Rachel Leininger, a senior at Bethany Christian High School in Goshen, Indiana, has won the $750 top prize in the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) U.S. Washington Office 2018-19 annual essay contest. Leininger’s essay, “Communication in Place of Isolation,” calls for the U.S. government to engage with the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea…
Read more Contest winner calls for engagement with North Korea
Toward an end to the Korean War The second summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) took place in Hanoi last week. Many were hoping for more concrete action steps and details on the initial agreement that was signed at the Singapore summit in…
After years of work by advocates, including many constituents of Mennonite Central Committee, criminal justice reform legislation was signed into law by President Trump on December 21. The law is called the First Step Act and it is just that—a first step. Additional reforms are still needed to address mass incarceration in the U.S., which…
Shutdown ends – for now On January 25, portions of the federal government that had been without funding for 35 days reopened under a continuing resolution through February 15. The deal came one day after a proposal to pair border wall funding with protections for DACA and TPS recipients failed in the Senate. The bill would have…
January 7, 2019 Looking back at 2018 and ahead to 2019 As we begin 2019, we are grateful for the advocacy work that we have been able to do together with you over the past year. We celebrated reforms to our criminal justice system, legislation on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the renewal of…
After years of attempts to reform our broken criminal justice system, change is within sight. The First Step Act, a bill that includes important sentencing and prison reforms, has strong bipartisan support in the Senate and has now been endorsed by the president. But if Congress does not pass this legislation by the end of…
Help us pass criminal justice reforms! President Donald Trump recently voiced his support for a bipartisan criminal justice bill, a revised First Step Act that would provide sentencing and prison reforms. The First Step Act would curb mandatory minimums for many low-level drug crimes, providing judges with more discretion over individual cases. The bill also aims to eliminate the…
