Molly Weston Williamson

Sometimes, advocates, impacted folks, and electeds work together and enact REAL change. Overjoyed that over 3.2 million Virginians will no longer have to make the impossible choice between taking time off to care for themselves or their loved ones and their paychecks! Congrats, VA on #PaidLeave4All

Breaking: Virginia just became the first Southern state to pass paid leave! Both paid family and medical leave and paid sick time legislation are now headed to the Governor's desk. This is a huge win for VA families and the national paid leave movement. 🎉👏

Today Virginia passed paid family and medical leave—a huge, historic win.

This happened twice before and both times Youngkin vetoed it, against the will of the state. Governor @abigailspanberger.com, and legislators and advocates who wouldn't give up, will now get it done. #PaidLeaveForAll

Fast Facts About Paid Leave in Virginia With the governor’s signature, Virginia will guarantee paid family and medical leave to nearly all workers starting in December 2028.

Virginia's legislature just sent a strong paid family and medical leave bill to the governor, who has pledged her support. Find out what you need to know with new from me for @americanprogress.bsky.social www.americanprogress.org/article/fast...

The Social Security Administration Is Bleeding Staff New data show rapidly shrinking staff numbers at the Social Security Administration, reducing the agency’s ability to serve older adults, people with disabilities, and other claimants.

The Trump Administration has pushed out thousands of staff members from the Social Security Administration, harming claimants and customer service around the country. New from me for @americanprogress.bsky.social www.americanprogress.org/article/the-...

‘I don’t have words’: 2 more kids from Liam Ramos’ Columbia Heights school taken into ICE custody The children were taken into ICE custody after their mother was detained at a court appointment. School leaders say the mother asked them to bring the kids to the detention center because there were n...

“We had to deliver them to a detention center,” principal Jason Kuhlman said about the second grader and fifth grader.

Social Security scraps plan to limit disability benefits after uproar The policy would have fundamentally altered who qualifies for the two federal disability programs by eliminating or limiting a person’s age as a factor to consider.

The Trump Administration is abandoning plans for the biggest-ever cut to Social Security Disability Insurance, which would have hit older workers hardest.

The rule would have devastated up to 1.5 million workers' financial stability, retirement security & access to health care.

wapo.st/4o48J24

ACA Premium Spikes Will Derail Disabled People’s Careers The expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits threatens the economic stability and health coverage of self-employed Americans with disabilities.

Nearly 1.2 million disabled Americans are self-employed. For many, expiring enhanced premium tax credits threaten health care access and affordability. New from me, @seemiaroll.bsky.social, & @nzmurphy.bsky.social for @americanprogress.bsky.social www.americanprogress.org/article/aca-...

New @americanprogress.bsky.social I find that 4.4 million small business owners and self-employed people face a $1,500 mean tax hike this year.

When enhanced marketplace tax credits expire, businesspeople making <$150k, face a larger tax hike than eliminating the passthru deduction

With inflation on everyone’s minds, it’s a good time to recognize one of Social Security’s most valuable features: Its annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), which will be announced tomorrow. 🧵

The Trump Administration’s Plans To Covertly Cut Social Security Disability Benefits An upcoming regulatory proposal would change the rules of Social Security disability programs to make it harder to qualify, particularly harming older adults.

The Trump Administration is planning a proposal to prevent too many people, especially older adults, from qualifying for Social Security disability benefits they need.

New from @seemiaroll.bsky.social & me for @americanprogress.bsky.social www.americanprogress.org/article/the-...

Read more about how paid leave got left out & what it would mean to finally complete Social Security with #PaidLeaveForAll here (7/7): scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcont...

Without paid leave, Social Security remains incomplete today, at profound cost to us all. After nearly a century, it is time to complete Social Security by restoring the final form of wage loss insurance that should have been there all along: paid leave. (6/7)

However, largely due to political opposition from the medical societies, paid leave was left out. As a result, Roosevelt spent years calling to complete the system by adding this missing component; when FDR died, Truman made adding back this protection a signature goal of his administration. (5/7)

The creators of the Social Security Act strongly considered including wage loss benefits for illness, studying the idea at length and even drafting an amendment to add them to the law while it was still pending in Congress. (4/7) www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/...

The Social Security Act created unemployment insurance and retirement benefits to make up for lost wages due to job loss or old age. But the law was incomplete in large part because it did not make up for lost wages when you get sick or hurt—what today we would call paid leave. (3/7)

In his signing statement, FDR said the Social Security Act “represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete.” (2/7) www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/st...

90 years ago today, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act, creating protections Americans have built lives and livelihoods on for generations. But this crucial law has had a missing piece since its creation: paid leave. A 🧵 (1/7):

The Department of Child Snatching

Priced Out of Phone Calls Home - Bolts The FCC blocked Biden-era limits on the exorbitant rates and fees charged by prison telecom companies, leaving incarcerated people and their families to fight for state-level reforms.

Biden’s FCC passed rules to make phone calls from prison cheaper, to help keep people connected to their families.

Trump's FCC has now blocked that change.

An incarcerated writer on what this means for people behind bars, in a must read, icymi: boltsmag.org/north-caroli...

Social Security pulls field office staff to answer overwhelmed phone line The agency, which serves 73 million beneficiaries, has struggled to improve customer service amid cutbacks, long wait times and a crashing website.

After Social Security arbitrarily cut thousands of staff, the only way to “fix” anything is moving them from one critical area to another—most recently, abruptly shifting 1K staff from local offices to the 800 number.

But it’s not a real fix at all…it only creates new problems.

wapo.st/44nQiPx

Congress Traded Your Pap Smear for a Billionaire’s Tax Break Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," argues Kierra Jones, is part of "conservatives’ political crusade to ban abortion and gender-affirming care, and to deprive Americans of their reproductive and bodily aut...

It’s ugly and it’s deadly. But hey, as long as the rich get richer, right?

The Social Security Administration put out a statement celebrating a bill that would lead to faster insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund

A disgraceful story. The absolute disregard and hostility the power centers of our country exhibit towards young people is part of the story of this time.

And the NYT caught the car on affirmative action. So now begins the process of retroactively excavating race-conscious admissions. Awful.

Also: the OBBBA would accelerate both Social Security & Medicare's trust fund reserve depletion by a year.

They are touching Social Security, Medicare, AND Medicaid.

www.crfb.org/blogs/obbba-...

Young Workers Least Likely To Have Parental Leave, Sick Days—Report The U.S. is a global outlier in paid time off. And the youngest members of the workforce are the least likely to get the paid leave they need. Experts say it could spell disaster for their careers—and...

As Lily, 24, said: "There could be a time in my life where I have to make the decision between staying home to care for my daughter when she is sick and making money to put a roof over her head and food in her mouth.”

Pssst . . . it costs about the same amount to shore up Social Security's finances as it does to make the Trump tax cuts permanent.

But Congressional Republicans are on the verge of shoveling trillions at the wealthiest, while leaving a shortfall in the program we ALL need and love.

Women already do 2/3 of the unpaid care in the US, equating to $683 billion a year in unpaid care work. infogram.com/1pdd7xxy9p5x...

LGBTQI+ People Are Working, Healing, and Caring in a Country Without Guaranteed Paid Leave New Center for American Progress survey results show LGBTQI+ Americans are trying to balance work, health, and caregiving, despite gaps in supports such as paid leave.

New @americanprogress.bsky.social data: half of LGBTQI+ people have called on chosen family for care, along with a third of non-LGBTQI+ people. We need #PaidLeaveForAll that includes all families.

More from @mollyww.bsky.social www.americanprogress.org/article/lgbt...

The Trump Administration Is Making All of Our Jobs More Dangerous That’s very bad news in a country where a worker died on the job every 99 minutes in 2023.

New for @teenvogue.com: Republicans love to talk about how much they care about the American worker, but the Trump admin’s anti-worker, anti-regulatory, anti-science agenda is putting millions of workers in danger—and more of them are going to die because of it www.teenvogue.com/story/trump-...