Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka appeared together Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event to call on the U.S. Senate to move forward on confirming President Obama's nominations to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). If those confirmations fail to be approved, the board would  fall below a quorum on Aug. 1  and no longer would be able to do its job of protecting America's workers.

The workplace rights of millions of working people will be at risk if the U.S. Senate does not approve President Obama’s five bipartisan nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). On July 10, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will join Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) for a  discussion  of the NLRB’s role as an advocate for all U.S. workers, how the board can function in the face of Republican attempts to prevent it from doing its job and potential Senate rule changes to end the obstructionism that’s blocking NLRB nominees.

This week, the  Center for American Progress  (CAP), a think-tank closely associated with President Obama’s Administration since it was the home of many key White House officials like Gene Sperling and Melody Barnes, changed course on backing a “grand bargain” with Republicans on cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and raising taxes on high income earners to balance the budget in the long run. After taking a position favoring a debate on shrinking government back in 2009, CAP now sees four years later, that the job crisis remains while the federal deficit and the size of government has plummeted.  But, let’s hope this change in heart has a similar effect on the Obama administration.

There are so many myths and misconceptions about immigration, oftentimes it’s hard to get the facts. That’s where the Center for American Progress’  new immigration policy brief  comes in handy.

The Center for American Progress, Campus Progress and the USAction Education Fund released new reports today that detail what an increase in the interest rate on Stafford student loans would mean for several states.

If Congress doesn’t act, the interest rate on these loans will double—from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent—on July 1.

In 2010, women who worked full-time, year round, still only earned 77 percent of what men earned. The median earnings for women were  $36,931  compared with $47,715 for men, and neither real median earnings nor the female-to-male earnings ratio have increased since 2009. And even though women are outpacing men in getting college degrees, that’s not enough to close the gender pay gap.

Van Jones, a former Obama White House adviser on green jobs and an award-winning human rights activist, maps out how to turn Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and the American Dream into reality in his new book Rebuild the Dream . The book is due out April 4, the anniversary of King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968, but you can click here to pre-order.

Republican presidential candidates and party and conservative leaders holler that the rich are paying far, far too much in taxes. Here are the facts: Rich Americans are not overtaxed. Not by a long shot. From 1996 to 2007, the overall federal tax rate for the richest 1 percent fell by more than 6 percentage points. The top marginal income tax rate dropped from 70 percent in 1980 to 35 percent today. And that’s just for starters.

Jennifer Angarita, AFL-CIO National Worker Center coordinator, sends us this report.

Since 2008, states across the country have witnessed a wave of restrictive voting changes, which limit individuals’ access to the polls and the ease with which they can register to vote. Advocates, community members and working people gathered this week at an advocacy roundtable at the Center for American Progress to learn about efforts to suppress voting rights on the state level.

The only good thing about a federal spending cap is how it sounds in a press release, according to Jordan Eizenga, a policy analyst for the  Center for American Progress .

Some conservative lawmakers are calling for a cap on total federal spending as a precondition to their support for raising the debt limit. Some are even bringing the issue up in the presidential primary.

But Eizenga says:

The bottom line is that this is an astonishingly bad idea even for those willing to undermine the entire U.S. economy by engaging in political brinksmanship over the debt limit .

Check out his analysis here .