Media clips

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• April 6, 2026
  March 31, 2026
• Women Are Getting Slammed in Trump’s Economy

  Among Black women, the unemployment rate has skyrocketed over the past year, from 5.5 percent in February 2025 to 7.1 percent in February 2026. What’s worse, college-educated Black women suffered the sharpest declines in employment, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), likely the result of Trump’s massive layoffs in the federal government early last year. 

  Washington Monthly March 30, 2026
• Why Black professionals are walking away from corporate America – and not looking back

  According to a blog post from the Economic Policy Institute, the employment rate for Black women dropped by 1.4% to 55.7%, one of the “sharpest one-year declines in the last 25 years.” Black women with college degrees who worked in the public sector were the main ones to be targeted in Trump’s political ploy.

  Thegrio.com March 30, 2026
• Black Women Have Proven Their Worth. So Why Are They Being Targeted?

  The Economic Policy Institute tracked declines for Black men and white women of no more than 0.5 percent. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women actually saw small increases in employment. And while many people know about the “300,000” Black women who left the workforce in just three months, Fortune reported a much bigger number: nearly 600,000 Black women had been “economically sidelined” by November 2025. Experts note these losses were compounded by DEI backlash.

  The Root March 30, 2026
• How Union Contracts Protect and Empower Coffee Workers

  The majority of unions fail to secure a first contract within a year of winning an election, says Margaret Poydock, senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). “While the National Labor Relations Act requires employers—and unions—to bargain in good faith, there is nothing in the law that requires parties to reach agreement”, she says. A Bloomberg Law analysis from 2021, for example, found that the average time-to-contract was 465 days. 

  The Pourover Newsletter March 30, 2026
• Working Mothers Are Leaving The Workforce. Here’s The Real Reason Why

  The structural pressures driving women out of the workforce also land unevenly by race. An Economic Policy Institute analysis published this year found that Black women’s employment rate fell 1.4 percentage points in 2025—one of the sharpest single-year declines in 25 years, with college-educated Black women experiencing the steepest drop. Federal layoffs and the rollback of diversity initiatives drove much of that loss, according to EPI, concentrated in agencies where Black women held a disproportionate share of the workforce.

  Forbes March 30, 2026
• Why Iowa women’s wages have gotten worse in 2026

  Today—Thursday, March 26—is Equal Pay Day, a day highlighting how much less the average American woman makes compared to the average American man.

  In 2025, women made 18.6% less than men, meaning they’d have to work all of 2025, plus January, February, and nearly all of March, to make up the difference.

  There are several reasons for that, not least of which is a society that upholds men being in charge and devalues so-called “women’s work” like teaching, health care, and tipped work.

  But it’s also because of policy choices our elected officials make at the state and federal levels—especially in recent years, which have contributed to widening that gap this year.

  “We’ve really stalled out on our progress in our country around closing that gap,” said Jennifer Sherer, the Iowa-based deputy director of state policy and research at the Economic Policy Institute. “And, in 2025, we even went backwards a little bit.”

  Iowa Starting Line March 30, 2026
• Economists Say Politicians Aren’t Helping Affordability

  However, these solutions can also lead to other issues that have the opposite effect in the long run. For example, when you look at things like grocery prices, Josh Bivens, chief economist of the liberal Economic Policy Institute, says, “If you try to push down grocery prices, you could actually start reducing supply. People might start going out of business, or grocery stores close.”

  De Franco News Clips (YouTube) March 30, 2026
• Survey: Twin Cities child care providers say they’ve struggled this winter

  Even before Operation Metro Surge, child care was a major challenge for parents in Minnesota, which is home to the third most expensive care in the nation, according to a study from the Economic Policy Institute.

  Minnesota Reformer March 30, 2026
• COMMENTARY: School spending can never be high enough to satisfy Big Labor

  It was expressed succinctly in February in a paper by Heidi Shierholz and left-leaning academic Josh Bivens for the Economic Policy Institute. 

  According to Shierholz and Bivens, state and local governments, whose collective spending soared by 62 percent from 2015 to 2025 (26 percentage points above CPI inflation for the decade!), to reach nearly $4.4 trillion annually, are being “starved”!

  Las Vegas Review-Journal March 30, 2026