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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday offered new details about her plan to make sure all workers can take time off, with pay, in order to care for a newborn or sick relative.

During that time, the worker would be eligible to receive replacement wages, up to two-thirds of his or her salary.

The proposal, if enacted, would patch a major gap in America’s safety net. Workers in every other developed country are entitled to paid leave, in some cases for more than a year.

The weather's been positively toasty across much of the east coast over the past several days, especially for a December. In New York, Sunday temperatures shattered a 30-year-old record, hitting 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And the month has been chock-full of 60-plus days.

So what's going on? Is this a climate change thing, or a welcome boon from the ongoing El Nino tropical weather event? The answer actually lies with a buzzword from 2014's equally extreme temperatures: the polar vortex.

Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center at the National Weather Service, said last week the band of cold air surrounding the arctic -- called the "Arctic Oscillation" -- is particularly tight right now. During the polar vortex, pressure changes in that band of air caused it to slow and slip down towards America, bringing with it a wave of Arctic air that led to well below zero temperatures.

We go on endlessly about how “untrustworthy” she is, while fact checkers rank her as the second-most honest prominent politician in the country. (And her opponent as by far the least.)

History is decidedly unafraid of “the woman card.” It doesn’t care how many people will stand on tables today and swear they’d feel the same if she were a man. It will see us for what we are—a sick society, driven by misogyny and pathetically struggling to come to terms with the fact that women do not exist solely to nurture.

When Mitt Romney wiped servers, sold government hard drives to his closest aides and spent $100,000 in taxpayer money to destroy his administration’s emails, it was barely an issue.

Thousands of people are fleeing Puerto Rico as the island remains without power and the death toll continues to climb more than a month after Hurricane Maria. Even for those who can afford plane tickets and get to the airport, there’s another hurdle: evacuating with pets.  Leaving the island with animals in tow has become a huge challenge, said Sarah Barnett of the Humane Society of the United States, which has workers on the ground in Puerto Rico. The pet owners Barnett has spoken with have been “hysterical” with worry, she said.

Some pet owners stayed, remaining in dire conditions to care for animals. Others had to make gut-wrenching decisions. Claudia, a single mother who left for North Carolina with her baby and two dogs, left her other three dogs with a friend. She’s now desperately trying to bring those dogs to the mainland, too.

“They’re inundated with people wanting to fly their animals out in cargo,” Barnett said. American Airlines is accepting a limited number of pets per flight as checked baggage, and United is transporting animals through its PetSafe program.  Delta did not reply to a query about whether it is flying pets in cargo, though it previously waived fees for pets flying in the cabin from Puerto Rico. JetBlue and Southwest never transport pets in the cargo hold, though they both fly a limited number of small pets in the main cabin. A JetBlue spokesperson told HuffPost the airline has waived all in-cabin pet fees for flights out of Puerto Rico through Nov. 15, and doubled the number of pets per flight from four to eight.

A Democratic member of President Donald Trump’s voter fraud probe said it should urgently disclose what it’s been working on and its future plans, or else disband entirely. Alan King, a probate judge in Jefferson County, Alabama, is one of four Democrats on the 11-member Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. He told HuffPost on Tuesday that he was disappointed in how the commission had conducted business and wouldn’t be surprised if other members of the panel had already drafted a recommendation to the president. “Based on what I’ve read and accounts, it wouldn’t surprise me,” King said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if this whole commission was set up and they had an end result in mind when this commission was first originated.”

While he added that it was possible “that there are maybe some pockets of folks on both sides of the aisle who perhaps haven’t followed the rules,” he continued, “it’s a huge leap to go from that type of scenario to then go to to this massive plot, conspiracy of almost election mafia standards, to think that there are massive, widespread voting fraud in the United States.” 

As some Democrats on the commission have begun openly questioning their fellow commissioners’ activities, Democrats in Congress have asked the Government Accountability Office to review whether the panel is complying with transparency requirements. Several federal lawsuits have also sought to block the commission from operating, alleging it is not complying with federal transparency and privacy requirements. Critics of the panel characterize it as an effort to weaken confidence in American elections, saying it aims to lay the groundwork for more restrictive voting laws and substantiate Trump’s claim that millions voted illegally last year (several studies and investigations have shown voter fraud is not a widespread problem). Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the commission’s chair, have pledged that the panel would be bipartisan and neutral.

In 2014, the state switched the city's water source to the Flint River to save money and residents began to complain about the quality of tap water. Michigan officials insisted it was safe to drink, even though an internal memo at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services warned that lead poisoning rates were higher than usual for children under 16.

The state continued to say the water was safe until a Flint pediatrician reported in September that there was an unusually high level of lead in Flint children.

Snyder has apologized for the incident, activated the national guard, called for President Barack Obama to declare an emergency and accepted the resignation of the head of the state's Department of Environmental Quality. Obama declared an emergency on Saturday.

In Libya, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed herself to be quick to use the American military without thinking about what comes next. As the decisive voice pushing the Obama administration to war, Clinton had no serious plan for a post-Qaddafi Libya, a point driven home forcefully once again in a New York Times cover story on Sunday.

Libya was not the first time she endorsed a U.S. military operation in the Middle East without thinking ahead: Clinton voted for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. She has shown repeatedly that she did not learn the lessons of Iraq, and has yet to admit to the failure of Libya.

The second is to acknowledge the limits of the capacity of the United States to transform the world in our interests and image. As explained in the New York Times, "Mrs. Clinton's deep belief in America's power to do good in the world ran aground in a tribal country with no functioning government, rival factions and a staggering quantity of arms."

To date, Trump has nominated 87 people to be judges with lifetime tenure on U.S. district courts, circuit courts or the Supreme Court. Eighty of them are white, or nearly 92 percent. One is black, one is Latino and five are Asian or Pacific American. He hasn’t nominated any Native American judges.

The president also keeps nominating men. Sixty-seven of his court picks are male, compared to 20 who are female.

Advocates for a more diverse federal bench say it’s crucial that the nation’s courts reflect the demographics of the populations they serve.

Just A Reminder That Trump Has Still Provided Zero Evidence Of Voter Fraud

President Donald Trump still hasn’t provided any evidence of voter fraud in the U.S., despite repeatedly claiming that it’s a widespread issue and that thousands of people voted illegally in New Hampshire in November. 

Trump, who has tapped Vice President Mike Pence to lead an investigation into the issue, first made the New Hampshire claim last month during a closed-door Oval Office meeting with Democratic and Republican senators. The president told the group that he lost the state and that former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) didn’t retain her seat because thousands of people had been bused in to the state to vote illegally.

Donald Trump has reportedly ceased raising money for the big dollar committee linking his campaign to the official Republican Party.

Presidential campaigns are supposed to provide a flush of cash for the party. But Trump’s effort has raised significantly less than previous Republican candidates even though he has been able to collect much larger checks. That has left the RNC in the worst financial shape it has been in at this point in a presidential election since the turn of the millennium.

The RNC has raised just $271 million through September, including the money brought in by Trump. This is the lowest amount the party has had at this point since the passage of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law instituted higher contribution limits and banned party soft money. It is lower than the $332 million raised in 2012, the $310 million raised in 2008 and the $306 million raised in 2004 ― and that’s before adjusting for inflation.

Washington Post Supreme Court correspondent Robert Barnes quotes Erwin Chemerinsky, now dean of the University of California, as writing that “No justice in Supreme Court history has consistently written with the sarcasm of Justice Scalia.”

So while Antonin Scalia, who was found dead Saturday, may be primarily remembered as one of the giants of conservative legal thought, he will also be known as someone who made sarcasm a linchpin of the highest court's opinions.

Overall, Hasen found that Scalia authored 75 of the 134 sarcastic opinions. "His ability (and willing-ness) to engage in nastiness, particularly directed at other Justices’ opinions, is unparalleled," Hasen writes. The law professor says this isn't all bad. "Sarcasm makes his opinions punchy and interesting, clarifying where he stands in a case and why and gaining attention for his ideas. On the other hand, such heavy use of sarcasm can demean the Court."

Women Have Very Little Political Power Anywhere In The World

When Canada's new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced he had appointed women to half of his government's cabinet positions, many people asked him why.  "Because it's 2015," he replied. 

A new report on global gender equality by the World Economic Forum, the Geneva-based nonprofit most famous for its uber-elite economic conference in Davos, Switzerland, shows that while women are inching toward global parity in education, health, and to a lesser extent economic outcomes, they are still woefully underrepresented in national governments. 

asked the Supreme Court to stay out of a controversial lawsuit the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma filed last year challenging the constitutionality of Colorado's legalization of marijuana.

"original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States."

When Nebraska and Oklahoma sued last December and asked the Supreme Court to intervene, they argued that "Colorado’s affirmative authorization of the manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana presents a substantial obstacle to Congress’s objectives under

A Swiss plane carrying American citizens, including a Washington Post reporter, who were released from Iranian prison on Saturday departed Tehran early Sunday morning. The prisoners were freed as part of a prisoner release deal -- the result of 14 months of high-stakes secret negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.

Last July, just before the U.S., Iran and five world powers announced they had reached an agreement on Iran's nuclear program, Kerry had a conversation about the prisoners with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, and President Hassan Rouhani's brother, Hossein Fereydoun, in Vienna.

Afterward, they went to Zarif's hotel room and spoke again about the prisoners. “We actually shook hands, thinking we had an agreement,” Kerry said. “I thought it was done.”

WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump has delivered a series of speeches promoting the Republican tax reform agenda and a series of tweets undercutting it.  Download Trump’s speeches focus on how the his party’s tax plan, which has only been sketched in broad outlines, would cut business taxes in a way that would ultimately help working families.  In an effort to replace some of the missing revenue from that corporate tax cut, however, Republicans want to do away with a number of expensive tax breaks that help middle-class families, ostensibly while still delivering the middle class a net benefit.

A similar pattern played out earlier this year when Republicans tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act. After the House passed a plan to repeal Obamacare that Trump initially hailed, he later characterized some of its details as “mean.” The repeal effort ultimately failed. 

Artist Carter Goodrich painted Trump as a “dangerous clown” for the magazine’s Oct. 30th issue because he was “still just as stunned now” about the election results as he was last November. The image is called “October Surprise.” “I have been asked to work on movies about him. I can’t do it; most satire seems to lighten what feels to me like a dire situation. He’s already a cartoon villain, infantile and strange,” Goodrich said.

Conservatives Face A Choice On Obamacare: Trump Or Their Principles

As the GOP plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act becomes less of a pamphlet and more of a bill, House Republican leaders are hoping recalcitrant conservatives in their party who claim they can sink those efforts won’t be willing to cross President Donald Trump.

I know from my constituents back home, if the president is in support of it ... that gives them a certain comfort level.

Here Are The Many Ways Donald Trump Scares The Crap Out Of Democrats

President Donald Trump may have toned down his style for his joint address to Congress this week, but Democrats aren’t any less worried about what they think he may do to the United States.

What scares them is Trump himself, what the president’s use of fear-mongering claims suggest he wants to do to the country and what his vision of a newly “great America” would mean for anyone who disagrees with him.

Donald Trump would like us all to believe that the United States would have registered a “complete and total victory” in Afghanistan had its troops been led by … General Robert E. Lee.

Virginia Supreme Court last week ruled that the state could finally pull down a monument to a general who took part in a pro-slavery secession that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands.

“President Lincoln wanted Lee to command the North, in which case the war would have been over in one day [citation needed]. Robert E. Lee instead chose the other side because of his great love of Virginia [citation badly needed], and except for Gettysburg, would have won the war [infinite citations needed],” Trump wrote.