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    Alissa Scheller

    Alissa Scheller

    Visuals Editor, HuffPost

  • There Is No Such Thing As A 'Safe' Lead Level

    Before Freddie Gray died of spinal injuries he received in police custody, sparking weeks of protest in his native Baltimore and around the country, he was a "lead kid," one of thousands of children in the city with toxic levels of lead in their blood from years of living in substandard housing -- and long-term health problems as a result. "Paint was peeling off the windows," recalled Gray in the 2009 deposition of a lead-poising lawsuit he and his siblings filed against the owners of the building they grew up in. For children like Gray, who was 25 years old when he died in April, lead poisoning can mean ADHD, behavior problems, and irreversible brain and central nervous damage.

  • Corporate America Should Be Embarrassed About This Chart

    HuffPost looked at the male-female ratio of the board directors at 100 companies. We found numbers that were, frankly, horrifying.

  • Today, 9 States Allow Confederate Flags On License Plates

    Suddenly, government displays of Confederate symbols are all over the news. This week, driven by the horrific massacre at a historically black Charleston church, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) urged her state legislators to remove the Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds. Last week, the Supreme Court said Texas can't be forced to offer license plates featuring that flag.

  • It's Still Legal To Discriminate Against Transgender People In Most States

    Caitlyn Jenner's Vanity Fair cover was met with an outpouring of love and acceptance. Jenner gained a million Twitter followers in just over four hours, outpacing even President Barack Obama, and thousands tweeted #CallMeCaitlyn to show their support. The rate of violence against transgender women, especially transgender women of color, is alarming -- according to a 2013 report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, an organization working to reduce violence against LGBTQ people, 72 percent of victims of anti-LGBTQ homicide were transgender women, and 89 percent of victims were people of color.

  • The Latest Law Second-Guessing A Woman's Right To Control Her Own Body

    Starting July 1, women seeking an abortion in Tennessee will have to wait 48 hours before they’re allowed to have the procedure. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill on Monday requiring the two-day wait, which makes Tennessee the 27th state to impose a delay for women who want to end a pregnancy. Earlier this month, Oklahoma’s governor signed a law increasing that state's mandatory waiting period from 24 hours to 72.

  • Think People On Food Stamps Are Eating More Lobster Than You? Think Again

    Lorca Henley of Bowling Green, Ohio, said her family's dinners on different nights this week included taco salads, tuna casserole with mashed potatoes, spaghetti with meat sauce and hamburgers they fried on the stove because they were out of propane. Steak, lobster and crab legs were not on the menu, even though such fare figures prominently in political debates over what food people buy with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. Henley, 42, said she's received SNAP benefits since October, when she lost her job as a registered nurse with a dialysis company.

  • The States With The Most Stay-At-Home Fathers

    In the 1970s, only six U.S. men identified themselves as stay-at-home parents. Last year, by contrast, an estimated 1.9 million fathers remained home with the kids -- accounting for 16 percent of the stay-at-home parent population, according to a HuffPost analysis of U.S. Census data. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

  • 6 Maps That Show How Deeply Segregated Baltimore Is

    Protests erupted in Baltimore this week following the  fatal arrest of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died on April 19 after sustaining a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. Almost 20 percent of Baltimore families live below the poverty level, and the median family income is $41,385. White flight, stunted economic growth and high crime  have all been issues in Baltimore over the last 60 years.

  • Black America Is Just 72 Percent Equal To White America. In Some Areas, The Inequality Is Worse Than That.

    A report released last week holds troubling findings about lasting inequality across the African-American community. The 2015 "State of Black America" study, conducted by the National Urban League, finds that black Americans fare worse than their white peers across a variety of indicators, including economics, social justice and overall equality. “What do we say and how would we frame the state of black America for 2015?

  • A Lot Fewer Americans Get Unemployment Benefits Than You Think

    The share of unemployed Americans who receive unemployment insurance benefits has dwindled to its lowest point in decades, thanks in part to benefit cuts in Republican-led states. Just 23.1 percent of unemployed workers received state unemployment benefits at the end of 2014, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank. The previous low was 25 percent in September 1984, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data going back nearly 40 years.

  • Distance Is No Big Deal For These Citizens Traveling To Selma This Weekend

    On March 7th, 1965, roughly 600 leaders and supporters of the Civil Rights Movement attempted to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, only to be met by a violent wall of police dogs, night sticks and tear gas. This year, politicians, celebrities and citizens alike are coming together for a day of remembrance. The celebration is scheduled to include a speech from President Barack Obama, a reenactment of the march and a concert in celebration of its determination and success.

  • Who Gets Food Stamps? White People, Mostly

    Gene Alday, a Republican member of the Mississippi state legislature, apologized last week for telling a reporter that all the African-Americans in his hometown of Walls, Mississippi, are unemployed and on food stamps. "I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call 'welfare crazy checks,'" Alday said to a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper, earlier this month. Nationally, most of the people who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are white.

  • The 114th Congress Is One Of The Most Diverse Ever, And That's Kinda Pathetic

    That's an accomplishment, but still a far cry from the 272 women Congress would need to actually be representative of the American public. Congress continues to be dominated by Christians, and the growing number of Americans who do not identify with any religion are hugely underrepresented. Racial minorities also fall short, with the 13.2 percent of black Americans and 17.1 percent of Hispanic Americans represented by only 8.5 and 6.9 percent of Congress, respectively.

  • Why Even A 12-Month Ban On Blood Donations From Gay Men Makes No Sense

    The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday ended the lifetime ban on blood donations from men who have sex with men. “The one-year deferral notion constitutes symbolic progress, but is not any more warranted than a lifetime ban," wrote Dr. Eli Adashi, professor of medical science at Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School, in an email to HuffPost.

  • Since Newtown, The Nationwide Trend Has Been Toward Weaker Gun Laws

    Two years ago this coming Sunday, 20-year-old Adam Lanza invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle and other weapons. Since then, there have been 95 more school shootings in the U.S., according to a report by the pro-gun control group Everytown. A separate investigation by Mother Jones found that there have been 21 fatal school shootings in the last two years.

  • Here's How You Can Honor The Newtown Victims

    This Sunday marks the two-year anniversary of the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and community organizers and gun control groups have planned a number of vigils and memorials across the country to mark the occasion. Members of the Newtown community are still deliberating the best way to permanently honor the victims, which included 20 children and 6 teachers. In the mean time, check the map below (zoom in to see multiple events in one area, and click to see location and time information) to see if there's an event near you.

  • Would You Guess There Are Fewer Amish Today? You'd Be So Wrong

    There’s no denying that the Amish are fascinating to the rest of us ("the English," in Amish terms). Many may not realize, however, that though the Amish make up only a tiny percentage of Americans (less than 0.1 percent), the Amish population has grown enormously since the early 1960s, with much of the increase occurring in the last two decades. The Amish in America trace their roots to the Anabaptists, who appeared in Switzerland during the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s.

  • All Your Favorite Halloween Candy Is Made By Only 10 Corporations

    Maybe you did it by color if you were an artistic type, or by flavor profile if you were a blossoming foodie. Most kids probably don't sort their Halloween candy according to which company owns the brand, because most kids don't know or care where their treats come from. Note: The Huffington Post defined "Halloween candy" by going to Manhattan locations of CVS, Duane Reade and Walgreens and seeing what was being sold in the Halloween aisle.

  • Proof That Coffee Is More Popular Than Tea In Pretty Much Every Country

    Is anyone surprised?

  • In Some Countries, It's Illegal To Hit Your Child. The U.S. Is Not One Of Them.

    Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted in a child injury case last week after reportedly using a small tree branch to hit his 4-year-old son in May 2014. Peterson has also been accused of abusing his other young son, though his lawyer maintained the accusations are untrue. Peterson was charged under a Texas statute that criminalizes “bodily injury” to a child “recklessly, or with criminal negligence.” Like every other state in the U.S., Texas has no law explicitly making corporal punishment at home illegal.