Sen. Susan Collins is being criticized for the Supreme Court ruling allowing states to ban abortion because the moderate Republican voted to confirm two of the justices who were in the majority opinion.

Critics attacked the Maine senator on social media, and some called for her resignation. The Maine Democratic Party and others cast some of the blame on Collins because her vote was crucial in confirming Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Collins also voted to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch, who also sided with the majority opinion.

Collins says in a statement that the overturning of Roe is a "sudden and radical jolt to the country" that will sow division.

Collins is a Republican and has been a supporter of a woman’s right to an abortion. She has also crossed the aisle on key issues like splitting with Republicans on former President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several Muslim countries, the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and on whether to convict Trump after his impeachment following the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

The senator said in a statement Friday that she had received assurances from Kavanaugh and Gorsuch that Roe v. Wade was an established legal precedent, the Associated Press reported.

“Throwing out a precedent overnight that the country has relied upon for half a century is not conservative,” she said. “It is a sudden and radical jolt to the country that will lead to political chaos, anger, and a further loss of confidence in our government.”

Senator John Fetterman’s candid approach to his struggles with mental health is unusual on Capitol Hill, where issues with members’ health are frequently kept hidden from the public.

But Fetterman’s openness has led to praise from mental health advocates, fellow members of Congress, and President Joe Biden, who said in a tweet, "We’re grateful to you for leading by example." 

Such mental health struggles in politics are not new — but they’re not mentioned often.  

In 1972, U.S. Sen. Thomas Eagleton was forced to bow out as the vice presidential pick for Democratic nominee George McGovern after his mental health struggles became public.

And in 2007, then-Congressman Patrick Kennedy opened up on Larry King live about his struggles with mental health.   

After a late-night car crash on Capitol Hill, the Rhode Island Democrat pled guilty in 2006 to charges of driving under the influence of prescription drugs.  

Since departing Congress, he founded the Kennedy Forum, which he describes as a think tank focused on mental health and addiction policy. 

"I think Senator Fetterman, simply by checking himself in saying he needs help and going to get that help, is going to probably help more people in that single act than any other bill that he sponsors or acts that he passes in Congress this year for sure," Kennedy said last week. "When I did go to treatment, I went under the cover of darkness, I did not do what Senator Fetterman has done, and that is to be very public about going to treatment. When I did go publicly, it was because I was forced to go publicly, I had had a DWI."

Fetterman suffered a stroke during his Senate campaign last year. His office said he has experienced depression on and off throughout his life but it became more severe recently.   

Mental health experts say his transparency about his struggles is an important signal to those dealing with similar issues. They say depression following a stroke isn’t unusual. 

 "We know that up to a third of people who have a stroke will suffer depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in people who have had a stroke. So I think for him to be so public about it is so courageous and he's been courageous up until this point, and he continues to do so," said Dr. Daniel Bober, a psychiatrist. 

The Instagram account Dear White Staffers is a popular meme page geared toward people of color working on Capitol Hill and in government agencies.

In recent weeks, however, it's become a forum for staffers to anonymously share stories about issues they have faced working for specific members of Congress. And it could have a real impact on both the conditions congressional staff deal with and changing who gets to work in Congress.

Earlier this month, a group of congressional staffers announced an unprecedented effort to unionize. This is the byproduct of years of work done by people who haven't been well paid in an environment that still isn't especially diverse.

To clear up some misconceptions here, these are white-collar jobs that require dressing up, but working in the halls of Congress doesn't exactly mean you're making bank. 

Staffers, especially at the entry-level, can have full-time jobs working in Congress and have to rely on government benefits like food stamps or work a second job just to afford to get by. 

Take Don Bell, for example. He now works in career development at the University of Connecticut School of Law, but he worked more than three years on Capitol Hill as a Senate staffer in the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal and served as president of the Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus.

He loved his time on the Hill and credits the office for getting him a stipend even before he was brought on full-time and for promoting him and supporting his development. But early on, he started out unpaid and had a second job you wouldn't expect a congressional staffer to need.

"I was a lawyer by day working on policy and a cashier at Wal-Mart at night," Bell said. "And as you can imagine, those were very long days, going from one job to the other, just trying to make it financially. I came to D.C. with nothing coming from a family that didn't have any means."

And that required some major sacrifices. 

"By the time I started full-time in Senator Blumenthal's office as the judiciary legislative correspondent, I was two weeks away from defaulting on my student loans," Bell said. "So I put all of my chips in the middle of the table to have the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill."

It might come as a surprise, but these staffers are often the ones actually writing the laws. Members of Congress are public faces, and they have a wide range of work, including committee meetings. But when it comes to how the sausage is actually made, markup meetings — where the bulk of any given bill gets written — are usually attended by staffers, sometimes even low-level ones.

All those cost issues don't even account for internships, which were unpaid for a long time on Capitol Hill. When you factor in the cost of living, transportation and other essentials, interning could cost thousands of dollars. If you're stretching out every dollar, even some small things can be a challenge. 

Carlos Mark Vera was an intern on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

"It's little things that you normally think about," Vera said. "You have to wear professional clothing every day. I only owned one suit, so my family had to kind of pitch in to buy me another one. So it definitely was a struggle."

His experience struggling to afford an unpaid internship led him to found Pay Our Interns — a group that's pressuring offices on Capitol Hill and other government agencies to, essentially, pay their interns. He argues that not paying interns really limits the pool of who can do it.

"You need housing, so that's rent, any professional clothing, transportation, and we know that on average, an unpaid internship can cost $6000 for three months. So unless you have that money just lying around, it really puts a lot of folks that are working-class middle class at a disadvantage."

There's been some positive change on this front. Every congressional office now has money set aside  — each House office has $25,000 set aside specifically to pay interns.

But those funds haven't necessarily led to congressional offices hiring a representative set of interns.

A report last year by Pay Our Interns found that 76% of paid congressional interns were white, even though white students make up just 52% of the national undergraduate student population. 

And that gap, which is reflected in full-time and senior staff too, has consequences for who gets to shape policy. Ruby Robles, a current Capitol Hill staffer and a spokesperson for the Congressional Hispanic Staffers Association or CHSA, says it affects a lot of members of the group.

"A lot of us [are] Latinos, but some of us, we migrated to this country," Robles said. "We are first-generation college students, and then we made our way all the way to Washington, D.C. A lot of us are working on Capitol Hill because we are we want to work in public service. It's the American dream, but the higher pay issues, sometimes they become a barrier for many people."

A survey by Issue One, a nonpartisan group looking to reduce the influence of money in politics, found that 13% of all Capitol Hill staff — over 1,200 people — made less than the salary MIT estimates would constitute a living wage of $42,610 in Washington, D.C. But if you look at staff assistants, the most common entry-level full-time job on Capitol Hill, that rate jumps to 70% making less than the estimated living wage in D.C.

The low pay means, sometimes, the only people who can take these staff jobs are people supported financially by their parents. That leads to the population of staffers skewing whiter and wealthier. And as a lot of current and former staffers are pointing out, it shuts out many people of color and people who don't come from privileged backgrounds.

The result is a less diverse workforce. The nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies estimated in a 2020 report that people of color made up just 13.7% of all top-level House staff, and just 11% of all top-level Senate staff.

And that can make a real difference when crafting policies.

"Congressional staffers are essential in ensuring that the policy being made has been effectively vetted and is reflective of the hopes and aspirations of constituents across the country, and so if we don't have a diverse set of people, skills experiences in those decision-making rooms is much more likely that we aren't going to get the best policy for people at the ground level back home," Bell said.

And while staffers of color are at the forefront of this recent push, and many of those are Democrats, the issues we’re seeing here affect staffers of both parties from all backgrounds.

Audrey Henson is a former congressional staffer from a low-income background and a current Republican congressional candidate in Florida. She was the founder of College to Congress, a group that provides financial support to congressional interns and staff. She's no longer with the group, but the shock she felt when she found she'd be paid $25,000 a year for her full-time job still sticks with her. 

"I'll never forget when I filed my tax returns in 2013 as a Capitol Hill staffer, and after I submitted them, the first page that came up was It looks like you qualify for Medicaid and food subsidy benefits," Henson said. "That, to me, almost felt like a dagger in my heart because I was working for a boss that was anti-subsidy and that really showed me, wow, the way that our Congress works, the way that they treat their staff, this is absolutely backwards."

The circumstances may have been tough for a lot of current and former staffers on Capitol Hill, but folks on the Hill see the emergence of the recent unionization effort and more public criticism of working conditions as an opportunity for things to change.

"I think that there's some room for change here, and also there's really going to be a really big push," Henson said. "So I am hopeful that hopefully, the national attention that this has gathered will lead to change."

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — In Washington, DC, the buzz of the town is President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill. But one thing that’s not being talked about is something called SALT.

“The problem is, this policy is very, very expensive and regressive,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

MacGuineas has been very focused on SALT in recent weeks.

So, what is SALT? Clearly, we're not talking about the table seasoning, but "state and local taxes" and deductions you may or may not be able to take on your federal tax return. Before 2017, there was no limit on how much of the state and local taxes an individual paid that they could deduct from the federal tax return but in 2017, former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts changed that.

“You add all those state and local taxes together and they were capped at a deduction of $10,000,” said Sharon Lassar, the director of The School of Accountancy at the University of Denver.

She has been following the news around SALT and the bill. The most recent proposal would increase the SALT cap from $10,000 to more than $72,000, reducing the overall tax burden for some.

“In this package, 80% of the benefits go to people making over $200,000 per year,” said MacGuineas. “This is not the targeted low-income people that a lot of people expect in this bill.”

So, who exactly benefits from the SALT cap repeal? It’s individuals with high incomes in states with high-income taxes. So, think New York, New Jersey, and California.

“The average person probably doesn’t pay more than $10,000 in state and local taxes,” said MacGuineas. “About 50% of this is going to the very richest 1% and they, on average, would be getting an annual tax break of over $35,000.”

A big advocate for the removal of the SALT cap is Rep. Thomas Souzzi from New York. He recently said in a statement, “This fix will put money back in the pockets of hardworking, middle-class families in our districts,” but would not respond to our requests for an interview.

One thing to keep in mind: no text draft of this bill has been released to the public yet. So, we are only getting this from people working on the bill.