by | Feb 24, 2025 4:42 pm | Comments (18)
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Anna Salemme and Lyudmyla Kobylyanska at Sunday's mass.
Three years after Russia invaded Ukraine — and began a war that President Trump now falsely claims Ukraine started — 75 people gathered on George Street for a somber Sunday mass to try to figure out how best to support the country they love in such tumultuous times.
by | Feb 20, 2025 1:09 pm | Comments (15)
McMahon and Murphy, at confirmation hearing.
Washington — The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee voted along party lines Thursday to confirm Linda McMahon as the next education secretary as Democrats said she would be the last person to hold the post of a cabinet agency President Donald Trump wants to disband.
Continue reading ‘Committee Clears McMahon; Dems: There Goes The Ed Department’
by | Feb 17, 2025 9:15 am | Comments (22)
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Eco-friendly affordable housing on Dixwell: More, please.
With the Connecticut General Assembly’s legislative session in full swing, New Haven’s eight state lawmakers are pushing 184 different bills that touch on everything from growing housing near transit to digging deep on thermal energy to requiring movie theaters to disclose what time the films, and not just the trailers, actually start.
by | Feb 13, 2025 5:02 pm | Comments (19)
Murphy (right) to McMahon (left) at Thursday's hearing: Possibility of revoking funding for schools with programming based on ethnic or racial identity is "chilling."
WASHINGTON — After grilling her at a confirmation hearing, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Thursday he is a “hell no” on confirming Connecticut businesswoman Linda McMahon to be U.S. secretary of education, saying President Donald Trump’s executive order curbing diversity programs would result in the beleaguered agency “micromanaging” public school curricula.
by | Feb 11, 2025 3:52 pm | Comments (5)
Donovan: Don't let DOJ "dox" its own FBI agents.
A New Haven and Bridgeport law firm has catapulted into the thick of a nationwide effort to halt the Trump administration’s purging of the executive branch and retaliation against career federal officials who investigated the president and Jan. 6 rioters.
by | Feb 10, 2025 4:35 pm | Comments (14)
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DeLauro takes on another leadership role.
(Washington) Rep. Rosa DeLauro has been in the forefront of Democratic efforts to push back against President Donald Trump, and on Monday she got a new title to reinforce her role.
The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee — the panel that writes the spending bills each year to fund the federal government — will be one of three co-chairs of the new “Rapid Response Task Force and Litigation Working Group.”
Continue reading ‘DeLauro To Co-Chair Dems' "Rapid Response Task Force"’
by | Feb 5, 2025 7:17 pm | Comments (19)
Attorney General William Tong has made it clear: Connecticut commits to protecting access to gender-affirming care for young people, even as President Donald Trump has signed an executive order restricting federal support for that “life-saving care.”
by | Feb 5, 2025 1:01 pm | Comments (25)
UNITE HERE Prez Gwen Mills: The struggle begins in New Haven.
Standing room only in Dixwell's Trinity Temple.
Zachary Groz Photos
Marks addresses the thousand gathered, pushing for Yale and elected officials to back the working class.
“It feels like a boom is happening in this city,” thundered Rev. Scott Marks to a roaring crowd of 1,000 New Haveners overflowing the pews, hugging the walls, and huddling criss-cross on the floors of Trinity Temple Church of God in Christ (COGIC) on Dixwell Avenue Tuesday night.
“But my question is: It’s a boom for whom?”
by | Jan 31, 2025 7:42 pm | Comments (17)
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IRIS Director Maggie Mitchell Salem: Help halted for "the world's most vulnerable people."
IRIS (Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services) has laid off 20 percent of its staff — approximately 20 people — in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decisions to stop all new refugees from entering the country and halt federal funding to assist those who have recently arrived.
As the organization adjusts to a new era of federal hostility toward its mission, New Haven’s state and federal representatives are working to fight back.
by | Jan 23, 2025 3:14 pm | Comments (8)
Laura Glesby file photo
Inauguration Day protest outside City Hall.
(Opinion) Local government is at the center of a contentious national conversation about immigration.
Many cities across the United States, including New Haven, have adopted sanctuary policies, limiting the role of local law enforcement in federal immigration policy. These orders are not just acts of political defiance; they are deeply rooted in constitutional principles, practical governance and the need to build trust between local authorities and the communities they serve.
by | Jan 23, 2025 9:50 am | Comments (4)
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Barber: “We’re going to have to engage in some of this kind of moral imaginative activism in the days to come.”
According to pastor and civil rights activist William Barber II, there’s one word that American politicians have refused to say in recent years –– and their refusal to do so has plunged the country into an ongoing political crisis, dividing it along racial lines and delivering it on a silver platter to a handful of “oligarchs.”
That word is poverty.
Continue reading ‘Barber On Politics: It's Time To Talk Poverty’
by | Jan 22, 2025 7:57 pm | Comments (20)
Elicker: “What world are we in right now where, because of a disagreement on policy, the Trump administration is threatening arresting local officials? That's something you see in Iran, that's something you see in Russia, and I guess that's something we see in America right now, but that's really sad.”
The Trump administration might try to criminally prosecute local officials who stand in the way of its mass deportation efforts — but Mayor Justin Elicker isn’t worried about being locked up.
After all, he stressed, there’s a big difference between not participating in federal immigration raids and actively trying to prevent them.
by | Jan 22, 2025 12:36 pm | Comments (4)
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Frank Redente, Jr. (right), with Lombard's Ruben Mallma, on the 2023 campaign trial: "Still a lot to do."
Frankie Redente just turned 50, he just bought a house two blocks from his grandma’s old apartment, and he just filed to run for a second two-year term as Fair Haven alder — with a promised focus on keeping neighborhood parks clean.
Continue reading ‘Fair Haven Alder First To File For Reelection’
by | Jan 21, 2025 4:19 pm | Comments (32)
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Kica Matos: Trump's executive orders "should offend any American who believes in our Constitution and our democracy."
Connecticut has joined 17 states in suing President Donald Trump to challenge an executive order to end birthright citizenship — just one of a slate of executive orders signed by the new president that a national immigrant rights activist based in New Haven describes as “comprehensive, cruel and shocking in scope.”
by | Jan 21, 2025 1:04 pm | Comments (3)
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Heimer: Expanding public financing to City Clerk's race would be "an increase in democratic participation."
New Haven’s Democracy Fund wants to test expanding its pioneering mayoral public financing program to other citywide races to make them more often contested and competitive.
That’s why the program’s board voted to request $60,000 from the mayor’s upcoming Fiscal Year 2025 – 2026 budget to fund a pilot program for citywide seats, including City Clerk, Registrar of Voters and Board of Education.
Continue reading ‘Democracy $ Sought For More Than Just Mayor’
by | Jan 20, 2025 3:27 pm | Comments (27)
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Punk rocker Paul Heriot, at left, with fellow Trump supporters at Monday's downtown New Haven inaugural watch party.
A rebel roar arose from a Temple Street bar in the People’s Republic of New Haven as Donald Trump took the oath of office Monday as America’s 47th president.
by | Jan 16, 2025 4:23 pm | Comments (2)
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Newly elected board Chair Lesley Heffel-McGuirk (left): "I feel very strongly about the Democracy Fund, and about democracy in general."
Mayoral candidates can now raise less money from individual contributors, and put a lot less of their own money into campaigns, if they want to receive a public grant and matching funds through the city’s public financing program.
Continue reading ‘New Rules Take Effect For Democracy Fundees’
by | Jan 14, 2025 11:43 am | Comments (15)
Blumenthal, brandishing Form 990 tax returns, confronts Hegseth (at left) at Senate confirmation hearing.
With the nation watching, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal hit the “gotcha” button Tuesday.
by | Jan 14, 2025 9:30 am | Comments (14)
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Mayor Elicker (at the mic) in Hartford on Monday.
(Hartford) Mayor Justin Elicker and Supt. Madeline Negrón made the trip to the state’s capital Monday — to stand alongside mayors and superintendents from Bridgeport, Stamford, Waterbury, and Hartford and deliver a collective call for state government to up its public education funding by $545 million.
by | Jan 10, 2025 9:39 am | Comments (6)
The Swamp isn't Twitter: Budget-watcher Prisinzano (at right) to Musk (left).
“DOGE” may be able to cut thousands of jobs. It will find fat to trim.
It won’t end up eliminating federal government departments or axing trillions of dollars in spending. Not even close.
So predicts a budget-watcher who’s monitoring the incoming Trump Administration’s effort to take a blowtorch to the “Deep State.”
by | Jan 9, 2025 2:12 pm | Comments (8)
Paul Bass Photo
Justin Elicker swearing in Lisa Milone.
A Democratic mayor swore in a Republican election official with calls for bispartisan cooperation as GOP members cheered them on.
by | Jan 8, 2025 2:00 pm | Comments (3)
Paul: Return to sender.
Jason Paul wants to lead the Democratic Party back to winning elections — in part by leaving people’s phones alone.
by | Jan 2, 2025 5:02 pm | Comments (14)
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Board of Alders President Walker-Myers at WNHH: "I don't instill fear. I instill hope."
Don’t panic. Let’s see what happens and what doesn’t happen. Then we’ll make sound decisions the way we always do.
Tyisha Walker-Myers offered that strategy as she and New Haven walk into what may prove a stormy 2025.
Emphasis on “may.”
by | Dec 19, 2024 5:10 pm | Comments (15)
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DeLauro: Putting "President Musk" on guard.
Democratic New Haven U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s party will be out of power when Congress resumes next month. On Thursday, she gave a taste of how she’ll still look to have an impact on the work that does or doesn’t get done.
by | Dec 17, 2024 7:14 pm | Comments (41)
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Mayor Elicker (center) at Monday's ribbon cutting for the Coliseum redevelopment: "On the housing front, we've made a ton of progress."
Mayor Justin Elicker quietly kicked off the 2025 race for mayor on Tuesday — by officially filing to run for a fourth two-year term in office.