Here are some of the sources I currently rely on for the truth: Democracy Now, Business Insider, The New Yorker, The American Prospect, The Atlantic, Americans for Tax Fairness, Economic Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, The Guardian, ProPublica, Labor Notes, The Lever, Popular Information, Heather Cox Richardson, and, of course, this Substack.
Robert Reich Substack
August 13, 2025
- Reduced reliance on government assistance: As of 2025, the federal minimum wage is considered a “poverty wage,” according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). A single, full-time working adult earning $7.25 per hour now falls below the poverty threshold of $15,650. Raising the minimum wage to match inflation could lift millions above the poverty line and reduce dependence on safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid, ChatGPT said.
GO Banking Rates
August 13, 2025
The ITIN has also been used as a way for immigrants to show they are abiding by the law as they wait for Congress to pass an immigration reform bill, said Daniel Costa, the director of Immigration Law and Policy and the Economic Policy Institute.
“I think this is because the immigration reform bills that have been proposed in Congress and included a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants have often included provisions requiring undocumented immigrants to pay back taxes. If they have kept up with paying their taxes and a legalization passes Congress, then they’ll already have met that requirement,” he said. He added, however, that Congress hasn’t taken a meaningful step in that direction since 2013.
Houston Chronicle
August 13, 2025
We’re joined today by VALERIE WILSON — labor economist at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, where she heads up the organization’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy — to discuss just some of those reasons.
“I think this particular firing has raised alarm bells with so many people because of how important, how essential, those monthly jobs numbers are in this country,” Wilson explains today. “There’s a lot of visibility around these numbers and statistics. And we know that a lot of decision-makers rely on those numbers: the Federal Reserve, state and local governments, policymakers, businesses.” Moreover, she tells me, “the fact that this seems to be a politicized firing because the President simply didn’t like what the report was saying, is especially troubling to people who rely on the accuracy of those numbers to make important decisions.”
Pacifica Radio
August 13, 2025
Director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute Daniel Costa doubts that net migration will be negative in 2025 but thinks it will be soon.
“I am skeptical that we will see negative net migration in the first year, just based on some of the legal immigration flows… which might take longer for the administration to impact,” Costa told The Center Square. “But I do think we will likely see it in the next years of the administration, especially after the major influx of $170 billion the administration has been gifted from Congress for immigration enforcement.”
The Center Square
August 13, 2025
Boston Globe
August 13, 2025
“Antoni has repeatedly and unfairly attacked the agency he’d be set to run, contributed to the right-wing Project 2025 policy blueprint, and in his role at the Heritage Foundation has stretched the truth about the economy to make partisan political claims,” said Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
Common Dreams
August 13, 2025
This might have been billed as an effort to impose “efficiency” on the system. But “a more accurate description,” writes Monique Morrissey of the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute, “is sabotage.”
LA Times
August 13, 2025
“We’ve definitely seen school districts across the country make the decision to change bus routes, cut bus routes,” said Sebastian Martinez Hickey, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute who has studied the nationwide shortage of school bus drivers.
More than half of all students, he says, still rely on buses to get to school, especially low-income students.
Today, EPI found there are nearly a third fewer bus drivers than there were 15 years ago.
“I think perhaps they are undervalued because we don’t think about what an essential service it is to get children safely and on time to school,” said Martinez Hickey. “When there are changes to school bus routes or there are cancellations, that can contribute to increases in chronic absenteeism for students.”
CBS News Texas
August 13, 2025