Articles by Debbie Sharnak

While Congress has continued to diversify over the last decade in terms of both gender and race, one element that has not changed is the average age of the institution’s members. The 113th Congress had an average age of 57 years and with Senators, it was 62 years old. However, there are some notable millennials (18-33) running for Congress this year. In order to run for Congress, one needs to be 25-years-old and 30 to run for Senate, so only the older group of this generation can even run for C...

The 2016 RNC convention in Cleveland is only three months away, but it is perhaps a rule used in 2012 that will have the greatest impact in Ohio. In 2012, Republicans were worried about Ron Paul's popularity possibly upsetting establishment candidate Mitt Romney's clear path to the nomination. So, the RNC Rules Committee changed the rules. Whereas previous conventions allowed for any candidate with the largest share of delegates in at least five states to be placed on the ballot, Republicans r...

During the 2008 election, then-candidate Barack Obama promised that one of his first actions as president would be to close Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. military prison in Cuba. He followed up that commitment by signing an order on his very first day in office to close the facility. Perhaps it was a preview for what has characterized his presidency: frustration and rejection at the hands of Congress. Since signing the order, Obama has run into the problem of where to send the remaining prisoners a...

Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson are currently two top contenders for the Republican nomination. Trump remains the leader with 35.6 percent of the polls, while Carson was in second but recently slid into fourth place behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Their popularity, however, stems from their outsider status as neither has held elected office before. Their recent entry into Republican politics has caused some to question their party loyalty--and rightfully so. Both candidates...

Over the past few weeks, protests at Yale, Georgetown, and Princeton highlighted the racist tendencies of some of the school’s most important alumni and contributors, many who had buildings and schools named after them. Students are now demanding that colleges change the name of these monuments to the school’s forbearers. At Yale, protests erupted over changing the name of a residential community, Calhoun College, which bears the name of John C. Calhoun, an ardent proponent of slavery in the ea...

One of Obama’s most prominent campaign pledges included a promise to close Guantanamo Bay. The prison camp has housed hundreds of prisoners in the war on terror since 2002, acting as a location to both detain and interrogate what the United States considers “extraordinarily dangerous people.” Since it first opened though, the prison has come under increasing scrutiny. In addition to charges of torture, Amnesty International has called the facility the Gulag of our time, and the facility has dra...

In the first presidential primary debate, Donald Trump claimed that Republicans would not be engaging with the immigration debate if it weren’t for his bravado. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be talking about illegal immigration,” he said. “You wouldn’t even be talking about it. This wasn’t a subject that was on anyone’s mind until I brought it up at my announcement.” Media outlets jumped on the statement, rating the claim as false both because the media had been addressing the issue...

Many viewers turned in to the first GOP presidential debate to learn about the different candidates crowding the field. Yet, certainly others were just waiting to hear if anything inflammatory would continue to flow from Donald Trump's mouth. Trump did not disappoint, but neither did a few other candidates. Here are the most outrageous statements from the GOP debate and what was missed because of them: Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin: “Probably the Russian and Chinese government know more...

In 2013, Dilma Rousseff canceled a state visit to the U.S. after reports surfaced that the United States spied on her own personal communications, as well as various other Brazilians. Less than two years later, Rousseff and Obama appear to have smoothed over these differences. On June 30, Rousseff came to Washington and signed a series of agreements to address global climate change. Among other provisions, both nations committed to increase the use of wind and solar energy to 20% of their nati...