The post It’s Past Time To Grant D.C. Statehood appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 51 to remedy this imbalance and make Washington the 51st state. This column explores the history underlying D.C. residents’ fight for their full rights as Americans, including efforts to both advance and suppress statehood. The district’s more than 700,000 residents deserve not only to have a vote in Congress, but also to enjoy the full benefits of citizenship without being subjected to the uneven and punitive oversight of the federal government and Congress in particular.
For much of Washington’s history, “taxation without representation” has been both the unofficial motto and rallying cry of its residents. The slogan is a remnant from the seeds of the American Revolution—and a reference to the fact that the more than 700,000 residents of the district pay federal taxes and fight in wars, all while being denied the full rights that the 50 states enjoy. In fact, Washington’s residents pay more taxes than residents in 22 states and pay more per capita to the federal government than any state—yet they have no votes in Congress.
Washington has had various governing models and levels of franchise throughout history; all have fallen short of full statehood. In 1790, following a compromise struck between rival factions led by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, a new national capital was established in the South, in exchange for the federal government’s assumption of the states’ Revolutionary War debts. When the capital was officially moved in 1800, the federal government controlled the district and granted it no votes in Congress, nor in the Electoral College. Through much of the 1800s, Washington was governed by a popularly elected city council and an appointed, then later elected, mayor. That system would be later replaced by a territorial governor appointed by the president, followed by an appointed commission that would last until the mid 1900s.
During the Civil War and Reconstruction, more than 25,000 Black Americans moved to Washington, D.C. As a result, Black citizens made up about one-third of the population during the late 1800s. After Black men obtained the right to vote via the Reconstruction Act of 1867, they began seeking office in the D.C. government; the first Black municipal office holder was elected in 1868. This period coincided with social and economic success for the district’s Black residents, which would later meet vicious and violent backlash. Prior to that, in 1874, Congress removed the district’s ability to elect its own leaders, in part to quash the growing Black political power; instead, Congress opted for a three-person board of commissioners that the president appointed, which governed the district until 1967.
The civil rights movement of the 1960s and activism of the 1970s were a catalyst for democratic advancement for the residents of the district. The era saw the ratification of the 23rd Amendment in 1961, granting residents the right to vote for president and vice president for the first time. In the 1970s, the Home Rule Act allowed residents to elect their own mayor and city council, and in 1971, Washington gained a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives.
Congress also passed a constitutional amendment in 1978 that would have finally granted Washington two voting senators and a voting House representative—but it failed to receive ratification from enough states in time to be enacted. Under the current home rule status, Congress maintains the right to override legation passed by the D.C. City Council and signed by the mayor, in addition to retaining authority over the district’s budget. To this day, Washington, D.C., remains the only national capital in the democratic world whose citizens do not have equal voting and representation rights.
Beyond the negative impacts of the lack of voting representation, the district’s inability to act as the arbiter of its own laws leaves it subject to the political whims of Congress. While Congress and the president can nullify laws passed by the D.C. government with a resolution of disapproval, they have only ever exercised that ability three times. Far more frequently, Congress has chosen to override the decisions of local elected officials and voters in Washington through the appropriations process.
Over the years, Congress has attempted to supersede D.C. laws in various policy areas, including marijuana legalization, marriage equality and the extension of domestic partner rights, reproductive rights, and HIV/AIDS prevention. Furthermore, conservative members of Congress routinely introduce stand-alone legislation designed to force unwanted policies on the residents of Washington.
The district’s status has also resulted in disparate treatment in receiving emergency congressional aid in the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. In early March 2020, federal lawmakers passed a $2 trillion relief package known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which included a minimum of $1.25 billion guaranteed to each state. Washington, D.C., however, only received $500 million—a marked departure from the normal practice of treating the district like a state for federal funding purposes.
The district also finds itself at a disadvantage in controlling the actions of federal law enforcement on its own streets. On June 1, 2020, when protestors peacefully gathered in Lafayette Square to protest systemic racism and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people at the hands of police, they were met with extreme force by federally controlled military and law enforcement units—including unidentified federal law enforcement agents under the direct control of the Trump administration.
The violent crackdown was made possible by the invocation of the federal government’s broad powers over the district, including control of the D.C. National Guard—the only one out of 54 states and territories to report to the president. The attacks on protestors involved the deployment of rubber bullets and tear gas without warning or provocation and the use of military helicopters throughout the night to intimidate and disperse crowds. The Trump administration floated, then subsequently abandoned, the unprecedented idea of federalizing the district’s police force as part of the crackdown. Since Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser lacks the authority of a governor or some large city mayors, she was left with few options other than rhetorically opposing the Trump administration’s actions and imploring governors to call back their National Guard units.
Statehood opponents routinely tie their arguments to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution, which outlines the general provisions for federal authority over the seat of government. Opponents also rely on the justification offered by James Madison in the Federalist Papers: There exists an “indispensable necessity of complete [federal] authority at the seat of government.” However, legal scholars and statehood advocates have long noted that the Constitution only outlines the requirements for preserving a federal enclave to house the seat of government and does not preclude Congress from granting statehood to Washington outside the borders of that enclave. Creating a new state is not an unprecedented action; Congress has done so for 37 other states through simple legislative action.
Within Congress, opposition to D.C. statehood has relied on both partisan objections and racist counterfactual arguments attacking the fitness of the district’s historically Black leaders and population.
Conservatives, echoed by President Donald Trump in May 2020, have argued that the district’s overwhelming population of Democratic voters would elect two Democrats to the Senate and send a Democrat to the House. Rather than allow the district’s residents to make their own political determinations, congressional Republicans opt to stymie residents’ right to representation in order to preserve the balance of power in the Senate.
In addition, like in much of American society, race has long been a dividing line in statehood debates, and the question of slavery remained central to statehood admission up through the Civil War. Throughout the 20th century, large factions of Congress historically held views that only territories with majority-white populations deserved statehood. In the case of the district, where African Americans have been the majority or near-majority of the population since the 1950s and more than one-third of the population since the Civil War, the statehood debate has involved these arguments as well.
In the 1870s, when the district’s Black population was on the rise and the federal government stripped the city of its ability to elect its leaders, Sen. John Tyler Morgan of Alabama—who was also a Confederate general and owner of enslaved people —argued that it was necessary to “deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being in the District” in order to suppress Black political power. In 1993, when a D.C. statehood measure was defeated in the House, members attacked the district’s history of Black political leadership and argued, “Let’s take it [Washington] back and clean it up.”
Alarmingly, this trend continues today. In making a case against H.R. 51 in 2020, Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) argued that the district was “not equipped to shoulder the burden of statehood,” and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (R) claimed that Mayor Muriel Bowser and the late Mayor Marion Barry—both Black Americans—would be untrustworthy as governors. Cotton also attempted to justify Washington’s status by noting that other less populous and less diverse states were “well-rounded” and “working-class”—a thinly veiled racist swipe at the residents of the district.
In November 2016, the residents of Washington, D.C., voted overwhelmingly for self-governance and statehood when they approved a ballot measure, by a margin of 79 percent, that would admit the district as the 51st state. And with the passage of H.R. 51 in June, the House voted for the first time since the establishment of Washington, D.C., to declare it the nation’s 51st state. The bill would incorporate the residential and commercial areas of the district into the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, and would preserve a smaller federally controlled district containing the seat of government to continue serving as the nation’s capital.
Passage of this legislation in the House represents a huge step forward in expanding democratic representation. One area that the bill does not fully address, however, is the presidential electors whom the district appoints. The 23rd Amendment states: “The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct: A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State.”
Thus, even if Washington were shrunk to a smaller federal enclave, the residents of that enclave—including the first family—would choose three presidential electors. Selecting the electors by vote would result in significantly skewed representation and an unfair bias in favor of the sitting president or the candidate the president supports. However, an easy remedy exists: The 23rd Amendment states that electors are appointed “in such manner as Congress may direct.” Congress could direct in statute that the electors vote for the candidate who wins the majority of the national popular vote. This would address the specific problem with the district’s electors, as well as reduce the bias in the Electoral College that has resulted in two of the last three presidents winning an election without a majority of the votes cast.
Native Washingtonians and recent arrivals alike have taken up the banner of this long-running statehood fight that dates back hundreds of years. It’s time for Congress to listen to them, end their second-class citizenship status, and enact H.R. 51. It’s time to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state of the union.
William Roberts is the managing director for Democracy and Government Reform at the Center for American Progress. Sam Berger is the vice president of Democracy and Government Reform at the Center.
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]]>The post Trump’s War on the Postal Service Hurts All Americans appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>The Trump administration recently orchestrated the appointment of a top fundraiser for the Republican Party, Louis DeJoy, as the postmaster general. DeJoy is the first postmaster in more than 20 years to lack any experience with the Postal Service, and he has serious conflicts of interest. Dejoy has a multimillion dollar stake in a supply chain logistics company that contracts with the Postal Service. Since his appointment, DeJoy has secretly taken steps that have slowed the delivery of mail.
The U.S. Postal Service has been a part of the fabric of American life for more than 200 years. It is even more vital during a pandemic that limits in-person interactions.
The Postal Service is a lifeline for millions of people. Americans rely on it for medicine, jobs, their small businesses, and critical services in rural areas. Trump’s war against the post office is a threat to all Americans.
Sam Berger is vice president for Democracy and Government Reform at the Center for American Progress. Stephanie Wylie is the senior policy analyst for Legal Progress at the Center for American Progress.
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]]>The post 100 Years After the 19th Amendment, the Fight for Women’s Suffrage Continues appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>As we celebrate this important milestone, we must sit with the amendment’s complicated legacy and reality, both of which are instructive for the future. The expansion of voting rights to women has been essential to the fight for equality, whether in the workplace, in the classroom, in cultural norms, or in the voting booth. Yet, the fight was compromised from its inception by a narrow vision of who should benefit and who could be left out. The white suffragists who gained the vote were willing to do so even though many women of color—who faced additional racism-fueled barriers such as the proliferation of Jim Crow laws—effectively could not enjoy the same opportunity. This dichotomy of professing a commitment to equality while embracing the privileges of exclusion, however, was not unique to the debate about women’s suffrage. It reflects a larger reality that, while women have made important gains, these gains have not always been evenly experienced. The consequences of eroding access to the vote has been extensive: Even the unprecedented selection of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)—the first woman of color as a vice presidential candidate on a major-party presidential ticket—cannot obscure the reality that women, especially women of color, are still underrepresented in the halls of Congress; shut out of most of the top jobs in companies; denied bodily autonomy; paid less than their male counterparts; and, ultimately, left behind in an economy that undervalues their lives.
The long history of the fight for women’s suffrage is stained with racism that many writers of history have attempted to whitewash. Famous white women such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony have received the lion’s share of credit for leading the suffrage movement. However, these women fought alongside women of color—such as Ida B. Wells, Mabel Ping Hua-Lee, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, Jovita Idár, Susette La Flesche Tibbles, and so many more—whose stories and contributions have not been elevated to the same extent in the prevailing historical narrative. While the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 is often touted as the official start of the suffrage movement, this selectively simplifies its origins. For example, the suffrage movement drew inspiration from the Haudenosaunee women, who, for centuries, held political and other societal rights in their sovereign nations and had roots in the movement to abolish slavery. Famous abolitionists Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass were also dedicated suffragists, who recognized the intertwined importance of Black suffrage and women’s suffrage as central to fulfilling the nation’s commitment to equality and equal justice under law.
The movement splintered into factions as the 15th Amendment—which promised suffrage to any citizen regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude—neared the finish line with mounting political support in the late 1860s. Leading white suffragists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony took one side, espousing racist rhetoric and forming alliances with racists to advocate for white women’s suffrage as more pressing or even necessary than an amendment that would result in suffrage for Black men. This embrace of racist ideology betrayed the trust and desires of Black women, who had long been fighting for suffrage not just for themselves but also for their families and communities. On the other side, they—particularly Black suffragists—understood that it was a false choice. Without the 15th Amendment, Black women could not hope to be enfranchised along with their white peers whenever that day did come, and the other immediate policy goals of the suffragettes—for example, the right to own property or access educational opportunities—would never be realized for Black women. Even after the 15th Amendment was ratified, leading white suffragists continued attempts to treat women of color suffragists as pawns for political expediency, epitomized when organizers of the Women’s Suffrage Parade in 1913 asked Black suffragists to march in the back instead of with their state delegations to appease racist suffragists and their allies.
On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was adopted, 42 years after its first introduction into Congress, as part of the U.S. Constitution. The 19th Amendment extended the vote to, in theory, between 26 million and 30 million women, making it the single largest expansion of voting rights in United States history, yet its reach must not be overstated. First, several states had already granted women full or partial voting rights by 1920, so the amendment affirmed the right in those states and vitally extended the right to others. Second—and most importantly—despite the contributions of women of color to the suffrage movement, suffrage was not a reality for women of color upon its passage in 1920. Chinese Americans were not able to vote until the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 (for most other Americans with Asian ancestry, this came in 1952) and Native Americans were not able to vote in all states until 1948. Black people, particularly those living in the Jim Crow South, were blocked from voting through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, white-only primaries, and other barriers and acts of violence and intimidation designed to silence them.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) brought the promises of the 15th and 19th Amendments closer to a reality for all Black people as well as other people of color whose votes had been suppressed through the same discriminatory tactics outlawed by this pivotal civil rights legislation. For many, it wasn’t until the VRA was extended in 1975 to, among other things, require voting materials be translated into languages other than English, that many Latinx and immigrant voters could comfortably exercise their right to vote. The takeaway is simple: Simply granting the right to vote was not enough to ensure that all women were truly enfranchised. It has taken a century of additional measures to close loopholes and combat discrimination—and the fight is far from over.
Many Americans still do not enjoy full voting rights. Despite the VRA, voter suppression efforts persist and disproportionately target voters of color, immigrant voters, LGBTQ voters, and disabled voters, and, as a result, many women living at the intersection of any of these identities. Such efforts include, but are not limited to, voter ID laws, inaccessible polling places, voter roll purges, voter intimidation efforts, limited access to early voting, and disinformation campaigns. The persistence of this discrimination is in large part due to the weakening of the VRA, particularly in light of recent events such as the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision Shelby County v. Holder—gutting key VRA voter protection provisions—and the lifting of a consent decree on the Republican National Committee in 2017, which voting rights advocates fear may result in more frequent instances of voter intimidation and suppression.
Moreover, people residing in Washington, D.C., or in a U.S. territory, still are limited in their ability to have full representation at the federal level. People living in D.C. are unable to have full congressional representation and, instead, are limited to a single delegate who serves in the U.S. House of Representatives. Although D.C. residents can vote for president and have three presidential electoral votes, people living in U.S. territories cannot vote in presidential elections and also have limited representation in Congress. Felony disenfranchisement laws around the U.S. prohibit people in prison, people serving felony probation or parole, and/or formerly incarcerated people who have completed their sentence from voting. These laws disproportionately disenfranchise Black and Latinx people. Partisan gerrymandering is also effectively disenfranchising millions of U.S. voters. Finally, the coronavirus crisis has created new obstacles to safe and equitable access to voting for many voters in addition to existing barriers.
Lawmakers must enact robust policies to combat voter suppression to ensure that all eligible Americans can vote. This involves ensuring that discriminatory measures and actions that limit the ability to vote—such as voter ID laws, voter roll purges, discriminatory signature verification requirements, voter intimidation tactics, disinformation campaigns, and disenfranchising people on the basis of felony convictions and/or where they live—are repealed, halted, and prevented in the future. Partisan gerrymandering, which devalues votes, must also come to an end. In addition, it is essential that any and all voting reforms aim to make voting more convenient, safer, and more accessible for every eligible voter. Voter registration measures such as automatic registration; same-day registration; preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds; online registration; longer early voting periods; “no-excuse” absentee voting; as well as ample in-person voting options are essential to ensuring that all Americans can easily and safely vote. Bills such as the For the People Act (H.R. 1) and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (H.R. 4) are essential steps toward protecting and expanding voting rights and must be passed into law. Furthermore, Congress should grant Washington, D.C., statehood as well as establish a binding mechanism that would allow people living in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories to determine their own futures with regard to the right to vote in the presidential election. Finally, no one should have to choose between their paycheck and exercising their civic voice. All voters—especially working women with caregiving responsibilities—should have access to flexible and expanded paid time off for voting. All of these pro-voter reforms will not only benefit traditionally suppressed voters, such as voters of color and disabled voters, but they will also widely benefit women voters by helping to ensure their fair participation.
In response to the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers and leaders at all levels must act quickly to implement robust vote-by-mail systems and ensure access to safe in-person voting options for people who prefer or need them.
Women’s progress is intertwined, still, with the suffrage movement. Access to the vote is a powerful tool to drive change and transform communities. Yet, despite their exclusion from the promise of the 19th Amendment, women of color have emerged as a growing electoral powerhouse. It is precisely because of this growing power that the rights of women of color are increasingly under attack today, just as they’ve have always been, by those in power who are seeking to preserve a status quo and maintain their privilege at the expense of justice for all. The legacy of the 19th Amendment makes clear the urgent importance of an inclusive vision of equality that encompasses the diversity of women’s experiences, and this vision must be a priority in the years ahead.
The commemoration of women’s suffrage must not be solely a celebration—it must be a call to action. While subsequent legislation has since enfranchised more women of color—and, today, women of color collectively have come to represent a potential powerhouse electorate—systemic discrimination still bars some women of color from the polls. The promise of suffrage—and with it, the promise of American democracy and the promise of true equality—has yet to be fully realized.
Robin Bleiweis is a research associate with the Women’s Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Shilpa Phadke is the vice president of the Women’s Initiative at the Center. Jocelyn Frye is a senior fellow with the Women’s Initiative at the Center.
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]]>The post Why Hungary’s Democratic Backsliding Should Prompt NATO To Act appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>Órban’s deliberately provocative and threatening speech was not a nationalist dog whistle intended only for the Hungarian public. Rather, it directly suggested that a significant amount of territory belonging to Hungary’s neighbors to the east—Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine—should be considered Hungarian.
Órban’s rhetoric—and Hungary’s rapidly backsliding democracy—should serve as a wake-up call to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Today, the alliance faces a growing and pernicious threat: the rise of illiberal nationalism within its ranks. This internal threat is one that an alliance built on cooperation of individual nation-states and premised on states working together is ill-suited to address. For instance, NATO has been encouraging member states to devote more resources to national defense. However, this begs the question of whether the alliance should encourage an autocratic Hungary to massively increase its defense spending when it could use its military capabilities to threaten its neighbors. With Turkey stoking tension with Greece in the eastern Mediterranean, leading to fears of conflict between two NATO members, the internal threat of nationalism to NATO’s cohesion is clear. It is time for the NATO alliance to get serious about the threat posed by rising nationalism and democratic backsliding among its member states.
Over the past decade, the Órban regime has relentlessly attacked Hungarian democracy. Today, Freedom House maintains that, given the government’s tight control over the media and independent institutions, Hungary can no longer be considered a democracy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Órban has taken on emergency powers that allow him to rule by decree, further consolidating his power over the government. This descent into authoritarianism has also gone hand in hand with the regime’s efforts to inflame Hungarian nationalism and provoke confrontation with Hungary’s neighbors.
Órban has followed a tactic employed by Russia, wherein President Vladimir Putin issued passports to Russian populations outside of their borders. In 2011, Órban similarly expanded Hungary’s citizenship laws, issuing passports to ethnic Hungarians in surrounding countries. And while Órban has made it exceedingly difficult for Hungarians who have moved abroad to vote, Hungarian minorities in surrounding countries have become a major base of support for the Órban government. For instance, in the Romanian region of Transylvania, there are 1.2 million ethnic Hungarians, making it one of the largest ethnic minority populations in Europe. This has created what Tamás Kiss, a researcher at the Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities, described as a system of “ethnic parallelism – to build up and maintain a system in which Hungarians can live their life as it would be not in Romania but in Hungary.” Using local proxies in ethnic Hungarian communities in Slovenia, Serbia, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania, Órban has pumped money into Hungarian-centric media and cultural programs. Akos Keller-Alant, a Hungarian journalist, describes this strategy as a way to pursue “the ‘virtual unification’ of all Hungarians,” including by making it “easier for them to gain Hungarian citizenship.”
Meanwhile, tensions with Hungary’s neighbors have grown. The Órban regime has been quick to stoke resentment over various perceived slights—both real and imagined—within Hungarian minority populations. This, in turn, has provoked a backlash among Hungary’s neighbors, exacerbating tensions and increasing anti-Hungarian sentiment. This gives the Órban regime a nationalist dial, so to speak, to aggravate territorial grievances whenever it chooses. With the upheaval and uncertainty caused by COVID-19, the ability to distract the nation from the government’s response to the pandemic would likely become increasingly politically appealing.
While ethnic conflict is not a new feature of central European politics, several factors—including Hungary’s rapid military modernization and growing relationships with Russia and China—make Órban’s increasing nationalistic posture and rhetoric more troubling.
Órban is not just stirring the nationalist pot. Hungary’s movement away from democracy and embrace of autocratic illiberalism has helped the country foster closer relationships with Russia and China. Russian intelligence has greatly expanded its presence in the country, allegedly using Hungary as a back door to the European Union. Meanwhile, China has built up its economic and political connections to Budapest, with a major Belt and Road Initiative project linking the Hungarian capital to Belgrade. Ultimately, these sorts of actions benefit all involved parties: Hungary builds economic and political ties with Russia and China, while Russia and China get the opportunity to not only build ties with a fellow illiberal regime but also potentially undermine the cohesion of the EU and NATO.
Additionally, both Russia and China provide a revanchist model for Hungary to follow. Russia seized Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, and continues to dispute regions of Georgia under the guise of protecting ethnic Russian populations. China, for its part, has built islands in the South China Sea, claiming a loose historical connection. What once may have been viewed as an international taboo—seizing territory—has clearly been broken. However outlandish Hungary’s territorial claims, similar actions undertaken by the Órban regime may gain backing from Moscow or Beijing or both.
Hungary has been considered a solid NATO partner since it became a member of the alliance in 1999. Today, it has troops in Kosovo and Afghanistan and contributes to the Baltic air policing mission. Meanwhile, its defense spending has remained low, amounting to just 1.22 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in 2019.
However, Hungarian defense spending has significantly accelerated, with a major focus on force modernization. In its 2020 national budget, Hungary is expected to increase its defense spending by 20 percent, for a total defense budget of 616 billion forints, or $2.1 billion. Hungary is on track to reach the goal of 2 percent defense spending by 2023. Much of the defense budget increase has occurred since the beginning of the Trump administration, with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó emphasizing President Donald Trump’s call for European countries to ensure their own security.
Hungary is purchasing Saab Gripen fighters to replace its aging Soviet fighters. In addition, it is modernizing its helicopter fleet, acquiring 20 light tactical H145M helicopters from Airbus, and has expanded its ground capabilities through the acquisition of American Humvees, German tanks, and modern howitzers. Hungary is also seeking to expand its ground forces and expand youth recruitment to military programs. Hungary has also prioritized what it terms its “territorial defense” capabilities, or using the military to patrol the country’s borders since the migrant crisis of 2015. The Órban regime is planning on doubling the number of soldiers at the borders in 2020, despite the fact the migrant flows through Hungary have essentially stopped.
To be clear, the military balance between Hungary and its neighbors is not favorable for Hungary. It is highly unlikely that Órban fanning the flames of nationalism will turn into a full-on inferno, with demands for territorial revisions and war. Yet the mere potential for such a dystopian future—and the possibility for outside agitators to encourage such an outcome—should lead both NATO and the EU to take action to snuff out those embers.
From a NATO alliance perspective, the presence of an illiberal member whose leader stokes ethnic and national tension with its neighbors and spends significant sums modernizing its forces should be concerning. While the notion that allies embedded in an alliance could take arms against each other may seem far-fetched, history says otherwise. In 1940, during World War II, Hungary regained the region of Transylvania from Romania. At the time, both nations were allies as part of the Axis powers. What is more, Romania contemplated going to war against its Axis “ally” following the assumed defeat of the Soviet Union. It is not out of the realm of possibility that similar intra-alliance divisions could arise today.
For NATO, it should be clear that the political character of each of its member states matters a great deal to the security of all members and to the effectiveness of the alliance. NATO needs to become a democratic alliance again.
To that end, the United States, the EU, and European states with significant influence on Hungary, namely Germany, could step in to exert their considerable leverage. However, short of evicting illiberal members from the alliance—which is both complicated and immensely controversial—NATO should seek to deepen integration and limit the potential for unilateral action by expanding greater cross-border regional and pan-European defense integration. By way of example, in 1952, Germany and France created the European Coal and Steel Community, merging the industries needed to wage war into a supranational structure that no single state controlled. Similarly, the challenge posed by the revival of European nationalism should lead to efforts to integrate European defense acquisitions and military forces as much as possible. This should not be considered a short-term effort but rather a long-term endeavor to blunt and diminish underlying historical antagonisms.
NATO should also undertake and encourage initiatives that integrate force and promote joint acquisitions, which is already happening on a limited level in Western Europe. For instance, Danish sailors serve on German naval vessels, and Belgium and the Netherlands have joint naval capabilities. NATO has also expanded initiatives to foster joint acquisitions, including a $20 million precision-guided munitions purchase involving 11 allied partners and the establishment of permanent joint intelligence capabilities. NATO should encourage central and Eastern European countries to undertake similar efforts and should try to create incentives for such cooperation.
Additionally, NATO should encourage more defense spending at the EU level. This entails re-imagining the 2 percent defense spending pledge as not only an investment in national military forces but also in collective European defense. While Europeans do need to invest more in defense, this no longer needs to be done just through the European nation state, especially because the EU’s involvement in defense is no longer a third rail for European integration. In a recent poll, nearly 80 percent of European publics were in favor of a common EU defense policy. Similarly, European citizens are growing more comfortable with the power of the EU to solve complex multinational issues. When COVID-19 hit Italy, for example, Italian leaders turned to the EU much in the same way that a U.S. state hit by a natural disaster would turn to the federal government for assistance.
Furthermore, current European spending is extremely inefficient, leads to immense duplication and waste, hinders interoperability of forces, and contributes to Europe punching well below its geopolitical weight. For example, Europe has 17 types of battle tank systems and an estimated 178 separate types of weapons systems. While any prospect for the creation of a so-called EU army is a long way off, the gradual development of EU capabilities or of military capabilities developed under EU auspices should be integrated into NATO’s efforts and planning. Instead of worrying about duplicating NATO efforts, the United States and NATO should seek to leverage the EU’s powers of integration. The events of the past few years have made this more important than ever.
Encouraging defense integration at the bilateral, regional, and EU levels provides a path forward to deal with increasingly nationalist NATO members. In doing so, NATO can mitigate the threat of nationalism in member states such as Hungary by entangling and integrating their militaries to such a degree that nationalist agitation remains strictly rhetorical.
The renewed interplay of nationalism and authoritarianism should raise real concerns within NATO. Preventing Europe from descending into a destructive cycle of nationalist conflict was, after all, a major driver for the formation of the NATO alliance and the impetus for the European integration project. With the threat of democratic backsliding and nationalist aggression rearing its ugly head once more, NATO must respond.
Max Bergmann is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Siena Cicarelli is a research assistant for National Security and International Policy at the Center.
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]]>The post State Responses To Address the Shortage of Infant and Toddler Child Care appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>Some states have engaged in grants and contracts with child care providers to target areas with less infant and toddler child care as well as populations with less access to child care. Infants and toddlers require lower teacher-to-child ratios and smaller group sizes. Thus, the true cost of this type of care is often greater than the base child care subsidy reimbursement rate, which can create a barrier to providers wishing to offer care for infants and toddlers. Grants and contracts can provide a more stable funding stream than portable vouchers and are usually designed to cover a larger share of the actual cost of providing care. Georgia’s Quality Rated Subsidy Grants program and Oregon’s Baby Promise are two examples of this approach. Both programs award federal funds directly to providers through grants and contracts to create slots for children eligible to receive child care assistance, paid at a higher reimbursement rate than base subsidy rates. In Hawaii, administrators use contracts to increase access to child care for adolescent parents who have infants and toddlers and are enrolled in high school and parenting programs. And Colorado implemented a microgrant program to target child care deserts across the state. Grants and contracts also establish reliable public funding based on enrollment rather than attendance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this arrangement allowed some providers to continue receiving income to cover bills and prevent permanent closure.
Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships (EHS-CCPs) have also improved access to quality infant and toddler child care for families. This federally funded program provides resources to communities that lack adequate access to quality early learning opportunities and encourages collaborative relationships with providers who agree to meet EHS standards. One partnership operating in Bartlesville and Claremore, Oklahoma, improved both the quality of care and access for families from the Delaware Tribe of Indians and children who are not part of the tribal community. Through the partnership, the child care provider lowered teacher-to-child ratios to give children more individualized care; provided opportunities for professional development; ensured that all classrooms serve a mix of subsidy-eligible and higher-income families; and built new classrooms as well as a completely new child care center that will serve 148 additional children. While partnerships have achieved measurable gains for many communities, they require greater investment to reach more children and families, as all EHS programs only serve about 3 percent of eligible families. Similar to grants and contracts, EHS-CCPs offer reliable public funding and supports that have served as stabilizers for providers with decreased enrollment during the coronavirus crisis, helping some programs keep their doors open.
Some states and localities have passed legislation aimed at improving access to affordable, quality child care for infants and toddlers. In 2018, Washington state established the Child Care Collaborative Task Force (C3TF), which is charged with developing recommendations to build greater access to affordable child care for working families. Among its recommendations, the task force called for limiting what families pay for child care to 7 percent of their income by 2025. This initiative—alongside similar task forces in Oregon and New York—demonstrates the growing interest among states to identify and implement strategies that will create greater access to quality child care for all families.
The Birth-to-Three for All DC Act, passed in July 2018 by the D.C. Council, contains perhaps the most comprehensive state or local actions dedicated to improving infant and toddler child care and well-being. The bill improves subsidies to cover the true cost of providing quality care; introduces a progressive pay scale that ensures no family pays more than 10 percent of its income on child care; boosts pay and professional development for early educators; and strengthens physical, mental, and nutritional health supports for families. While the District of Columbia has not yet fully funded the legislation, the bill serves as a model for other states and cities not only for improving child care access but also promoting affordability, workforce compensation, and infant health.
States must first quantify the problem in order to understand and target communities most in need. Collecting data on total enrollment or licensed capacity—specifically by age group within the 0-to-5 age range—allows researchers and policymakers to better measure the need for infant and toddler child care. Currently only 19 states and the District of Columbia, which account for less than 40 percent of the U.S. population, collect and publicly report data on child care supply by age.
Colorado developed a model using licensed capacity and enrollment data and results from the Preschool Development Grant Parent Survey, a survey of more than 3,000 parents conducted primarily online by the Colorado Health Institute (CHI), the Colorado Office of Early Childhood, and partners. The survey weighted results by parent age, ethnicity, and region within the state to both estimate existing and needed child care supply by age and understand the shortage specific to infant and toddler child care. The CHI also conducted 19 focus groups with families, providers, and other early childhood stakeholders to better understand child care needs and experiences in communities across the state. This work transpired as part of a comprehensive child care needs assessment, conducted with support from the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five Initiative, which also examined family support programs and disparities by race and geography.
Child care plays a critical economic infrastructure role by enabling parents to work—something made abundantly clear during the ongoing coronavirus crisis as parents struggle to balance work and family responsibilities. State leaders understand that an essential part of their response to the economic crisis onset by the COVID-19 pandemic includes a stable child care industry that provides sufficient access for working families. While the four examples highlighted in this column show the steps states can take to address the shortage of infant and toddler child care, long-term solutions require significant federal investment to reach all communities and prevent further shortages for an industry on the brink of collapse.
MK Falgout is a special assistant for Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress. Steven Jessen-Howard is a former research assistant for Early Childhood Policy at the Center.
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]]>The post 10 Actions Employers Can Take To Secure Equal Pay for Black Women appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>The disparity between Black female and white male earnings, unfortunately, is not new. In 2018, Black women working full time, year round earned an estimated 62 cents for every dollar earned by white male full-time, year-round workers. This nearly 40 percent gap in earnings reflects the combined impact of long-standing racial and gender pay disparities. While a portion of these disparities can be explained by measurable factors such as differences in seniority or education, a significant portion—estimated to be as high as 38 percent of the overall gap—cannot be explained by such factors. It is this portion that researchers often attribute to discrimination.
There is a critical need for action at all levels to address the pay discrimination that Black women experience, from congressional action on pending proposals such as the Paycheck Fairness Act to robust executive actions by the administration, such as increasing the number of compliance reviews to assess federal contractor pay practices; state innovations to limit the misuse of salary history; and actions within individual workplaces. Such action is especially important given Trump administration efforts to roll back important progress on equal pay by moving to discontinue the collection of employers’ compensation data. Employers have a particularly pivotal role to play in setting the tone and establishing pay practices within workplaces, and they must be front and center in this work to correct the disparities that have eroded Black women’s pay for decades.
Here are 10 concrete actions that employers can take to address Black women’s pay gap.
Employers should undertake a compensation audit that looks at racial, ethnic, and gender pay differences on an annual basis. Such an internal audit enables a company to examine pay differences confidentially across an organization and take concrete steps to close the gaps that are uncovered. To the extent that employers find unexplained pay gaps for Black women, corrective measures taken expeditiously can help undo these disparities and raise their wages.
Pay disparities are often difficult to detect. Greater pay transparency could help provide Black women with better information about where pay gaps exist, which job opportunities could be the most equitable and promising, and where corrective action may be needed. It is especially important for employers to provide more transparency about pay differences broken down by factors such as race, gender, and ethnicity to promote better understanding of workers’ diverse experiences. Researchers have found that pay data disclosure by employers can help close pay gaps within the workplace.
There are many different models that employers can draw from in deciding how best to disclose compensation information. In the United Kingdom, for example, companies with 250 or more employees—including many U.S.-based employers with offices in the United Kingdom—are required to report their gender pay gap. Employers modeling this type of reporting could publish or make available to employees disaggregated data to show the overall racial and gender pay gaps within a company and provide more visibility into pay differences not only for Black women but for all workers across race and ethnicity. Another option for employers is to post salary ranges for open positions so that all applicants have a better understanding of the expected wages associated with a position. Still another option is for employers to publish their pay data utilizing the occupational categories in their EEO-1 form submission, a standard form that employers with 100 or more employees are required to file yearly with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Using this approach, an employer could publish pay data broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender across the form’s broad occupational categories to help pinpoint potential problems. Any or all of these options could help shed light on where pay disparities experienced by Black women are occurring.
It is important to ensure that the jobs that Black women hold are compensated equitably in comparison to other jobs within a workplace. This is particularly necessary because many Black women are frequently clustered in jobs that are lower-paying and that offer fewer promotional opportunities. Employers should assess the different jobs within their workplaces to identify jobs that are comparable—for example, jobs that require similar types of skills or functional activities. Just because two jobs have different titles does not mean that they are not “equal” or substantially the same for purposes of establishing the appropriate pay level. Commissioning an objective analysis of the different positions within a company and the different components of each job could help identify which jobs are comparable. Similarly, employers can undertake an analysis of their workforces to determine whether Black women—or other workers—are siloed in certain types of jobs. If such occupational segregation exists, employers can take steps to make adjustments where necessary to raise wages and promote comparable pay levels across job categories, achieve greater diversity within occupations, and increase the numbers of Black women in higher-wage jobs. These types of analyses could help show where pay adjustments are needed and could create new opportunities for Black women.
Black women disproportionately work in low-wage jobs, particularly jobs that pay at or near the minimum wage. They also are overrepresented in what are known as tipped occupations—jobs where workers are paid less than the federal minimum wage because there is an expectation that these workers will earn the equivalent of the minimum wage when tips are added to their pay. This type of subminimum wage also affects certain workers with disabilities, whose employers are permitted to pay them a wage lower than the federal minimum wage for the work that they perform. Raising the minimum wage and eliminating the tipped minimum wage and subminimum wage for workers with disabilities would help increase the wages of many Black women and help them make ends meet. Employers can take comparable action on their own to increase the wages of employees working in minimum wage jobs to ensure that they are earning at least $15 per hour. Employers also can take steps to remove barriers to collective action and union organizing, which can help create spaces for workers to discuss their wages and engage with employers.
Employers should make a commitment to prohibit the use of salary history when making hiring or compensation decisions. Using salary history to determine whether to hire a person, or whether to set an individual’s new salary based on their previous salary, means that Black women—indeed, all women—are perpetually connected to salaries that may be infected with discrimination. Establishing a clear prohibition against this would help ensure that the pay level for a particular job is based on factors related to the job being performed instead of other, extraneous factors.
Employees too often are in the dark about how pay decisions are made within their workplace and about their employer’s overall pay policies. Establishing an equal pay “right to request” or “bill of rights” would help ensure that all employees have access to basic information about pay practices and policies within an organization. Such information could include the employer’s equal pay policy, the salary range for open positions, a description of the process used to determine pay raises, information on gender and racial pay gaps within the company, and information on how frequently compensation audits are undertaken. Having this type of information available would establish a baseline level of understanding for all employees, including Black women, and allow for greater clarity about an employer’s pay policies.
Creating a working group or task force with representation from across an organization can foster better communication about employer pay practices and provide an additional layer of transparency about the process for determining wages. Such a working group would not make pay decisions or be involved in setting pay levels; rather, it would provide a forum where questions and problems could be surfaced and discussed. This group could elevate specific concerns about pay disparities facing Black women or other groups of workers and delve into specific strategies that could be deployed across the organization to ensure that pay policies are evenly administered.
Establishing a strong commitment to equity, as reflected in the policies and practices utilized throughout an individual workplace, can help foster a climate and culture where pay discrimination is not permitted to take root. Research studies have found that greater numbers of women in leadership can help reduce different forms of workplace discrimination such as sexual harassment and expand opportunities for women. Increasing the number of Black women at the highest levels of an organization not only helps break previously impenetrable glass ceilings but also can broaden perceptions of where Black women fit within a company and help ensure that Black women are seen as valued workers. Employers should undertake targeted efforts to include Black women at every level—on boards, in executive leadership, and in managerial roles across different types of functional and programmatic teams throughout the company.
Improving Black women’s wages is only one part of a comprehensive strategy to ensure that Black women are treated fairly in the workplace and achieve more economic stability. Many Black women work in jobs that lack critical workplace supports such as paid sick leave and access to back-up care in emergency situations. The absence of these types of supports can make it harder for Black women, and other women workers, to navigate their work and family responsibilities and can create untenable choices between putting their job or their family at risk. Further, many Black women lack the overall wealth—which goes beyond earnings to encompass savings, retirement, and other financial assets—to sustain themselves through different economic emergencies or the inevitable financial ebbs and flows that occur over time. Employers can address these concerns by adopting strong work-family policies such as paid family and medical leave and ensuring that workers have equal access to other types of critical benefits within organizations, including retirement benefits, comprehensive health coverage, and work bonuses.
Pay discrimination often is rooted in different forms of bias, including biases about Black women and their value. These biases can lead to Black women being underpaid; being passed over for promotions; and being excluded from better, more lucrative jobs. Although diversity training is not a panacea, done well it can be an important component of a comprehensive strategy to rid the workplace of implicit and explicit biases that shape workers’ experiences. Ongoing anti-bias training is critical to combat workplace biases that devalue the contributions of Black women. Employers requiring all staff throughout the company to undertake such training on an annual basis could help counter discriminatory attitudes and create more equitable workplace environments for all workers.
Black women deserve to be paid fairly for their work, and the time for action is long overdue. Statements of support on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, while important to show solidarity and commitment, are not a substitute for concrete action. Employers should take intentional steps, such as the actions discussed in this column, to address pay disparities experienced by Black women and help ensure that pay practices utilized throughout workplaces are administered in a fair and even-handed manner. This work should be a top priority for all employers and is essential to making the promise of equal pay a reality for Black women.
Jocelyn Frye is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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]]>The post Trump’s Plan To Defund Social Security appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>Social Security is funded by a 6.2 percent payroll tax paid both by employees and employers; this payroll tax goes into the Social Security trust fund.* According to the trustees’ latest projections, the trust fund ensures that Social Security beneficiaries can count on all of their promised benefits until 2035, giving Congress enough time to address Social Security’s longer-term financial shortfall. Currently, 65 million people receive Social Security benefits, including retirees, people with disabilities, widows and widowers, and surviving spouses and children of workers. Most seniors and disabled worker beneficiaries rely on Social Security for a majority of their income. As the pandemic continues to exact a toll on Americans’ health and financial security, Social Security’s guaranteed income is all the more important.
Trump’s August 8 memorandum instructed the U.S. Department of the Treasury to delay the payment of employee-side Social Security taxes on wages paid from September 2020 through December 2020 to workers earning less than $4,000 every other week (roughly $100,000 on an annual basis). Because employers are legally required to withhold employees’ share of the tax notwithstanding Trump’s memorandum, many tax lawyers and payroll administrators have raised doubts about whether employees will see any boost in their paychecks from moving back the tax deadlines; employers may simply continue to withhold tax from paychecks and hold onto the money until the delayed deadline for paying it to the government. Regardless, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated that up to $100 billion in payroll tax revenue flowing into Social Security could at least be delayed under Trump’s action.
Trump has made clear that he wants the tax that is delayed this fall under his unilateral action to be permanently forgiven, which would result in a permanent revenue loss of about $100 billion for Social Security. At the Bedminster press conference, President Trump also stated, “If I’m victorious on November 3rd, I plan to forgive these taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll tax.” Trump doubled down on these comments on Monday, August 10, reiterating, “After the election, on the assumption that it will be victorious for an administration that’s done a great job, we will be ending that tax, we’ll be terminating that tax.”
Cutting Social Security taxes from September through December would hurt Social Security’s finances; permanently eliminating the tax would gut the program. Trump’s proposed payroll tax cut would eliminate about 35 percent to 45 percent of Social Security payroll tax revenue, depending on details not yet known.** This would drain about $350–$450 billion in payroll tax revenue in 2021 and more in later years. This enormous revenue loss would greatly accelerate the exhaustion of the trust fund. Once the trust fund is exhausted, remaining Social Security revenues would fund only a portion of promised benefits, which are already modest. The average monthly benefit for retired workers is now $1,516. The average monthly benefit for disabled workers is $1,259.
Based on the latest Social Security trustees’ projections, we estimate:
The underlying projections from the trustees are from April and incorporate little or none of the economic damage wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s failure to contain it. Tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs, which already means less revenue for Social Security. Many workers infected with the virus could face debilitating long-term health issues that make it more likely that they will need to rely on disability benefits. Cutting Social Security’s income stream is the last thing Americans need right now.
Seth Hanlon and Christian E. Weller are senior fellows at the Center for American Progress.
*Authors’ note: Social Security has separate trust funds for retirement and disability insurance, but they are commonly analyzed as a combined trust fund.
**Authors’ note: Trump’s memorandum specifically calls for a delay in payroll taxes with regard to workers who “generally” earn less than $4,000 per biweekly paycheck (about $100,000 per year), leaving unclear whether the action will apply to wages up to that amount for workers who earn more. Based on the latest wage distribution data, we estimate that employees with annual wages under $100,000 account for about 70 percent of all wages subject to Social Security tax—that is, wages under the wage cap, which is currently $137,700. We estimate that wages under $100,000 per worker, including the wages of those who earn more, account for somewhat more than 90 percent of wages subject to Social Security tax. Seventy percent to 90 percent of the employees’ share of the tax would be 35 percent to 45 percent of the entire tax. Although Trump’s memorandum did not mention self-employment tax, for these estimates we assume that similar rules would apply to half of the tax paid by self-employed workers, who pay both employee and employer shares.
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]]>The post Faith Leaders To Watch in 2020 appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>As civil rights leader and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) wrote shortly before his death on July 17, 2020, “Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.” During his last days, he invoked the language of his own Christian faith to encourage participation in our democracy.
Getting out the vote is an act of faith for many Americans. Across political and ideological spectrums, Americans are motivated by their diverse faiths and backgrounds to encourage people to vote.
The Center for American Progress’ Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative has identified 15 of the many faith leaders engaged in nonpartisan voter engagement in 2020. Their work is described briefly below. They also recently participated in email interviews with the authors about how their faiths inform their work. Not only do they represent diverse faith traditions, but they also represent a variety of approaches to this work and are at a variety of stages in their careers.
The Rev. Traci Blackmon is the associate general minister for justice and local church ministries of the United Church of Christ, which has an ongoing voter mobilization campaign called “Our Faith, Our Vote.” Blackmon told the authors that the goal of the campaign is “to equip people to vote their guiding life principles above political parties.” This year, the campaign started a Civic Action Center that offers online voter registration and candidate and policy information, combined with moral and theological reflections. The campaign also provides financial support to congregations and communities in need so that they can engage in voter mobilization efforts that help their community members make their voices heard. In 2012, Blackmon created “Souls to the Polls STL,” a multifaith campaign that provided 2,800 St. Louis community members with rides to the polls during local and national elections that year.
The Rev. Blackmon told the authors:
As a Christian, I model my life after the earthly ministry of Jesus, an Afro-Semitic Palestinian who was born into a family of modest means on the less than desirable side of town. Most of Jesus’ public ministry was spent reaching out to those who were ignored in community and underserved by the ruling class. In my quest to follow him, I am compelled to do the same. But no matter the sacred text, people of all faiths share a common mandate to serve and care for our neighbor. It is this unified understanding of goodness that ensures democracy. Government by the people is indeed government for all of the people.
Satjeet Kaur is the executive director of the Sikh Coalition, which is mobilizing Sikhs to exercise their right to vote in the 2020 election. Her organization is recruiting and training voter registration volunteers to become get-out-the-vote (GOTV) champions in their local communities. The organization is also providing a free tool for Sikhs to check their voter registration, register to vote, and find out about deadlines and details specific to the elections in their states. And it published a policy brief detailing the civil rights policy priorities affecting the Sikh American community. Kaur began her work with the Sikh Coalition in 2010 as a local community organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area.
According to Kaur:
Sikhi teaches us that we have both spiritual and temporal responsibilities—a concept called miri piri. Actively pursuing justice and equity and serving humanity go hand in hand with our spiritual journey. Using our voice and our vote in an effort to fight for human rights is our responsibility. These principles from Sikhi motivate me to continue our work in civic engagement just as they fuel my drive in our broader efforts to advocate for the civil rights of Sikhs and other religious minorities. Underrepresented communities need to claim the spaces that equally belong to us. This requires us to put in the time and resources to mobilize our communities and bring our voices to the polls.
“Every Voice, Every Vote” and seeks to engage hundreds of thousands of voters. It is focused on achieving 100 percent voter participation by reaching congregations, engaging student voters, and combating voter suppression. The campaign is guided by a belief that its “work is much more powerful when we do it in partnership with communities across lines of difference.” Prior to this role, Pesner served as a congregational rabbi in Boston, where he led nationally recognized efforts to organize multifaith communities for social change.
Pesner said:
I believe that Jews are called to do civic engagement work as one way to fulfill the sacred mandate of tikkun olam—world repair. The Hebrew word “kol” means both “voice” and “vote.” My Judaism calls me to engage across lines of difference and ensure that access to voting is a reality for all, so that every voice is heard and every vote is counted. The pandemic is an unprecedented challenge to our democracy, and for us as a nation to overcome this challenge, faith communities and social justice organizations must continue to work together to expand how Americans can vote, advance rights legislation, and address persistent discrimination in voting.
“Still Strong, Go Vote” campaign organizes congregations across Georgia to demonstrate their resilient strength and civic power, despite the challenges of COVID-19, by turning out voters in November. The campaign has a goal of mobilizing 100,000 people of faith in Georgia to pledge to vote in the 2020 elections. Honor is the former organizing pastor of Pulse Church in downtown Atlanta and a frequent commentator on the intersection of theology, race, and cultural criticism.
The Rev. Honor told the authors:
My faith motivates my work because I believe the gospel compels us to love God with our hearts, souls, and minds and to love our neighbors as ourselves. I believe civic engagement through voting is one of the best expressions of this commitment. Faith communities are important to the work of building a more inclusive democracy because at their best they provide moral imagination to help envision more just ways of being a nation. And at other times, faith communities have played the important role of being the voice of conscience when the country has failed to live up to its espoused moral values.
initiative to reach young adults in the FCNL network, encouraging them to register to vote and reach out to their friends to register and to make a plan to vote in the upcoming elections. The FCNL has also designed questions for candidates running for Congress. It also encourages its members to develop personal relationships with local candidates that will endure following the election. Randall has served as the FCNL’s general secretary for almost a decade, having previously served for 20 years at Connecticut-based nonprofits advocating for peace and justice.
Randall said:
As a Quaker, my faith and practice lead me to help create the beloved community that God wants for all of us. This requires a government that serves all people, and voting matters! Everyone needs to vote and to engage their elected officials after the election. Faith communities are critical in providing a moral voice during elections; people of faith understand the common good, which is essential for a democratic government. The egalitarian premises that underly our democracy are threatened by the extreme concentrations of personal and corporate wealth that influence the outcomes of elections. Participation by all people in voting and in advocacy are a way to speak truth to power and to act in a spirit of love.
campaign includes “We are Watching” meetings to hold senior election officials accountable, educate congregations and communities about voting rights, and provide a moral presence outside polling sites alongside lawyers. A Baptist minister, the Rev. Taylor was previously adviser and lead of the Faith Initiative at the World Bank Group.
According to Taylor:
This work is centered in the core conviction of imago dei, that every person and voter is made in the very image of God. As a result, efforts to suppress the votes of communities of color both undermine the legitimacy of our democracy and assault our faith. I also do this work believing that my generation inherited the unfinished business of the civil rights struggle, which includes the ongoing struggle to protect the right to vote as a sacred and vital one and in the process help transform our democracy. At their best, faith communities often serve as the conscience of the state and a source of resilient hope—providing both moral vision and organizing infrastructure to protect the most vulnerable and empower the most marginalized.
Katz said:
There are countless examples of Judaism calling on us to promote justice, equality, righteous work, and the recognition that every person has inherent dignity. My faith grounds me in the fight to keep our courts fair, expand voter protections, support reproductive justice and access to abortion, and ensure that religious freedom is only used as a tool to protect and never to discriminate against already vulnerable communities. People of faith have a proud and storied history of advocacy and activism in this country when it comes to fighting for a free and just society we all believe in.
“We Must Do M.O.R.E—Mobilizing, Organizing, Registering and Educating.” The campaign aims to build electoral power among the 140 million poor and low-income people in the United States. It is also committed to challenging voter suppression and protecting the right to vote. Theoharis is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and has spent more than two decades organizing with low-income communities in the United States.
Theoharis told the authors:
I was raised to see that faith must be linked to doing justice and holding those in power accountable to the people. As a Christian pastor, biblical scholar, and anti-poverty activist, I believe we are called to build a movement where everybody’s in, nobody’s out. Throughout history, it has been movements led by those most impacted by injustice and poverty, with faith communities and moral leaders as standard-bearers involved, that have fundamentally transformed society.
1 million Muslim voters in 2020. The Million Muslim Votes campaign is meant to bring together Muslim communities in support of the largest voter mobilization effort in history. In addition to his previous experience as an organizer and advocate for social justice, Gula co-founded the Islamic Center of Peace in Dayton, Ohio.
Gula said:
I am driven by the idea that the prophets were community organizers. They energized their communities to become more active members of society. They focused on fixing broken social systems, bringing about meaningful change to people’s lives, and empowering vulnerable and oppressed populations. It is my belief that civic engagement is more than just voting; it’s about making a positive difference in one’s community, collectively. I also believe that faith communities are important in the work of building a more inclusive democracy because they provide a moral framework that revolves around building community and promoting justice and understanding that goes beyond partisan lines and the political tribalism that has created the division we see today.
registering 500,000 voters in the 2020 election cycle. Kumar has spoken about her Catholic values and Catholic communities’ voter turnout. She told the authors:
Equity and justice are driving principles of my faith, and they inform my work for a more just world. Giving someone agency to determine who represents their most basic needs and addressing systemic inequities allows us to strive for fairness. It is this motivation I have in making sure people are adequately represented and cared for and that no one is left behind or discarded when it comes to matters of equity and accessibility. We all have an obligation to care and look out for each other. That belief is driven by my Catholic faith but also my faith in people.
Time, Yahoo!, Washington Monthly, and National Journal. She is the author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap.
According to Sullivan:
Toxic theology has shaped our politics for too long, and women will be the ones to disrupt its hold on voters. As a journalist, I reported on well-intentioned but very defensive efforts by progressives that said, “You can be progressive without losing your faith!” We flip that around and talk about how broadening your definition of your neighbor often deepens your faith. Faith communities understand the power elections and politics have on the common good.
McKellar said:
My Mexican Catholic faith tradition teaches me the truth that every human being is sacred because all of us were made in God’s image. Therefore, I am called to labor for the creation of laws and structures that allow God’s creation to live with full dignity, inclusion, opportunity, and peace. At their best, faith communities are engines of liberation and revolutionary love. Faith communities challenge their members to become more generous, more interdependent, more empathetic versions of themselves. Through millions of individual encounters with their neighbors, members of faith communities can inspire a new generation of voters to actively seek structural belonging, and as the Hebrew Prophet once said, “live to see the goodness of God in the land of the living.”
McBride said:
Faith communities, and particularly Black churches, have been at the vanguard for pulling America forward through democracy and faithful protest against racism. My faith calls me to speak up for those whose voices are muzzled by the powerful and to call us all to vote the interests of those most marginalized around us. That is how we will become a more perfect union.
Unitarian Universalist Association, and Nicole Pressley is the national organizer for UU The Vote. They work to engage Unitarian Universalist individuals, congregations, and institutions in bringing their values to the public square in the 2020 elections, through deep partnerships with local and national front line organizations. They both identify as queer people of faith and have a track record of local community organizing. Previously, the Rev. Horan was the executive director of the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance, and Pressley was an organizer and communications strategist working with the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta.
Pressley said:
As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe that practicing our values means being in deep relationship with our communities and neighbors is the primary mechanism for lasting change. Voting is one of many political acts that create change. However, the organizing and relationship building we do in the course of electoral work is the site of the necessary ideological and spiritual transformation that allows us to imagine and call forth a new world together. Faith communities have a moral mandate to facilitate caring and cooperative relationships to reach beyond the walls of our congregations in order to move hearts and minds in service to justice and liberation.
The Rev. Horan added:
As a Unitarian Universalist, I am grounded both in a deep belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all people and an understanding that because of that inborn belovedness we all possess, every person should have a voice and a vote in building a world in which all of us can be free and flourish. Faith communities are some of the only truly multigenerational, values-based organizations in society today, and progressive people of faith have immense potential not only to leverage our power and our values in service of liberation in this moment but to grow and sustain the souls of future generations as they grow into the leaders who will be called to address the deepest problems facing our society today.
These diverse faith leaders are working this year to get out the vote. As a critical part of civil society, religious communities offer a clear moral voice in support of civic engagement, the peaceful transfer of power, combating voter suppression, and protecting the ability of marginalized communities to participate in elections. Their work feeds the soul of our nation and contributes to a well-functioning and healthy democracy.
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons is a fellow with the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Maggie Siddiqi is the director of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative.
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]]>The post The Black-White Wealth Gap Will Widen Educational Disparities During the Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on Center for American Progress.
]]>Divergent access to the resources necessary for successful remote learning—such as books, computers, and other equipment—could further worsen racial disparities in educational outcomes. Due to systemic racism in the housing industry, predominantly Black neighborhoods tend to have lower property values. This, in turn, means the schools in these same neighborhoods have fewer financial resources—and these financial pressures have only increased and exacerbated racial inequities during the pandemic.
The flipside of underresourced schools is that parents will have to provide more of the resources themselves as schools transition to remote learning. The pressure on parents to provide these additional resources is greatest in communities where families have less wealth and thus less ability to support their children’s online education. Unless Congress provides the money so that local leaders and school districts can make necessary changes, many Black children are more likely to fall behind their white peers in education, stymying their educational progress.
In the United States, wealth and education already feed into each other in an intergenerational cycle. Families with more wealth are able to provide more educational opportunities for their children, who are in turn able to capitalize on those opportunities in ways that create more wealth. This reinforcement of wealth through education and of education through wealth—when combined with the racially disparate economic and health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic—will only further widen existing racial wealth and education gaps. The intergenerational transmission of racial wealth inequality is playing out at rapid speed during the pandemic.
Wealth—the difference between what people own and what they owe—is key to families’ immediate financial security and their long-term economic mobility. During an economic crisis, families with more wealth are better able to protect themselves in the event of adverse personal outcomes such as temporary layoffs or more permanent job losses. In communities that experience widespread job losses, those who have better economic standing to begin with are better able to insulate their children against long-term setbacks. In the current pandemic, for example, wealth can provide emergency savings to help pay bills—especially rent or mortgage payments, which are key to maintaining housing stability.
Yet Black families have a median wealth of about 10 cents to every dollar of wealth of the median white family. In 2016, the last year for which data are available, the median Black family had about $17,150 in wealth while the median white family had about $171,000 in wealth. Because wealth is often passed on from one generation to the next, this massive wealth gap between Black and white families has persisted for centuries. As the authors of the comprehensive report “What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap” point out, “wealth begets more wealth.” Inheritances and gifts, access to beneficial social networks, and education are all mechanisms by which families pass on wealth to their children. Put simply, white families have more opportunities than Black families to give their children a leg up because they have access to more wealth.
This past spring, school closures and the transition to online learning, while a necessary public health measure, required that families had access to financial resources to help pay for part of their children’s education. At the same time, many of these same parents lost part or all of their earnings from coronavirus-induced job losses and cuts in hours. Black workers, who tend to work in less stable jobs where they are at higher risk of getting laid off, are typically among the first to feel the brunt of an economic downturn. These jobs also make it more difficult for people to buy a house and save money. African American families then live in more financially precarious situations because they are less likely to own their own home and can be more easily evicted if they fail to pay their rent and because they have fewer savings outside their house than is the case for white families. Less wealth—reflected, among other things, in lower homeownership rates—makes it more difficult for Black families to afford reliable internet service and electronic devices, both of which are necessary for remote learning.
African Americans have experienced particularly large job losses in a labor market characterized by persistent racism and inequality, as the Economic Policy Institute’s Elise Gould and Valerie Wilson discuss in a recent report. Estimates based on census data show that 54.8 percent of Black workers said that they had lost incomes due to a job loss or cut in hours from late April to early June, compared with 45.8 percent of white workers.
The labor market pain has created housing instability for Black families to a much larger degree than was the case for white families. Estimates based on census data show that more than one-third of African Americans who experienced job-related income losses said that they either didn’t pay their mortgage or deferred their mortgage, compared with only 16.9 percent for white families with earnings losses. Among renters, 38.3 percent of Black families with income losses didn’t pay or deferred their rent, compared with 23.1 percent of white families in a similar situation.
The sharp labor market decline this past spring threatened the housing stability of Black families more quickly than it did for white families. This discrepancy reflects differences in emergency savings. Federal Reserve data, for example, show that 36.4 percent of African American homeowners and 56.4 percent of African American renters could not access $400 in an emergency in April 2020. In comparison, 24.4 percent of white homeowners and 50.9 percent of white renters had difficulties coming up with that amount in an emergency. Without emergency savings, many more Black homeowners and renters quickly faced trouble making their monthly payments than white homeowners and renters when they lost their jobs.
As a result, many Black families also had fewer savings to pay for tools such as internet access and electronic devices, which are crucial to maintaining children’s education. About 1 in 7 Black renters who have no trouble paying their current rent only have access to the internet for educational purposes sometimes, rarely, or never. This is almost three times as large a share as Black homeowners who had no trouble paying their mortgage. Importantly, most Black families rent rather than own their home. And the gap between Black homeowners and Black renters in having reliable internet access is much greater than among white homeowners and white renters. The same is true when it comes to access to electronic devices: Black renters are much less likely than either Black homeowners or white renters to have reliable access to these devices. (see Figure 1)
Homeownership is often a more financially stable housing option than renting because it allows families to have more predictable housing costs. Yet most Black families rent their homes, and many of those renters have had trouble paying their bills amid the current recession. These job losses have only exacerbated the lack of access to the internet and electronic devices. For example, 28.7 percent of Black parents with children in public or private schools who had trouble paying their rent in the previous month also said that they only sometimes, rarely, or never had access to the internet. And 36.8 percent of Black renters having trouble paying their rent said that they only sometimes, rarely, or never had access to devices for educational purposes for their children. (see Figure 1) These are much larger shares than for any other group of Black or white renters or homeowners. A lack of savings creates more housing instability for Black families, which leads to less access to the internet and electronic devices for remote learning.
The lack of reliable internet or an electronic device for remote learning also correlates with fewer hours per week of teaching time. (see Figure 2) This correlation is much larger among Black families than white families, where the lack of reliable access to the internet and to devices is less pronounced. Unreliable internet access and a lack of consistent access to electronic devices reduces families’ time teaching children by two to three hours among Black families but only by one to two hours among white families. (see Figure 2) White families without reliable internet or devices are probably also less likely to simultaneously experience job loss and a lack of savings; as a result, they can afford to spend additional time with their children to offset the lack of internet and devices. While the short- and long-term impacts of coronavirus-related school closures and job losses on children’s educational outcomes cannot be measured yet, it is already clear that there are differential effects by race on access to educational resources as a result of the pandemic. In particular, the persistent and large Black-white wealth gap directly and immediately feeds into persistent educational gaps.
As the debate over school reopenings heats up, policymakers must consider how wealth disparities between Black and white families will affect educational outcomes. Parents, as well as teachers and staff, need to feel safe sending their children back to school. When in-person schooling is not possible, parents must have the resources to help their children learn remotely. Schools and local government can provide reliable internet service and electronic devices to children—but they need more financial support. State and local governments will also need to ensure that families have stable housing by extending moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures.
Furthermore, Congress can do more to offset increasingly permanent job losses; for example, Congress can extend added unemployment benefits and protect public sector employment by helping state and local governments address large coronavirus-related budget deficits. Congress and employers can also make sure that parents can take paid time off from work to help their children with their education when schools are closed or remote learning is necessary. All of this assistance will be especially valuable to Black families, who often have much fewer savings than white families to tide them over in an emergency. Without targeted assistance to ensure that parents can maintain a quality education for their children, school closures and continued remote learning will widen the racial educational achievement gaps between Black and white children for the foreseeable future.
Dania Francis is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Christian E. Weller is a professor in the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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]]>A new Center for American Progress analysis of the Household Pulse Survey finds that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Millennial mothers are nearly three times more likely than Millennial fathers to report being unable to work due to a school or child care closure. Indeed, Millennial men have largely embraced gender equality when it comes to paid work, but research has found that these attitudes rarely extend to child care responsibilities. Today’s heterosexual couples may aspire to more egalitarian parenting and housework, as evidenced by women becoming a majority of the paid labor force for the first time in nearly a decade in December 2019. The data, however, tell a different story, as women are often responsible for a much greater share of child care and household labor. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the 11 million single-parent families are headed by women.
The relatively meager work-family policies in the United States translate to an underresourced child care system and no guaranteed federal paid family and medical leave. While the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act provided funding for businesses to extend paid sick and caregiving leave to their workers, lobbyists for big business inserted exemptions that, among other things, excluded all workers in businesses with more than 500 employees from such paid leave provisions. As they have for generations, women have shouldered most of the unpaid domestic work, even as their roles as financial breadwinners have grown. Indeed, more than 60 percent of mothers are now the sole or co-breadwinners of their household.
Decades of federal inaction have resulted in a market-based approach to the problem, placing the burden on families to finance a child care system. This has merely resulted in greater gender, economic, and racial inequities. Meanwhile, early childhood educators—who are disproportionately women and specifically women of color—have been systematically underpaid and undervalued in the accounting of economic productivity, perpetuating a history of misogyny and racism that has long characterized U.S. domestic economic policy.
Unfortunately, as a result, Americans have internalized the notion that child care is a personal problem—or even a personal failure on the part of working mothers. In truth, however, the lack of affordable child care is a structural macroeconomic problem that policymakers have ignored for far too long; their choices and priorities may now push millions of working mothers into unemployment as the child care system faces a pandemic-induced existential threat.
In March 2020, when schools and child care programs were forced to close amid the COVID-19 outbreak, Millennial parents braced for what many thought would be a few weeks of home quarantine. Several months into the pandemic, however, some parents must continue to balance working from home while also caring for and home-schooling their children. Many others have been forced to cut back on expenses due to unemployment and fewer job openings. Meanwhile, essential workers—who are disproportionately women of color—are struggling to find child care that is safe for their children and families.
In the new reality of the coronavirus pandemic, a growing body of evidence shows that mothers are assuming the lion’s share of housework, child care, and home schooling responsibilities. This analysis uses data from the Household Pulse Survey, which was rapidly developed and implemented by the U.S. Census Bureau to track the social and economic effects of COVID-19 on households. This weekly survey, covering the months of April through July 2020, asks respondents to identify the main reason they did not work the previous week. As seen in Figure 1, more than one-third of nonworking Millennial mothers reported “caring for children not in school or [child] care” as their main reason for not working. In contrast, Millennial fathers were nearly three times less likely to cite child care as their main reason for not working.
Starting in April, the share of mothers and fathers citing child care closures as the main reason for not working began to increase, reaching a peak of 38 percent for Millennial mothers in late June and early July before declining slightly in mid-to-late July. Nonetheless, there are still far more Millennial mothers not working due to child care and school closures than there were in April.
Figure 1
These data show that child care responsibilities are having a negative impact on Millennial mothers’ attachment to the labor force—and this problem seems to have only gotten worse with the pandemic stretching into summer. Over the long term, these impacts are likely to compound. Research has shown that women’s lifetime earnings are significantly affected when they leave the workforce for even a couple of years, exacerbating the gender earnings gap.
Betsey Stevenson, the former chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor, recently stated: “The impact of the child care crisis on women’s outcomes is going to be felt over the next decade.” While this is undoubtedly true, federal policymakers can mitigate the crisis by investing in the child care industry and providing workers with access to paid leave in order to support working families and maternal employment. For example, a significant stabilization fund would prevent the United States from permanently losing as many as 4.5 million licensed child care slots over the next several months. Working parents also need access to paid sick days and paid family and medical leave so that they are able to take time off work to care for a child, care for a sick loved one, or recover their own health without losing a paycheck or their job.
Without robust child care infrastructure or comprehensive paid leave for all, the gender gaps in employment, domestic caregiving, and lifetime wages will widen to levels last seen decades ago. Congress must act swiftly to ensure that thousands of child care businesses do not close permanently over the coming weeks and months. Millennial mothers are the backbone of the U.S. economy, but they are weathering more economic turmoil than they have in previous generations. Failing them now in their hour of need would have devastating effects on the economy for generations to come.
Rasheed Malik is a senior policy analyst for Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress. Taryn Morrissey is a senior fellow at the Center.
*Authors’ note: Millennial parents are defined as survey respondents born between 1981 and 1996 that share a household with a child under the age of 18. The Household Pulse Survey does not ask about household relationships or parental status.
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