Contributing Writers

The massive $2 trillion CARES Act — which sent households one-time payments and boosted unemployment checks with an additional $600 a week through July — helped keep millions afloat, but more than 8 million people have been forced into poverty since the aid ended. “The relief was temporary, and much of it has now expired, so now we’re seeing poverty rise again,” says Megan Curran, a researcher at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.

Big Tech CEOs were grilled Wednesday about how they moderate election disinformation and extremist content, and were accused by Republicans of censoring conservatives. Overlooked were reports that Facebook designed changes to its news feed algorithm in 2017 to reduce the visibility of left-leaning news sites like Mother Jones. Mother Jones editors wrote in 2019 that the site had seen a sharp decline in its Facebook audience, which translated to a loss of around $600,000 over 18 months.

Lawmakers grilled the chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter just days before Election Day on how they moderate hate speech, extremist content and election disinformation, including tweets from President Trump. Republicans have long accused Big Tech platforms of censoring conservative views, but tech policy expert Ramesh Srinivasan says the argument is shaped around talking points that are aimed at invalidating election results.

A record 76 million people have already voted in the U.S. election, but the battle over the counting of mail-in ballots continues, with the Supreme Court issuing rulings on how long after Election Day ballots can be counted in the battleground states of Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

We get an update from Chile, where an overwhelming majority have voted to rewrite the country’s Pinochet dictatorship-era constitution and tens of thousands poured into the streets to celebrate, just one year after mass protests against social and economic inequalities rocked the country and set it on a path to social reform.

Two members of a Kentucky grand jury convened after the Louisville police killing of Breonna Taylor have spoken on camera for the first time, calling the actions of the Louisville officers responsible for Taylor’s death “criminal” and saying the state’s Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron never gave them the option to consider murder or manslaughter charges against the police officers involved.

Less than a week out from Election Day, we look at President Trump’s call for poll watchers in battleground states like Pennsylvania that he needs to win. Trump is “framing this all as a left-wing conspiracy to take away his presidency,” says Marc Lamont Hill, professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Protesters in Philadelphia mark a second night of calling for the abolition of police after two Philadelphia police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man, while he was having a mental health crisis. The shooting reflects decades of defunding of social services, including for mental health, while police departments have continued to grow, says author and activist Marc Lamont Hill, who argues, “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.

As the presidential race enters its final full week, we speak with filmmaker Nadine Natour about “Natours Grocery,” her new documentary short that tells the story of her Palestinian American family living in Trump’s America. Natour’s immigrant parents own a store in the highly conservative town of Appomattox, Virginia, which voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016.

In her new book, “The Purpose of Power,” Black Lives Matter co-creator Alicia Garza lays out how people can build power and effect change. “Movements are not just about protests,” she says. “Movements are absolutely about how we get more power into the hands of more people.

This election season, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza says President Trump is “stoking fires he has no intention of controlling” and inciting far-right extremists. She was recently approached by the FBI after agents found her name on a list in the home of a white supremacist in Idaho who was arrested on weapons charges. “Racial terror has always been used as a form of control, particularly during periods of people fighting for social change,” she says.

As right-wing judge Amy Coney Barrett is sworn in as the ninth justice to the Supreme Court of the United States, just 30 days after President Trump announced her nomination and eight days ahead of the November 3 election, we speak with Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, who says the rushed confirmation shows that the Supreme Court “is not a neutral body — it is incredibly political.

During the second and final presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee, moderator Kristen Welker asked Trump and Biden about immigration and family separation. Trump deflected questions during the debate, repeatedly stating that the Obama-Biden administration “built the cages” and falsely claiming that kids seeking asylum in the U.S. are “well taken care of.

President Trump and Joe Biden sparred on their records over race and criminal justice in Thursday’s presidential debate. Trump simultaneously promoted his criminal justice reform efforts while continuing to lean on “tough on crime” rhetoric. Trump also criticized Biden for authoring the 1994 crime bill and supporting other laws that intensified mass incarceration in the U.S., which Biden acknowledged was “a mistake.