US oil and gas industry is booming. So are its donations to GOP allies

Sunday May 12, 2024 · 10:00 AM PDT

2024/05/12 · 10:00

no image description available — Rep. August Pfluger of Texas speaks at a House Republican news conference on energy policy at the U.S. Capitol

Not Donald Trump. Not Ted Cruz. But a little known Republican from West Texas ranks as the top recipient of fossil fuel money.

By Marcus Baram, Capital and Main

August Pfluger, an Air Force veteran and member of the U.S. House representing a small district in West Texas, isn’t exactly a household name on the national political scene, with little press coverage in the last two months outside a recent Fox News appearance.

But he is the country’s top recipient of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry—out of all federal candidates, including President Biden, Donald Trump, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—receiving $573,721 during the current 2024 election cycle, according to campaign finance data compiled by Open Secrets. Pfluger is running for reelection, though it’s not a competitive race in the strongly Republican district, which includes part of the Permian basin, the largest oil-producing region in the country.

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Saturday May 11, 2024 · 1:00 PM PDT

2024/05/11 · 13:00

As the November election nears, journalists work to counter false and misleading information aimed at Spanish-speaking voters.

By Timothy Pratt, Capital and Main

When Rafael Olavarría was out of the U.S. for personal reasons recently, he found himself up early on a Friday doing something new in his job at the two-year-old, Spanish-language fact-checking project Factchequeado.

For the first time, Olavarría was not only correcting a viral falsehood posted on X (formerly Twitter) that he had already corrected three weeks earlier, but also naming the members of Congress who were repeating the disinformation, along with their statements and time stamps. Among them was Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

“One of our missions,” said the former Univisión and CNN en Español journalist, “is to raise the political price of lying.” (Asked by Capital & Main about Cruz’s posting of disinformation, a spokesperson for his office refused to comment and instead took to X to attack the reporter as biased.)

The lie in question revolves around the claim that the U.S. was “secretly” flying 320,000 unauthorized immigrants into the country—an assertion that is untrue and a distorted description of “humanitarian parole,” a federal immigration program granting people from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba permission to stay in the U.S. for up to two years. People participating in this program are vetted by the federal government and must pay for their transportation to the U.S.

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Sunday April 07, 2024 · 12:00 PM PDT

2024/04/07 · 12:00

Participants who received an average of $850 per month used it for paying bills, reducing debt, and improving credit.

By Timothy Pratt, for Capital & Main

In 2022, Shamarra Woods, now 31, was about to leave Atlanta, frustrated by her high rent and low pay as a logistics team trainee at a cardboard box company, a job it had taken her a year to find. A single mother (her daughter Memri was born in March of that year), she couldn’t see her way to making ends meet.

Then in late May she received a phone call with some welcome news: Someone from the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund, an Atlanta nonprofit, told her she had been chosen by lottery to participate in “In Her Hands”—a pilot program giving an average of $850 per month for two years to 654 women, no strings attached. The GRO Fund runs the program in partnership with Give Directly, a New York-based nonprofit.

The extra money allowed Woods to pay off debt and to afford child care, which in turn enabled her to keep a job at a company that eventually promoted her.

The Georgia program is one of 155 nationwide launched in the last few years to test the notion of unconditionally giving cash to fight poverty—called guaranteed or basic income. The idea has caught fire, with a growing number of pilot programs producing more and more data pointing to its effectiveness.

Now a group of academics has completed a report on the first year of the two-year program. “In Her Hands” has had some initial success in paving a road out of poverty.

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Saturday April 06, 2024 · 10:00 AM PDT

2024/04/06 · 10:00

Not far from a birthplace of the Black Lives Matter movement, a school district convulses after Black history and literature classes are canceled.

By Frances Madeson, for Capital and Main

The protests and student walkouts have stopped as an uneasy calm settles over St. Charles County, Missouri, after the community’s all-white school board threatened to eliminate both a Black history class and Black literature class, saying the curriculum contained elements of critical race theory.

As community outrage drew national media attention, the board retreated and said the curriculum would be reviewed, rewritten to be “largely political neutral” and brought back in time for the next school year.

While that has tempered public indignation, for people like Miranda Bell, a Black mother of two students in the Francis Howell School District, there’s a nagging sense that the community has no sincere interest in teaching the honest history of people like her. “Every day when they walk out the door, I don’t know if they’re safe, because I don’t know,” she said of her school-aged children. “But I do know they need to know who they are.”

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Sunday February 11, 2024 · 11:00 AM PST

2024/02/11 · 11:00

From food to finding flights, volunteer groups send support to the airport nightly to help asylum seekers.

By Kate Morrissey, for Capital & Main

Oscar, a 35-year-old Venezuelan man, sat on the floor of the San Diego International Airport, wondering how he was going to make it to Denver.

He had about $60, what was left of the money he had when he crossed the Mexican-U.S. border at a California port of entry on Jan. 4 for an appointment to request asylum. He’d checked the airfare before his asylum appointment and calculated he had enough to purchase a flight. But prices had climbed, and now he was hundreds of dollars short. His family waiting for him in Colorado didn’t have the money to help him.

He had already spent his first night on U.S. soil at the airport, and now he faced another.

As the evening wore on, a woman approached him and asked if he wanted a sandwich. He was surprised to learn it was free. Then she asked if he already had a boarding pass.

Economic Hardship Reporting Project for Daily Kos Partners

Sunday February 11, 2024 · 9:00 AM PST

2024/02/11 · 09:00

The problem: The pollution from all the truck exhaust is mega-dangerous. By Siri Chilukuri, for Grist and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

Stephanie Joseph loves her dream home, a colonial-style house in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. She and her husband stayed within a budget, paid off student loans, and made sacrifices all so that their family could live in the peace and quiet of Cornwall, a placid town of just under 13,000 people situated in the Catskills.

The area is lush and green and dotted with American beech and red maple trees. Joseph regularly sees hawks, foxes, and deer, as well as woodpeckers near her house. State parks and a wetlands sanctuary are nearby.

Then came the news in 2022 that land next to Joseph’s home was slated to become a mega-warehouse—just 50 feet from her front door.

Economic Hardship Reporting Project for Daily Kos Partners

Saturday February 10, 2024 · 9:20 AM PST

2024/02/10 · 09:20

Former President Donald Trump is greeted by his ideological precursor President Ronald Reagan at a 1987 White House reception.

By John Patrick Leary for Economic Hardship Reporting Project

This column is supported by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

The evergreen questions raised by the label “conservative” are: conserving what and from whom?

Let’s dispense with one popular answer to this question, asserted by many American conservatives and liberals alike: that proper conservatives are devoted to “small government” or engaged in protecting “individual liberties” from a big government. These are slogans of today’s Republican Party, but there’s no good argument to believe that the party behind the War on Drugs (Richard Nixon, and later Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and every Republican since), the PATRIOT Act (George W. Bush), the first and second Iraq War (both Bushes), massive police funding, eliminating the right to abortion, “Don’t Say Gay” laws, and school book bans is, in any way that makes sense, devoted to “limiting” the power of the government. To make sense of the word “conservative,” we have to dig deeper than headlines and slogans.

Economic Hardship Reporting Project for Daily Kos Partners

Sunday January 28, 2024 · 7:00 AM PST

2024/01/28 · 07:00

After people buy back the land beneath their mobile homes, renewables tend to crop up.

By Siri Chilukuri for Grist/EHRP

This story was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

As mobile home owners fight rising housing costs, some of them have hit upon a solution that also helps in the fight against climate change: banding together and buying the land underneath their homes.

This model of collective ownership, also called resident-owned cooperatives or ROCs, is on the rise. The number of mobile homes attached to a resident-owned cooperative grew from just over 200 in 2000 to more than 15,000 in 2019, according to a 2022 study from researchers at Berkeley, Cornell, and MIT.

When residents own the land, they can move more quickly to upgrade infrastructure. That’s where climate change comes in. Renewables—especially solar—work uniquely well with these types of places, according to Kevin Jones, director at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at the Vermont Law and Graduate School.

“There’s nothing more perfect than these resident-owned communities because they already have a cooperative structure and, generally, commonly own the piece of land,” said Jones. “[They] are just kind of natural communities to be able to bring the benefits of solar to more low- to moderate-income people.”

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Wednesday January 10, 2024 · 8:20 AM PST

2024/01/10 · 08:20

The $215 million deal made headlines, but the industry pay gap persists, along with new cases of sexual harassment.

By Susan Antilla for Capital & Main

Seven months after a historic settlement between Goldman Sachs and a group of women who sued the financial giant for pay discrimination, not much seems to have changed on Wall Street. As part of the $215 million deal, approved on Nov. 7 by U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres, the firm will pay about 2,800 women who worked in Goldman’s investment banking, investment management, and securities divisions from as early as 2002 to 2023.

“My goal in this case has always been to support strong women on Wall Street. I am proud that the result we achieved here will advance gender equity,” plaintiff Allison Gamba said in a prepared statement.

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Friday January 05, 2024 · 8:20 AM PST

2024/01/05 · 08:20

In low-income areas of Los Angeles without supermarkets, small stores are learning to profitably sell healthy foods their customers can afford.

By George B. Sánchez-Tello for Capital & Main

The doorway into La Placita Oaxaqueña—a small corner store in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park neighborhood—frames a view of a red wicker basket overflowing with golden Mexican mangoes next to freshly picked oranges still on their leafy stems. A small sign hanging from the ceiling reads “¡Compra Saludable Aqui!” (Buy Healthy Here!). Next to the card readers at the cashier counter are small plastic containers of red, ripe strawberries flanked by a straw basket of more than a dozen dark green avocados. This presentation is all by design.

Store owner Emilia Lopez shares a receipt with a breakdown of sales so far this year. In a dense, urban neighborhood a mile’s walk from the closest full-service grocery store, Lopez has sold more than $400,000 worth of produce—more than 60% of her annual sales. And it isn’t yet Christmas, the biggest sales day of the year. “Es lo que mas se vende,” Lopez says in Spanish—produce is what sells the most in her small store.

La Placita Oaxaqueña’s success matters not only to Lopez and her neighborhood, but to businesses and communities across California. Making the sale of fruits and vegetables cost effective to corner markets and convenience stores could unlock access to wholesome food for millions in low-income communities across California and improve health outcomes.

Economic Hardship Reporting Project for Daily Kos Partners

Tuesday December 05, 2023 · 8:20 AM PST

2023/12/05 · 08:20

By Siri Chilukuri for Economic Hardship Reporting Project

When hurricanes hit, it’s easy to show the damage: downed power lines, uprooted trees and destroyed houses. But when those things are removed or cleaned up, there is a more insidious damage that still lurks and is hard to portray: a lack of affordable housing.

And that hits renters in the coastal United States especially hard, according to new research from Ohio State University.

The study looks into how affordable rent is in the wake of hurricanes, weather disasters that are becoming more common due to climate change. Researchers found that after a hurricane, the number of rental units usually decreases, which leads to higher rent prices. Some states, like Florida, actually have a moratorium on rent increases after disasters—but it only lasts for a month. Meanwhile, the damages from hurricanes can sometimes take years to repair. Other research backs that up, with one study from 2022 finding that 40% of rental units are in the path of disaster.

Capital and Main for Daily Kos Partners

Thursday November 30, 2023 · 8:20 AM PST

2023/11/30 · 08:20

The laws that helped pull unionization down to near 10% remain on the books—but 6 out of 10 U.S. adults now say declining unionization is bad for the country.

By Mark Kreidler for Capital & Main

For organized labor in the U.S., 2023 was a year of strikes that made national news and resulted in high-profile negotiating victories. From the sidewalks of Hollywood and New York to assembly plant floors in Detroit and beyond, the phrase “hot labor summer” arrived in full fury.

And despite a year that felt full of breakthroughs, the future of unions in this country is indeed an open question.

The union membership rate in the U.S. for 2022 fell to the lowest level ever recorded at 10.1%, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is barely half the 20.1% unionization rate that existed in 1983, the first year for which comparable data are available.

Numbers for 2023 are due early next year from the BLS, but union rates have been on a downward trajectory for 40 years with virtually no interruption. At the same time, public support for unions in America is near 50-year highs, and 6 in 10 adults say the reduction in union representation has been bad for the country. So what’s going on?

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US oil and gas industry is booming. So are its donations to GOP allies

Fact checkers are fighting election disinformation campaigns targeting Latinos

In Georgia, a basic income program’s success with Black women adds to growing national interest

‘They don’t want to teach Black history’

A sandwich. A boarding pass. Migrants stranded at San Diego Airport depend on volunteers for help

In New York, 1 in 4 residents now live within a half-mile of a mega-warehouse

What is a conservative? Understanding how the term works in American politics

How mobile home co-ops provide housing security—and climate resilience

Despite historic pay discrimination settlement, little has changed for women on Wall Street

Working to end ‘food apartheid’

Why tenants struggle more in the wake of hurricanes

As public support for unions grows, U.S. laws still favor employers