Earlier this month, the IRS and the Department of Treasury announced that Direct File will be expanded so more than 30 million taxpayers in 24 states will be eligible in the 2025 tax season. The announcement comes after Direct File launched earlier this year with a pilot program that began with 12 states and more than 140,000 taxpayers successfully completing their taxes.

On Monday evening hundreds of people gathered at the Detroit Gesu Catholic Church for a Town Hall with the Nuns on the Bus and Friends – a cross-country bus tour on the theme “Vote Our Future.”   They were asked to name out issues most important to them in the upcoming election. I’m one of the Friends riding the bus – not a nun, but honored to be invited because of the close cooperation of the Coalition on Human Needs, which I direct, and NETWORK Advocates for Catholic Social Justice, the sponsor of the bus tour and a member of CHN.   

The Census edition. There’s a lot to report with the Census Bureau in recent weeks and we want to walk you quickly through the numbers. The brief glimpse: bad news on poverty, good news on health care, good news on income. 

Census Bureau analysts, policy experts, and disability rights advocates will convene next week to discuss whether or how Bureau officials should change the way disabled Americans are counted. At issue is a change in the methodology used in the way people with disabilities are tallied in the American Community Survey (ACS) – one that advocates fear could result in a severe undercount.