Bryce Covert

This, 1000%, but also... by definition the families who need after school are the ones who can't just pick a kid up at 2:40 every day! Even if the school would like to think most can!

Sure, why not begin after school a week and a half after school starts? Surely that will create zero problems!

All the economists I follow are debating whether we're entering a recession or just a period of really shitty low job growth. Both scenarios are completely self-inflicted. So fun!

Trump's war on immigrants shows up clearly in the data: the age 16+ immigrant popn has dropped 3.8%—1.9 million—since January. It's a moral catastrophe, and an economic one. Deporting 1 million immigrants per year will cost ~6 million jobs over Trump's term.

www.epi.org/publication/...

MTA installs new ‘leaning bars’ at West 4th St. subway station The NYC transit agency installed four new “leaning bars” at the West 4th St. station of the A, C and E trains in Greenwich Village over the weekend. The thin, slanted metal bars are mea…

Hurting the disabled, pregnant, elderly, and very young (not to mention anyone who is just tired) to make sure a homeless person is not allowed to lie down www.nydailynews.com/2025/03/17/m...

Today's #UIClaims data continue to show significantly higher continued unemployment insurance claims for federal workers than this time last year, up 59% for the week ending July 12 (compared to the same week last year). Hard to ignore when the divergence in trend began.
#EconSky @epi.org

Murky Pledges of Investment Cast Shadow on Trump’s Trade Deals

I'm shocked, just shocked that the details of Trump's deals aren't what he says they are www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/b...

Workers Roast as Federal Heat Standard Languishes Workers are overheating on the job, even in blue states. A proposed federal rule could help—but the Trump administration might abandon it.

Biden's OSHA proposed a federal workplace heat standard, with water and rest breaks and cooling-off zones.
Trump's OSHA has gone through the motions in hearings,with no guarantee that they'll finalize it.
Meanwhile people sweat and fall ill in the heat.
@whitneycwimbish.bsky.social reports:

Indiana got a waiver to ban candy and soda purchases with food stamps while also bowing out of the Summer EBT program that helps kids stay fed while out of school. Exposes the priorities. prospect.org/health/2025-...

A Rockville woman with developmental disabilities was laid off from NIH after 30 years. What’s next for her is uncertain. Andrea Geller loved her job in the mailroom at NIH. But after she was laid off, she's struggling to find a job accommodating her disabilites.

An independent civil service is so important for so many reasons. One overlooked one is that it offers economic opportunities to people who would not otherwise get them from the private sector.
bethesdamagazine.com/2025/07/29/d...

The Brooklyn Museum and Central Public Library are also right there and great, the latter particularly has a lovely children's section. And the Brooklyn Children's Museum is awesome and not far. I ended up in this area by accident but raising a kid here has turned out to be so great!

IRS Chief Says Direct File Is ‘Gone,’ Other Audit Tech Is Coming The Biden-era IRS free filing tool, Direct File, is “gone,” IRS Commissioner Billy Long said.

Chef's kiss that the IRS commissioner announced he killed Direct File, which cut out tax filing middle men, to a conference of tax preparers news.bloombergtax.com/financial-ac...

D.C. lawmakers strike a new compromise on tipped minimum wage with final budget vote The D.C. Council approved capping planned increases to the tipped minimum wage after a lengthy debate on the matter. This was the most controversial part of the 2026 budget.

DC residents have TWICE passed a measure eliminating the tipped wage and yet the council has yet again undone their votes wamu.org/story/25/07/...

Screenshot that says: This was how they survived these calls: each side reassuring the other even as they continued to unravel. Omar was working the graveyard shift at a local call center to help pay for groceries. His two younger sisters, 17 and 13, were trying to cook for the family from her mother’s recipes. Omar’s younger brother, 7, was waking up at night short of breath, wheezing and choking, until Omar took him to the emergency room. Doctors said he was suffering from panic attacks. He had never spent a night away from Elizabeth, and he didn’t know what it meant to be undocumented, or detained, or deported. The family had decided it was best to tell him that his mother was still at work.

Screenshot that says: The factory was empty. The machines sat silent. Back orders continued to pile up as a skeleton crew arrived at 7 a.m. to restart the manufacturing lines. Hartmann walked through the lobby, handing out coffees and greeting eight new employees who were reporting for their first day. They had already been interviewed and hired, but they couldn’t start until they were authorized to work through E-Verify, so a manager named Daisy Hernandez took their IDs and I-9 forms into her office and started punching in the numbers. None of the eight new hires were U.S. citizens. They had submitted paperwork based on green cards, alien registration numbers, temporary visas and work authorizations. Hernandez tried to log into E-Verify, but her password didn’t work. She tried again, and the account was locked.

Great story about the wide ripples of one of the many workplace ICE raids ordered by the Trump administration www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/u...

Incredible journalism

It's going to be a busy few months! 😅 Sources on either topic, please reach out.

Center for Health Journalism announces 2025 National Fellows, more than $80,000 in grants

I'm also incredibly excited to have been selected as a 2025 USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism National Fellow to report on the intersection between the child welfare system and the affordable housing crisis centerforhealthjournalism.org/about/center...

Eight Journalists Win Mcgraw Investigative Reporting Grants - Newmark J-School Eight journalists have been named the latest recipients of the McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism. Each of the winning projects will receive a

I'm incredibly excited to have been selected for the McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism to investigate private equity ownership of childcare www.journalism.cuny.edu/2025/07/eigh...

FEMA Withholds Homelessness Grants While Building Migrant Prison Camps The resetting of priorities will have tragic consequences.

The FEMA money that built the concentration camp in Florida is from a program that initially came out of the same bucket of funds intended to deal emergency homelessness in the states, money that Trump is illegally withholding. Naomi Bethune looks at that disconnect:
prospect.org/justice/2025...

Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose and

Predictable, but no less shocking or reprehensible: Trump just signed an executive order urging states to forcibly institutionalize homeless people, defund Housing First, criminalize encampments, and cut aid to cities that don't comply.

Larry "women have less 'intrinsic aptitude' than men" Summers is excited about Trump forcing more "merit-based admissions and hiring" on Columbia, I'm so surprised www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/02...

Gazans Are Dying of Starvation

16 children have died of starvation in Gaza this month alone. I don't have any other words. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/w...

Eleven-minute race for food: how aid points in Gaza became ‘death traps’ – a visual story Hundreds of people have died while seeking food since delivery was taken over by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in May. But Palestinians facing extreme hunger have no choice but to take the risk

“You always know that it could be you who gets shot, or it might be someone next to you.” More than 1,000 people in Gaza have died while seeking food since May. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Congress Funded Head Start. The Trump Administration Is Holding Up the Money. Delays in funding and new procedures to justify budgets have led to temporary closures and massive uncertainty for programs, workers, and families who rely on child care.

Here's my reporting on what the administration was doing to Head Start funding and the huge problems it caused for programs across the country prospect.org/health/2025-...

Department of Health and Human Services—Application of Impoundment Control Act to Availability of Head Start Program Funds Congress appropriated amounts to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for fiscal year (FY) 2025 to carry out the Head Start Act. Between...

GAO finds that the Trump administration illegally withheld Head Start funding www.gao.gov/products/b-3...

Opinion | The ‘Boy Crisis’ Is Overblown

I accepted the “boys are in crisis” narrative for a long time — that underperforming boys is a new problem and that modern school isn’t made for them. But it turns out that girls have been outperforming boys SINCE 1914!!! www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...

"An estimated 30,000 families are expected to save a combined $13.3 million annually under the new policy"

Zohran Mamdani is calling for city-owned grocery stores. NYC already has them. The idea has broad support from progressives, while some critics warn against “radical socialism.” But New York already has city-owned grocery stores.

new york already has city-owned grocery stores gothamist.com/news/zohran-...

Some States Are Seeking to Deregulate Child Care. Advocates Are Fighting Back How advocates in three states beat back proposals to increase child care ratios.

States are struggling to fund childcare after pandemic funding dried up, and some Republicans are touting deregulation as an answer. But in three states this past session advocates fought back against those efforts and won. www.the74million.org/zero2eight/s...

Screenshot: While the companies pledged at the January announcement to invest $100 billion “immediately,” the project is now setting the more modest goal of building a small data center by the end of this year, likely in Ohio, the people said.

I'm shocked, just shocked that a big promise of investment made to please Trump has fizzled www.wsj.com/tech/ai/soft...