North Carolina, which saw a tightening of the presidential race in the 2020 election, was among the states that saw an influx of money from Mark Zuckerberg in the months leading up to the voting.
(John Moore/Getty Images)
The Department of Justice will not renew existing contracts with private prison companies following an executive action signed by President Joe Biden on Jan. 27. The move, part of a package of racial justice initiatives, reinstates an Obama-era policy reversed by former President Donald Trump in 2017.
Even as the industry has drawn sharp criticism from criminal justice reform groups, the top private prison companies continue to net billions in revenue by contracting with federal, state and local governments. In 2019, private facilities incarcerated an estimated 116,000 individuals or 8.1 percent of the nation’s total prison population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, Facing Recall Effort, Puts Essential Workers at Risk
By Walker Bragman and David Sirota
On 1/27/21 at 2:07 PM EST
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) holds and looks at a vial containing Pfizer/BioNTech s COVID-19 vaccine in Los Angeles, California on December 14, 2020.
Jae C. Hong-Pool/Getty
With a virulent new strain of coronavirus, California s pandemic outbreak is so out of control that public officials have had to lift air pollution regulations in order to accommodate a spike in cremations. Meanwhile, public opinion data shows widespread support for keeping businesses closed to halt the outbreak.
In response to the emergency and to a recall effort around his handling of the pandemic and the economy Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is lifting stay-at-home restrictions, removing essential workers from the state s vaccine priority list, and championing a complex deal that extends the state s expiring partial eviction moratorium but still al
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
When U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler and U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly voted against the certification of election results following the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, they joined many Republican members of Congress who stand to lose future campaign contributions from some of the largest corporate interests in the country.
But while corporate political action committees (PACs) may have disavowed Republican actions, union-affiliated PACs that have backed Kelly and Reschenthaler are largely keeping quiet.
According to campaign finance data from the National Institute on Money in Politics, more than two dozen labor groups have donated a total of $321,500 to the Western Pennsylvania lawmakers since they were elected to Congress including the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners, LiUNA, Boilermakers and a union representing Operating Engineers. So far, at least, they show little sign of rethinking that support. Of the 28 unions that WESA reached out to, onl