It has always perplexed me that the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)—known colloquially as food stamps—doesn’t allow recipients to use the benefit to purchase hot food items at grocery stores. Bread, steak, fish, potato chips, bananas and nearly every other food item lining the shelves? Sure. The ready-made rotisserie chickens, mac-and-cheese, or mashed potatoes on […]

A civil rights lawsuit against the Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida overcame a tricky and nuanced legal hurdle this week in federal court. As Mother Jones originally reported, Taylor Cadle was 12 years old in 2016 when she told a sheriff’s deputy that she had been sexually abused by her adoptive father, Henry Cadle. […]

This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Ayanna Harris-Rashid was sitting up in bed, her newborn son latched to her breast, one hand scrolling on her phone, when the police called. She was wanted on a felony charge of child neglect. Harris-Rashid […]