families

Arkansas families describe living where lawmakers are hostile to their transgender children

BY: - May 3, 2023

Parker Saxton, 18, sings tenor in his high school choir and enjoys drawing. Sabrina Jennen, 17, also enjoys drawing and is considering a nursing career. Dylan Brandt, 17, works at a hardware store and is the manager of his high school’s cheerleading team. Brooke Dennis will be 11 this month and looks forward to playing […]

President Joe Biden speaks about his fiscal 2024 budget proposal at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia on Thursday, March 9, 2023. (Screen shot from White House feed)

Biden budget asks for 25% tax on billionaires, boosts in domestic and defense spending

BY: - March 9, 2023

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year asks Congress to boost funding for defense and domestic programs and levy a 25% minimum tax on billionaires, setting up a significant contrast with House Republicans, who hope to cut spending to last year’s levels and overwhelmingly oppose tax increases.  The president’s budget […]

Girl Scout Troop 3458 presents a check to the Food Bank of Northeast Arkansas

Families are taking a hit as pandemic aid ends, inflation continues

BY: - February 27, 2023

Forty million people in the U.S. are having difficulty affording household expenses, and a little more than 25 million people say they sometimes or often do not have enough to eat, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent Household Pulse survey data.  The survey is designed to collect data on household experiences during the […]

People at a baggage carousel in an airport.

Advocacy groups ask FTC to expand Biden administration efforts to rein in junk fees

BY: - February 13, 2023

President Joe Biden devoted 19 sentences of his State of the Union speech to “junk fees,” which includes credit card late fees, service fees for concert tickets and airplane seating preferences that he said strain families’ budgets. Biden did not mention the numerous and opaque fees faced by prisoners and their families every day. But […]

COMMENTARY
Abortion rights supporters march in Denver in the wake of a leaked Supreme Court opinion that indicates justices will overturn Roe v. Wade, May 7, 2022. The court overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022. (Photo by Kevin Mohatt for Colorado Newsline)

Fifty years later, our lives still at risk

BY: - January 22, 2023

Fifty years ago, a very different U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. Radical right-wing extremists control the Supreme Court and serve in elective office. We have fewer freedoms than we did a generation ago. We suffer, and women die because of it. When the Supreme Court ruled last June to strip away our rights […]

A man and a boy draw with chalk on a sidewalk in 2021 to celebrate new monthly expanded child tax credit payments. Hopes that the credit would be revived by the end of 2022 vanished Tuesday when a major spending package did not include the proposal. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for ParentsTogether)

Child tax credit expansion left out of congressional omnibus package

BY: - December 20, 2022

WASHINGTON — Any last hopes of resurrecting the expanded child tax credit as part of Congress’ massive spending package were dashed early Tuesday when the 4,155-page bill was released without a mention of the tax benefit. The temporary expanded child tax credit, part of a COVID-19 relief deal in 2021, allowed more low-income families, including […]

Students at an Ohio elementary school help gather items for a food bank drive. (Photo by Duane Prokop/Getty Images for Feeding America)

Studies: Gains against childhood hunger lost after child tax credit ended

BY: - November 15, 2022

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in October confirmed previous research that food insecurity increased substantially after the expiration of federal monthly advanced child tax credits on Jan. 15, 2022. The study looked at the period between January and July of this year in a series of national surveys, and found […]

COMMENTARY
Smiling pediatrician showing digital tablet to mother and baby in exam room

In states where abortion is banned, children and families already face an uphill battle

BY: - September 19, 2022

Some proponents of abortion bans and restrictions say they are concerned about “supporting not just life,” but what they call “quality of life worth living,” saying they want to promote laws and policies that help families. Three authors from Brigham Young University, for instance, have noted that the overturning of Roe v. Wade provides a […]