Existing federal environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act are increasingly recognized as providing the authority for immediate action on climate change. The Center for American Progress welcomes a panel that will extend this discussion to the role of the National Environmental Policy Act, which was established in 1969 to provide a systematic, interdisciplinary approach that ensured the integrated use of natural and social sciences in planning and decision making. Please join us for an important and timely discussion about the application of existing federal authorities to address global warming, including a proposed executive order requiring assessment and disclosure under NEPA.

In his new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, Steven Greenhouse of The New York Times takes a fresh, probing, and often shocking look at the stresses and strains faced by tens of millions of American workers as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled. Greenhouse goes behind the scenes to tell the stories of software engineers in Seattle, hotel housekeepers in Chicago, call center workers in New York, and janitors in Houston, as he explores why, in the world's most affluent nation, so many corporations are intent on squeezing their workers dry. Please join CAP Senior Fellow Gene Sperling for an informative and lively discussion on the shrinking and stressed American middle class with Greenhouse, Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO, Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal, and Ruy Teixeira of CAP and the Century Foundation.

More than five years after the United States' invasion of Iraq and well over six years after the beginning of combat operations in Afghanistan, the United States faces numerous challenges to its national security interests in the greater Middle East and significant hurdles in dealing with other diplomatic and humanitarian crises around the world. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a distinguished member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, will discuss these issues and take questions from members of the working press. Hagel is the author of America: Our Next Chapter, a straight forward examination of the current state of our nation that provides substantial proposals for the challenges of the 21st century.

American Progresss is pleased to present the Third Annual Progressive Party, an evening of celebration in support of our work and our mission. When: Thursday, May 8, 2008 at The Newseum in Washington, DC.

Made in America, a selection for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, chronicles the rise of the Crips and Bloods, tracing the origins of their bloody four-decades long feud, and setting up the introduction of a cast of contemporary gang members whose street-level testimony provides the film with a stark portrait of modern-day gang life: the turf wars and territorialism, the inter-gang hierarchy and family structure, the rules of behavior, the culture of guns, death and dishonor.

More than a simple account, perspective is an essential element of Made in America. Throughout the film ex-gang members, gang intervention experts, writers, activists and academics analyze many of the salient issues that contribute to South LA's malaise: the erosion of identity that fuels the self-perpetuating legacy of black self-hatred, the disappearance of the African-American father and an almost pervasive prison culture in which today one out of every four black men will be imprisoned at some point in his life.

Please join us for a provocative Q&A session immediately following the film.

Public support for long-term care services is predominantly provided through the Medicaid program, which has historically financed nursing home care rather than services in homes and other community settings. Yet over the last decade, state Medicaid programs have worked to expand home and community-based long term care programs. States and community-level providers have also pioneered new approaches to delivering long-term care services, such as consumer-directed personal care services and radical reforms of nursing home-level services.

How can this progress be sustained and encouraged, especially through federal policy? Which state approaches offer the most promise for reducing the persistent institutional bias in our long-term care system? What can states do on their own to continue innovating? What roles do consumers and other stakeholders play?

In his eye-opening new book, Doubt Is Their Product, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Industry executives, he argues, have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to skew the scientific literature, manufacture and magnify scientific uncertainty, and influence policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. In doing so, they have delayed action on specific hazards—including global warming, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials—and constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats. 

Please join the Center for American Progress for a presentation by David Michaels on industry's assault on science and the consequences for public health.

Next year, America has a chance not only to inaugurate a new president, but also to welcome a new progressivism. It's a chance not just to repair the damage of the Bush years or to put in place long overdue items from the progressive agenda, but to put forward big, bold ideas that can respond to the very specific and new challenges of our times. In its spring issue, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas presented 20 of these new ideas. Join us as we explore some of these ideas in depth, and debate the contours of the new progressive agenda.