ReportWire

Tag: latino people

  • Fact check: Biden makes false claims about the debt and deficit in jobs speech | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes false claims about the debt and deficit in jobs speech | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    During a Friday speech about the September jobs report, President Joe Biden delivered a rapid-fire series of three false or misleading claims – falsely saying that he has cut the debt, falsely crediting a tax policy that didn’t take effect until 2023 for improving the budget situation in 2021 and 2022, and misleadingly saying that he has presided over an “actual surplus.”

    At a separate moment of the speech, Biden used outdated figures to boast of setting record lows in the unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics and people with disabilities. While the rates for these three groups hit record lows earlier in his presidency, he didn’t acknowledge that they have all since increased to non-record levels – and, in fact, are now higher than they were during parts of Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Here’s a fact check.

    Biden said in the Friday speech that Republicans want to “cut taxes for the very wealthy and big corporations,” which would add to the deficit. That’s fair game.

    But then he added: “I was able to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion over the first two-and-a – two years. Well remember what we talked about. Those 50 corporations that made $40 billion, weren’t paying a penny in taxes? Well guess what – we made them pay 30%. Uh, 15% in taxes – 15%. Nowhere near what they should pay. And guess what? We were able to pay for everything, and we end up with an actual surplus.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims were thoroughly inaccurate. First, he has not cut the federal debt, which has increased by more than $5.7 trillion during his presidency so far after rising about $7.8 trillion during Trump’s full four-year tenure; it is the budget deficit (the one-year difference between spending and revenues), not the national debt (the accumulation of federal borrowing plus interest owed), that fell by $1.7 trillion over his first two fiscal years in office. Second, Biden’s 15% corporate minimum tax on certain large profitable corporations did not take effect until the first day of 2023, so it could not possibly have been responsible for the deficit reduction in fiscal 2021 and 2022. Third, there is no “actual surplus”; the federal government continues to run a budget deficit well over $1 trillion.

    CNN has previously debunked Biden’s false claims about supposedly having cut the “debt” and about the new corporate minimum tax supposedly being responsible for deficit reduction in 2021 and 2022. The White House, which declined to comment on the record for this article, has corrected previous official transcripts when Biden has claimed that the debt fell by $1.7 trillion, acknowledging that he should have said deficit.

    As for Biden’s vague additional claim that “we end up with an actual surplus,” a White House official said Friday that the president was referring to how the particular law in which the new minimum tax was contained, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, is projected to reduce the deficit. But Biden did not explain this unusual-at-best use of “surplus” – and since he had just been talking about the overall budget picture, he certainly made it sound like he was claiming to have presided over a surplus in the overall budget. He has not done so.

    Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal think tank, said in response to the White House explanation: “Well he didn’t say ‘budget surplus’ I suppose. But in federal budget conversations, the word surplus has a very specific meaning. It doesn’t mean ‘additional,’ it means revenues exceed spending.” He noted earlier Friday that there hasn’t been a federal budget surplus since 2001.

    It’s worth noting, as we have before, that Biden’s Friday comments would be missing key context even if he had not inaccurately replaced the word “deficit” with “debt.” It’s highly questionable how much credit Biden himself deserves for the decline in the deficit in 2021 and 2022. Independent analysts say it occurred largely because emergency Covid-19 relief spending from fiscal 2020 expired as scheduled – and that Biden’s own new laws and executive actions have significantly added to current and projected future deficits. In addition, the 2023 deficit is widely expected to be higher than the 2022 deficit.

    More on the corporate minimum tax

    When Biden spoke Friday about “those 50 corporations that made $40 billion, weren’t paying a penny in taxes,” he was referring, as he has in the past, to an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis published in 2021 that listed 55 companies the think tank found had paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year.

    But it was imprecise, at best, for Biden to say Friday that we made “them” pay 15% in taxes. That’s because the new 15% minimum tax applies only to companies that have an average annual financial statement income of $1 billion or more – there are lots of nuances involved; you can read more details here – and only 14 of the 55 companies on the think tank’s list reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion. In other words, some large and profitable companies will not be hit with the tax.

    The federal government’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation projected last year that the tax would shrink deficits by about $222 billion through 2031, with positive impacts beginning in 2023. Gardner said Friday that he fully expects the tax to play a role in reducing deficits going forward, but he said its deficit-reducing impact “might be lower than expected” in 2023 because the Treasury Department – which has been the subject of intense lobbying from corporations that could be affected – has taken so long to implement the details of the law that the Internal Revenue Service ended up waiving penalties on companies that don’t make estimated tax payments on it this year.

    Regardless, Gardner said, “The minimum tax did not reduce the deficit at all in fiscal years 2021 or 2022 because it didn’t exist during those years.”

    Early in the Friday speech, Biden boasted of statistics from the September jobs report that was released earlier in the day. But then he said, “We’ve achieved a 70-year low in unemployment rate for women, record lows in unemployment for African Americans and Hispanic workers, and people with disabilities – folks who’ve been left behind in previous recoveries and left behind for too long.”

    Facts First: Three of these four Biden unemployment boasts are misleading because they are out of date. Only his claim about a 70-year low for women’s unemployment remains current. While the unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics and people with disabilities did fall to record lows earlier in Biden’s presidency, they have since increased – to rates higher than the rates during various periods of the Trump administration.

    Women: The seasonally adjusted women’s unemployment rate was 3.4% in September. That’s a tick upward from the 3.3% rate during two previous months of 2023, but it’s still tied – with two months of the Trump administration – for the lowest for this group since 1953, 70 years ago.

    African Americans: The seasonally adjusted Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in September, up from the record low of 4.7% in April. The current 5.7% rate is higher than this group’s rates during four months of 2019, under Trump.

    Hispanics: The seasonally adjusted Hispanic unemployment rate was 4.6% in September, up from the record low of 3.9% from September 2022. The current 4.6% rate is higher than this group’s rates for every month from April 2019 through February 2020 under Trump, plus a smattering of prior Trump-era months.

    People with disabilities: The unemployment rate for people with disabilities, ages 16 and up, was 7.3% in September, up from a record low of 5.0% in December 2022. (The figures only go back to 2008, so the record was for a period of less than two decades.) The current 7.3% rate is higher than this group’s rates during eight months of the Trump presidency, seven of them in 2019.

    Source link

  • ‘Race neutral’ replaces affirmative action. What’s next? | CNN Politics

    ‘Race neutral’ replaces affirmative action. What’s next? | CNN Politics

    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    When the Supreme Court cut affirmative action out of college admissions programs Thursday, it did not outlaw the goal of achieving diversity, but it set a new “race-neutral” standard for considering applicants.

    That term – “race neutral” – does not appear in the opinion of the court, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, which states that colleges and universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin.”

    But when Roberts clarifies that students can still refer to their race in admissions essays, explaining challenges they’ve overcome, he and the majority are buying into the idea of race neutrality.

    Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote his own concurring opinion, uses the term “race neutral” repeatedly, offering it as an antidote to affirmative action.

    Pointing to efforts in California and Michigan to enroll diverse classes at top universities even after voters in those states ended affirmative action, Thomas says race-neutral policies can “achieve the same benefits of racial harmony and equality without any of the burdens and strife generated by affirmative action policies.”

    Justice Sonia Sotomayor shot back at Thomas and the majority, rejecting the term.

    “The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored,” she wrote.

    For more on this view, read this piece in The Atlantic by scholars Uma Jayakumar and Ibram Kendi: “‘Race Neutral’ Is the New ‘Separate but Equal.’”

    If the experience of California and Michigan – where voters ended affirmative action programs years ago – is any indication, we can expect that the representation of Black and Latino students at top-level universities will fall.

    Those states argued in briefings to the court that their race-neutral efforts have not been completely successful, particularly at top-tier, flagship public schools, in creating environments that are inclusive for all.

    California has, according to its brief, tried race-neutral measures that “run the gamut from outreach programs directed at low-income students and students from families with little college experience, to programs designed to increase UC’s geographic reach, to holistic admissions policies.”

    While it has made strides, it says, there is a shortfall “especially apparent at UC’s most selective campuses, where African American, Native American, and Latinx students are underrepresented and widely report struggling with feelings of racial isolation.”

    In California, half of the college-age population – 18-24 – is Latino, according to data from the Public Policy Institute of California. Compare that with just 27% of enrollees for 2022 at the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses who the UC system categorizes as Hispanic/Latinx.

    On the other hand, less than 13% of the college-age population is Asian, compared with 38% of UC enrollees.

    A little more than quarter of college-age Californians are White, compared with 18% of UC enrollees.

    Five percent of UC enrollees are African American, which is about on par with the 5.6% of college-age Californians who are Black.

    The figures change in comparison with the system overall at UC Berkeley, the system’s flagship undergraduate campus, where a smaller portion of entrants in 2022 were categorized as African American / Black (3.6%) and Chicanx / Latinx (21.1%), and more were White (30.7%) and Asian (52.1%).

    It’s also interesting to note that the Supreme Court exempted military academies from the decision. They can, presumably, still utilize affirmative action even though they are the higher learning institutions over which the federal government has the most control. The court, according to the majority opinion, feels the academies have “potentially distinct interests.”

    Those interests were perhaps outlined by former military leaders who wrote a brief last year arguing affirmative action aided national security.

    Meanwhile, even though race is off the table as a determinative factor, schools like Harvard University can and still will very much take into account whether an applicant’s parents went there, how much their parents might be able to donate and whether an applicant can help their sports teams.

    “While the actual language of the Supreme Court will come across as very intellectualized and esoteric, as if in a classroom, in reality, how will this work?” wondered Laura Coates, CNN’s chief legal analyst, appearing on the network Thursday.

    “How will you be able to have certain color blindedness but then at the same time allowed to take into account one’s experiences when race has been a part of that? That’s the devil in the details of every affirmative action case.”

    CNN’s Nicquel Terry Ellis wrote about what the data suggests will happen:

    A study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that colleges and universities are less likely to meet or exceed their current levels of racial diversity in the absence of race-conscious admissions. They are also less likely to reflect the racial makeup of the population graduating from the nation’s high schools.

    Zack Mabel, a researcher for Georgetown’s Center for Education and the Workforce, told her race-neutral practices have not driven the diversity many colleges hoped for, and some students are simply not applying. Read more from Terry Ellis.

    Creating a more equitable and representative workforce has been a public aim in corporate America, where companies have created diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, departments. Multiple corporations – from Apple to IKEA – asked the Supreme Court to allow affirmative action to continue so that their potential workforce is more diverse.

    But efforts to recruit students of color in the race-neutral, post-affirmative-action world will be complicated in states where there is a growing backlash to diversity efforts.

    CNN’s Leah Asmelash recently wrote:

    More than a dozen state legislatures have introduced or passed bills reining in DEI programs in colleges and universities, claiming the offices eat up valuable financial resources with little impact.

    “The ruling by the Court’s six Republican-appointed justices prevents higher-education institutions from considering race in admissions precisely as kids of color, for the first time, comprise a majority of the nation’s high-school graduates,” writes Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor at The Atlantic and a senior political analyst for CNN.

    He suggests the decision will “widen the mismatch between a youth population that is rapidly diversifying and a student body that is likely to remain preponderantly white in the elite colleges and universities that serve as the pipeline for leadership in the public and private sectors.”

    Rather than ease social tension, he argues, the new race-neutral requirement could actually propel it.

    Source link

  • The Fed could easily drive Black unemployment much higher than the overall jobless rate | CNN Business

    The Fed could easily drive Black unemployment much higher than the overall jobless rate | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Millions of jobs could be on the chopping block this year, as the Federal Reserve continues its rate-hiking campaign to tame inflation. But the effects of that action likely won’t reverberate evenly across the economy.

    The Fed has seen some success: Inflation has cooled for eighth consecutive months, according to the February Consumer Price Index. The Producer Price Index shows a dramatic drop in wholesale prices in February. And the Fed’s favored inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, has also started to moderate.

    But the job market has proved to be a formidable force, humming steadily in the face of climbing rates meant to slow its growth. After adding more than half a million jobs in January, the US economy then added 311,000 jobs in February, with an unemployment rate of 3.6% — just above a half-century low — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    However, the jobless rate isn’t expected to be that low for long.

    At its most recent policy-making meeting, the Fed released projections for the year ahead that showed unemployment could jump to 4.5%, representing another 1.5 million job losses, by the end of the year.

    While that’s a small improvement from the central bank’s previous 4.6% jobless rate estimate, economists say it’s possible the unemployment rate could rise above the Fed’s expectations. Moreover, they say that historically disadvantaged groups could be disproportionately affected by the central bank’s stringent monetary policy.

    While some groups often sidelined in the job market have seen benefits from this hot job market — women have seen a faster pace of job gains than men in recent months, for example — others, including Black women and Latino men, have seen slower recoveries in jobless rates since the onset of the Covid pandemic.

    Recession fears gained traction last month when the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sent markets wobbling, raising concerns about the economy’s ability to handle more stress. Goldman Sachs revised its estimate of the United States entering a recession over the next 12 months to a 35% chance, up from its estimate of a 25% chance before the banking sector turmoil.

    That’s of particular concern to certain demographic groups: Jobless rates for Black and Hispanic Americans often increase by more than those of their White counterparts during recessions, said Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher focusing on demographics and social trends at the Pew Research Center.

    History makes that discrepancy clear.

    A Pew Research Center report comparing two recessions in recent decades shows how Black and Hispanic Americans experience disproportionate effects on their jobless rates during periods of economic downturn. From the second quarter of 2007 to the second quarter of 2009, during the Great Recession, the unemployment rate rose 6.5 percentage points for Black Americans. The Hispanic unemployment rate climbed 6.3 percentage points. For White workers, it increased 4 percentage points.

    And from the first quarter of 1990 to the first quarter of 1991, the unemployment rate climbed 1.4 percentage points for Black Americans and 2.1 percentage points for Hispanic Americans. The White unemployment rate rose 1.3 percentage points.

    Economists say it’s hard to guess the trajectory of the unemployment rate this year, noting it could very well exceed the Fed’s estimate.

    “There’s just tons of momentum, and once you slow the economy enough to get the unemployment rate moving up, it’s very hard to sort of turn that cruise ship back around,” said Josh Bivens, research director and chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

    As such, the Fed’s tightening efforts could easily drive the Black unemployment rate much higher than the overall jobless rate, said William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and chief economist to the AFL-CIO.

    “If the Fed continues to use unemployment as its measure of labor force slack, and thinks they want a 4.5% unemployment rate — to make that happen, the Fed would have to induce net job loss in the labor market,” Spriggs told CNN in an email. “If we go through two months of negative job growth, all bets are off. The Black unemployment rate will easily get to 9% in that scenario.”

    One other likely consequence of growing unemployment is slowing wage growth, Bivens said.

    Like rising unemployment, stunted wage growth tends to hit marginalized groups harder. A 2021 Economic Policy Institute report shows that a 1 percentage point increase in overall unemployment correlates with about 0.5% slower wage growth for White median hourly wages. Wage growth falls by roughly 0.8% for Black median hourly wages.

    “A lot of people have this idea that in a recession, if unemployment rises by a couple of percentage points, as long as you’re not one of those unlucky people to lose the job, you’ve dodged the bullet,” Bivens said. “And that’s not true at all.”

    Still, a robust labor market isn’t a permanent solution to bridging employment disparities, even if the Fed does keep rates lower, says Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.

    The job market’s recent strength is unsustainable, she said. The US economy needs about 75,000 net job gains a month to keep stable and is currently adding about 350,000 net job gains a month on average, according to Edelberg.

    “[The Fed is] right to be confident that one of the things that’s going to have to happen to get inflation back down to a normal, stable level is to get job growth to a normal, sustainable level,” Edelberg said. “But if the Fed’s actions resulted in a slower labor market, then inflation stayed high — that would be a disaster.”

    The March jobs report from the Department of Labor, due to be released Friday at 8:30 a.m., is expected to show the US economy gained 240,000 positions last month. ADP’s private-sector payroll report, generally seen by investors as a proxy for the trajectory of Friday’s number, fell short of expectations, with just 145,000 jobs added. Economists had expected private hiring would rise by 200,000 positions last month.

    Source link

  • Democrats in Connecticut want to ban state agencies from using ‘Latinx’ | CNN Politics

    Democrats in Connecticut want to ban state agencies from using ‘Latinx’ | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Several state Democratic lawmakers in Connecticut are seeking to ban state agencies from using “Latinx,” – the latest example of political backlash against the term.

    Members of the Connecticut state House introduced a bill last month that would prohibit state agencies and employees acting on behalf of state agencies from using “Latinx” in official communications.

    Rep. Geraldo Reyes, one of the primary sponsors of the bill, told CNN on Thursday that he and his colleagues behind the bill are Puerto Rican and consider the term offensive.

    “It’s a term that we believe is unnecessary because the Spanish language, which is 1,500-plus years old, already identifies male, female and neutral,” Reyes said on “CNN Newsroom,” adding that “Latin” and “Latino” were both gender-neutral options.

    Reyes told CNN that a state House committee is screening the bill, and that he hopes it will soon receive a public hearing. If the committee approves the bill, it would need to pass the state House and Senate and be signed by the governor before it becomes law. Democrats have full government control in Connecticut.

    Some activists, academics, companies and progressive groups have adopted “Latinx” in an effort to include those who fall outside the male/female gender binary. But many Hispanics and Latinos take issue with the term, calling it clunky and nonsensical for Spanish speakers.

    The term has also been swept up into the nation’s culture wars. In one of her first acts as Arkansas governor, Republican Sarah Huckabee Sanders barred the use of “Latinx” in official state documents and ordered a review of state agencies’ past usage of the term. GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Texas, meanwhile, mocked the term during her victory speech last November, characterizing her win as “a victory for every single Hispanic who loves the Spanish language and does not want to be called Latinx.”

    While “Latinx” is often derided by those on the right, politicians from both parties have expressed opposition to the term. Aside from the state lawmakers in Connecticut, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said in 2021 that he had instructed his office not to use the term in official communications.

    “Look y’all. Hispanic, Latin American are gender neutral. So we have already gender neutral options to describe the Latino community. Adding an x and creating a new word comes off as performative,” Gallego tweeted at the time. “It will not lose you an election but if your staff and consultants use Latinx in your mass communication it likely means they don’t understand the Latino community and is indicative of deeper problems.”

    Data suggests that “Latinx” is not widely used among the people it is meant to describe.

    A Pew Research Center survey published in 2020 found that only about one in four adults in the US who identify as Hispanic or Latino have heard the term “Latinx,” while just 3% say they use it to describe themselves. Those who used the term tended to be younger, US-born and Democratic-leaning. They were also more likely to be bilingual or predominately English speakers and were more likely to have gone to college.

    Similarly, a 2021 Gallup poll found that just 4% of Hispanic and Latino Americans prefer the term “Latinx” over “Hispanic” and “Latinx,” though a majority of respondents said it didn’t matter to them which term was used.

    Other surveys point to divides along cultural lines. An Axios-Ipsos Latino poll in partnership with Telemundo from last year found that a majority of Mexican Americans surveyed were comfortable with the term “Latinx,” while around just one in three Central Americans were.

    Critics of “Latinx” have noted that the term falls outside the bounds of Spanish grammar and is difficult for Spanish speakers to pronounce. And given its popularity among predominately English speakers, some also feel that the term imposes English conventions upon Spanish speakers.

    In recent years, others have opted for new alternatives such as “Latiné,” which is gender-neutral and more consistent with the way Spanish is spoken.

    Source link

  • Meet the history-makers of the 118th Congress | CNN Politics

    Meet the history-makers of the 118th Congress | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The 118th Congress, being sworn in Tuesday, will eclipse several records set by the outgoing Congress.

    It features a record-setting number of women, 149 – expanding female representation by just two members above the record set by the 117th Congress. Overall, women of color will also break a record for their representation this year, with 58 serving, and within the House alone, there will be a record number of both Latinas and Black women.

    The new Congress also boasts the House’s first Gen-Z lawmaker and the longest-serving woman in congressional history.

    Some newcomers, Republicans and Democrats alike, also achieved historic firsts in their own states, ushering a diverse group into a politically split Washington.

    Here’s a look at the lawmakers, some new and some returning, who are making history in each chamber during this session of Congress.

    Alabama: Republican Katie Britt is the first woman elected to the Senate from Alabama, winning an open seat vacated by her onetime boss, GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, who held the seat for nearly four decades.

    Alabama’s two previous female senators both were appointed to fill vacancies.

    California: Democrat Alex Padilla will be the first elected Latino senator from California, winning a special election for the remainder of Vice President Kamala Harris’ term as well as an election for a full six-year term. Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrant parents, was appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to the seat Harris vacated when she became vice president.

    Oklahoma: Republican Markwayne Mullin will be the first Native American senator from Oklahoma in almost 100 years, winning the special election to succeed GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe, who is resigning. Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, represented the state’s 2nd Congressional District in the last Congress. Democrat Robert Owen, also a member of the Cherokee Nation, represented Oklahoma in the Senate from 1907 to 1925.

    AZ-06: Juan Ciscomani will be the first Latino Republican elected to Congress from Arizona. Ciscomani, who was born in Mexico and immigrated to the US with his family as a child, previously worked at the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and was a senior adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

    CA-42: Democrat Robert Garcia will be the first out LGBTQ immigrant elected to Congress. Garcia, who immigrated from Lima, Peru, in the early 1980s at the age of 5, has been the mayor of Long Beach.

    CO-08: Democrat Yadira Caraveo will be the first Latina elected to Congress from Colorado. Caraveo, a state representative and the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, defeated Republican state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer to win the seat located north of Denver.

    FL-10: Democrat Maxwell Frost will be the first Gen-Z member of Congress after winning the open seat for Florida’s 10th Congressional District.

    The 25-year-old representative-elect told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on November 9 that when President Joe Biden called to congratulate him, the president recalled being too young to be sworn in as a senator when he was first elected at age 29.

    “He asked me if it was the same situation. I said, ‘No, Mr. President, you had me beat on that. I’m already old enough to be sworn in on January 3.’ So, it was great to talk with him. You know, he was elected at a very young age, too, so he understands that experience,” Frost said on “CNN This Morning.”

    IL-03: Democrat Delia Ramirez will be the first Latina elected to Congress from Illinois. Ramirez, who served as a Chicago-area state representative and is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, was also the first Guatemalan American to serve in the Illinois General Assembly.

    IL-17: Democrat Eric Sorensen will be the first out gay person elected to Congress from Illinois. Sorensen, a former Rockford and Quad Cities meteorologist, defeated Republican Esther Joy King in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos.

    MI-10: Republican John James of Michigan will be the first Black Republican elected to Congress from Michigan, winning the open-seat race for the redrawn 10th Congressional District in the Detroit suburbs.

    MI-13: Democrat Shri Thanedar will be the first Indian American elected to Congress from Michigan. Thaneder, who immigrated to the US from India, was elected to the Michigan House in 2020 and unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2018.

    NY-03: Republican George Santos won the first House election between two out gay candidates – in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. Santos, the son of Brazilian immigrants, defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman for the Long Island-based seat.

    Santos is entering the House under intense scrutiny after admitting to lying about key pieces of his background while state and federal prosecutors look into his finances and fellow lawmakers voice their outrage over his resume fabrications.

    OH-09: Democrat Marcy Kaptur will become the longest-serving woman in Congress when she’s sworn in to represent the state’s 9th Congressional District for her 21st term. Kaptur, who was first elected in 1982 and is currently the longest-serving woman in House history, will break the record set by Barbara Mikulski, who represented Maryland in the House and Senate for a combined 40 years.

    OR-5 and 6: Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Democrat Andrea Salinas will be the first two Latinos elected to Congress from Oregon.

    Chavez-DeRemer, who is Mexican American, will represent the 5th Congressional District, succeeding Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader.

    Salinas, whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico, won the state’s newly created 6th Congressional District.

    PA-12: Democrat Summer Lee will be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania. Lee, who had been a Pittsburgh-area state representative, will succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle.

    VT: Democrat Becca Balint will be the first woman and first openly LGBTQ person elected to Congress from Vermont. She will succeed Rep. Peter Welch, who was elected to represent the state in the Senate.

    WA-03: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will be the first Latino Democrat elected to Congress from Washington state. Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto repair shop owner whose father immigrated to the US from Mexico, defeated Republican Joe Kent to succeed GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who finished third in the August top-two primary. Herrera Beutler was herself the first Hispanic member of Congress from Washington state.

    Source link

  • Airbnb finds people have more trouble booking stays if hosts think they are Black | CNN Business

    Airbnb finds people have more trouble booking stays if hosts think they are Black | CNN Business


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Airbnb on Tuesday said it has found a “meaningful difference” in the booking success rate for users who are perceived to be White compared to those who are perceived to be Black. The findings come after the company launched an initiative to uncover and remedy race-based discrimination on its platform.

    While all users successfully had their reservations confirmed by hosts more than 90% of the time in 2021, Airbnb said it found a notable gap in user experiences during that time depending on their apparent racial identity. Users who were perceived to be White had a booking success rate of 94.1% while users who were thought to be Black had a success rate of 91.4%, according to the company. (Those perceived as Asian and Latino/Hispanic had booking success rates sitting in between.)

    “It is a meaningful difference, and it’s unacceptable,”Janaye Ingram, Airbnb’s director of community partner programs and engagement, told CNN. “It is something that we obviously are not okay with and we are doing a lot to address.”

    The findings are part of Project Lighthouse, an effort launched by Airbnb in 2020 to collect data on racial discrepancies on its service. The project was developed in partnership with Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, and with the support of other national privacy and civil rights organizations like the NAACP and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

    Airbnb’s efforts to address racial disparity on its platform come after the company repeatedly faced scrutiny on the issue. A 2015 study from Harvard found that Airbnb hosts were less likely to rent to guests with names that sounded African American. The next year, Airbnb was hit with a lawsuit accusing it of discriminatory housing practices. (A federal judge later blocked the suit.) And in 2019, the company settled a lawsuit from several Black women in Oregon alleging customers were discriminated against based on their race.

    The company said Tuesday that information collected through the Project Lighthouse initiative is being used to inform the company’s approach to bookings and reviews in an effort to minimize racial discrimination for prospective guests.

    “You can’t fix what you don’t measure,” Ingram said.

    Airbnb has taken a number of steps in recent years to address concerns about racial disparities on its platform, including getting rid of guests’ profile pictures prior to booking, making more people eligible for the “Instant Book” feature that bypasses host approval, auditing booking rejections and making it easier for all guests to receive reviews, according to the company.

    On Tuesday, Airbnb said Project Lighthouse revealed another potential issue in need of tweaking: guests with more reviews have higher booking success rates than those without, and guests perceived to be White or Asian have more reviews than others. In response, Airbnb plans to make it easier for all guests to receive a review when they travel, an effort that it hopes will have a large impact on the Black and Latino or Hispanic communities.

    The findings released on Tuesday come after Airbnb conducted two racial audits in 2016 and 2019.

    “Racial audits work, as long as corporations make the changes necessary to address what they expose,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color Of Change. “Six years after Airbnb’s first racial audit, and two years after Color Of Change negotiated Project Lighthouse, Airbnb is now a leading example of what it looks like to back up the rhetoric of racial justice with the policy, practice and personnel that can prevent rampant racial discrimination.”

    Source link

  • Racist rhetoric greets increasing population of Latino students in this Tennessee county | CNN

    Racist rhetoric greets increasing population of Latino students in this Tennessee county | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Sitting in the back of a packed room in the Hamilton County Schools administration complex, Clara fought the urge to leave. She had taken the day off from her factory job to be there but was nervous to see a crowd of people supporting a board member who had referred to Latino students as a burden.

    On that fall afternoon, the mother of three felt like she carried the weight of those parents who wanted to defend their children but couldn’t show up out of fear, or could not leave their workplaces early to attend the school board meeting. Latino families who call Chattanooga, Tennessee, and its surrounding towns home are not invisible, and they don’t want to be a regular target of racist rhetoric and unequal treatment, she told CNN.

    “It hurts when someone speaks without really knowing our people and uses ill words to humiliate our children. It hurts because it’s hard to try to understand (English), be there, arrive on time and support my kids at school,” said Clara, 52, whose two younger sons attend schools in the district.

    “I’m not leaving because I want a much better future for my children,” she said.

    CNN agreed to only use Clara’s first name to protect her identity out of respect for her safety concerns.

    In the months since a Hamilton County Schools school board member suggested the rising number of Latino students who speak little to no English were overwhelming schools, several activists and educators who spoke with CNN said they received anti-immigrant, racist and hateful messages after condemning the remarks.

    In this county near the Tennessee-Georgia border, the growth in the Hispanic or Latino population has outpaced the national average. In the past decade, the number of residents who identified as Hispanic or Latino rose nearly 81% or more than 12,000 people, compared to 23% nationwide, according to US Census data.

    While the county’s more than 366,000 residents largely identify as White and about 7.4% identified as Hispanic or Latino in the 2020 Census, their presence has pushed a community with a dark racial history to face the inequalities that persist and adapt to a new normal that goes beyond the fractured Black-White paradigm that has characterized the South for a long time.

    Although there are ongoing efforts by the city and school officials to better serve Latino families, the demographic shift has also come with reminders of how heavily divided this region is and the fact that many Latinos live afraid of authorities because of their current or past immigration status.

    In an interview with The Chattanoogan in late August, Rhonda Thurman suggested the rising number of Latino students who speak little to no English were overwhelming schools. Thurman is a long-time board member representing schools with a majority White student population. She is known for her conservative views as well as her stance on books that have been deemed “inappropriate” for children by some or labeled “critical race theory.”

    “It is mind-boggling to me the burden it puts on the schools, the teachers and the taxpayers,” Thurman told the newspaper about the number of Latino students.

    “Teachers tell me they cannot give the attention they deserve to the English-speaking students because they have to devote so much time to try to help the Hispanic students catch up,” she said according to the newspaper.

    During the board meeting last month, members briefly discussed resources for Latino students offered by the school district or their interest in new initiatives. That was something that Clara said reinforced her frustration over the lack of support for Latino families and her conviction to overcome the fear that some people of color have toward those with conservative views.

    “I’m not afraid of speaking up and share my opinion, it’s where we live. This is the South and this area is absolutely closed (minded) in many aspects,” she said.

    Clara, center, embraces her sons Daniel and Benjamin.

    The Hamilton County Schools district comprises 76 institutions and serves 45,000 students. About 19% of students, or 8,702, are Hispanic but not all of them have limited English proficiency.

    There are 5,039 students considered English Language Learners currently enrolled, data shows. Diego Trujillo, director of the district’s English as a New Language Program, said Spanish is the top language for ELL but students speak more than 100 different languages, including Arabic, Mandarin, Vietnamese and five Mayan dialects.

    “When we think about English learners, there’s this association strictly to folks that are Spanish speaking, and when you look across the district we’re seeing a diversity of language,” Trujillo said.

    The school district declined to comment specifically on Thurman’s comments. Thurman has denied that she specifically called children a burden. She told CNN the number of Latino students were “burdening the system” and the school district was dealing with things it had not faced before.

    “Different people say different words and some people just jump on it because I happen to be a conservative and a Christian and some people just don’t like that,” Thurman said.

    Semillas, a non-profit group focused on racial and educational justice for the Latino community, has called for Thurman’s resignation and for a new task force to create an action plan that would better support the needs of Latino students and parents. Their online petition has garnered nearly 1,400 signatures.

    “While some programming has been developed over the years, Latinx community members have seen little to no proactive action to actually take a moment to meet and listen to the challenges and barriers Latinx and immigrant students and parents face each and every day,” said Mo Rodriguez-Cruz, the group’s co-founder and field director.

    A student looks at schoolwork during an English as a New Language class at The Howard High School.

    Taylor Lyons, co-founder of the local parent group Moms for Social Justice, said negativity toward Hispanic students is just the latest in a list of “hot button” issues that have been the focus of conservatives who live in the county. Over the past several years, Lyons said, conservatives have flooded school board meetings to fight mask and Covid-19 vaccine mandates as well as books in school libraries, which made her group subject of threats and accusations. In 2018, Moms for Social Justice launched an initiative to help teachers stock classrooms with books.

    “What it tells us is that you have a small but very loud minority of extremists, who are very uncomfortable with the cultural change around them. They’re uncomfortable with the demographic change,” Lyons said.

    In Chattanooga, the county seat that largely touts itself as progressive, residents are seeing the demographic shift manifest itself in many aspects of their lives.

    At The Howard School, a high school that is the pride of the city’s Black community, numerous photos of its Black alumni decorate the hallways, but most of its current students speak Spanish and are of Guatemalan descent. Most evenings, families can sit on wooden bleachers at amateur soccer matches and cheer as Spanish-language music blasts on speakers. In the city’s Rossville Boulevard, there has been an influx of Guatemalan restaurants and other businesses that proudly display the country’s flag or its national soccer team jersey.

    As the tensions spurred by changes in the student body came to light in recent school board meetings, students and teachers at two schools (Howard and East Side Elementary) in the district opted to keep focusing on creating an inclusive environment around them.

    Daisy Hernandez said her friends and classmates at The Howard High School are proud to embrace their background and culture at school.

    When Daisy Hernandez walked to her first class at The Howard School three years ago, she heard the chatter of her peers in English, Spanish and Mam, the Mayan language spoken in Guatemala and by her parents. There, the 17-year-old said she doesn’t see or feel the animosity that families like hers often experience while living in the South.

    “I see Howard as a school that helps us out in knowing other people. I’ve seen Black students talk to Hispanic students. I think that’s beautiful because we are becoming one,” said Hernandez, who is the high school’s student body president.

    The Howard School is the largest high school in the county and one of 10 schools in the district where Hispanic students surpass the number of students of any other racial or ethnic group. The number of English Language Learners at those schools this year represents 56% of all ELL students in the district.

    For decades, the school was known for predominantly serving Black students, but enrollment data shows that at least half of the student body has been Hispanic in the past five school years.

    At the start of the day, students listen to Assistant Principal Charles Mitchell read announcements in English and then in Spanish. The tradition, which began five years ago and required him to learn a new language, is one of the many ways “we go beyond our means just to include everybody,” Mitchell said.

    Jose Otero, an English as a New Language teacher who has been at the school for the past four years, said most Hispanic students at Howard are Guatemalan and fall into two major groups. Like Hernandez, some children were born and raised in Chattanooga to immigrant parents, and others recently migrated from Guatemala, El Salvador or Mexico along with their families or by themselves.

    Jose Otero is among several teachers helping the rising number of Latino students arriving in Hamilton County learn English.

    All students, Hispanic or Black, have different realities and different experiences, Otero said, and one thing that helps them connect with each other has been sports, especially soccer.

    Most of the 40 soccer players at Howard are Guatemalan and the larger school community has taken an interest in the team because they’ve been district champions in recent years, said Otero, who is also the school’s head soccer coach.

    “The kids are starting to appreciate each other’s culture and want to be a part of it. I think with time, there’s gonna be more Guatemalan kids playing basketball and baseball and football, and there’s gonna be more Black kids playing soccer,” Otero said.

    About two miles east of the high school, teacher Amanda Edens and her fifth-grade students at East Side Elementary finished reading “Esperanza Rising” by Pam Muñoz Ryan, a novel about a young girl who flees Mexico and settles in a farm camp in California.

    Edens, whose Spanish is limited, said she used the book to teach her students the curriculum while also connecting with them. They are mostly Hispanic, she said, and they enjoyed giggling every time she pronounced the Spanish phrases and words scattered throughout the book.

    The 37-year-old teacher is facing the challenging task of navigating a state law that requires public schools to teach only in English and serving a fast-growing number of students who are not fluent in the language.

    But it’s something that Edens and other teachers in Hamilton County told CNN they embrace and said it’s far from being a burden.

    Dual-language flags hang in a hallway at East Side Elementary in Chattanooga.

    “There’s obviously the challenge of how am I going to help a child attain educational success when we don’t speak the same language and I’m giving them complex fifth grade texts in English,” Edens said.

    “It’s not necessarily an easy thing, but it is super rewarding when that child starts asking: ‘can I go to the restroom?’ in English, or when they’re speaking Spanish to me and I recognize what they’re saying well enough to communicate back,” she added. “But I’ve never felt burdened by that.”

    At the elementary school, English as a New Language teachers “push in” or join the general education classes and work with small groups to reduce the time the students are away from their classroom. Trujillo, the director of the district’s English as a New Language Program, said that type of language acquisition model is part of the work he hopes to achieve at more schools as the district works to have ENL programs at most campuses. In the past, he said, students were taken to a different campus to get language instruction if their schools did not offer the program or had ENL teachers.

    Andrea Bass, one of the ENL teachers at East Side Elementary, said the school staff respects and actively honors their students’ first language and culture. Many of the students are from Guatemala, and their families, who speak Spanish or Mayan dialects, are constantly engaged in their education despite the language barriers, she said.

    When Edens, Bass and other teachers heard their students might have been referred to as a burden, they signed a letter calling the remarks “offensive to those students, their families, and those of us who teach them.”

    “Our students don’t always have a voice and neither do their families,” Bass said. “I felt like it was my duty to speak up for them.”

    That sense of duty comes from seeing how many parents are afraid to speak up or advocate for themselves but nonetheless put a lot of their trust in educators, Bass said.

    Andrea Bass and several other teachers in Hamilton County signed a joint letter to show their love and support of Latino students earlier this year.

    The Latino or Hispanic community in Hamilton County, including Chattanooga, has grown and changed since Clara moved there nearly two decades ago. Yet, the challenges many families face remain the same.

    When Clara left her hometown in central Mexico, she went from working a desk job that required her to wear high heels and suits to factory jobs in Chattanooga, where sneakers and jeans are the norm. A change that was even more demoralizing, she said, would come on her son’s first day at school when she “realized that I had become illiterate.”

    “I could not speak English, I couldn’t have a conversation with my son’s teacher. It was very frustrating,” she said.

    Not much has changed for the increasing number of Latino families in the county, many who relocated from the neighboring state of Georgia after a state law that authorized police to investigate the immigration status and arrest undocumented immigrants went into effect in 2011. But city and school officials have launched initiatives in the past year hoping to address their needs.

    The city created the Office of New Americans last year to connect immigrant and refugee communities with city resources, including translation services and helping them with citizenship and naturalization paperwork.

    “It’s a way to make sure that we are empowering the people who are coming to Chattanooga and empowering our immigrant community to really be able to flourish,” said Esai Navarro, the office’s director.

    Navarro said the key is “emphasizing inclusion versus assimilation.”

    The Howard School launched a

    Meanwhile, the school district opened its International Welcome Center to assist international students with enrollment and connect them with support services. The center has helped 224 families since it opened last year.

    The melting pot of races, languages and cultures that Hamilton County and Chattanooga are seeing is everything Hernandez, the high school student, has known ever since she was born. What some see as a new normal is simply her reality – something she recently wrote about in a poem:

    “My left starred shoulder: red, white, blue”

    “My right striped shoulder: Quetzal white, light blue..”

    “A girl: two countries, one world, growing stronger, forever longer”

    Source link

  • The Future of Monkeypox

    The Future of Monkeypox

    The World Health Organization has recommended a new name for monkeypox, asking countries to forget the original term in favor of a new one, “mpox,” that scientists hope will help destigmatize the disease. But in the United States, the request seems to be arriving late. The outbreak here has already been in slow retreat for months—and has already left many Americans’ minds.

    About 15 cases are now being recorded among Americans each day, less than 4 percent of the tally when the surge was at its worst. After a sluggish and bungled early rollout, tests and treatments for the virus are more available; more than a million doses of the two-shot Jynneos smallpox vaccine have found their way into arms. San Francisco and New York—two of the nation’s first cities to declare mpox a public-health emergency this past summer—have since allowed those orders to expire; so have the states of New York and Illinois. “I think this is the endgame,” says Caitlin Rivers, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

    But “endgame” doesn’t mean “over”—and mpox will be with us for the foreseeable future. The U.S. outbreak is only now showing us its long and ugly tail: 15 daily cases is not zero daily cases; even as the number of new infections declines, inequities are growing. Black and Latino people make up a majority of new mpox cases and are contracting the disease at three to five times the rate of white Americans, but they have received proportionately fewer vaccines. “Now it’s truly the folks who are the most marginalized that we’re seeing,” says Ofole Mgbako, a physician and population-health researcher at New York University. “Which is also why, of course, it’s fallen out of the news.” If the virus sticks around (as it very likely could), and if the disparities persist (as they almost certainly will), then mpox could end up saddling thousands of vulnerable Americans each year with yet another debilitating, stigmatized, and neglected disease.

    Read: America should have been able to handle monkeypox

    At this point, there’s not even any guarantee that this case downturn will persist. “I’m not convinced that we’re out of the woods,” says Sara Bares, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, in Omaha. Immunity, acquired through infection or vaccines, is now concentrated among those at highest risk, says Jay Varma, a physician and epidemiologist at Weill Cornell Medicine. But researchers still don’t know how well those defenses can stave off another infection, or how long they might last—gaps in knowledge that may be tough to fill, now that incidence is so low. And although months of advocacy and outreach from the LGBTQ community have cut down on risky sexual activities, many cautionary trends will eventually reset to their pre-outbreak norm. “We know extensively from other sexually transmissible infections that behavior change is not usually the most sustained response,” says Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an infectious-disease physician at Emory University.

    At the same time, this year’s mpox outbreaks are stranger and more unwieldy than those that came before. A ballooning body of evidence suggests that people can become infectious before they develop symptoms, contrary to prior understanding; some physicians are concerned that patients, especially those who are immunocompromised, might remain infectious after the brunt of visible illness resolves, says Philip Ponce, an infectious-disease physician at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the medical director of San Antonio’s Kind Clinic. (Some 40 percent of Americans who have been diagnosed with mpox are living with HIV.) Researchers still don’t have a good grip on which bodily fluids and types of contact may be riskiest over the trajectory of a sickness. Cases are still being missed by primary-care providers who remain unfamiliar with the ins and outs of diagnosis and testing, especially in people with darker skin. And although this epidemic has, for the most part, continued to affect men who have sex with men, women and nonbinary people are getting sick as well, to an underappreciated degree.

    Read: What should worry most Americans about our monkeypox response

    Intel on the only mpox-fighting antiviral on the shelf, a smallpox drug called tecovirimat, also remains concerningly scant, even as experts worry that the virus could develop resistance. The treatment has been given a conditional greenlight for use in people who are currently, or at risk of becoming, severely sick. Anecdotally, it seems to work wonders, shaving days or weeks off the painful, debilitating course of symptoms that can send infected people into long-term isolation. But experts still lack rigorous data in humans to confirm just how well it works, Bares, who’s among the scientists involved in a nationwide study of the antiviral, told me. And although clinical trials for tecovirimat are under way, she added, in the U.S., they’re “struggling to enroll patients” now that infections have plummeted to such a sustained low. It’s a numerical problem as well as a sociocultural one. “The urgency with which people answer questions declines as case counts go down,” Varma told me.

    Recent CDC reports show that a growing proportion of new infections aren’t being reported with a known sexual-contact history, stymieing efforts at contact tracing. That might in part be a product of the outbreak’s gradual migration from liberal, well-off urban centers, hit early on in the epidemic, to more communities in the South and Southwest. “In small towns, the risk of disclosure is high,” Bares told me. In seeking care or vaccination, “you’re outing yourself.” When mpox cases in Nebraska took an unexpected nosedive earlier this fall, “a colleague and I asked one another, ‘Do you think patients are afraid to come in?’” Those concerns can be especially high in certain communities of color, Ponce told me. San Antonio’s Latino population, for instance, “tends to be much more conservative; there’s much more stigma associated with one being LGBT at all, let alone being LGBT and trying to access biomedical interventions.”

    Hidden infections can become fast-spreading ones. Monitoring an infectious disease is far easier when the people most at risk have insurance coverage and access to savvy clinicians, and when they are inclined to trust public-health institutions. “That’s predominantly white people,” says Ace Robinson, the CEO of the Pierce County AIDS Foundation, in Washington. Now that the mpox outbreak is moving out of that population into less privileged ones, Robinson fears “a massive undercount” of cases.

    Americans who are catching the virus during the outbreak’s denouement are paying a price. The means to fight mpox are likely to dwindle, even as the virus entrenches itself in the population most in need of those tools. One concern remains the country’s vaccination strategy, which underwent a mid-outbreak shift: To address limited shot supply, the FDA authorized a new dosing method with limited evidence behind it—a decision that primarily affected people near the back of the inoculation line. The method is safe but tricky to administer, and it can have tough side effects: Some of Titanji’s patients have experienced swelling near their injection site that lasted for weeks after their first dose, and now “they just don’t want to get another shot.”

    The continued shift of mpox into minority populations, Robinson told me, is also further sapping public attention: “As long as this is centered in BIPOC communities, there’s going to be less of a push.” Public interest in this crisis was modest even at its highest point, says Steven Klemow, an infectious-disease physician at Methodist Dallas Medical Center and the medical director of Dallas’s Kind Clinic. Now experts are watching that cycle of neglect reinforce itself as the outbreak continues to affect and compress into marginalized communities, including those that have for decades borne a disproportionate share of the burden of sexually associated infections such as syphilis, gonorrhea, and HIV. “These are not the groups that necessarily get people jumping on their feet,” Titanji told me.

    Some of the people most at risk are moving on as well, Robinson told me. In his community in Washington, he was disappointed to see high rates of vaccine refusal at two recent outreach events serving the region’s Black and American Indian populations. “They had no knowledge of the virus,” he told me. Titanji has seen similar trends in her community in Georgia. “There’s some sense of complacency, like, ‘It’s no longer an issue, so why do I need to get vaccinated?’” she said.

    Read: America is zooming through the pandemic panic-neglect cycle

    The tide seems unlikely to shift. Even tens of thousands of cases deep into the American outbreak, sexual-health clinics—which have been on the front lines of the mpox response—remain short on funds and staff. Although the influx of cases has slowed, Ponce and Klemow are still treating multiple mpox patients a week while trying to keep up the services they typically offer—at a time when STI rates are on a years-long rise. “We’re really assuming that this is going to become another sexually associated disease that is going to be a part of our wheelhouse that we’ll have to manage for the indefinite future,” Klemow told me. “We’ve had to pull resources away from our other services that we provide.” The problem could yet worsen if the national emergency declared in August is allowed to expire, which would likely curb the availability of antivirals and vaccines.

    Rivers still holds out hope for eliminating mpox in the U.S. But getting from low to zero isn’t as easy as it might seem. This current stretch of decline could unspool for years, even decades, especially if the virus finds a new animal host. “We’ve seen this story play out so many times before,” Varma told me. Efforts to eliminate syphilis from the U.S. in the late ’90s and early 2000s, for instance, gained traction for a while—then petered out during what could have been their final stretch. It’s the classic boom-bust cycle to which the country is so prone: As case rates fall, so does interest in pushing them further down.

    Our memories of public-health crises never seem to linger for long. At the start of this mpox outbreak, Titanji told me, there was an opportunity to shore up our systems and buffer ourselves against future epidemics, both imported and homegrown. The country squandered it and failed to send aid abroad. If another surge of mpox cases arrives, as it very likely could, she said, “we will again be going back to the drawing board.”

    Katherine J. Wu

    Source link

  • A record number of women will serve in the next Congress | CNN Politics

    A record number of women will serve in the next Congress | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A record number of women will be elected to Congress this year, CNN projects – but barely.

    The 149 women who will serve in the US House and Senate in the 118th Congress will expand the ranks of female representation by just two members above the record set by this Congress.

    Alaska carried women across that threshold on Wednesday night when the state determined through its ranked-choice voting system that Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, will represent the state’s at-large House seat for a full term after winning the special election earlier this year, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski will win reelection.

    Women will break an overall record in the House, with 124 taking office in January.

    And not only will women of color break records in the 118th Congress, but within the House alone, there will also be a record number of both Latinas and Black women. There will be four more Latinas in the House for a total of 18 – the most ever – and one more Black woman, bringing their total from 26 to 27.

    More than half of the incoming class of 22 freshman women in the House will be women of color, showing the increasing diversity of that chamber.

    “We’ve seen a pretty steady increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of women as candidates, nominees, and then officeholders at the congressional level, but more specifically, in the US House,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers.

    “That diversity is still hugely lacking in the US Senate. … We’re seeing stasis there in terms of the number of women of color overall. The number of Asian and Latino women specifically will stay the same, and the number of Black women will stay the same at zero.”

    Rep.-elect Sydney Kamlager of California is one of those new voices coming to the House. A state senator, she was elected to replace retiring Rep. Karen Bass, who will become the first female mayor of Los Angeles. Kamlager said while she is excited about the diversity of the freshman class, there is still a long way to go.

    “I think folks have to stop giving lip service to Black women and brown women and put the money where the mouth is. The fact remains that Black and brown women face higher barriers of entry into this work than other women and men,” the Democrat said. “When we run, our contributions are less oftentimes than men. We are held to higher and double standards,” she added, noting that female candidates are still often asked why they are not “home taking care of your husband or your children.”

    “Folks are OK with a mediocre male candidate but expect the female candidate to be off the charts,” she said.

    Rep.-elect Yadira Caraveo, a Democrat, is the first Latina elected to Congress from Colorado. A state representative and the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, she’ll also be just the second female doctor who’s a voting member of Congress. (The first, Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier, won reelection in Washington state.)

    “Kind of sad that it took until 2022,” Caraveo said, reflecting on both milestones.

    Her experience in medicine and state politics, she said, prepared her for having to work harder to get “less credit” than her male counterparts.

    “It is, unfortunately, something that I’ve seen throughout my time, both in medicine and in politics, and, sadly, a challenge that one gets used to, in some ways, but also, in other ways, continues to be painful,” said Caraveo, a pediatrician.

    “Even members of my staff, you know, as they came on board, really noted the different way in which I was treated or perceived as a woman of color compared to some of the other candidates that were able to more easily get meetings or support from different groups,” she added.

    Still, the moment isn’t lost on these women.

    “In Colorado, I didn’t grow up seeing what I am now,” said Caraveo. “The idea of being the first Latina – so not just that it’s a woman but it’s a woman of color – serving in Congress, I hope is going to be make things a little bit easier for the little girls that I’ve taken care of in clinic. So that one day they don’t have to talk about being first of something, their candidacy and their ability to be in office is just a given.”

    And Caraveo, who will be representing a new district that Colorado gained in the reapportionment process, also stressed the significance of what more female representation could mean for legislating.

    “That sense of collaboration that we approach things with is very different than, I think, what my male counterparts often do,” she said.

    On the other side of the aisle, Republicans will break a record with 42 women serving in Congress. Murkowski and Republican Sen.-elect Katie Britt of Alabama help bring the number of Republican women in the Senate to nine. And 33 Republican women will serve in the House next year, up from 32 this year.

    The incoming class of seven House Republican freshmen includes three Latinas, bringing the total number of Republican Latinas in the House to five.

    “Having the diversity of thought and experience is, you know, it’s critical to our representative democracy,” said Rep.-elect Erin Houchin, who noted that she’s the first woman to represent her Indiana district.

    “It feels like we’re accomplishing something for the next generation,” she said. “It is meaningful for me in particular to set that example for my own daughters, for young women.”

    Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio has seen and beat plenty of records before as the longest-serving woman in the House. When she’s sworn in for another term in January, on the heels of her first competitive reelection in years, she’ll become the longest-serving woman in all of Congress, beating the record set by former Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

    First elected in 1982, Kaptur has been sounding the alarm about her party being dominated by leadership from the coasts, while the heartland and industrial America – and its struggling middle class – is often forgotten in Washington.

    “My most heart-warming achievement is that the tenure represents a voice from the working class of people – who happens to be a woman,” she said.

    Source link

  • A record number of women will serve in the next Congress | CNN Politics

    A record number of women will serve in the next Congress | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    A record number of women will be elected to Congress this year, CNN projects – but barely.

    The 149 women who will serve in the US House and Senate in the 118th Congress will expand the ranks of female representation by just two members above the record set by this Congress.

    Alaska carried women across that threshold on Wednesday night when the state determined through its ranked-choice voting system that Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, will represent the state’s at-large House seat for a full term after winning the special election earlier this year, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski will win reelection.

    Women will break an overall record in the House, with 124 taking office in January.

    And not only will women of color break records in the 118th Congress, but within the House alone, there will also be a record number of both Latinas and Black women. There will be four more Latinas in the House for a total of 18 – the most ever – and one more Black woman, bringing their total from 26 to 27.

    More than half of the incoming class of 22 freshman women in the House will be women of color, showing the increasing diversity of that chamber.

    “We’ve seen a pretty steady increase in the racial and ethnic diversity of women as candidates, nominees, and then officeholders at the congressional level, but more specifically, in the US House,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Center for American Women and Politics at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers.

    “That diversity is still hugely lacking in the US Senate. … We’re seeing stasis there in terms of the number of women of color overall. The number of Asian and Latino women specifically will stay the same, and the number of Black women will stay the same at zero.”

    Rep.-elect Sydney Kamlager of California is one of those new voices coming to the House. A state senator, she was elected to replace retiring Rep. Karen Bass, who will become the first female mayor of Los Angeles. Kamlager said while she is excited about the diversity of the freshman class, there is still a long way to go.

    “I think folks have to stop giving lip service to Black women and brown women and put the money where the mouth is. The fact remains that Black and brown women face higher barriers of entry into this work than other women and men,” the Democrat said. “When we run, our contributions are less oftentimes than men. We are held to higher and double standards,” she added, noting that female candidates are still often asked why they are not “home taking care of your husband or your children.”

    “Folks are OK with a mediocre male candidate but expect the female candidate to be off the charts,” she said.

    Rep.-elect Yadira Caraveo, a Democrat, is the first Latina elected to Congress from Colorado. A state representative and the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, she’ll also be just the second female doctor who’s a voting member of Congress. (The first, Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier, won reelection in Washington state.)

    “Kind of sad that it took until 2022,” Caraveo said, reflecting on both milestones.

    Her experience in medicine and state politics, she said, prepared her for having to work harder to get “less credit” than her male counterparts.

    “It is, unfortunately, something that I’ve seen throughout my time, both in medicine and in politics, and, sadly, a challenge that one gets used to, in some ways, but also, in other ways, continues to be painful,” said Caraveo, a pediatrician.

    “Even members of my staff, you know, as they came on board, really noted the different way in which I was treated or perceived as a woman of color compared to some of the other candidates that were able to more easily get meetings or support from different groups,” she added.

    Still, the moment isn’t lost on these women.

    “In Colorado, I didn’t grow up seeing what I am now,” said Caraveo. “The idea of being the first Latina – so not just that it’s a woman but it’s a woman of color – serving in Congress, I hope is going to be make things a little bit easier for the little girls that I’ve taken care of in clinic. So that one day they don’t have to talk about being first of something, their candidacy and their ability to be in office is just a given.”

    And Caraveo, who will be representing a new district that Colorado gained in the reapportionment process, also stressed the significance of what more female representation could mean for legislating.

    “That sense of collaboration that we approach things with is very different than, I think, what my male counterparts often do,” she said.

    On the other side of the aisle, Republicans will break a record with 42 women serving in Congress. Murkowski and Republican Sen.-elect Katie Britt of Alabama help bring the number of Republican women in the Senate to nine. And 33 Republican women will serve in the House next year, up from 32 this year.

    The incoming class of seven House Republican freshmen includes three Latinas, bringing the total number of Republican Latinas in the House to five.

    “Having the diversity of thought and experience is, you know, it’s critical to our representative democracy,” said Rep.-elect Erin Houchin, who noted that she’s the first woman to represent her Indiana district.

    “It feels like we’re accomplishing something for the next generation,” she said. “It is meaningful for me in particular to set that example for my own daughters, for young women.”

    Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio has seen and beat plenty of records before as the longest-serving woman in the House. When she’s sworn in for another term in January, on the heels of her first competitive reelection in years, she’ll become the longest-serving woman in all of Congress, beating the record set by former Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

    First elected in 1982, Kaptur has been sounding the alarm about her party being dominated by leadership from the coasts, while the heartland and industrial America – and its struggling middle class – is often forgotten in Washington.

    “My most heart-warming achievement is that the tenure represents a voice from the working class of people – who happens to be a woman,” she said.

    Source link

  • Finding a star for ‘Wednesday’ who embodies ‘Family’ values with her own kooky twist | CNN

    Finding a star for ‘Wednesday’ who embodies ‘Family’ values with her own kooky twist | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    There was a lot riding on the casting choice for the titular character of the new Netfilx series “Wednesday.” In addition to someone who could pull off creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky, the role of raven-haired, pigtail-braided Wednesday Addams needed to go to a young actress who could rise to the occasion of playing a character from such an iconic property.

    “It’s always a little bit daunting when you start a process with such legacy and storied roles around it,” casting director John Papsidera said in a chat with CNN.

    The show marks a return to the Addams Family world, based on the cartoons by Charles Addams and first presented on screen in the iconic 1960s black-and-white sitcom and later in the much-loved early 90s films by Barry Sonnenfeld. In the new series, Wednesday finds herself at a boarding school called the Nevermore Academy where all manner of outcast and freak can roam free.

    For those expecting a tongue-in-cheek rehash of “The Addams Family” – complete with the double-snap theme song – think again. This “teen-centric dark comedy,” as described by showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar, is not a reboot, but rather a closer examination and celebration of the majorly macabre and sharp-as-a-razor older sister of the Addams clan.

    In searching for their perfect Wednesday, Gough and Millar worked with casting directors Papsidera and Sophie Holland, among others, and said in an email to CNN that it “was always our intention to cast a Latina actress” for the role, because they wanted to honor Gomez Addams’s heritage. While the character of family patriarch Gomez was portrayed by White actor John Astin in the “Addams Family” sitcom from the 1960s, he was portrayed by Puerto Rican actor Raul Julia in the Sonnenfeld movies. In “Wednesday,” Gomez is played by veteran performer Luis Guzmán, also from Puerto Rico.

    The role of daughter Wednesday eventually went to teen it-girl Jenna Ortega (“Scream,” “You,” “X”), an actress of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent. Gough and Millar knew they had found their Wednesday as soon as they met Ortega, they said.

    “I had talked about Jenna a lot in going into (the casting process),” Papsidera said of Ortega. “It’s also a thin world of girls that can be number one on the call sheet and handle the pressure of that, and also is accomplished in her own right. When you start to talk about a young Latina actress, she rises to the top of the heap.”

    Millar and Gough said the show employed a Mexican creative consultant to “help ensure that the scripts reflected Jenna’s specific heritage.”

    “This generation is all about authenticity. We were very intentional in every aspect of the casting process,” the showrunners added. “We wanted to ensure the students at Nevermore Academy were truly reflective of modern American society. It’s not only about series regulars, it is about the depth of casting across the entire series, including background extras.”

    Another coup scored by the casting team on “Wednesday” was to snag actress Christina Ricci, who timelessly portrayed the character in Sonnenfeld’s movies, in the smaller role of Marilyn Thornhill. It almost didn’t happen, due to Ricci’s schedule and commitment to her hit Showtime series “Yellowjackets.”

    “It was really a lovely long game with Christina,” Papsidera said. “We had always talked about her from the beginning. And it wasn’t until almost the very end that her schedule opened up, and then we pivoted there and Tim (Burton, director of “Wednesday”) got on the phone with her and it all worked out.”

    Ricci and Burton, who marks his first foray into directing a television series with the new series, had previously worked together on the 1999 film “Sleepy Hollow.”

    “I think the idea of working with Tim again was probably the biggest bonus in our camp,” Papsidera said of landing the veteran actress. “I also think that she got the idea of participating in something that she loves too, that it was really special for everybody involved.”

    “Wednesday” certainly wastes no time in surreptitiously honoring Ricci’s contributions to the character. Without spoiling too much, the pilot episode features a group of people dressed as pilgrims who meet with an unfortunate fate, calling to mind Ricci’s more-than-memorable Thanksgiving scene in 1993’s “Addams Family Values.”

    “There’s a certain serendipity to the whole series in that way,” Holland added of nabbing Ricci. “It’s like things came together sometimes very last minute, sometimes when we were pulling our hair thinking, ‘We can’t find this, we can’t find this.’ And then something would lock into place. And the whole series, you’ll see once you watch the whole thing, is that it all sort of works together almost like a Rubik’s cube.”

    “Wednesday” also stars Gwendoline Christie, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Joy Sunday, among others.

    The casting team operated under the direction of Burton, who Papsidera said had a clear vision for the show and characters.

    “If anything, that’s where we all kind of started and ended our discussions – with what Tim saw and who he felt he was drawn to as these characters,” Papsidera said.

    Venturing into such an established world, the goal was to “try and reinvent what it is without throwing away the spirit of it,” he added.

    “There’s a certain amount of pressure because also…we are fans,” echoed Holland.

    Holland said she wanted to “fulfill everybody’s needs and wants” and give “proper care to what we do” with regard to the franchise.

    “You want the essence of what those original characters were, but you want it in a new way. So that’s always the challenge, and the reward when you get it,” Papsidera said.

    “Wednesday” is streaming now on Netflix.

    Source link

  • Immigration a top issue among Latino voters weeks out from Election Day | CNN Politics

    Immigration a top issue among Latino voters weeks out from Election Day | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, immigration remains a top issue among Latino voters – but views on legal and illegal immigration vary greatly.

    “I think it’s been misunderstood,” said Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied Latino voter preferences for decades.

    While many Latino voters support a more “humane treatment” of migrants and creating a pathway to citizenship for the undocumented, Teixeira said there are many in the community who “are not really interested or delighted by the idea people can just pour across the border. … They also think we need more border security.”

    While polls show the majority of Hispanics align with Democrats on immigration, the GOP has recently made significant gains, even while escalating the anti-immigrant rhetoric popularized by former President Donald Trump.

    About 55% of Latinos support Democrats on the issue of legal immigration, according to a recent NYT/Siena College poll, which also indicated roughly a third support a border wall along the US southern border.

    With candidates racing to capture every last vote, Latinos – who make up more than 30 million of the country’s registered voters – could tilt the scales in major contests across battleground states.

    “There’s a vulnerability there. There’s a soft underbelly for the Democrats on this issue, even among Hispanic voters,” Teixera said.

    A hardline immigration policy is part of what Abraham Enriquez says attracted him and other Latinos in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley to Trump.

    “I think Latinos, we don’t really care much about what you say, it’s about what you’re going to do,” said Enriquez, who founded Bienvenido US, an organization that aims to mobilize conservative Hispanic voters.

    The grandson of Mexican migrants, Enriquez says Democrats are losing support among the nations’ fastest growing voting bloc because their rhetoric is out of touch: too critical of the capitalist system and not critical enough of what he calls unrestricted immigration.

    “If America is so bad, if America is such a terrible country to live in, why did 50 migrants die suffocated in a trailer to seek a better life in this country?” he asked.

    Trump unexpectedly made gains in the Rio Grande Valley in 2020 and the region recently elected the first GOP representative in more than a century, after US Rep. Mayra Flores won a special election earlier this year.

    While Republicans are closely eyeing three congressional races in South Texas as a test of their appeal in the community, immigration attorney Carlos Gomez argues campaign promises often don’t lead to change. He says a sensible, balanced approach to reform is sorely needed, but missing from the public discourse surrounding immigration.

    “Neither party is addressing the issue well,” Gomez said. “Either they talk to the right, or they talk to the left, but they don’t come (to the border) and talk to us. They don’t see what we’re doing on a daily basis.”

    Gomez criticized Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants to Democrat-led cities as an “inhumane” way to win votes, not a genuine effort to help migrants or border towns.

    In Florida, another state with a large Hispanic population, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis similarly took the controversial step in September of flying dozens of Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts – a move that pro-immigration advocate Maria Corina Vegas called a “stunt.”

    “It may make for interesting television, to raise money, to play to the base, to feed a narrative of grievance. That’s what populists do, effectively,” said Vegas, a deputy state director for the American Business Immigration Coalition, a group that promotes comprehensive immigration reform.

    As a Venezuelan-American who came to the US fleeing Hugo Chavez’s communist regime, she argued the demonization of outsiders among politicians may help motivate some supporters, but will ultimately harm the country.

    “I never thought I would see that in this country. I saw that in my country – it tore my country apart. It doesn’t matter if it comes from the right or the left. It’s anti-democratic,” Vegas said.

    For Cuban-born entrepreneur Julio Cabrera, the issue is tied inextricably to the American economy: “This country moves because of immigrants and Latinos. … We do the dirty jobs others do not want.”

    Cuban-born entrepreneur Julio Cabrera.

    Cabrera is turned off by anti-immigrant rhetoric, he says, because the vast majority of immigrants entering the US are decent people looking to work and build a better life. He believes the immigration system should be kinder to those who have risked their lives for a better future.

    After fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist dictatorship in 2006, Cabrera says he was robbed at gunpoint while traveling through Mexico before arriving at the southern border, where he sought asylum with his daughter.

    Now, he is a successful restauranteur, running Cafe La Trova in Miami, where he says most of his staff are immigrants.

    “Everybody is an immigrant here and we’ve done something remarkable for this community.”

    Younger voters, like Marvin Tapia – a Colombian-American who lives in Little Havana – argues the recent rise in anti-immigrant sentiment is tied to nationwide demographic change, which he says is a positive development more politicians should embrace.

    “If we’re sharing a country built on immigrants, we should be proud of that. That we evolved and we grow and change. … I believe that growth is pivotal to the growth of a country, especially like the US,” Tapia said. “We should learn from it, instead of run from it.”

    Source link

  • The Latino voter shift comes into focus in South Texas | CNN Politics

    The Latino voter shift comes into focus in South Texas | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    What first appeared as statistical noise is now becoming clearer: Historically left-leaning Latino voters are shifting toward the GOP, with the potential to swing major races come November’s midterm elections.

    And with razor-thin margins determining control of Congress, Hispanic communities where Donald Trump unexpectedly made gains in 2020 are coming into sharp focus, especially the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.

    Here, the battle for Texas’s 15th Congressional District between Republican Monica De La Cruz and Democrat Michelle Vallejo is arguably the state’s most competitive House race and may be a test for Republicans’ appeal among Hispanic Americans.

    Hispanic Americans make up a fifth of registered voters in more than a dozen hotly contested House and Senate races in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Texas. While Democrats are still expected to win a majority of Latino voters, their margins appear to be shrinking – dramatically, in some cases.

    “What we’re seeing now is that the GOP has stepped in and helped us get our messaging out to show Latinos their values of faith, family and freedom really align with the Republican Party,” De La Cruz said

    Vallejo argues that the shift is tied to an increase in outside spending by the GOP: “I think the resources and money they’re getting from the outside really does add fuel to their fire. … It’s not deeply connected with the desire from the community to drive up and bring solutions that are specifically from South Texas.”

    For De La Cruz, attending her first Trump rally inspired her to start a career in politics.

    “I was busy raising a family, raising my business,” De La Cruz said. “(Trump) caught my attention to look at national politics and what was happening in DC and say, ‘Those policies don’t reflect me or my values.’”

    The entrepreneur insurance agent and mother of two says she’s a former Democrat whose family voted against Republicans for generations, including her “abuelita.”

    “This area had been under Democrat rule for over 100 years and what we’re seeing here is that Democrats haven’t done anything for us. … (They) just abandoned Latinos and Latinos are seeing that their values of faith, family and freedom just align better with the Republican Party.”

    Part of a trio of Latina Republican congressional nominees on the ballot in South Texas, De La Cruz is attempting to redefine the region’s political tradition alongside Cassy Garcia, a former Ted Cruz aide who is running in the 28th District, and US Rep. Mayra Flores in Texas’ 34th who became the party’s first representative from the Rio Grande Valley in more than a century after winning a special election earlier this year.

    The “triple threat,” as some Republicans call them, are part of a record number of Republican Latino nominees this fall, with many taking a page from Trump’s pro-border wall playbook.

    Asked whether she ever felt insulted by Trump’s rhetoric toward Latino immigrants (“They are bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” the then-candidate said when announcing his first presidential run in 2016), De La Cruz, the granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, said his words didn’t turn her away.

    “Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have said things the way he said them, but I think people were able to look past those things because they knew he’s not a politician. He didn’t have a political background. He was a businessman,” said De La Cruz. “He stood up against the establishment and put forth policies that worked for American families.”

    Like her GOP opponent, Vallejo, the Democrat running in Texas’ 15th, is a relatively new to politics and an entrepreneur. She operates the Pulga Los Portales flea market in Alton, which her parents founded some 25 years ago.

    “Our community deserves more attention and more respect,” Vallejo said of the newly drawn district, which would have voted for Trump by nearly 3 percentage points in 2020. “I think that both national parties were leaving us out.”

    Vallejo said Republicans have “demonized” Latino immigrants to score political points.

    “We have pride and dignity and we will not stand for anyone making fun of us, making fun of our community and our culture. We’re deserving and we give a lot back to this country,” she said.

    Running as a progressive in an area that more often elects moderate Democrats, Vallejo defeated her primary opponent by only 35 votes and is campaigning on guaranteed abortion rights, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and raising the minimum wage to $15.

    “There are a lot of issues being ignored,” Vallejo said. “It’s time we see a change for South Texas, and we need progressive, bold policies … so that we finally get a voice at the table.”

    Vallejo points to outside influence and spending to account for the GOP’s gains in the area, saying, “Outside interests did see an opportunity to swoop in, pouring millions and millions of dollars to pretty much buy up our seat.”

    As for Latinos who drifted from Democrats to support Trump, Vallejo said she “looks forward to hopefully earning their support.”

    “I’m fighting for all our families here in South Texas, whether they’re Republican, independent or people who have never felt engaged by the political system before,” she said.

    Polling indicates that Latino voters are more likely than any other ethnic groups to cite the economy or inflation as the most important issue facing the country. But other issues, such as immigration and abortion, also loom large.

    “It’s become so difficult. … Supply chain issues are a big problem. And inflation – we used to pay $19 for a box of eggs. Now, I pay $54,” said Rodolfo Sanchez-Rendon, the owner of Teresita’s Kitchen in McAllen.

    Sanchez-Rendon also faults Democrats for undervaluing faith, family and small business.

    “Their values have changed,” he said. “Extremely liberal, where religion becomes an afterthought. … They’ve drifted from our values.”

    But the economy remains the most important issue to voters like Sanchez-Rendon, who immigrated to the United States in 1986 and said unchecked illegal immigration is out of control across the southern border.

    Contractor Edgar Gallegos said he plans to vote Republican because of the economy, despite Trump’s rhetoric about Latino immigrants.

    “I’ll take a mean tweet right about now, over what we have,” Gallegos said.

    Other voters, like Justin Stubbs, say they feel Democrats lack urgency on the issue of immigration.

    “It seems like Republicans care and talk about the border issue a lot more. … I just don’t see a lot of Democrats talking about the border crisis and honestly, there’s a lot of people down here that are affected by that,” he said.

    One voter in nearby Alton, Texas, said he and his wife will remain loyal to the Democratic Party because he believes it will do more to help the community.

    “We want candidates who will pay attention to our needs,” says Jose Raul Guerrero, who says he’s voting for Vallejo partly because he’s known her since she was a child. “She understands our needs. … and we need a lot of help right now.”

    “What people have to understand is that Hispanic Americans have hard working-class values,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a former Barack Obama campaign worker who led Trump’s hyper-local Hispanic advertising in 2020.

    “Who’s America’s blue-collar billionaire? Donald Trump,” he said.

    Sopo said part of the Trump’s campaign’s success with Latinos was tied to an ad campaign that “used words and ways of speaking” that were unique to specific nationalities and generations, tailoring ads meant to target Puerto Ricans, for example, with slang and references common to the island.

    “The reality is there are many Hispanic communities,” Sopo says. “You open the door with culture and engage Hispanics on a policy level.”

    Pointing to trends over the last decade that show Latinos experiencing gains when it comes to incomes, home purchases and starting new businesses, Sopo said many in the community view Trump aspirationally – adding that among some Latinos, especially men, the former President’s brash rhetoric may have worked to his advantage.

    “To a lot of Hispanic Americans – the same way that Bill Clinton was the first Black president before Barack Obama – Donald Trump, to them, is the first Hispanic president,” Sopo said. “He’s very charismatic, he’s not politically correct, he’s a successful entrepreneur. … These values really resonate.”

    Source link

  • The government wants to change how it collects race and ethnicity data. Here’s what you need to know | CNN Politics

    The government wants to change how it collects race and ethnicity data. Here’s what you need to know | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    If you’ve filled out a survey at any point in the last 25 years, chances are you were asked two questions about your race and ethnicity: Whether you are of Hispanic or Latino descent, and then separately, if your race is White, Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American or another race.

    A new proposal aims to change that, merging the two questions into one and adding a new category for people of Middle Eastern and North African descent. That would alter how the government – and by extension, the research community studying Americans’ demographics, opinions, voting habits and behaviors – measures and reports on the race and ethnicity of the American public.

    The proposal put forth by a working group of government statisticians and methodologists is at least partly an effort to reduce the share of Americans choosing a nebulous “some other race” category that is required to be included in the decennial census and the American Community Survey, two of the key government studies measuring American demographics.

    While some researchers say the proposed changes would improve the accuracy and depth of the data available on race and ethnicity, others – particularly those who advocate for the Afro-Latino community – fear the plan would make it harder to understand racially driven inequalities in the US.

    Decisions about what gets measured and how reach far beyond the numbers that appear on the Census Bureau’s website: Data gathered through these questions drives the way racial disparities in housing, health care and employment are understood and tracked, how congressional districts are drawn, and how the resources of some government programs are allocated and assessed. It can affect policymaking at the federal, state and local levels.

    “The simple fact is that if your community is not visible in the statistics, you are functionally invisible when it comes to political representation,” said Thomas Wolf, the deputy director of the democracy program at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU law school.

    The public comment period on the changes closes on April 27 after being extended. Nearly 18,000 comments had already been submitted on the Federal Register notice page as of Sunday morning. Once the comment period ends, the standards will be in the hands of the nation’s chief statistician, Dr. Karin Orvis. Final decisions on the standards are expected by the summer of 2024.

    Here’s what to know about the proposals.

    The Office of Management and Budget sets standards for both the wording of questions and the types of data government agencies and surveys must collect when they are gathering information about Americans’ racial and ethnic identities.

    The existing standards, which have been in place since 1997, call for one question asking whether respondents have Hispanic or Latino background followed by a second question on racial identity, with options for American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and White.

    Because of a congressional law passed in 2005, the decennial census and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey are also required to include a “some other race” category in the second question.

    Over time, the Census Bureau has seen a notable increase in the number of people choosing that option. In the 2020 census, “some other race” was the second-largest racial group with 49.9 million people opting for it. That trend has raised questions about whether the two separate questions accurately capture the racial makeup of the country.

    “The ‘some other race’ category is intended to be a residual category for people who do not identify with any of the minimum OMB categories,” Merarys Rios-Vargas, the chief of the ethnicity and ancestry branch of the Census Bureau’s population division, said during a webinar on the proposed changes hosted by the NALEO Education Fund last month. “But when the residual category is the second-largest response group, changes need to be made, and we have identified a solution with the combined question.”

    If implemented, the new standards would merge collection of race and ethnicity information into a single question, expand the categories used to measure race and ethnicity, and mandate the collection of more detailed information on race and ethnicity whenever possible.

    The proposed combined question measuring a respondent’s race or ethnicity includes seven broad categories: White, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native, Middle Eastern or North African, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Respondents can choose multiple categories from that list. The congressionally mandated “some other race” category would also continue for the decennial census and ACS.

    Under the existing standard, respondents of Middle Eastern or North African, or MENA, descent were typically considered racially White. Census Bureau research conducted in 2015 suggested that without a distinct MENA category, roughly 12% of people who otherwise had been identified as MENA chose “some other race,” but that dipped to just 3% with the addition of a separate MENA category.

    The proposed changes would also require the collection of more detailed information on national or tribal origin within each of the major racial or ethnic categories. An example provided by the working group includes checkboxes for some common subgroups (such as Italian under White, Puerto Rican under Hispanic or Latino, Korean under Asian, etc.) as well as an open-ended box in which respondents could write in any additional detail they wanted to share.

    The proposed standards result from a review launched by the Office of the Chief Statistician of the United States last year, building on work conducted in the previous decade by the Census Bureau, the OMB and others. A working group of federal experts put together the proposed changes, and the OMB released the working group’s proposals for public comment in late January.

    Part of the challenge in formulating these questions is that race itself is more a social than a scientific matter. As the Census Bureau puts it, the categories “generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically.”

    Because the questions used in government work set the standard for much other research, they can affect the way Americans classify their own racial and ethnic identity.

    “The way that we talk about race in this country has been very much shaped by the way we ask about it,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at the Pew Research Center.

    A Pew survey in January 2020 asking respondents to describe their race or ethnicity without offering categories found that about 8 in 10 gave responses that fit within the OMB’s race or ethnicity categories. When the same participants were separately asked about their race and ethnicity using questions from the 2020 census, nearly all respondents were consistent across the two formats, but the mismatch was significantly larger for those of Hispanic or Latino heritage.

    The government’s working group noted that a “large and increasing percentage of Hispanic or Latino respondents” to both the Census and the ACS are skipping the race question outright or choosing “some other race.”

    Recently released data from the 2020 census made public by the Census Bureau shows that 43.6% of the Hispanic population either skipped the race question or reported being “some other race” alone during the decennial count. The Census Bureau contends that its research shows this is because “a large proportion of the Hispanic population does not identify with any of the current Office of Management and Budget race categories.”

    Wolf, of the Brennan Center, noted the challenge that type of mismatch could present to the usefulness of the data.

    “If someone’s self-identification doesn’t map onto the categories that federal law recognizes, the data does not really help people activate and protect their civil rights,” he said.

    Researchers outside the government are largely dependent on the OMB standards to frame questions on race and ethnicity in a way that allows comparisons with the gold-standard government studies that track American demographics. Some of these researchers are concerned that respondents who do not see themselves represented in the data may be less inclined to participate in surveys. Insights Association, a professional organization for market researchers, conducted testing on how to ask about race and ethnicity in a way that respondents prefer and found that a single question with more detailed response categories received the most positive feedback.

    Cindy Neumann, the director of research for the Insights Association, said, “Where [respondents] feel that they’re included, we feel that they’re going to be a little bit more willing to participate in research, and engage a bit more.”

    A 2015 test by the Census Bureau found that a combined question on race and ethnicity decreased the share of respondents choosing “some other race” or skipping the question entirely. For Hispanic respondents, a significantly higher share identified as Hispanic alone under the combined format, suggesting they could be less likely to select one of the race categories also offered in a combined question than they would have using separate questions.

    Some are concerned that the proposed standards aren’t measuring the right information.

    Many of the public comments submitted in response to the proposals or shared during a series of town halls OMB hosted in March have focused on the language used in the Black or African American category. A movement has emerged to add a category to measure those who are descended from enslaved people in the United States separately from people of African or Caribbean descent. The comments submitted reflect disagreement about the specific language and structure that would best capture the community, but suggestions have included adding categories for American Descendants of Slavery, American Freedmen, or Foundational Black American, separating Black American from African American, and adding a separate question asking whether a person is a descendant of enslaved people. Each could measure a part of the population that some feel is unrecognized under the current standards.

    Among advocates for the Afro-Latino community, researchers worry that asking about Hispanic or Latino ethnicity within the same question as race could minimize the detail available about the racial makeup of the Latino community.

    “If I, for example, a Black Latina, want to mark my Latinoness but also say that I’m a Black woman, then I have to choose Latino as my race and Black as my race and then I’m counted as multi-racial,” said Danielle Clealand, an associate professor at the University of Texas who studies Afro-Latino identity. “What it does is turn many of us who identify as Black or White or Native American as multi-racial, and that is not how we self-identify.”

    Critics of the proposal say multiple questions are necessary to measure race, ethnicity and national origin, since a single question could muddy the measurement of those identifiers, even if responses related to each of those concepts are available for respondents to choose.

    “You don’t measure two concepts with one question, and so by putting Hispanic ethnicity and race into one question, you are risking a huge undercount not only of racially stigmatized groups but also of the overall Latino origin population,” said Nancy López, a sociology professor at the University of New Mexico who directs and co-founded the school’s Institute for the Study of “Race” and Social Justice.

    “It’s not going to help us know how you are treated, and if there’s an injustice that needs to be rectified,” she said.

    The components of race and ethnicity that can affect how a person experiences the world may not be evident in their answers, according to critics of the proposal. A person’s racial or ethnic self-identification may not match the way they are perceived and treated by others, or may not align with their national origin or ethnic heritage. If the questions ultimately used in the government standards aren’t clear about which aspects they measure, their utility could be diminished, the critics say.

    The stakes are extremely high. In making any changes to the way race and ethnicity are measured, the working group and the chief statistician will need to strike a balance between reflecting the ways Americans choose to identify themselves with fulfilling the need for data that allows the government to enforce its own laws.

    “Does this allow us to do the things that the census is intended to do – voting rights, civil rights, allocation of congressional districts,” said Lopez from Pew. “Race and ethnicity is central to the work of folks who are in those spaces.”

    Source link

  • Miami Mayor Francis Suarez files to run for president in 2024 | CNN Politics

    Miami Mayor Francis Suarez files to run for president in 2024 | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Miami GOP Mayor Francis Suarez has filed paperwork to run for president, according to new FEC filings, marking the long-shot candidate’s formal entry to the race.

    Suarez is set to speak Thursday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. During an appearance on Fox News over the weekend, the mayor said he would make a “major announcement” in the coming weeks and pointed to his remarks at the Reagan Library as “one that Americans should tune in to.”

    Suarez, a Cuban American, is currently in his second term as mayor of Miami, Florida’s second-most populous city. Until recently, he also served as the president of the bipartisan US Conference of Mayors.

    Ahead of his filing, a super PAC supporting Suarez on Wednesday released a two-minute video touting his leadership of the Florida city as he teased a longshot bid for the White House.

    “Conservative mayor Francis Suarez chose a better path for Miami,” the video’s narrator says, highlighting his approach to crime and support for law enforcement.

    The first major Hispanic candidate to enter the Republican race, Suarez starts off as a decided underdog in the primary, with former President Donald Trump, a resident of nearby Palm Beach, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis towering over the field in polling. The primary also includes former Vice President Mike Pence, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

    Trump’s recent federal indictment over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving office has also roiled the Republican contest. The former president remains popular with the party base, and candidates have been split in their reactions to the indictment.

    Suarez, who has previously been critical of Trump, told Fox News on Sunday that the news of the former president’s first federal indictment felt “un-American” and “wrong at some level.”

    In an interview with CBS News last month, Suarez said deciding on a presidential bid was a “soul-searching process.” He also nodded to his lack of national name recognition, saying, “I’m someone who needs to be better known by this country.”

    Suarez’s late entry into the GOP primary, relative to other rivals, could affect his chances of qualifying for the first Republican primary debate, scheduled to take place in Milwaukee on August 23. The Republican National Committee has laid out strict polling and donor thresholds that candidates must meet to make the stage.

    Prior to his first election as mayor in 2017, Suarez served a Miami city commissioner for eight years. His father, Xavier Suarez, also served as mayor of Miami in the 1980s and 1990s, though his last victory in 1997 was overturned following an investigation into voter fraud.

    As mayor, Suarez has sought to bring a new era of technology, innovation and entrepreneurship to his city, including promoting industries such as cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. He has advocated making Miami the new Silicon Valley and even invited Elon Musk to move Twitter headquarters to the city.

    Suarez has also spoken about combating climate change – “It’s not theoretical for us in the city of Miami, it’s real,” he told CBS News last year.

    The mayor has on occasion locked horns with DeSantis, including over the governor’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, his claims of election fraud in the state and, most recently, his feud with Disney.

    Still, Suarez is a proponent of the Florida law championed by DeSantis that critics have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay,” which bans certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. But Disney’s opposition to the measure led DeSantis to plot a takeover of the special taxing district that allowed the entertainment giant to build its iconic theme park empire in Central Florida. The move has alarmed some Republicans, who question whether elected executives should use state power to punish a company.

    Disney announced last month it was scrapping plans to build a $1 billion office campus that is estimated to have created 2,000 white-collar jobs.

    “He took an issue that was a winning issue that we all agreed on,” Suarez told NewsNation in May, “and it looks like now it’s something that’s spite or maybe potentially a personal vendetta, which has cost the state now potentially 2,000 jobs in a billion-dollar investment.”

    When DeSantis proposed a police force to investigate election fraud, Suarez told CNN’s Jake Tapper last year that he didn’t see it “as a major problem in our state, or in our city, frankly.”

    During the pandemic, Suarez opposed DeSantis’ reopening of bars as Covid-19 cases continued to increase in the state. He pointed to “the issue of whether the decisions (made by the state) are data-driven or political.”

    Suarez told the Miami Herald he voted for DeSantis’ Democratic opponent in 2018, but he voted for the governor.

    Suarez’s presidential bid comes as Florida, long a swing state, has been trending red, with Republicans making gains in the past few election cycles, especially among Hispanic voters.

    In 2020, Trump lost Hispanic-majority Miami-Dade County – the state’s most populous county, which includes the city of Miami – by 7 points. Four years earlier, he had lost the county to Hillary Clinton by 30 points. Similarly, last year, DeSantis coasted to reelection, in part due to his success in Miami-Dade, which has historically been a huge source of Democratic votes. DeSantis also won Osceola County in the Orlando area, another recent Democratic stronghold with a large Puerto Rican population.

    In a Fox News op-ed last fall, Suarez said that the GOP success in Miami “can be replicated nationally if Republicans, and all elected officials, learn the lessons we learned about building an inclusive conservative majority.”

    “In Miami, we’ve grown a high-tech economy that delivers results, and voters have responded to our work by voting Republican at all levels, from my nearly 80% re-election results as mayor to the increasing large margins of Republican congressional candidates,” he wrote.

    Source link