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Tag: early June

  • Immigration raids linked to significant California job losses, analysis finds

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    Each month, Edward Flores crunches the numbers. And each month he grows more and more certain of the stark impact of federal immigration raids on California’s economy.

    Flores found that the number of people reporting private sector employment in California in late May and early June fell by 3.1% — a drop so significant it was exceeded in recent memory only by the employment downturn during the COVID-19 lockdown.

    The associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the UC Merced labor center based his analysis on U.S. census data from those months and published his findings over the summer.

    Flores has repeated the analysis for each month since June, with the exception of October, when the federal government shut down and for the first time in some 50 years did not collect these data.

    The employment decline grew further, with a 4.9% decrease in the first week of July — 742,492 fewer workers.

    Numbers somewhat bounced back in August, after a U.S. district judge temporarily banned roving patrols of immigration agents from stopping people based on the color of their skin, language spoken or vocation. But from May to September, private sector employment fell by 2.9%, Flores said in his latest report.

    “We are seeing a pretty persistent trend,” Flores said. “It really underscores the urgency with which our elected officials and policymakers should be devising ways of mitigating the economic harm that is occurring as a result of immigration enforcement actions.”

    The analysis shows an outsize effect on noncitizen women, whose reported employment plummeted about 8.6%, or 1 in 12 out of work after raids began to roil Los Angeles in early June.

    But citizens also showed a marked decline. From May to July, California citizens accounted for the largest share of the decline in private sector workers, about 415,000 people. But the analysis showed that the decline affected noncitizens more, with their numbers dropping by 12.3%, as compared with the 3.3% decline among citizens from May to July.

    California wasn’t the only part of the U.S. to experience an employment downturn linked to immigration enforcement, Flores said.

    In August, hundreds of National Guard troops flooded the streets of Washington, some in armored vehicles, as the federal government also deputized local police in its patrols, citing a need to crack down on out-of-control crime, even though data showed crime in the city was down.

    In that month, the number of those reporting work in the private sector in Washington, D.C., decreased 3.3%, according to the UC Merced analysis. When federal control of local police in Washington ended in September, the district saw a 0.5% increase in private sector work.

    These large declines were not seen in the rest of the country, where the number of private sector workers remained stagnant most months or saw slight increases.

    Economists say what’s clear is that the U.S. population of immigrant workers is shrinking, after more than 50 years of growth, which will have consequences for the economy.

    In January 2025, there were 53.3 million immigrants living in the U.S., making up close to 16% of the country’s population, according to the Pew Research Center. By June, the nation’s immigrant population had decreased by more than a million, to 51.9 million — and that decline has probably continued.

    Giovanni Peri, a professor of international economics at UC Davis, said he expected to see major effects on sectors with an immigrant-heavy workforce, including construction, restaurants and personal services.

    Large numbers of deportations are one factor, he said, but besides that, some will decide against immigrating to the U.S., while others already in the country will choose to leave.

    Still others will stay home, scared to go to work — particularly in cities hit hard by raids.

    “Immigrants are a very important part” of the workforce, he said. “We expect to see less growth of employment. That will be a sign both that immigrants are not coming and maybe some are leaving.”

    Flores, the UC Merced researcher, advocates for policies such as cash relief or expanding access to unemployment insurance, which undocumented immigrants are denied despite contributing payroll taxes. Such policies, giving low-income families spending power, not only would provide much-needed relief but also would help inject money into the local economy.

    “It’s the holiday season right now. There are so many families that don’t know how to put food on the table or pay their next bill,” Flores said. “As a public, we should be concerned with what is happening to people’s stability during these times.”

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    Suhauna Hussain

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  • Why Not Whitmer?

    Why Not Whitmer?

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    Why doesn’t Gretchen Whitmer just run for president? Or at least humor the suggestion?

    Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, sat cross-legged on the couch of a darkened TV studio in East Lansing, where a local PBS program called Off the Record is taped—a weird name for an interview show watched by 100,000 people.

    “I know!” agreed Whitmer, who wore a camouflage sweatshirt with Michigangster scripted across the front. We met here on a recent evening for an interview in which I would ask her—on the record—several variants of the above “running for president” question.

    No, of course she is not running for president, Whitmer told me. She 100 percent supports Joe Biden, who is great and vigorous and all of that—and not too old, definitely not too old. She just wants to help him win. Kamala Harris too. Love her!

    Clearly, though, Whitmer was happy to go through the Kabuki of being interrogated over whether she might change her mind. She didn’t bother with the annoyance that many ambitious pols feel compelled to feign—it’s such a hassle—when asked whether they might give the ol’ presidency a look. She giggled at many of my questions. Whitmer seems to genuinely enjoy being a politician, even the ridiculous and absurd parts of it, such as this.

    “So, you’re not running for president,” I said.

    “Correct,” she affirmed.

    “Why not?”

    “Because I just got reelected governor,” she replied, half-smirking. “And I made a commitment to the people of Michigan that I’m gonna fulfill it.” This has been Whitmer’s stock answer since she trounced the Republican Tudor Dixon by 11 points to win reelection last November.

    [Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]

    Okay, sure. But a few days earlier, Whitmer had announced plans for a new political-action committee, the Fight Like Hell PAC, named for her oft-stated vow to preserve abortion rights after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. The PAC will allow the governor to raise money for Democrats across the country ahead of 2024—just the kind of thing restless and term-limited statewide leaders do when they are trying to take themselves national.

    And surely Whitmer noticed that, in early June, Biden had taken an unfortunate plunge while onstage during the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation. He was fine, but the viral episode underscored how nerve-racking it can be to watch an octogenarian run for reelection. Presumably Whitmer had also seen that 67 percent of respondents to a recent CBS News poll said they don’t think Biden should seek another term, a figure that includes 75 percent of independents and 42 percent of Democrats.

    No shortage of Democratic colleagues, operatives, and donors has encouraged Whitmer to seek the presidency—and not necessarily to wait until her second term ends. She is one of the top Democrats on the “If Biden backs out” index, and has even been offered up—including by me—as someone who might consider primarying him. Polls show a bipartisan yearning to avoid a Biden-Trump rematch that is not exactly shaping up to be a rolling pageant of joy.

    I followed Whitmer on a series of high-energy events across Michigan last week. She visited a dance studio in Detroit and a sporting-goods store in Lansing, where she signed a bill—the Crown Act—that will make it illegal to discriminate against citizens based on their hair style. “For far too long, we’ve known that hair-based discrimination has been used to deny equal opportunity for Black men and women,” Whitmer said to applause from a heavily Black audience.

    She is deft at pivoting from specific issues to the broader theme of personal freedom, particularly relating to her signature cause, abortion access. “Michigan is a state where we stand up for fundamental rights,” she continued. “Whether it’s the right to make your own decisions about your health and your body, the freedom to feel safe in your community.” Her list also included the freedom to move around. “Fix the damn roads” was Whitmer’s slogan when she first ran for governor, in 2018. After considerable gridlock over how to fund the work, the state’s roads are now plugged with orange construction barrels. “Our new state flower,” she calls them.

    Whitmer’s governing course has been bumpy at times, especially in her first term, when she confronted Republican majorities in both houses of the legislature. To pay for the road repairs, she proposed a 45-cent-per-gallon gas-tax increase—a deeply unpopular idea that quickly crashed. Whitmer would eventually bypass the legislature and pay for the road repairs through several billion dollars in bonds approved by the State Transportation Commission.

    [Read: Why Biden shouldn’t run in 2024]

    A hyperlocal message like “Fix the damn roads” is good for a cheerleader governor but not always a vehicle that travels well. Whitmer is, for better or worse, extremely Michigan—possessed of one of the thickest native accents I’ve heard, a pronounced northern twang that evokes the Upper Peninsula more than Detroit. She’s lived in the state for all of her 51 years: childhood in Lansing and Grand Rapids, college and law school at Michigan State, stints in the state House and Senate, a vacation cottage up north. Her foul-mouthed irreverence, goofy humor, and ability to pound beers and disarm adversaries make her a formidable operator in Lansing.

    “You could drop Gretchen Whitmer anywhere, and she can connect immediately,” Mike Duggan, the longtime mayor of Detroit, told me. “You could be sitting here in Detroit, up in Marquette talking about mining. She listens intently. People feel, like, a bond with her.”

    Across the state, Whitmer is known affectionately as “Big Gretch.” It’s not clear where the moniker started, and Whitmer didn’t love it at first. “There aren’t many women who want ‘Big’ on the front of her nickname,” she told me. But she went with it, in keeping with the ethos of her favorite movie, The Big Lebowski. The governor has embraced the film’s walk-off line—“The Dude abides”—as a personal credo of acceptance and willingness to roll with imperfect circumstances.

    Whitmer achieved national prominence during the pandemic, and it was not all pleasant—including a kidnapping plot against her for which the FBI arrested a motley but heavily armed band of self-styled militia men. Her lockdown policies faced fierce and at times unruly opposition. She was also a target of President Donald Trump, who dismissed her as “that woman from Michigan.” Whitmer took pride in the brush-off, put the quote on a T-shirt, and wore it on TV. Biden’s campaign team vetted her as a possible running mate in 2020. Whitmer said at the time that she was happy in her “dream job,” which is what politicians tend to say while they’re contemplating another one.

    [Gretchen Whitmer: The plot to kidnap me]

    Whitmer has two daughters in college and lives in the governor’s mansion with her second husband, Marc Mallory, a dentist, and their two dogs, a labradoodle (Kevin) and Aussiedoodle (Doug). As a matter of personal bias, I told Whitmer I am supportive of people giving human names to their pets. Or maybe I was just trying to flatter her into answering the question about running for president—crack the door open just a little and spare us this recurrent parade of elderlies.

    Whitmer, obviously, took none of my bait. She kept laughing, though—abided, even. “You know, it’s funny; ‘The Dude abides’—it’s a really wise philosophy,” she observed during our brief detour into film study. “There are just things you can’t control.”

    I took this to mean that Whitmer is ruling nothing out and is willing to adapt to the unforeseen. I pointed out that Americans were starved for new national leaders. Whitmer did not dispute this. Nor have Democrats nominated a fresh face since Barack Obama—and he had to jump the line for that to happen, in 2008, when it was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s turn. Is Whitmer willing to “fight like hell” to upset the entrenched political order, or is that just a slogan?

    I also mentioned that if the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can poll as high as 20 percent in the Democratic primary field, then many Democratic voters are clearly open to—even desperate for—someone not named Biden on the ballot. Why not give them a serious alternative?

    [Read: Joe Biden isn’t popular. That might not matter in 2024.]

    “You know, there are a lot of really talented Democratic leaders all across the country,” Whitmer told me. She would be proud to be considered among them.

    What if Biden changes his mind?

    “He’s running!”

    “Okay, but you saw him fall the other day,” I said. “Did your thinking, in that split second before Biden got up, change at all?”

    “No!”

    Whitmer was still laughing at this point, but I might have been pushing things—approaching dark and disrespectful. I had a flight to catch in Detroit, and a long drive from Lansing, with construction to contend with. “We’ll keep talkin’. How’s that?” Whitmer said. “And one of these days, we’ll have a beer. Or three.”

    We left things there, and the Michigangster governor returned to her lane, for now.

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    Mark Leibovich

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  • Why Biden Caved

    Why Biden Caved

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    The White House and Congress have not made much progress in their talks to avert an unprecedented, and potentially calamitous, national default that could occur as soon as early June. But on the most fundamental point of dispute, President Joe Biden has already caved: He’s negotiating with Republicans over the debt ceiling.

    For months, the president’s ironclad position has been that the debt ceiling is not a bargaining chip. No longer would Democrats allow Republicans to hold hostage the nation’s creditworthiness and economic prestige. Paying the government’s bills by raising the U.S.’s statutory borrowing limit would be nonnegotiable. As recently as Friday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declared without equivocation, “We are not going to negotiate over the debt limit.”

    But Biden himself has dropped the pretense that his weeks-long budget discussions with the GOP have not revolved around the debt ceiling. Asked specifically about the debt ceiling on Sunday—in anticipation of a second White House visit by congressional leaders, planned for today—Biden told reporters, “Well, I’ve learned a long time ago, and you know as well as I do: It never is good to characterize a negotiation in the middle of a negotiation.”

    Read: This debt crisis is not like 2011’s. It’s worse.

    So there you go: It’s a negotiation. Exactly what the two parties are discussing is only starting to become clear. According to various reports, a deal to avert default could include some changes to permitting rules that would speed up domestic-energy production; a revocation of unused COVID funds; additional work requirements for some federal programs (although the president has ruled out any modifications to Medicaid); and, most significant, a cap on overall federal spending.

    The Biden administration still claims to be haggling only over the budget, not the debt ceiling. “The president has been emphasizing for months that he’s eager to have budget negotiations,” a White House official, who requested anonymity to explain the administration’s somewhat tortured position, told me. “That’s of course different from avoiding default, which is nonnegotiable.”

    Biden’s no-negotiation stance was born of past experience, when in 2011 Republicans dragged out debt talks with the Obama administration to the brink of default, resulting in a downgrade of the U.S.’s credit rating. But Biden’s approach this time is proving to be neither realistic nor sustainable, especially after Speaker Kevin McCarthy defied expectations last month by getting a budget-slashing debt-ceiling bill through his narrow House majority.

    Crucially, Biden failed to win strong support for his strategy from House centrists. Democrats had been hoping to persuade Republicans representing swing districts to buck McCarthy and help pass a debt-ceiling increase. But those lawmakers have stuck by the speaker. Complaining about a lack of outreach from the White House, they instead criticized Biden over his refusal—until recently—to negotiate. With Republicans unwilling to budge, Democratic centrists began to lose patience with Biden’s approach and conducted their own bipartisan negotiations.

    “We believe it’s very important in general that both sides sit down and try to work this out,” Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, the Democratic co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, told me before Biden’s first meeting last week with McCarthy and other top congressional leaders. “This can’t become a part of a political back-and-forth as the country drives off the cliff.”

    Read: “We used to be called moderate. We are not moderate.”

    Last month the Problem Solvers offered their own plan, which they presented as a fallback option that could win bipartisan support should Biden and McCarthy fail to strike a deal in time. The proposal would immediately suspend the borrowing limit through the end of the year to buy time for broader budget talks. If Congress agrees to unspecified budget limits and creates a fiscal commission to tackle the nation’s long-term deficits and debt, the plan stipulates that the debt ceiling would be increased through the 2024 elections.

    The compromise has yet to gain momentum, but its release seemed to undermine the Biden administration’s insistence that Democrats would not tie a debt-ceiling increase to spending reforms. “We didn’t try to fill in every blank, but we thought this was a really good framework to become the meat of the deal,” Representative Scott Peters of California, a Democrat who helped write the Problem Solvers plan, told me.

    It could still prove handy. Biden struck an optimistic note on Sunday, telling reporters, “I really think there’s a desire on [Republicans’] part, as well as ours, to reach an agreement, and I think we’ll be able to do it.” But McCarthy is sounding more dour. “I still think we’re far apart,” he told NBC News yesterday morning. The speaker said that Biden “hasn’t taken it serious” and warned that an agreement needed to happen by this weekend in order for the House and Senate to have time to debate and pass it by early June.

    Whether a Biden-McCarthy deal could even get through the House is also in question. Democrats have largely stayed quiet on Biden’s evident capitulation to Republicans, and the talks initially did not stir a backlash. But that may be changing as the president openly considers concessions that would be anathema to progressives, such as the possibility of adding work requirements to social safety-net programs. Still, the lack of a credible primary challenge to Biden’s reelection has helped give him room to negotiate, as Democrats fret about the effect that a default could have on the president’s already tenuous public standing.

    “As long as he continues to try to avoid default, and avoid the middle class having to pay the cost for it, then he’s in the position that the majority of the electorate wants him to be,” Jesse Ferguson, a longtime Democratic strategist, told me.

    McCarthy has much more to worry about. He traded away his own job security to win the speakership in January, agreeing to rule changes that would make it easier for hard-right conservatives to depose him. A debt-ceiling deal that fails to secure deep enough spending cuts or policy concessions from Democrats could threaten his position. “Default can be avoided. The question is whether Kevin McCarthy could withstand putting that bill on the floor,” Ferguson said.

    The speaker has secured no substantive commitments from Biden, nothing specific that he can sell to his party. But McCarthy has elicited one major concession from the president, which serves as a prerequisite for any others to come. Biden has come to the table with default in the balance, and he’s negotiating on the GOP’s terms.

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    Russell Berman

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