appeared last October, his approval rating bottomed out; a month later, it had recovered -- and he was the President. Read the rest

Greg Gianforte is a short-tempered, hyper-conservative Montana political hopeful who is standing for the GOP in a special election for a Congressional seat; he is also invested in Russian firms that are under US sanction. Read the rest

The best way to fight gerrymandering is to prove to courts that electoral districts have been unfairly formed, a tactic that's been used successfully in places like North Carolina; but for this to work, you need good demographic data to show that the district is unfair, and for that, you need an accurate census. Read the rest

David Lesperance is a Canadian-born lawyer who specializes in helping the super-rich secretly buy foreign citizenship so they can escape taxation at home. Read the rest

On inauguration day, 214 protesters were arrested in DC on felony riot charges, and now they face up to $25,000 in fines and up to 10 years in prison, though no one -- not the cops, not the prosecutors -- believes that more than a handful were involved in property damage or disorderly conduct. Read the rest

The Republican Congressjerks who passed legislation allowing your ISP to spy on your online activity and sell the data from it without your permission will be firmly reminded of their calumny in the 2018 election cycle, as the Center for Media Justice and its privacy allies plan "street-level tactics" to hold them accountable for their sellout. Read the rest

Yesterday, Congress voted to bar the FCC from ever making a rule that limits how your ISP can spy on you and sell your data, without your permission. Read the rest

The humiliating inability of Republicans to legislate even when they control the Presidency, House and Senate has emboldened the left wing of the Democratic party, led by Bernie Sanders, to push to replace Obamacare (designed by the Heritage Foundation and first trialled by Mitt Romney) with "Medicare-For-All," a state run, universal healthcare system that will end the out-of-control transfer of tax funds to insurance companies and the bonanza for Big Pharma. Read the rest