Republicans refused to hold hearings on President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, and now Democrats are threatening to do the same for President Trump’s nominee, Neil Gorsuch. This gridlock is just one example of how all three branches of ... More »
Donald Trump’s unexpected electoral victory has raised several questions about the future of American and global politics, but one question that political pundits have focused on is how President Trump was able to garner a groundswell of populist support. Poli... More »
In 2016, Chicago struggled with the highest number of homicides the city has seen in more than a decade. Lawmakers are now scrambling to find solutions to curb the violence plaguing neighborhoods across the city. Recently, Illinois state legislators representi... More »
Driving a Tesla may sound exotic, but electric cars are anything but a novel idea. The first successful electric automobile in the U.S. debuted in 1891. Over the last century, the development of electric vehicles (EVs) has been intimately tied to the oil marke... More »
Over the course of the past half-century, the United States has seen the largest wave of immigration since the Age of Mass Migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning in 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act allowed for a significant inc... More »
The Great Recession of the late 2000s impacted the lives of millions of people and caused upheaval in countless neighborhoods and cities. Nearly a decade since the recession began, we have seen some neighborhoods rebuild and recover, while others continue to f... More »
Encouraging healthy behaviors is a significant policy challenge because efforts to spark conversation around a health topic often fail to translate into strategies that actually change collective health behaviors. Although campaigns might be successful at spre... More »
People are hard-wired to form social networks, and an individual’s social network can play a role in shaping his or her behavior. Unfortunately, this social dynamic is as true for criminal networks as it is for more benign social networks. Among young people, ... More »
Selective admissions high schools, or exam schools, have long been at the center of education policy debates due to their struggles in balancing fair enrollment and improving diversity. In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jef... More »
India, like other developing countries, is struggling with a scarcity of formally trained medical professionals, especially in rural and isolated areas. This gap has fueled the proliferation of informal healthcare providers, known pejoratively as “medical quac... More »
Charter schools have become a dominant fixture in the city of Chicago and across the United States. Nationwide, enrollment in charter schools has more than doubled in the past ten years. In Chicago during the early 2000s, legislative action increased the numbe... More »
Heroin consumption in the United States nearly tripled between 2007 and 2014, and it is now the cause of 10,000 deaths per year, according to an annual report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The report, compiled from 1,444 surveys o... More »