According to a new report released today by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), nearly one in five Americans report not having enough money to feed themselves or their family at some point last year

Joseph Williams moved more than 30 times as a child, living in homeless shelters, church basements, and the homes of family friends. Now Williams, a junior safety on the University of Virginia football team, is taking up a cause supporting university workers who are barely making enough to get by.

Williams is one of 18 Virginia students participating in a hunger strike — now more than a week long — to protest the poor wages paid to many of the university’s service employees. The strike, organized by the school’s Living Wage Campaign, began on February 17 with the goal of getting a living wage for underpaid employees. “I know first-hand what the economic struggle is like for many of these underpaid workers,” Williams wrote in an essay explaining his participation:

In failing to implement a living wage for its lowest paid employees, the University of Virginia has also failed to uphold the moral standards to which it holds its students. We are engaging in this hunger strike to call attention to the administration’s moral hypocrisy and to finally produce results in the form of a Living Wage. Although I am exhausted, hungry, dry-mouthed, and emotionally taxed, I believe it is my responsibility as a member of the University community, and even more as a member of the human race, to stand up and speak for those whose voices have been silenced and whose livelihoods are marginalized by the policies of the current University administration.

Democrats have started to wage a political assault against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and the intensity of their attacks will intensify in the coming weeks. Senior officials in the Democratic Party anticipate that Mitt Romney will win the Republican presidential nomination and then tap Rubio to be his running mate.

As states like Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, and New York are looking to raise the minimum wage, they are meeting opposition from well-funded political groups who seek to increase corporate profit. Despite the swath of misinformation painting the minimum wage is a “job killer,” John Stoher of The American Prospect points out that the minimum wage is not even growing at the speed of inflation: The federal minimum for an hourly wage was $3.35 in 1982 and now it’s $7.25, up 120 percent. Inflation, meanwhile, has climbed during that period by 135 percent. Surveys find that nearly two-thirds of Americans want the minimum wage to be at least 10 dollars. Historically, raises in the minimum wage never lead to unemployment and small businesses are not affected. So where does such fierce opposition to it come from? Enter the Employment Policies Institute, a corporate-backed spreader of misinformation and propaganda that rakes in the money every time the minimum wage issue enters the political debate (this is not to be confused with the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a think tank we often cite as legitimate).

Rick Santorum's presidential campaign "is actively seeking the support of Democrats in Tuesday's Michigan primary, running a robocall that sounds oddly like one that would be run by an organized labor group," the Washington Post reports. TPM: "Michigan's primary rules allow Dems to vote in the state's GOP primaries. The liberal site DailyKos and other progressive partners have been trying to drum up enthusiasm for 'Operation Hilarity' -- an effort to get Democrats to vote in the GOP primary and tilt the vote against Mitt Romney. The Santorum campaign evidently decided they'd take votes from any legitimate source."