The Donald Trump administration’s draft proposal to reverse the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers and health plans cover most contraceptive services at no cost is wrong for working women and families. The draft as written allows any employer—whether a church, a non-profit related to a church, or a for-profit corporation—that has any moral or religious objection to choose not to cover these contraceptive services. It also exempts any insurance company with a moral or religious objection from covering contraceptive services. 

A new U.N. report highlights how the corporations prevent far too many working people in the United States from asserting their most basic human and workplace freedoms.

Starting today, working people could see a 35% increase in the value of their 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts over a career. That is because new protections, designed to ensure the retirement savings system truly works for working people and retirees, begin to take effect.

It was early on the afternoon of Aug. 12, 2004. I was on an annual family vacation in the Poconos, in northeast Pennsylvania. I was 23 years old. I got word that my then-home state governor, Jim McGreevey of New Jersey, had hastily called a press conference. Rumors about the governor’s sexual orientation had followed him around for years. I remember asking my father what he thought the press conference was about. “Pay to play or something like that,” he said. There is a long and troubling history of corruption in New Jersey politics. Something told me this press conference would be different. I had a pit in my stomach.

The U.S. economy added 138,000 jobs in May and unemployment was little changed at 4.3%, according to figures released this morning by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A troubling sign, reinforcing the weakness of the numbers, was the revision of the preliminary numbers for March and April downward, a combined 60,000 fewer jobs than earlier reported. That normally indicates a slowing in net job creation from new firms being created and old firms going out of business. This continues the recovery of the labor market at a tempered rate, which means the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee should continue to let the economy grow at this rate and not raise interest rates.