tag:theconversation.com,2011:/institutions/american-university-school-of-public-affairs-3417/articlesAmerican University School of Public Affairs2023-08-25T17:51:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2120672023-08-25T17:51:53Z2023-08-25T17:51:53ZGospel singer Mahalia Jackson made a suggestion during the 1963 March on Washington − and it changed a good speech to a majestic sermon on an American dream<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544069/original/file-20230822-5286-r2ntq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=946%2C315%2C4065%2C2983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. (bottom right) listens to gospel singer Mahalia Jackson during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-singer-mahalia-jackson-sings-at-the-march-on-news-photo/53404587?adppopup=true">Bob Parent/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every now and then, a voice can matter. <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/jackson-mahalia">Mahalia Jackson</a> had one of them.</p>
<p>Known around the world as the “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mahalia-Jackson">Queen of Gospel</a>,” Jackson used <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123498527">her powerful voice</a> to work in the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/post-war-united-states-1945-1968/civil-rights-movement/">Civil Rights Movement</a>. Starting in the 1950s, she traveled with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the South and heard him preach in Black churches about a vision that only he could see.</p>
<p>But on Aug. 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, something didn’t quite sound right to Jackson as she listened to King deliver his prepared speech. King was reading from his prepared remarks when she made <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/1/18/10785882/martin-luther-king-dream-mahalia-jackson">a simple suggestion</a>.</p>
<p>“Tell them about the dream, Martin,” <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/may/19/mahalia-jackson-martin-luther-king-al-sharpton">she urged King</a>, “tell them about the dream.” </p>
<p>Inspired, King cast aside his prepared remarks and ad-libbed from his heart. For the estimated 250,000 who joined the <a href="https://www.si.edu/spotlight/1963-march-on-washington">March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a> that day, they heard King <a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety">deliver one of his seminal sermons</a>.</p>
<p>“I have a dream,” King preached, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”</p>
<p>Though most memorable, King’s voice wasn’t the only one that day 60 years ago. The other voice, the one King listened to and heeded, belonged to Mahalia Jackson. </p>
<p>“A voice like hers comes along once in a millennium,” <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/mahalia-jackson-gospel-takes-flight">King once said</a>.</p>
<h2>An international phenomenon</h2>
<p>Born on <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jackson-mahalia-1911-1972/">Oct. 26, 1911, in New Orleans</a>, Jackson had a contralto voice that first won fame as a gospel singer in the choir at Greater Salem Baptist Church on Chicago’s South Side during the 1940s. </p>
<p>Among her earliest hit recordings were “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P5bXtVb614">I Can Put My Trust in Jesus</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiCtmjPQE0w">In the Upper Room</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEH7jyt1eoo">He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands</a>,” “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06gAdro-62E">Move On Up A Little Higher</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3H80p0dkxU">Even Me Lord</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black woman dressed in a white gown gestures with her hands as she sings behind several microphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544332/original/file-20230823-19-92zuwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mahalia Jackson performing in Copenhagen, Denmark, in April 1961.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-gospel-singer-mahalia-jackson-copenhagen-denmark-news-photo/1049302250?adppopup=true">Lennart Steen/JP Jazz Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Before long, Jackson was appearing in major concert venues in the U.S. and Europe. In 1956, she was the first gospel singer to perform at <a href="https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/performers/mahalia-jackson">Carnegie Hall</a>. In 1961, Jackson <a href="https://www.bet.com/article/dbpnlc/this-day-in-black-history-jan-20-1961">sang at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy</a>. The popular <a href="https://blackmusicscholar.com/mahalia-jackson-story/">“Ed Sullivan Show” made Jackson a household name</a> by frequently asking her to perform. </p>
<p>But international fame did not make Jackson forget her religious upbringing and commitment to fight for equal rights. </p>
<p>In “<a href="https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1958sep27-00041/">As the Spirit Moves Mahalia</a>,” prominent Black writer Ralph Ellison wrote about the meaning of Jackson’s voice. </p>
<p>“The true function of her singing is not simply to entertain,” he explained, “but to prepare the congregation for the minister’s message, to make it receptive to the spirit, and with effects of voice and rhythm to evoke a shared community of experience.” </p>
<p>Ellison <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/12/04/book-world/58b37299-e450-4833-9917-7c46feb6f414/">further wrote</a> that Jackson was “not primarily a concert singer but a high priestess in the religious ceremony of her church.”</p>
<h2>Mahalia and Martin</h2>
<p>Jackson and King <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/jackson-mahalia#:%7E:text=Already%20an%20icon%2C%20Jackson%20met,anniversary%20of%20the%20Brown%20v.">first met</a> at the National Baptist Convention in Alabama in 1956. King asked her if she could support his work there by singing and inspiring civil rights activists during the 381-day <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2023/03/22/1161664788/the-women-behind-the-montgomery-bus-boycott">Montgomery Bus Boycott</a>.</p>
<p>From there, she became the first woman to serve on the board of the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/southern-christian-leadership-conference-sclc">Southern Christian Leadership Conference</a>, a prominent civil rights group led by King, and became one of King’s most trusted advisers. In a <a href="https://www.crmvet.org/docs/sclc/6212_sclc_newsletter.pdf">1962 press release</a>, <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/jackson-mahalia">King wrote that Jackson</a> “has appeared on numerous programs that helped the struggle in the South, but now she has indicated that she wants to be involved on a regular basis.”</p>
<p>She shared his vision for breaking down the barriers of segregation and fighting for equitable treatment for African Americans. In her own right, Jackson became a visible fixture within the Civil Rights Movement. </p>
<p>Jackson <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/archives/la-me-mahalia-jackson-19720128-story.html">died in 1972</a> at the age of 60. </p>
<h2>Jackson’s voice in a movement</h2>
<p>If music was the soul of the movement, strategic thinking was at its core. As <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/asa-hilliard">psychologist Asa Hilliard</a> later explained, among those strategies were moral suasion, litigation, grassroots organizing, civil disobedience, economic boycotts, the solicitation of corporate sponsors and the use of television. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/march-on-washington.htm">March on Washington</a> was considered the culminating event of the historic Civil Rights Movement. The march was rooted in the ideal of economic justice and intentionally held on Aug. 28 to commemorate the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/murder-of-emmett-till/">lynching of Emmett Till</a> in Mississippi on the same date in 1955. </p>
<p>Till’s death and the subsequent acquittal of three white men charged with the brutal murder was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/emmett-impact-emmett-tills-murder/">one of the turning points</a> of the movement.</p>
<p>Among the building blocks of the Civil Rights Movement was music. It spoke to the soul, and Mahalia’s gift comforted the masses. King often called her during trying times and <a href="https://www.directv.com/insider/mahalia-jackson-mlk-i-have-a-dream-speech">asked her to sing</a> to him over the telephone.</p>
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<img alt="A Black woman wearing a black hat stands in front of an American flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=865&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/544773/original/file-20230825-15-onlapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1087&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mahalia Jackson greets others during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on Aug. 28, 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-gospel-singer-mahalia-jackson-greets-others-during-news-photo/1472641559?adppopup=true">Roosevelt H. Carter/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/jackson-mahalia">King called</a> her “a blessing to me … and a blessing to Negroes who have learned through her not to be ashamed of their heritage.”</p>
<p>It was no surprise then that Jackson felt comfortable enough to make a suggestion to the civil rights leader during a sermon. </p>
<p>Before he appeared on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Jackson had sung her rendition of “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZck6OXR_wE">I have been buked and I have been scorned</a>” and after he finished, she sang “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g088O0UeKQE">We Shall Overcome</a>.” </p>
<p>But her <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/1/18/10785882/martin-luther-king-dream-mahalia-jackson">most important line that day</a> might have been, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212067/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bev-Freda Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the “Queen” of gospel music, Mahalia Jackson sang two songs during the historic March on Washington. But her most famous line may have been a suggestion to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.Bev-Freda Jackson, Adjunct professor of Justice, Law and Criminology, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2002192023-08-15T19:14:52Z2023-08-15T19:14:52ZBlack female prosecutors like Fani Willis face the unequal burden of both racist and sexist attacks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540505/original/file-20230801-21-ea2imr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=171%2C111%2C659%2C653&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in her office in Atlanta, Ga.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fani-willis-the-district-attorney-of-fulton-county-georgia-news-photo/1251972765?adppopup=true">David Walter Banks/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the day he was indicted on financial fraud charges in a New York City courtroom, former U.S. President Donald Trump launched an attack against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. </p>
<p>One of the handful of Black female prosecutors in the country, Willis has led <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/09/politics/trump-georgia-fani-willis-dozen-indictments/index.html">a criminal investigation</a> into Trump’s alleged campaign interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. </p>
<p>“In the wings, they’ve got a local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in her power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call,” Trump said on April 4, 2023.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23909548-trump-georgia-criminal-indictment">indictment that Trump feared</a> came on Aug. 14, 2023, and alleged that Trump and 18 co-conspirators operated a criminal enterprise to overturn the results of the 2020 election results to keep Trump in power. </p>
<p>Trump used an unidentified member of his presidential campaign to launch <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/14/us/elections/trump-georgia-fani-willis-truth-social.html">another personal attack</a> against Willis, calling her a “rabid partisan who is campaigning and fundraising on a platform of prosecuting President Trump through these bogus indictments.”</p>
<p>Trump’s attacks against Willis come at a time when Black women are increasing their numbers in the legal profession and face the same public scrutiny as their white male and female counterparts. </p>
<p>But in my view as <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/bjackson.cfm">a scholar</a> of race and gender in American politics, Black female prosecutors have an extra burden of gendered and racist attacks, especially in the age of Trump. </p>
<p>Though Black women share the same responsibility as their white counterparts – enforcing the law and deciding who gets charged with what crime – <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/10/politics/rachael-rollins-us-attorney-massachusetts-threats/index.html">many of their attempts</a> to eliminate perceived structural racism and establish criminal justice reforms are often at odds with traditional tough-on-crime policies.</p>
<h2>A steady growth</h2>
<p>The number of prominent Black female attorneys today is a far cry from when <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlotte-E-Ray">Charlotte Ray</a> became the first one in the U.S. in the late 1800s. </p>
<p>After graduating from Howard Law School in 1872, Ray became certified to practice in Washington, D.C., that same year. But because of <a href="https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2013/02/charlotte-ray.html">racial and gender discrimination</a>, she was unable to attract clients and later became a public school teacher in New York City. </p>
<p>Since then, Black women have steadily made progress, most notably in 1999 when <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/loretta-lynch/?sh=34ab327a314b">Loretta Lynch</a> became the first Black woman to serve as a U.S. attorney, and finally achieving the pinnacle on June 30, 2023, when <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/press/oath/oath_jackson.aspx">Ketanji Brown Jackson</a> was sworn in as as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. </p>
<p>But progress has been slow and fraught with peril. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://wholeads.us/research/tipping-the-scales-elected-prosecutors/">a 2020 study</a>, of the roughly 2,400 elected prosecutors in 2019, 45 of them were Black women, less than 2%.</p>
<h2>Political and legal fights</h2>
<p>The road to success for Black female lawyers has not been easy. <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/black-women-prosecutors-hate-misogynoir-part-life/story?id=68961291">Many of these women</a> say their progressive political values have clashed with law-and-order conservatives who typically dominate local, state and federal courtrooms. </p>
<p>Kim Gardner, St. Louis’ first elected Black female prosecutor, became the city’s circuit attorney in 2016 in part because of her campaign promises to seek mental health or drug-abuse treatment for people convicted of low-level, nonviolent crimes. Once elected, she <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/01/16/facing-intimidation-black-women-prosecutors-say-enough">met fierce opposition</a> from Republican state lawmakers and police union officials.</p>
<p>In 2020, the situation became untenable – for both sides. Gardner filed <a href="https://apnews.com/article/bb502b8260b31491ee9240cdc0d71662">a federal civil rights lawsuit</a>, accusing the city, the local police union and others of a coordinated and racist conspiracy aimed at forcing her out of office. </p>
<p>Though that federal case is ongoing, Gardner drew the ire of <a href="https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/politics/missouri-attorney-general-updated-petition-kim-gardner-removal-attempt/63-a85734bc-a4ec-49ca-8610-fce829754427">Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey</a>, who filed suit in February 2023 to have her removed from office. Gardner resigned on June 1, 2023. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A Black woman dressed in a business suit stands in front of a mural with her arms crossed." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542210/original/file-20230810-25-6v4prv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">State’s attorney for Baltimore, Md., Marilyn J. Mosby answers media questions on Aug. 24, 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/states-attorney-for-baltimore-maryland-marilyn-j-mosby-is-news-photo/594876236?adppopup=true">Larry French/Getty Images for BET Networks</a></span>
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<p>A similar situation occurred in Maryland in April 2015 when State’s Attorney for Baltimore Marilyn Mosby charged six police officers with the <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/death-of-freddie-gray-5-things-you-didnt-know-129327/">death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray</a>. Shortly after the officers’ arrests, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/black-women-prosecutors-hate-misogynoir-part-life/story?id=68961291">Mosby told ABC News</a> that she received an email with the subject “Obituary of Marilyn Mosby.”</p>
<p>The email described Mosby being “gunned down in cold blood walking into the courthouse” and said her then-husband, state delegate Nick J. Mosby, was “found tortured and dismembered.” The email ended with, “several family members, related to Mr. and Mrs. Mosby, have been reported ‘missing’, the police are not currently investigating and feel that none of the missing are significant.”</p>
<p>Since then, Marilyn Mosby <a href="https://www.wbaltv.com/article/marilyn-mosby-indicted-baltimore/36901609">was indicted</a> in 2022 on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/16/us/baltimore-prosecutor-marilyn-mosby-indicted/index.html">federal charges of perjury</a> after she allegedly withdrew money from her deferred compensation accounts and made a false statement on a loan application. Prosecutors said Mosby lied to avoid paying taxes on the money. </p>
<p>Mosby has pleaded not guilty, and her trial is scheduled for October 2023. </p>
<h2>The reality of public service</h2>
<p>To Willis, Trump’s attacks and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fulton-county-d-a-racist-threats-charging-decision-against-trump/">other racist threats</a> are a part of her job.</p>
<p>Trump’s comments “do not concern me at all,” <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/exclusive-interview-fulton-da-dismisses-trump-comments-ridiculous-after-calling-her-racist/7RVDEE5BEVAKFNCSLFD54YJ27E/">Willis told an Atlanta television station</a> in April 2023. “It’s ridiculous in nature, but I support his right to be protected by the First Amendment and say what he likes.”</p>
<p>Trump’s ugly use of race is all too familiar to another Black female prosecutor.</p>
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<img alt="A Black woman stands in front of the American flag and the state of New York's emblem." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541994/original/file-20230809-15-pud4n9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">New York Attorney General Letitia James has led a probe into Donald Trump’s business practices.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/new-york-attorney-general-letitia-james-points-as-she-news-photo/1319289050?adppopup=true">Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>New York Attorney General Letitia James led a nearly three-year investigation into Trump’s business practices and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/ny-sues-donald-trump-family-and-company/">filed a $250 million lawsuit</a> alleging widespread fraud against him, his New York-based real estate business organization and three of his children. </p>
<p>Trump has frequently used <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1572631979748896769">racist, derogatory words</a> to attack James.</p>
<p>James has remained steadfast. “He should know that we here in New York – and I, in particular – we are not scared of you,” <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63000691">she warned</a> Trump in September 2022.</p>
<p>Willis also <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/exclusive-interview-fulton-da-dismisses-trump-comments-ridiculous-after-calling-her-racist/7RVDEE5BEVAKFNCSLFD54YJ27E/">drew a line</a>. “People have that right to say whatever they choose to say as long as it does not rise to the level of threats against myself, against my staff or against my family,” she said in April 2023.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bev-Freda Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>While Donald Trump has used his social media platform to criticize all of his opponents, the former president has made his most controversial attacks against Black female prosecutors.Bev-Freda Jackson, Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059602023-05-22T12:27:43Z2023-05-22T12:27:43ZGOP’s proposed expansion of SNAP work requirements targets many low-income people in their early 50s – but many of them already work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527300/original/file-20230519-21-rnxqd4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C33%2C5488%2C3190&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many Americans in their early 50s take care of older loved ones.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/caregiver-woman-helping-senior-man-with-shopping-royalty-free-image/587506108">FredFroese/E+ via Getty Imagres</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em></p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Roughly half of the people who would be affected by a proposed expansion of <a href="https://theconversation.com/extra-snap-benefits-are-ending-as-us-lawmakers-resume-battle-over-program-that-helps-low-income-americans-buy-food-199929">Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program</a> work requirements already do what’s needed to meet those requirements. There’s also evidence suggesting that many of the rest have caregiving or health conditions that prevent them from working.</p>
<p>Formerly known as food stamps, SNAP helps low-income people buy groceries. </p>
<p>Republicans want the federal government to make SNAP benefits for <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/26/politics/work-requirements-food-stamps-medicaid-debt-ceiling/index.html">adults age 50 to 55</a> without dependents or disabilities contingent on spending <a href="https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/work-requirements#:%7E:text=Work%20at%20least%2080%20hours,least%2080%20hours%20a%20month">80 hours per month on work activities</a>, which may include employment, short-term training and community service. This proposed change is in a package that the Republican-led <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/19/politics/mccarthy-debt-limit-bill/index.html">House of Representatives passed in April 2023</a> that seeks to cut spending on several social programs.</p>
<p>Currently, the requirements only apply to adults under 50 without dependents who aren’t disabled.</p>
<p>We’re basing these estimates on our analysis of nationally representative time-diary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ <a href="https://www.bls.gov/tus/">American Time Use Survey</a>.</p>
<p>We analyzed the time that low-income Americans ages 50-55 who didn’t have a disability or child at home spent working, caring for others or dealing with their personal health and well-being from 2012 to 2021. </p>
<p>We found that in most years, more than half of them worked at least 20 hours per week. We estimated that, on average, those who met the work requirement actually worked about 41-51 hours per week – a full-time schedule. </p>
<p>We also determined that relative to their counterparts who met the work requirements, those who did not spent 10 times as much time managing their own health, five times as much time on child care, and more than five times as much time caring for an elderly or disabled adult.</p>
<p><iframe id="Lcj3Y" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Lcj3Y/4/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>The GOP bill is <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/how-to-stop-the-lefts-dangerous-despicable-war-on-work">grounded in a belief</a> that people who get SNAP benefits and aid through other assistance programs are not employed but capable of working, and that enforcing work requirements can increase employment and earnings.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/07/most-families-that-received-snap-benefits-in-2018-had-at-least-one-person-working.html">that’s a misconception</a>.</p>
<p>This measure and <a href="https://networklobby.org/devastating-debt-ceiling-bill/">several others like it</a> are part of a package that would raise the debt limit to avert a potential U.S. default and a global economic crisis.</p>
<p>Our findings <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/house-republicans-agriculture-appropriations-bill-would-cut-wic-benefits">support widespread concerns</a> that expanding SNAP work requirements would sever food assistance benefits for an estimated <a href="https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59102">275,000 low-income people</a> between the ages of 50 and 55, including many with health conditions and who care for others.</p>
<p>That’s troubling because the cost of <a href="https://blog.dol.gov/2023/01/24/new-childcare-data-shows-prices-are-untenable-for-families">professional child care</a> and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/health/senior-care-cost/index.html">elder care</a>, as well as the <a href="https://www.nationaldisabilityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/extra-costs-living-with-disability-brief.pdf">care for the disabled</a>, is very high in the U.S.</p>
<p>It’s reasonable to expect that the new work requirements would force many people to make hard choices between the caregiving arrangements for their loved ones and keeping their benefits. Also, since people who have poor health may not be able to work, they may find themselves unable to put food on the table if they lose SNAP benefits.</p>
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<h2>What other research is being done</h2>
<p>SNAP is associated with many positive trends beyond getting enough to eat. These include <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.4841">spending less on health care</a>, having <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/s1368980021003815">better health</a> and <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/financial-repercussions-of-snap-work-requirements.htm">becoming more financially secure</a>.</p>
<p>Further, when Americans use SNAP to buy groceries, studies have shown that it <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap/economic-linkages/">stimulates the economy where they live</a>, supporting low-income communities. </p>
<p>Additional research has found that work requirements tied to aid programs <a href="https://theconversation.com/snap-work-requirements-dont-actually-get-more-people-working-but-they-do-drastically-limit-the-availability-of-food-aid-204257">don’t get more low-income people to enter the labor force</a>. Studies also have found that these policies cause many people who are eligible for assistance to <a href="https://theconversation.com/medicaid-work-requirements-would-leave-more-low-income-people-without-health-insurance-but-this-policy-is-unlikely-to-pass-this-time-around-204731">lose their benefits</a> due to paperwork hassles and unclear guidelines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205960/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katherine Engel receives funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Taryn Morrissey has received funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bainum Family Foundation, DC Action for Children, and the Peter G. Peterson and Ford Foundations. Morrissey is a non-resident Fellow at the Urban Institute and previously a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.</span></em></p>Republicans are pressing for policy changes based on a misconception that hardly anyone who gets help buying groceries with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits is employed.Katherine Engel, PhD Student in Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsTaryn Morrissey, Professor of Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2021962023-04-04T12:15:00Z2023-04-04T12:15:00ZNew EU-UK trade deal has promise for Northern Ireland and US as well<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518029/original/file-20230328-518-tnu3a0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C0%2C7919%2C5306&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, left, and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen announce their new trade agreement. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/britains-prime-minister-rishi-sunak-and-european-commission-news-photo/1247535827">Dan Kitwood/Pool/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new trade agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom, which left the EU in 2020, could have finally found a way to safeguard peace in Northern Ireland after Brexit reignited old tensions.</p>
<p>The deal between the EU and the U.K., called the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9736/">Windsor Framework</a>, lays out new rules about how trade will move between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, the island that consists of Scotland, Wales and England, the other three provinces of the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Among other changes, the Windsor Framework creates two categories of items being shipped from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Items intended to stay in Northern Ireland would have free passage, but those destined to cross the border into the Republic of Ireland – which is in the EU – would face stringent screening. </p>
<p>The agreement has been <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/windsor-framework-ratified">ratified by the U.K. Parliament and the European Union</a>. But it remains to be seen whether Northern Ireland’s unionist political parties will accept it and lift their boycott of the provincial government.</p>
<p>Since unionists’ refusal to join the power-sharing assembly began in 2022, elected representatives in Northern Ireland have not been able to tackle a growing backlog of critical issues, including the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/19/northern-irish-healthcare-in-crisis-amid-political-deadlock">declining quality and availability of health care</a>, the shortage of housing, the <a href="https://viewdigital.org/crushed-by-the-cost-of-living-crisis/">rising cost of energy</a> and <a href="https://www.newsletter.co.uk/business/consumer/cost-of-living/northern-ireland-being-hit-harder-by-cost-of-living-crisis-than-other-parts-of-the-uk-as-more-forced-to-cut-back-on-essentials-which-research-shows-4020648">inflation</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=V4yncf0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">scholars</a> <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=6nkxNe8AAAAJ">of</a> Northern Irish politics, we see a newly approved trade deal as an opportunity to return Northern Ireland’s political attention to those crucial issues.</p>
<h2>A history of trouble</h2>
<p>In the late 1960s, a period of violence known as “The Troubles” began, pitting nationalists, who want Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland and are mostly Catholic, against unionists, who want it to remain part of the United Kingdom and are mostly Protestant. Over the following three decades, <a href="https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/sutton/tables/Status_Summary.html">about 3,500 people were killed</a> and <a href="https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/ni/security.htm#05">another 47,000 were injured</a> in riots, assassinations and other violence. These events were largely in the six counties of Northern Ireland, which are part of the U.K., but also happened in the neighboring nation of Ireland and the remainder of the U.K., on the island of Great Britain. </p>
<p>A 1998 agreement between the U.K. and Irish governments and various political groups in Northern Ireland ended the violence. That deal, called the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-61968177">Good Friday Agreement by nationalists and the Belfast Agreement by unionists</a>, set up a power-sharing provincial government in Northern Ireland, close links between this new government and the Irish government, and various systems for cooperation and coordination between the U.K. and Irish governments. </p>
<p>The agreement also allowed people who lived in Northern Ireland to identify as Irish, British or both and carry passports from both places. These measures made it easier for people with different identities in Northern Ireland to coexist, and in some cases to express complex identities. Today, for example, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/over-one-third-of-north-s-population-hold-irish-passport-1.4814375">more than one-third of Northern Ireland’s population</a> carry an Irish passport.</p>
<p>And the 1998 agreement says that the decision about whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the U.K. or unite with Ireland should be decided only by a majority vote of Northern Ireland’s people.</p>
<p>When the agreement was signed, both the U.K. and Ireland were part of the EU. The EU’s common market allows goods, people and business activities to flow freely between member nations, without customs or passport controls. </p>
<p>Within a few years of the 1998 agreement, trade and people were flowing seamlessly, rendering the border all but invisible – especially after the U.K. removed <a href="https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/border/border-violence.htm">military installations and the fortified barriers</a> at the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large commercial truck stops at a gate with a booth and a person holding a piece of paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518030/original/file-20230328-5054-txd7na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The port of Belfast is a crucial point in trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/freight-lorries-are-checked-after-disembarking-from-the-p-o-news-photo/1247533288">Paul Faith/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Brexit risks peace</h2>
<p>With the help of a strengthening EU, the peace was stable until 2016. That year, the people of the U.K. voted to leave the EU, though the majority of <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/brexit-northern-ireland-votes-to-remain-in-the-eu-1.2697132">voters in Northern Ireland wanted to remain</a> in the union. </p>
<p>The departure of the U.K. from the EU meant the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland mattered again. It would no longer be a technical, administrative boundary between EU member nations, but rather a point where goods and people would flow into and out of the EU and a non-EU country. </p>
<p>Tensions flared over where to put these checks and the possible new divisions they would create between either Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland or Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.</p>
<p>In 2019 the U.K. and the EU agreed to a deal, called the Northern Ireland Protocol, that established a kind of border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. It involved burdensome and slow customs checks on all goods arriving at Northern Irish ports and prohibitions on some goods including sausages, medicines, plants and potatoes. </p>
<p>Those problems sparked stiff resistance from unionists, who said it had done what they feared: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46988529">separated them from their nation</a>.</p>
<p>In 2022, in protest against the Protocol, the Democratic Unionist Party, a key party in Northern Irish politics, <a href="https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/no-stormont-return-until-ni-protocol-is-replaced-dup-leader-says/42170991.html">withdrew from the provincial government</a>, effectively shutting it down. </p>
<p>Now, the Windsor Framework keeps key border protections around the EU but eases a lot of the restrictions created in the 2019 agreement.</p>
<h2>A key US role</h2>
<p>There is an element of U.S. foreign policy at work here, too. The U.S. was <a href="https://joewilson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/wilson-resolution-calls-for-full-implementation-of-belfastgood-friday">key to negotiating the 1998 agreement</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/10/why-joe-biden-is-so-invested-in-defending-good-friday-agreement">successive administrations</a> have championed it as the only way to a sustainable peace. </p>
<p>When the U.K. voted to withdraw from the EU, the departure meant the U.K. needed to negotiate a new trade agreement with the U.S. But the U.S. decided to force the U.K. to work out its departure from the EU – in ways consistent with the 1998 agreement – before U.S.-U.K. trade talks could truly begin.</p>
<p>With the Windsor Framework agreed upon, the U.S. will <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/politics/biden-northern-ireland-visit/index.html">likely send President Joe Biden</a> to visit both Ireland and Northern Ireland, potentially as soon as April, to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1998 agreement. The new U.S. special envoy to Northern Ireland for economic affairs, Joe Kennedy III, a former Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, is also <a href="https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2023/01/19/news/us_envoy_promises_to_champion_northern_ireland_s_compelling_potential_-3005755/">expected to travel to Northern Ireland soon</a>, with U.S. investors eager to take advantage of <a href="https://www.newsletter.co.uk/business/us-president-joe-bidens-special-envoy-to-northern-ireland-joe-kennedy-hears-call-from-ni-business-for-new-economic-good-friday-agreement-4064604">Northern Ireland’s unique connections</a> with both the EU and the U.K. markets.</p>
<p>All eyes are now on the Democratic Unionist Party. Its members voted against the Windsor Framework in the U.K. Parliament in late March, but the people of Northern Ireland, including many unionists and the business community, want a functioning government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202196/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kimberly Cowell-Meyers is affiliated with the Ad-hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement but does not represent the group and the views expressed here are her own. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carolyn Gallaher is affiliated with the Ad-hoc Committee for the Protection of the Good Friday Agreement. This is an ad-hoc, bi-partisna voluntary group. It is not a lobby and there are no membership fees or responsibilities for members. It also does not have 501c3 status. However, we are not representing this group. The views expressed here are our own. </span></em></p>A newly approved trade deal could be an opportunity to return Northern Ireland’s political attention to pressing issues of health care, housing, energy costs and inflation.Kimberly Cowell-Meyers, Assistant Professor, Department of Government, American University School of Public AffairsCarolyn Gallaher, Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs, American University School of International ServiceLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1949722022-12-06T13:34:58Z2022-12-06T13:34:58ZEarly and mail-in voting: Research shows they don’t always bring in new voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496871/original/file-20221122-26-sz3ow1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5142%2C3423&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 110 million votes were cast in the U.S. midterm elections of November 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/hispanic-voter-voting-in-polling-place-royalty-free-image/138711489?phrase=U.S.%20voting&adppopup=true">Hill Street Studios/Digital Vision via Getty Iag</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>SciLine interviewed <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/leighley.cfm">Jan Leighley</a>, professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2022. Leighley discussed how early voting affects turnout, how turnout differs for midterm and presidential elections, how pollsters predict turnout and how to understand the persistent gap between people’s intention to vote and actual turnout.</em> </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jan Leighley, professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, discusses voter turnout.</span></figcaption>
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<p><em>Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
<p><strong>How do we know after an election how many people ultimately voted?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> It’s usually January by the time we really have a good sense <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90807427/midterm-election-results-2022-when-timeline">of how many people voted</a>, and there can be corrections after that. Now those are usually small corrections. But it takes a lot of people a lot of time even to <a href="https://www.electproject.org/2022g">ensure that number is correct</a>. </p>
<p><strong>How do newer forms of voting, such as early voting or mail-in voting, affect turnout?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> The assumption has always been if we make it easier to vote using these methods, more people will vote. (But) most research suggests that the people who take advantage of these newer ways of voting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12063">would have voted anyway on Election Day</a> if they weren’t able to vote in those other ways. </p>
<p>The original intention of those reforms was to get new people into the voting pool. We have a little bit of evidence that – under some circumstances – we can indeed increase turnout in the range <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691159355/who-votes-now">of 2 percentage points or so</a>. </p>
<p>But it depends on what parties do. It depends on the competitiveness of elections and other factors unique to specific elections. </p>
<p><strong>How does turnout differ between midterm and presidential elections?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> Presidential turnout is <a href="https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present">substantially higher than midterm elections</a>, when members of Congress and a set of senators and governors might be up for re-election or election.</p>
<p>Turnout in presidential elections tends to be around 50% to 60%, depending on various circumstances associated with the election. Midterms are usually in the 30% to 40% range. Again, depending on candidates, competitiveness, economic conditions and what the parties do to try to mobilize turnout.</p>
<p><strong>Does higher turnout mean better representation of the voter population?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> The turnout level, which is what we hear about the most, isn’t the only feature that’s important. The other feature is whatever 50% or 30% of voters who do show up, who they are. </p>
<p>And so, low turnout levels – like 30%, if you believe that’s low – that are nonetheless representative of all eligible voters, wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for representation … if those 30% of voters were like that larger pool of everyone who’s eligible. </p>
<p>And, in fact, what we find in midterms compared to presidential elections is that one group – younger individuals – (are) especially underrepresented in midterms. </p>
<p>The sense is younger individuals who are getting established as voters and figuring out how to vote and deciding whether it’s a priority, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/04/behind-2018-united-states-midterm-election-turnout.html">they vote far less in midterms</a> than they do in presidential elections. And so that’s a voice that isn’t heard perhaps as strongly as you might hope. </p>
<p><strong>How do pollsters predict voter turnout?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> Pollsters predict voter turnout <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/course/public-opinion-polling-basics/">using a variety of means</a>. They have extensive databases on past turnout behavior of citizens, and they use past behavior to predict what will happen in the current environment. (The pollsters) connect those historical details with the current environments and attitudes of their potential voters to predict what voter turnout will look like.</p>
<p><strong>What drives the persistent gap between people’s intentions to vote and their actions?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> I think voting is like a lot of things that we have good intentions to do, right? It takes time, it takes effort, it takes presence of mind, and life is complicated. And, oftentimes, the short-term, immediate, right-in-front-of-our-faces issues or problems or tasks take precedence. </p>
<p><em>Watch the <a href="https://www.sciline.org/elections/voter-turnout-science/">full interview</a> to hear about voter turnout.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.sciline.org/">SciLine</a> is a free service based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Leighley received funding from Pew Research Center around 2010.</span></em></p>Compared with past midterms, voter turnout among young people jumped in 2022 – but it was still below 30%.Jan Leighley, Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1936992022-11-04T16:21:21Z2022-11-04T16:21:21ZWhat’s at stake this Election Day – 7 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493337/original/file-20221103-13-5pz4zm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People volunteer at a Native Alaskan voting station on Nov. 2, 2022 in Anchorage. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/people-participate-in-voting-in-the-upcoming-midterm-elections-at-a-picture-id1244447058?s=612x612">Spencer Platt/Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Election Day closes in, uncertainty and concern about potential chaos – from violence at polling sites to candidates refusing to accept defeat – <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63494618">continue to rise</a>. </p>
<p>Problems that have historically plagued the U.S. electoral and political system – like voter intimidation – are cropping up ahead of the midterms. But so, too, are less familiar issues, like how previously run-of-the-mill state election positions are becoming opportunities for political activism.</p>
<p>Here are seven key issues that affect the midterm elections, drawn from stories in The Conversation’s archive.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A white older man in a dark blue suit stands next to two American flags, and a third very large flag over a blue backdrop. A Black man in a suit stands on the other side of the American flag." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493338/original/file-20221103-19-xv0h1o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">President Joe Biden spoke on Nov. 2, 2022, warning of the need to preserve and protect democracy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/president-joe-biden-arrives-to-deliver-remarks-on-preserving-and-as-picture-id1244440371?s=612x612">Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>1. Who is voting</h2>
<p>Voter participation during midterm elections is typically low – though <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/11/01/turnout-in-u-s-has-soared-in-recent-elections-but-by-some-measures-still-trails-that-of-many-other-countries/">some experts say</a> that there could be heavy turnout this year. But the question of who actually heads to the polls will also be critical, as races in key <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/">swing states tighten</a>. </p>
<p>Young voters are much less likely to vote during midterms than older people, as opposed to their higher turnouts during presidential elections, American University government scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1XMWY78AAAAJ&hl=en">Jan Leighley</a> wrote. Young voters are also more likely to identify as Democrats. </p>
<p>“So if younger voters are underrepresented in the November 2022 elections, more Republicans may be elected, as well as candidates less likely to reflect younger citizens’ views on key issues,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/young-voters-are-more-likely-to-skip-midterm-elections-than-presidential-races-192314">Leighley wrote.</a> </p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/young-voters-are-more-likely-to-skip-midterm-elections-than-presidential-races-192314">Young voters are more likely to skip midterm elections than presidential races</a>
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<p>This year, meanwhile, record numbers of Latinos are also expected to turn out to vote. In 2020, most Latinos voted for President Joe Biden – but increasing numbers of Latino voters are also supporting GOP candidates, including former president Donald Trump, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gop-made-gains-among-latino-voters-in-2020-but-democrats-remain-the-party-of-choice-for-upcoming-midterms-192679">wrote University of Tennessee social work</a> scholar <a href="https://experts.utk.edu/experts/mary-lehman-held/">Mary Lehman Held.</a></p>
<p>One reason is that Latino voters have different backgrounds, values and priorities. And not all would be turned off by Republican candidates’ restrictive immigration politics. </p>
<p>“Immigration policies only affect a subset of Latinos, most notably Mexicans, followed by Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans,” Lehman Held explained.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gop-made-gains-among-latino-voters-in-2020-but-democrats-remain-the-party-of-choice-for-upcoming-midterms-192679">The GOP made gains among Latino voters in 2020 but Democrats remain the party of choice for upcoming midterms</a>
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<h2>2. What voters want</h2>
<p>It’s the economy, stupid, <a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/its-the-economy-stupid/">as the famous</a> 1992 political adage about voters’ top concern goes. </p>
<p>Soaring inflation <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inflation-will-likely-stay-sky-high-regardless-of-which-party-wins-the-midterms-193416">rates top voters’</a> concerns this year, even though neither political party has been found particularly more effective at tackling the issue and bringing down inflation, as Texas State University finance scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=eP0xZ1kAAAAJ&hl=en">William Chittenden wrote.</a></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-inflation-will-likely-stay-sky-high-regardless-of-which-party-wins-the-midterms-193416">Why inflation will likely stay sky-high regardless of which party wins the midterms</a>
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<p>There was a flurry of political activism around the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a> in June 2022, undoing the federal right to an abortion. But just four months later, men and women both say that abortion politics are not bringing them to the polls, according to Harvard Kennedy School and Northwestern University social science scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vUKLlG4AAAAJ&hl=en">Matthew A. Baum</a>, <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/alaunasafarpour/home">Alauna Safarpour</a>, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=P_3neYQAAAAJ&hl=en">Jonathan Schulman</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0JH3YoUAAAAJ&hl=en">Kristin Lunz Trujillo</a>. </p>
<p>“The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision may have initially mobilized some voters in June and July, particularly women, but its effects appear to have diminished when we asked Americans about their intentions to vote again in August and October,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-not-influencing-most-voters-as-the-midterms-approach-economic-issues-are-predominating-in-new-survey-191836">they wrote.</a></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abortion-is-not-influencing-most-voters-as-the-midterms-approach-economic-issues-are-predominating-in-new-survey-191836">Abortion is not influencing most voters as the midterms approach – economic issues are predominating in new survey</a>
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<h2>3. Elections aren’t what they used to be</h2>
<p>Gone are the days when election administrators were considered low profile, conducting essential – but not flashy – work, like organizing voter lists, staffing polling places and counting election results. </p>
<p>Overall mistrust in elections is high in the U.S. following the 2020 elections – and former President Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat. It’s a new era in politics, where it is not necessarily a given that “elections happen, votes are counted, the winners are declared and democracy moves on,” wrote Arizona State University’s <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FdltMX4AAAAJ&hl=en">Thom Reilly</a>, a public governance scholar and former state election official. </p>
<p>One complicating factor is that the U.S. is the only democracy that elects many of its election officials, and high-ranking members of the Republican or Democratic parties usually oversee elections at the state level. </p>
<p>“That partisan system largely worked until now because, in essence, each party checked the other party’s ability to influence election outcomes. As long as states were politically diverse, members of the two major parties acted in good faith, and this model functioned – albeit imperfectly,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">wrote Reilly</a>. </p>
<p>But there’s already evidence that newly minted and highly partisan poll workers and election observers plan to disrupt the elections, potentially diminishing public faith in this essential democratic institution and weakening democracy itself. And a high number of candidates running for state election administration roles are election deniers. If they win, wrote Reilly, that will further erode public confidence in election integrity. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large white sign says 'Vote!' People walk past the sign outside, in what appears to be a green campus with trees." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/493339/original/file-20221103-24-oya9b6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Young people pass a voting information sign on the Emory University campus in Atlanta on Oct. 14, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/young-people-pass-a-voting-information-sign-on-the-emory-university-picture-id1244204492?s=612x612">Elijah Nouvelage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-faith-and-the-honor-of-partisan-election-officials-used-to-be-enough-to-ensure-trust-in-voting-results-but-not-anymore-189510">Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore</a>
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<h2>4. Black voters face possible intimidation</h2>
<p>Amid warnings from the Department of Homeland Security about political violence on Election Day – which University of Maryland, Baltimore County security researcher <a href="https://cybersecurity.umbc.edu/richard-forno/">Richard Forno</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-america-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon-193597">recently explored</a> – there’s an increased risk that polling sites will become yet another place for political violence. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-america-isnt-going-away-anytime-soon-193597">Political violence in America isn't going away anytime soon</a>
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<p>The threat brings to mind <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/elections/right-to-vote/voting-rights-for-african-americans/">long-standing efforts</a> by white supremacists to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/27/voter-intimidation-surging-2020-protect-minority-voters-column/6043955002/">intimidate and</a> threaten Black voters. </p>
<p>Georgia is one place with a long history of voter intimidation that is rolling out election reform laws, making it actually harder for voters – especially people of color – to vote. One part of this new law, called SB 202, removes some voting drop boxes, which people of color predominantly use. This comes as Black voters gain number and power in Georgia – and the tightened voting rules are reminiscent of the 1940s and other times when white conservatives cracked down on voting rights in response to rising Black political strength.</p>
<p>“The almost immediate passage of new election laws at a time of growing Black political strength suggests the persistence of a white backlash in Georgia,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-gop-overhauled-the-states-election-laws-in-2021-and-critics-argue-the-target-was-black-voter-turnout-not-election-fraud-192000">wrote</a> Emory University <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Doner-2">political science scholar Richard Doner</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/georgias-gop-overhauled-the-states-election-laws-in-2021-and-critics-argue-the-target-was-black-voter-turnout-not-election-fraud-192000">Georgia's GOP overhauled the state's election laws in 2021 – and critics argue the target was Black voter turnout, not election fraud</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193699/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Voter demographics and policy priorities are two recurrent, big issues on Election Day – but shifts in election administration and voting laws are new challenges influencing the midterms.Amy Lieberman, Politics + Society Editor, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1934922022-11-04T12:30:21Z2022-11-04T12:30:21ZAutomatic voter reregistration can substantially boost turnout<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492800/original/file-20221101-26714-ma4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=36%2C12%2C3995%2C2756&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voters cast ballots in Orange County, Calif., in November 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voters-cast-their-ballots-at-deerfield-elementary-school-in-news-photo/1064656452">Paul Bersebach/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Government efforts to keep registered voters on the rolls when they move from one address to another substantially boost those voters’ likelihood of casting a ballot, my research has found.</p>
<p>It’s long been known that the rules about how and when to register to vote – which <a href="https://vote.gov/">differ by state</a> – present a <a href="https://civilrights.org/blog/understanding-barriers-to-voter-registration-and-how-to-fix-them/">significant obstacle for people who want to participate in democracy</a>. In many nations, including Germany, Denmark, South Korea, Chile, Israel and others, citizens are automatically registered to vote when they become eligible to vote. Registration is the government’s responsibility. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/case-automatic-voter-registration">Some groups</a> have called for the U.S. or its states to adopt similar policies, broadly called “automatic voter registration.” Indeed, it was a major part of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1">For the People Act</a>, a bill introduced in early 2021 to address various aspects of U.S. election systems.</p>
<p>There is an existing federal law, often called the “<a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/national-voter-registration-act-1993-nvra">motor-voter law</a>,” that allows people who are getting a driver’s license to choose to simultaneously register to vote for federal elections. </p>
<p>Automatic voter registration, by contrast, makes the choice for people, and <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/automatic-voter-registration.aspx">requires them to opt out</a> of voter registration if they wish. In 2016, Oregon became the first state to <a href="https://sos.oregon.gov/voting/pages/motor-voter-faq.aspx">adopt this policy statewide</a>, eliminating the need for voters to take an extra registration step.</p>
<p>In the meantime, some communities are trying to help registered voters keep their registrations active. For instance, in 2018, election officials in California contacted people who were registered to vote but who had told the U.S. Postal Service they had moved. I evaluated this practice, called automatic reregistration, to see <a href="https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2021-3wzbh-v2">how well it worked</a> to keep voters actively participating in democratic self-government.</p>
<p><iframe id="ZhUZ8" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ZhUZ8/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Automatic voter reregistration</h2>
<p>Starting in 2015, the state of California began matching voter registration data to data collected by the U.S. Postal Service when people ask to <a href="https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/votecal/guidance/ncoa.pdf">have their mail forwarded</a>. When someone was detected as having moved within California, the county where they had been registered to vote would send out a postcard to the new address, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-list-accuracy.aspx">asking them to verify that they had moved</a>. Unless they explicitly told the county otherwise, the voter will be automatically reregistered at the new address.</p>
<p>I examined turnout data from Orange County, California, using voters who had moved within the county in June 2018. Voters who moved in the first half of June were automatically reregistered. But those who moved later in the month were not, because they moved too late: A <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/national-voter-registration-act-1993-nvra">law requires this type of records update to be completed</a> well in advance of a federal election. Apart from the dates of their moves, these two groups of voters were very similar. That allowed me to isolate the effect of automatic reregistration on people’s voting habits.</p>
<p>Overall, my analysis found that automatic reregistration boosted voter turnout by <a href="https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2021-3wzbh-v2">5.8 percentage points</a> over those who were not automatically reregistered.</p>
<p>There were partisan differences. Automatic reregistration had no statistically significant effect on Democrats’ turnout but boosted Republican turnout by 8.1 points – and lifted the turnout of people who did not identify with either party by 7.4 points.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sample postcard asking if a registered voter wants to change the address at which they are registered." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492342/original/file-20221028-64500-h5s605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In 2018, election officials in Orange County, Calif., mailed notifications to registered voters whom county records suggested had moved, informing them that they would automatically update the voters’ registration information.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Registrar of Voters, Orange County, California</span></span>
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<h2>Voting access is not just for Democrats</h2>
<p>Automatic reregistration is promising because it showed significant effects in a population in which we might expect to have only small effects. These voters had already broken through <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1532673x8100900301">the hurdle of initial registration once</a>. In addition, they had moved within Orange County, which meant potentially <a href="https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006651130422">less disruption to their lives than those who moved farther away</a>. Even so, relieving these voters of the reregistration burden effectively boosted turnout. </p>
<p>Voting access has long been a highly partisan issue. Some have even <a href="https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=671205A7-BB37-43A0-B8D9-8FE8E0B0ADE3">claimed</a> – without much scholarly evidence – that making voting easier could disproportionately benefit Democrats. Indeed, Republicans and Democrats have very different views about easing voting. In a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/04/22/republicans-and-democrats-move-further-apart-in-views-of-voting-access/">Pew Research Center</a> estimate in 2021, only 38% of Republicans supported automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote, while 82% of Democrats supported it. </p>
<p>But in my data, lifting the reregistration burden helped Republicans and independent voters more than Democrats. Of course, the 2018 general election was one in which Democrats in Orange County were already <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2018/12/03/orange-countys-final-vote-count-reveals-republicans-voted-for-democrats-69-per-house-vote-and-historic-turnout/">highly mobilized</a>. This might be why there was not a strong increase in turnout for the automatically reregistered Democrats. Another possibility could be that automatic reregistration disproportionately benefits Republicans and nonpartisan voters for some reason.</p>
<p>Whether the results will hold true in other elections and places remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the results show that automatic reregistration was effective in keeping voters actively participating, and they also show that easing voting in this way does not benefit only Democrats.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193492/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was funded by the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation.</span></em></p>When registered voters who move get help reregistering to vote in their new locations, they are more likely to cast a ballot at the next election.Seo-young Silvia Kim, Assistant Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1923142022-10-25T19:19:26Z2022-10-25T19:19:26ZYoung voters are more likely to skip midterm elections than presidential races<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490438/original/file-20221018-9241-w6h23b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C0%2C5472%2C3637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How many people vote matters, but so does their age.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voters-line-up-to-put-their-ballot-in-the-voting-machine-news-photo/1243198415">Scott Eisen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Midterm elections typically have lower voter turnout than presidential elections, but there is another crucial difference beyond just how many people vote: how old they are. </p>
<p>If past turnout patterns hold in 2022’s midterm election, most demographic groups will be represented as much as they are in presidential elections, with one major exception. People <a href="https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2020/demo/popest/2020-demographic-analysis-tables.html">ages 18 to 29 represent 16%</a> of the total U.S. population. But they will be a smaller proportion of voters in November.</p>
<p>That’s a key finding of <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1XMWY78AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my</a> research with political science collaborators <a href="https://www.brianhamel.me">Brian Hamel</a> and <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/jonathan-nagler.html">Jonathan Nagler</a>.</p>
<p>We wondered whether midterm elections are, because of their lower voter turnouts, less representative than presidential elections. For our initial findings, we compared the share of votes cast by different demographic groups in every midterm from 1974 to 2018 and those groups’ vote shares in presidential elections from 1972 through 2016. </p>
<p>During that period, people ages 18 to 29 cast 17% of the ballots in presidential races but just 12.8% of the votes in midterm elections, a drop of 4.2 percentage points. By contrast, the share of voters over the age of 45 rises almost 6 percentage points in midterm election years over their level in presidential elections.</p>
<p>When we analyzed differences in the share of voters by race, income and education levels, we found nearly equal levels of vote shares for these groups in both midterm and presidential elections. Yes, turnout is lower in all these midterms compared with presidential elections. But the representation of different voter groups is about the same – except for age. </p>
<p><iframe id="X4y3P" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/X4y3P/5/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Winners matter, but so do voters</h2>
<p>This representation difference is important. The winners of a nonpresidential election are determined by who gets the most votes. But research shows that the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-071108">policies that winning elected officials pursue</a> are determined in part by who voted for them. If younger people are underrepresented in midterm elections, then their policy views will also be underrepresented when winning midterm candidates vote on important issues.</p>
<p>If younger and older citizens supported the same policies, then underrepresentation of younger voters in the vote share wouldn’t matter. But people of <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generation-gap-in-american-politics/">different ages often have different views</a> on key issues.</p>
<p><iframe id="EGz5O" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/EGz5O/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>These age-based differences are also evident in policy views. Older Americans tend to report <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZSBZ7K">greater opposition to abortion rights</a> and less support for universal government-run health care.</p>
<p>At the most basic level, the age differences involve party affiliation. The <a href="https://cces.gov.harvard.edu">Cooperative Election Study</a> is a scholarly national public opinion survey conducted regularly since 2006. In its survey about the 2018 midterm election, younger voters were found to identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZSBZ7K">significantly more often as Democratic</a> than Republican, while older voters are much more likely to identify with the Republican Party.</p>
<p>So if younger voters are underrepresented in the November 2022 elections, more Republicans may be elected, as well as candidates less likely to reflect younger citizens’ views on key issues.</p>
<p><iframe id="CkKEU" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/CkKEU/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Overall turnout can mask differences</h2>
<p>With crucial issues like inflation, racial and economic equity, climate change and abortion rights all factors in the campaign, and a large number of competitive districts, some pundits are projecting that overall turnout <a href="https://rollcall.com/2022/09/21/midterm-elections-could-set-another-turnout-record-this-year/">may even surpass 2018’s record of 50.1%</a> of eligible voters.</p>
<p>But even if that happens, record high turnout does not guarantee that younger voters will be better represented. In 2018, for instance, younger voters turned out in larger numbers but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2019/02/11/yes-young-people-voted-at-higher-rates-in-2018-but-so-did-every-age-group/">were still underrepresented</a> because other age groups also turned out in larger numbers.</p>
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<p>It’s possible that 2022 could be different. It is true that <a href="https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/spring-2021-harvard-youth-poll">more younger people report being politically involved</a> now than in years past. But they also are less likely to have voted previously and may need to deal with <a href="https://www.thirdway.org/interview/duke-universitys-dr-sunshine-hillygus-on-making-young-voters">legal and bureaucratic registration requirements</a> that older voters have already handled.</p>
<p>As in many previous midterm elections, efforts to mobilize young voters are underway, including initiatives on college campuses and a <a href="https://www.studentvoteresearchnetwork.org">broader network of nonpartisan organizations</a> actively mobilizing younger citizens’ turnout. That may help younger voters understand their potential power, although in past elections it hasn’t led young voters to turn out in enough numbers to narrow the gap with older voters’ turnout.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/local-election-offices-often-are-missing-on-social-media-and-the-information-they-do-post-often-gets-ignored-184359">newer type of mobilization activity</a> that might – whether intentionally or otherwise – target young people more than established voters is increasing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/05/national-voter-education-week/">social media outreach by election administrators’</a> providing details on the local voting requirements.</p>
<p>Perhaps this newer mix of mobilization approaches, along with high salience of issues of special importance to younger citizens, may help them to overcome the steeper costs they must bear to have their voices heard – and to have more of their votes counted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192314/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Leighley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Americans’ political affiliations and views on key issues vary a lot by age. When fewer young people vote, winning candidates and policies may not reflect their views.Jan Leighley, Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1877552022-08-01T12:25:56Z2022-08-01T12:25:56ZHow to college: 4 essential reads for incoming first-year students and their parents on mental health, libraries and more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476586/original/file-20220728-20112-10xjie.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C48%2C5421%2C3826&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When students are prepared for the newness of college life, their well-being is better off.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sign-welcoming-new-students-is-posted-at-sproul-plaza-on-news-photo/1385202168?adppopup=true">Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News vis Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By the time they get through high school, most students are pretty used to transitioning from summer to school time. But starting college brings a whole new set of challenges. First-year college students have to handle additional responsibilities like how much time they’ll spend in class, how to manage the time they devote to their coursework and how to take advantage of campus resources like the library.</p>
<p>It is vital for emerging college students to understand these changes and adapt to them so they can have a rewarding college experience. For the back-to-school season, The Conversation has put together four articles from our archive that give first-year students and their parents tips on how to set themselves up for success during the college years.</p>
<h2>1. Parents, help students prepare for college</h2>
<p>Graduating from high school and enrolling in college are not all that emerging college students need to worry about. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=yTnATSQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Lara Schwartz</a>, director of the Project on Civil Discourse at American University, gave parents tips on preparing their kids for college. She wrote, “Knowing what to expect can make a major difference in a student’s psychological well-being.”</p>
<p>Schwartz suggested that parents do <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-parents-should-do-to-help-students-prepare-for-the-first-year-of-college-114556">five things</a> to help students feel ready for college. Parents should let their children know that professors will expect students to reach out when they need help. They should also discuss what they expect from their children, like how often they should communicate. Because it is the first year, parents should expect students to make mistakes but also encourage their children to recover from those mistakes.</p>
<p>“Many first-year college students report feeling ‘stressed most or all of the time,’ regardless of where they go to college,” Schwartz wrote. But with some advance preparation, parents can help alleviate that stress.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-parents-should-do-to-help-students-prepare-for-the-first-year-of-college-114556">What parents should do to help students prepare for the first year of college</a>
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<h2>2. Manage student mental health</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.usf.edu/student-affairs/counseling-center/about-us/joyce-nick.aspx">Nicholas Joyce</a>, a psychologist at the University of South Florida, gave new college students tips on what they can do to maintain their mental health in school. </p>
<p>He told students to <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-you-mentally-well-enough-for-college-118158">take responsibility</a> for making sure their work is completed and getting to classes on time. Also, students should not expect colleges to fix their mental health issues. Medical exceptions for mental health can be helpful when students start having poor grades, but they delay graduation dates. Students end up spending more time – and money – to earn their degree. </p>
<p>“More importantly, getting a medical exception does not resolve the underlying issue that led to the failure in the first place,” Joyce wrote.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-you-mentally-well-enough-for-college-118158">Are you mentally well enough for college?</a>
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</p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="People at different desks in the library." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476710/original/file-20220729-11809-5b98kp.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">College libraries are rich in resources but often misunderstood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/birds-eye-view-of-patrons-looking-at-books-on-the-ground-news-photo/1152501582?adppopup=true">JHU Sheridan Libraries/Archive Photos via Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>3. Make the most out of the library</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.middlebury.edu/library/people/carrie-m-macfarlane">Carrie M. Macfarlane</a>, director of research and instruction at Middlebury College, wrote that plenty of college seniors told her they regretted not learning more about their library in their first year of school.</p>
<p>Macfarlane laid out four ways to <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-college-students-can-make-the-most-of-their-college-library-163790">make the most out of the college library</a>. Borrowing from the library helps students cut the cost of supplies, and research shows that using the library correlates to students’ earning a higher GPA.</p>
<p>In addition, students can decompress at the library through stress management workshops and events like those that allow students to interact with dogs. Many libraries have job opportunities that allow students to earn money while learning a lot more about what’s available at campus libraries.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-college-students-can-make-the-most-of-their-college-library-163790">4 ways college students can make the most of their college library</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>4. Be careful with what you post</h2>
<p>Students might want to share what’s on their minds, but they need to think twice before they post on social media. Research shows that an increasing number of employers screen job candidates on social media.</p>
<p>Social media posts are part of an individual’s brand, according to <a href="https://honorsandawards.iu.edu/awards/honoree/8648.html">Thao Nelson</a>, a career counselor and lecturer at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. In an open letter to students she wrote in 2017 that still rings true, she warned students that “<a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-students-what-you-post-can-wreck-your-life-79224">what you post can wreck your life</a>.” She recommended students cultivate an online presence that will improve their chances of getting a job.</p>
<p>Nelson advised against posting foul language, bad-mouthing and putting illicit content online. Such posts can always be screenshot and reshared even if the user deletes it. However, Nelson said that students can search their profiles to delete content they do not want job recruiters to see.</p>
<p>“Remember, social media is not all bad,” wrote Nelson; “in many cases, it helps recruiters get a good feel for your personality and potential fit.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dear-students-what-you-post-can-wreck-your-life-79224">Dear students, what you post can wreck your life</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187755/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Starting college after finishing high school is an exciting phase of a student’s life. But students need to prepare for the new challenges college brings.Kiersten Tate, University Relations AssistantLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849132022-07-01T13:01:45Z2022-07-01T13:01:45ZDecades after Brown v. Board, US schools still struggle with segregation – 4 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/469081/original/file-20220615-10596-ka8yii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3402%2C1925&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Millicent Brown, left, was one of the first two Black students to integrate a South Carolina public school, in September 1963.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/USAMillicentBrown/deb2f7f4e4f1406aa001d2be2b246af6/photo">AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, handed down in 1954, was supposed to end racial segregation in the nation’s public schools. But that work remains undone, as evidenced by a U.S. Department of Justice collection showing <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/educational-opportunities-cases#race">dozens of active school-desegregation cases</a> even in 2022.</p>
<p>To take a more in-depth look at the prevalence and nature of contemporary school segregation in the U.S., The Conversation sought scholars who could discuss the topic from various standpoints – from its legal history to its current status and modern-day efforts to make schools inclusive beyond racial identity. Here are four selections from our past coverage.</p>
<h2>1. The Brown case wasn’t the beginning</h2>
<p>The fight for full equity in schools first went to the courts in 1947, when a group of Black parents in South Carolina wanted their kids to be allowed to ride the bus to school, as the white students could. When the case finally went to federal court in 1951, writes equity scholar <a href="https://news.clemson.edu/our-experts/roy-jones/">Roy Jones</a> at Clemson University, a federal judge suggested more – a suit against school segregation itself.</p>
<p>“A month later, [civil rights lawyer Thurgood] Marshall brought a new case, Briggs v. Elliott, … arguing that school segregation in South Carolina was unconstitutional. This was the first lawsuit in the country to challenge school segregation as a violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Jones writes. “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fight-against-school-segregation-began-in-south-carolina-long-before-it-ended-with-brown-v-board-177418">The Brown v. Board case</a> eventually grew out of that South Carolina case.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fight-against-school-segregation-began-in-south-carolina-long-before-it-ended-with-brown-v-board-177418">The fight against school segregation began in South Carolina, long before it ended with Brown v. Board</a>
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<h2>2. Still segregated</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of young adults with varying skin tones socialize outside" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=68%2C43%2C4091%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461338/original/file-20220504-16-rl3u6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Court-ordered desegregation has happened in the U.S. as recently as 2015, when a federal judge issued a desegregation order to the Cleveland, Miss., school district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/DesegregationAfterBusing/8b893af637dc4f649c093e983c0d005f/photo">AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Brown decision declared that public schools could not be segregated by race anymore, but the process took years and is still incomplete, writes <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8z4YFq0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Pedro Noguera</a>, an educational sociologist at the University of Southern California.</p>
<p>“American society continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-schools-are-not-racially-integrated-despite-decades-of-effort-177849">many of the nation’s public K-12 schools</a> are not well integrated and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another,” he writes. </p>
<p>In fact, Noguera explains, “in 2018-2019, the most recent school year for which data is available, 42% of Black students attended majority-Black schools, and 56% of Hispanic students attended majority-Hispanic schools. Even more striking, 79% of white students in America went to majority-white schools during the same period.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-schools-are-not-racially-integrated-despite-decades-of-effort-177849">US schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>3. Economic segregation</h2>
<p>Racial differences aren’t the only way U.S. schools are segregated. Education policy scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NOT4bMEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Kari Dalane</a> at the American University School of Public Affairs and a collaborator looked at how students are split up into classrooms within schools.</p>
<p>“<a href="https://theconversation.com/students-are-often-segregated-within-the-same-schools-not-just-by-being-sent-to-different-ones-179266">We found that … economically disadvantaged students</a> were increasingly likely to be concentrated in a subset of classrooms rather than spread out relatively evenly throughout the school,” Dalane writes.</p>
<p>That’s a problem because, as she explains, “more experienced teachers raise student test scores more than novice teachers, on average. However, novice teachers are frequently assigned to classrooms with more low-income students. Therefore, the more students are separated along lines of household income, the more likely poorer students are to fall behind academically.”</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/students-are-often-segregated-within-the-same-schools-not-just-by-being-sent-to-different-ones-179266">Students are often segregated within the same schools, not just by being sent to different ones</a>
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<h2>4. Children with disabilities</h2>
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<img alt="A teacher speaks with students who are raising their hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=31%2C0%2C5207%2C3257&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468082/original/file-20220609-18-6twc2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Learning support teachers such as Sabrina Werley in Pennsylvania are common, but schools’ services can vary widely.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sabrina-werley-works-with-her-4th-grade-students-in-a-math-news-photo/1312861050">Ben Hasty/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In the wake of the Brown decision came another effort – to include children with disabilities in the nation’s classrooms, rather than sending them to specialized schools focused on addressing their weaknesses.</p>
<p>A 1979 lawsuit ultimately asked the Supreme Court to interpret a 1975 law that said “children have the right to a ‘free appropriate public education’ in the ‘least restrictive environment’ possible in which their needs can be met,” explains education law scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=T3b-g5YAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Charles Russo</a> at the University of Dayton.</p>
<p>The lawsuit didn’t go well. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that a deaf student didn’t qualify for a sign-language interpreter because the student was doing well enough, even though an interpreter could have helped the student learn more and do better.</p>
<p>It took 35 years – until 2017 – for the Supreme Court to rule that schools owed students with disabilities an actually equal chance to make the most of their talents and promise. “<a href="https://theconversation.com/decades-after-special-education-law-and-key-ruling-updates-still-languish-181560">Progress – and potential – were the new standards, not merely getting by</a>,” Russo writes.</p>
<p>But it’s not clear how long it will take before every child has those opportunities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decades-after-special-education-law-and-key-ruling-updates-still-languish-181560">Decades after special education law and key ruling, updates still languish</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The effort to give every student equal access to an education has lasted decades and may need even more time before the goal is reached.Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1792662022-05-27T12:33:01Z2022-05-27T12:33:01ZStudents are often segregated within the same schools, not just by being sent to different ones<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465073/original/file-20220524-22-jiazkf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C27%2C6029%2C3983&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Classmates in grades 3, 4 and 5 are more likely to come from diverse economic backgrounds than their schoolmates in grades 6, 7 and 8.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/students-pass-a-beach-ball-to-the-next-person-on-the-list-news-photo/1334723214">Paul Bersebach, MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/research-brief-83231">Research Brief</a> is a short take about interesting academic work.</em> </p>
<h2>The big idea</h2>
<p>Children from low-income households are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221081853">increasingly being segregated into different classrooms</a> from their peers from higher-income households, according to recent research <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NOT4bMEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I</a> have conducted with education policy scholar <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/marcotte.cfm">Dave E. Marcotte</a>.</p>
<p>From 2007 to 2014, we tracked all North Carolina public school students statewide, from third through eighth grades, observing how the students were grouped into math and English language arts classes by each school’s process for creating class groups.</p>
<p>We used course enrollment data to figure out how many students in each classroom were from families whose incomes are at or below 185% of the federal poverty threshold – and how many were not. We found that those economically disadvantaged students were increasingly likely to be concentrated in a subset of classrooms rather than spread out relatively evenly throughout the school. </p>
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<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Often school segregation is thought about as Black and white students being forced to attend <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/tsq.12010">different schools</a>. This makes sense given the <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/blackrights/jimcrow">history of Jim Crow</a> – a 19th- and 20th-century legal system meant to <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what.htm">relegate Black people to second-class status</a> in white society – and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043152">court orders to desegregate schools</a>. </p>
<p>Another aspect of this issue is how students are sorted into classrooms within schools. A 2021 study found that more racially diverse schools are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-020-09309-w">more likely to have classrooms that are more segregated</a> than schools that are less diverse overall.</p>
<p>Researchers have recently begun to identify <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216652722">rising levels of segregation between schools</a> based not just on race, but also on household income.</p>
<p>Students from wealthier households are more likely than their less-well-off peers to have <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/whither-opportunity">higher academic achievement as measured by test scores</a> and to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858416645834">attend and complete college</a>.</p>
<p>Efforts to provide equitable opportunities for all students often focus on comparing funding and staffing between schools. Indeed, lower levels of school funding lead to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv036">lower educational attainment and lower wages in adulthood</a>.</p>
<p>However, resources can also be distributed inequitably within schools, on a classroom-by-classroom basis. For instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.009">more experienced teachers raise student test scores more than novice teachers, on average</a>. However, novice teachers are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X13495087">frequently assigned to classrooms with more low-income students</a>. Therefore, the more students are separated along lines of household income, the more likely poorer students are to fall behind academically.</p>
<h2>What still isn’t known</h2>
<p>We aren’t sure why there is an increase in segregation within schools by household income. One potential reason could be an increase in what is called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4501_2">academic tracking</a>,” which is the process of grouping students into classes based on their prior achievement, such as performance on standardized tests. </p>
<p>If <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.102.5.1927">low-income students perform worse on standardized tests than their peers</a>, they may be placed in lower tracks. However, standardized test scores may not accurately reflect ability for low-income students, since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2003.09.002">students from marginalized groups perform disproportionately worse</a> on assessments.</p>
<p>If in fact test scores do accurately reflect ability, there may be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.5.1739">some educational advantages</a> to track students into certain classes. However, researchers have long argued that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F019263658506948430">tracking perpetuates inequalities between low- and high-tracked students</a>. For example, students who are placed on lower tracks than their peers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3172">suffer from lower self-esteem</a> and are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904816681526">not as well prepared for college success</a> as higher-tracked students with similar test scores.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.axios.com/2021/09/22/charter-school-pandemic-enrollment-growth">growth in charter school enrollments</a> over the past two decades could also contribute to the increases in within-school segregation by income that we find. Public school principals who fear their students may depart for charters may attempt to retain them <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373715577447">by introducing specialized curricula or expanding gifted and talented programs</a>. If these programs continue to primarily serve students from families with higher incomes, that could increase income segregation within schools. This is a possibility we are exploring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kari Dalane and Dave Marcotte received funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation.</span></em></p>In middle school classes, students from lower-income families tended to be concentrated in just a few classrooms, new research from North Carolina has found.Kari Dalane, Ph.D. Candidate in Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1808382022-04-07T18:20:27Z2022-04-07T18:20:27ZKetanji Brown Jackson sworn in as Supreme Court justice: 4 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/471949/original/file-20220630-24-tbz0gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C164%2C5226%2C4017&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman to serve on the highest court in the land.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-handout-provided-by-the-supreme-court-chief-justice-news-photo/1241630923?adppopup=true">Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Shortly after noon on June 30, 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/judge-ketanji-brown-jackson-sworn-supreme-court-justice/story?id=85961957">took the judicial oath</a> and officially became a Supreme Court Justice of the United States – the first Black woman to sit on the bench.</p>
<p>The elevation of Jackson to the Supreme Court will not change the ideological setup of the bench – which will continue to be split 6-3 in favor of conservative justices.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, it is an important landmark in the history of the court – of the <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/members_text.aspx">115 justices on the Supreme Court</a> since it was established in 1789, 108 have been white men.</p>
<p>Race featured in Jackson’s confirmation process; so too did attempts to define her “<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2022/03/24/ketanji-brown-jackson-defies-judicial-philosophy/7135573001/">judicial philosophy</a>.” The Conversation has turned to legal scholars to explain the meaning of Jackson’s ascension to the court.</p>
<h2>1. Realizing MLK’s ‘dream’</h2>
<p>The Senate Judiciary Committee vote moving Jackson’s confirmation toward a final Senate roll call took place on April 4, 2022 – 54 years to the day since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The significance of the date was not lost on <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/bjackson.cfm">American University’s Bev-Freda Jackson</a>.</p>
<p>King’s words came up in Jackson’s confirmation hearing. Republican lawmakers suggested that his vision of an America in which people are judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was at odds with critical race theory, a concept much maligned by conservatives that holds that racism is structural in nature rather than expressed solely through personal bias. Their implication: that Jackson believed in critical race theory and therefore rejected King’s vision.</p>
<p>Bev-Freda Jackson <a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-and-the-color-blind-society-of-martin-luther-king-jr-180490">argues that this is a distortion</a>. “By recasting anti-racism as the new racism, conservative GOP leaders … use King’s words that advocated for a colorblind society as a critical part of their national messaging to advance legislation that bans the teachings of so-called divisive concepts,” she writes.</p>
<p>“Ketanji Brown Jackson is the very dream that King envisioned,” Jackson notes. “But he died before seeing the results of his nonviolent movement for social justice.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-and-the-color-blind-society-of-martin-luther-king-jr-180490">Ketanji Brown Jackson and the color blind society of Martin Luther King Jr.</a>
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<h2>2. On the shoulders of pioneers</h2>
<p>Now confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, Jackson has broken through the ultimate glass ceiling in terms of legal careers. She did so so on the shoulders of pioneering Black female judges.</p>
<p><a href="https://people.clas.ufl.edu/polssdw/">University of Florida’s Sharon D. Wright Austin</a> notes, even now, “relatively few Black women are judges at the state or federal level” – which makes the achievement of those who have made it to this level all the more remarkable.</p>
<p>Of the judges <a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jacksons-path-to-supreme-court-nomination-was-paved-by-trailblazing-black-women-judges-179728">highlighted by Austin</a>, there is Judge Jane Bolin, who became the country’s first Black female judge in 1939, serving as a domestic relations judge in New York for almost four decades. Later, in 1961, Constance Baker Motley became the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. In all she argued 10 cases before the court, winning nine of them. Meanwhile, Judge Julia Cooper Mack is noted as the first Black woman to sit on a federal appellate court, having been appointed in 1975 and serving 14 years on the bench.</p>
<p>These women are to be celebrated and remembered. As Austin writes, “Representation matters: It is easier for young girls of color to aspire to reach their highest goals when they see others who have done so before them, in the same way that women like Jane Bolin, Constance Baker Motley and Julia Cooper Mack encouraged Ketanji Brown Jackson to reach hers.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jacksons-path-to-supreme-court-nomination-was-paved-by-trailblazing-black-women-judges-179728">Ketanji Brown Jackson’s path to Supreme Court nomination was paved by trailblazing Black women judges</a>
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<h2>3. Echoes of the past</h2>
<p>The fact that a Black female Supreme Court justice was so long overdue is testament to the slow progress the U.S. has made toward racial – and gender – equality. </p>
<p>Margaret Russell, a <a href="https://www.scu.edu/ic/programs/bannan-forum/faculty-collaboratives/racial--ethnic-justice/margaret-russell/">constitutional law professor from Santa Clara University</a>, saw signs of this lack of advancement during parts of Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings.</p>
<p>Questions directed at the then would-be Supreme Court justice were, according to Russell, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jacksons-supreme-court-hearing-is-a-flashback-to-how-race-and-crime-featured-during-thurgood-marshalls-1967-hearings-177306">tantamount to race-baiting</a>. They also sounded eerily similar to criticisms that then-Supreme Court nominee Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American nominee to the court, faced in his own confirmation hearings in 1967. </p>
<p>Both Jackson, now, and Marshall, then, stood accused by senators of being soft on crime and were asked about how they intended to bring race into their legal decisions. “Are you prejudiced against white people in the South?” Marshall was asked by a known white supremacist senator. Similarly, Jackson was asked during her confirmation hearings if she had a “hidden agenda” to incorporate critical race theory into the legal system.</p>
<p>“I find it striking,” Russell writes, “that race has surfaced in such a major way in these hearings, more than five decades after Marshall’s nomination. In some respects, there has been progress on racial equity in the U.S., but aspects of these hearings demonstrate that too much remains the same.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jacksons-supreme-court-hearing-is-a-flashback-to-how-race-and-crime-featured-during-thurgood-marshalls-1967-hearings-177306">Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court hearing is a flashback to how race and crime featured during Thurgood Marshall's 1967 hearings</a>
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<h2>4. What Jackson will bring to the Supreme Court</h2>
<p>Jackson’s historic achievement of becoming the first Black female Supreme Court justice may distract from the fact she is also <a href="https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson-faces-confirmation-hearings-7-questions-answered-179715">eminently qualified to sit on the highest court</a> in her own right.</p>
<p><a href="https://law.rutgers.edu/directory/view/ak1444">Alexis Karteron of Rutgers University-Newark</a> notes that the Harvard Law-trained Jackson went on to clerk for Stephen Breyer, the justice she has now replaced. She has served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission as well as acting as both a trial court and appellate judge.</p>
<p>Jackson is also the first former criminal defense attorney to be nominated to the Supreme Court since Marshall. This puts Jackson in a unique position on the bench. Karteron writes that having served as a public defender “will help [Jackson] understand the very real human toll of our criminal justice system. … The criminal justice system takes an enormous toll on both the people in the system and their loved ones. I believe having a Supreme Court justice who is familiar with that is incredibly valuable.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson-faces-confirmation-hearings-7-questions-answered-179715">Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson faces confirmation hearings: 7 questions answered</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives and updates an earlier version <a href="https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-set-for-historic-supreme-court-confirmation-vote-3-essential-reads-180531">originally published</a> on April 4, 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Scholars discuss the meaning of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s elevation to the highest court in the land.Matt Williams, Senior International EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1804902022-04-05T12:31:20Z2022-04-05T12:31:20ZKetanji Brown Jackson and the color blind society of Martin Luther King Jr.<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455936/original/file-20220403-58985-4a0da2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=722%2C132%2C2127%2C1764&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson in a US Senate office on March 29, 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supreme-court-nominee-ketanji-brown-jackson-is-seen-during-news-photo/1388387718?adppopup=true">Alex Wong/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. Sen. Chuck E. Grassley had a question for <a href="https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/home.nsf/content/VL+-+Judges+-+KBJ">Ketanji Brown Jackson</a> during her confirmation hearings to be the first African American woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZocaS7ToO9c">Grassley</a>, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wanted to know if she agreed with Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision that one day America would become a nation in which people are judged “not by the color of their skin but by the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety#:%7E:text=sisters%20and%20brothers.-,I%20have%20a%20dream%20today.,flesh%20shall%20see%20it%20together.">content of their character</a>.” </p>
<p>What listeners might not have known about Grassley is that, while it appeared that he was holding up King as an example, he has a mixed history with King’s legacy. Grassley is, in fact, the sole surviving U.S. Senator to have cast a <a href="https://iowastartingline.com/2022/01/17/grassley-addresses-his-1983-mlk-jr-day-no-vote/">“no” vote in 1983</a> on making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday.</p>
<p>Without missing a beat, Jackson delivered a poignant story about her own family and sidestepped Grassley’s apparent move to use King’s words to oppose the teaching of race – and critical race theory in particular – in public schools. </p>
<p>Her parents, she explained, attended racially segregated schools in Florida. One generation later, their daughter was able to attend integrated Florida pubic schools and sits before them as a U.S. Supreme Court nominee. </p>
<p>“The fact that we had come that far was, to me,” Jackson testified, “a testament to the hope and the promise of this country.”</p>
<p>With their vote divided along partisan lines, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee assured the confirmation of the <a href="https://time.com/6146624/history-first-black-woman-supreme-court-justice-nominee/">first Black woman</a> in the 233-year history of the nation’s highest court. The fact that <a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2022/04/04/senate-panel-moves-toward-vote-on-jackson-court-nomination/">their vote</a> occurred on April 4, 2022, a day remembered for the assassination 54 years ago of King, was also significant. The full <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court-senate-confirmation-first-black-woman/">Senate confirmed her nomination</a> on April 7. </p>
<p>As a scholar of social justice movements, <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/bjackson.cfm">I believe</a> that Jackson is the very dream that King envisioned. But he died before seeing the results of his nonviolent movement for social justice. </p>
<h2>Distorting MLK’s words</h2>
<p>Delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the “I Have a Dream” speech is <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/news/freedoms-ring-i-have-dream-speech">King’s</a> most-recited and best-known. </p>
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<img alt="A black man dressed in a dark suit waves before speaking to thousands of people gathered around the Lincoln Memorial." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455942/original/file-20220403-11-52emub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.</span>
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<p>“So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream,” <a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety#:%7E:text=via%20Getty%20Images-,Civil%20rights%20leader%20Martin%20Luther%20King%20Jr.,of%20the%20March%20on%20Washington.">King said</a>. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. … I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”</p>
<p>Opponents of <a href="https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt-162752">critical race theory</a>, the academic framework that explains the relationship among race, racism and the law, have distorted King’s message. </p>
<p>By recasting anti-racism as the new racism, conservative GOP leaders such as <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-on-the-unifying-nature-of-americas-founding-principles">Grassley</a> and U.S. Sen. <a href="https://rollcall.com/2022/03/22/ketanji-brown-jackson-hearing-veers-into-hot-button-topics/">Ted Cruz</a>, a Republican from Texas, use King’s words that advocated for a colorblind society as a critical part of their <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-states-banning-critical-race-theory/">national messaging</a> to advance legislation that bans the teachings of so-called divisive concepts. </p>
<p>“Critical race theory goes against everything Martin Luther King has ever told us, ‘Don’t judge us by the color of our skin,’ and now they’re embracing it,” House Minority Leader <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/562700-mccarthy-critical-race-theory-goes-against-everything-martin-luther-king-jr/">Kevin McCarthy</a> said. </p>
<p>Such distortions have been sharply challenged, most notably by Bernice King, one of King’s four children. </p>
<p>“Do not take excerpts from my father,” <a href="https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1415463298464636928">she tweeted</a>. “Study him holistically … for people to be able to misappropriate him this way is actually beyond insulting.” </p>
<p>In practical terms, Jackson’s confirmation does not change the political ideologies on the nation’s highest court. Jackson is a Democratic appointee nominated to replace a Democratic appointee <a href="https://supremecourthistory.org/supreme-court-justices/associate-justice-stephen-g-breyer/">Stephen G. Breyer</a>.</p>
<p>More than likely Jackson will often be writing or signing dissents, along with the other Democratic presidential appointees: Justices <a href="https://supremecourthistory.org/supreme-court-justices/associate-justice-elena-kagan/">Elena Kagan</a> and <a href="https://supremecourthistory.org/supreme-court-justices/associate-justice-sonia-sotomayor/">Sonia Sotomayor</a>.</p>
<h2>MLK’s legacy</h2>
<p>Jackson’s appointment holds a significant symbolic value and adds an important message about <a href="https://www.morehouse.edu/life/campus/martin-luther-king-jr-collection/king-at-morehouse/">the legacy</a> of King’s sermons, speeches and writings. </p>
<p>In his “<a href="https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html">Letter from a Birmingham Jail</a>,” King wrote about the “urgency of now” and how Black people could no longer wait for moderates to join the fight for social justice. </p>
<p>“I had hoped,” King wrote, “that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”</p>
<p>“For years now, I have heard the word ‘Wait!’” King wrote. “This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’”</p>
<p>For Black women, at least, I believe the wait is over. What is significant about Jackson’s confirmation is beyond the color of her skin: She would become the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/briefing/ketanji-brown-jackson-hearings-supreme-court.html">only current justice</a> who has spent time not only at prestigious law schools and corporate law firms but also representing clients as a federal public defender.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An elderly white man wearing a dark business suit is seen with a marble wall in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/456179/original/file-20220404-9425-kxu4na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, arrives at a Senate Judiciary Committee session to vote on Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ranking-member-sen-chuck-grassley-looks-on-as-he-arrives-at-news-photo/1239742382?adppopup=true">Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)</a></span>
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<p>Throughout her career, she has written about the unfairness of the <a href="https://rollcall.com/2022/03/23/ketanji-brown-jackson-outlines-approach-to-sentencing-defendants/">criminal justice system</a>, and while serving on the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/once-home-to-ketanji-brown-jackson-sentencing-commission-now-sits-quiet-while-issues-go-unresolved-11647433838">federal Sentencing Commission</a> she took steps to reduce mass incarceration. </p>
<p>[<em>Understand key political developments, each week.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-understand">Subscribe to The Conversation’s politics newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>King knew that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbobelian/2013/01/21/mlk-and-the-supreme-court/?sh=6b317020db35">the Supreme Court</a> was integral in setting precedent, creating change and protecting freedoms. </p>
<p>In defending the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Montgomery-bus-boycott">Montgomery bus boycott</a> in Alabama, for instance, King invoked the federal courts, which in 1954 struck down school segregation in the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/spring/brown-v-board-1.html">Brown v. Board of Education</a> decision. </p>
<p>“If we are wrong, the Supreme Court is wrong,” <a href="https://www.uscourts.gov/news/2015/01/15/courts-legacy-intertwined-martin-luther-king-jrs">he said</a>. “If we are wrong, the Constitution is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.”</p>
<p>Though King was shot on the balcony of the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr">Lorraine Hotel</a> in Memphis, Tennessee, his dream of a colorblind society is becoming a reality with the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on April 8, 2022, to reflect Jackson’s confirmation.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180490/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bev-Freda Jackson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>President Joe Biden’s nominee for the US Supreme Court withstood four days of hearings and was confirmed to become the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.Bev-Freda Jackson, Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1690032021-09-29T20:09:07Z2021-09-29T20:09:07ZWhat happened during the last government shutdown: 4 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/423932/original/file-20210929-66205-8fwr30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C22%2C2986%2C1899&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Red sky at night, federal workers take fright? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-early-morning-sun-lights-up-the-sky-behind-the-u-s-news-photo/72581249?adppopup=true">Mark Wilson/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. is (once again) staring down the barrel of a <a href="https://www.crfb.org/papers/qa-everything-you-should-know-about-government-shutdowns">government shutdown</a>. </p>
<p>Barring progress on a spending bill to fund government agencies past Sept. 30, 2021 – and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/us/politics/debt-limit-spending-bill.html">Democrats are busying themselves</a> trying to get such a measure through Congress – federal workers could find themselves being sent home, or asked not to come in.</p>
<p>For how long is uncertain. Over the last few decades, the length of government shutdowns has crept up. The most recent one, which started on Dec. 22, 2018, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-happens-when-us-federal-government-shuts-down-2021-09-27/">lasted 35 days</a>, marking the longest shutdown to date.</p>
<p>During that period, The Conversation ran a series of articles that helped explain what was at stake, who suffers and why. Below are some insights gleaned by experts from previous government shutdowns that may give a clue as to what the U.S. can expect should the lights go off at midnight on Sept 30.</p>
<h2>Who is affected</h2>
<p>The federal workforce currently <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43590.pdf">comprises around 2.1 million civilian employees</a>. In the shutdown of 2018-2019, some 800,000 workers were affected by the government shutdown. Of those, around 380,000 were furloughed, meaning they could not work or get paid, while the rest worked without pay for the duration of the shutdown.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uab.edu/cas/pspa/people/faculty/nevbahar-ertas">Nevbahar Ertas at the University of Alabama at Birmingham</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-federal-workers-affected-by-the-shutdown-5-questions-answered-109631">broke down those numbers</a> for The Conversation. She explained that the vast majority of federal employees work and live outside of Washington, D.C. The work they perform ranges from protecting waterways and ensuring food safety to investigating crime. </p>
<p>In fact, federal workers “are employed in over 300 different occupations,” Ertas notes. Salaries vary along with the roles, but, as of 2017, the average federal salary was US$69,344.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-the-federal-workers-affected-by-the-shutdown-5-questions-answered-109631">Who are the federal workers affected by the shutdown? 5 questions answered</a>
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<h2>What happens to consumer spending</h2>
<p>One short-term consequence of not paying so many people is that it provides a short-term brake on consumer spending, according to Scott Baker, <a href="https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/baker_scott_r.aspx">a professor of finance at Northwestern University</a>.</p>
<p>Analyzing the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-economic-impact-of-a-government-shutdown-109182">impact of the 2013 government shutdown</a> – which saw some federal workers furloughed for more than two weeks – Baker found that it led to an immediate 10% decline in average spending for households in which at least one member worked for an affected federal agency. For households with a member furloughed in the shutdown, the drop in consumer spending almost doubled.</p>
<p>This is a problem not just for federal employees and their families. As Baker explains, it has a ripple effect on local businesses. One area of particular concerns is restaurants. When people tighten their purse strings, eating out is one of the first things to go. Given the challenging times the restaurant trade has had during the pandemic, any additional disruption would come as a further blow. </p>
<p>“In addition, the longer the shutdown lasts, the worse its impact,” Baker notes.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-economic-impact-of-a-government-shutdown-109182">What's the economic impact of a government shutdown?</a>
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<h2>The impact on health and safety</h2>
<p>Shutdowns don’t affect only the financial well-being of the U.S. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/mw4303a.cfm">Morten Wendelbo at American University School of Public Affairs</a> writes, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-will-harm-the-health-and-safety-of-americans-even-after-its-long-over-109843">disruption to business-as-usual can harm</a> the government’s ability to provide health services and protect the public from disasters.</p>
<p>This manifested in a number of ways during the 2018-19 shutdown. Disaster preparedness was one of the areas affected. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was forced to cease working on a several projects, and even those that continued were impacted by staff shortages as a result of federal furloughs. Among those temporarily sent home in that shutdown were hurricane modelers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Similarly, government employees tasked with managing forests prone to fires were affected by the shutdown. </p>
<p>“First responders and emergency experts use the off season to prepare for the next disaster season, but reports show that the prolonged shutdown is preventing some of this preparation, such as training for essential staff and forecasters,” Wendelbo explains.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-will-harm-the-health-and-safety-of-americans-even-after-its-long-over-109843">The shutdown will harm the health and safety of Americans, even after it's long over</a>
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<h2>Science suffers</h2>
<p>“When the U.S. government shuts down, much of the science that it supports is not spared,” writes <a href="https://www.chemistry.msu.edu/faculty-research/faculty-members/angela-k-wilson/">Angela Wilson of Michigan State University</a>. </p>
<p>She should know. As the head of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Chemistry, Wilson endured two shutdowns: “The 1,800 NSF staff would be sent home, without access to email and without even the option to work voluntarily, until eventually an end to the shutdown was negotiated.”</p>
<p>And it wasn’t just her agency. Scientists at the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Parks Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Geological Survey, among others, are also typically furloughed in government shutdowns. Such enforced periods out of work can be particularly disruptive for scientists who rely on critical windows for their work. </p>
<p>“If something happens only once a year and the moment is now – such as the pollination window for some drought-resistant plants – a researcher will miss out and must wait another year,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-gets-shut-down-right-along-with-the-federal-government-109690">Wilson explains</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/science-gets-shut-down-right-along-with-the-federal-government-109690">Science gets shut down right along with the federal government</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Congress is working on a spending bill to avert another government shutdown. Scholars explain what’s in store if they fail.Matt Williams, Senior International EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1654162021-08-03T18:27:26Z2021-08-03T18:27:26ZDoes a Trump endorsement make a difference? Yes, but not the way a candidate hopes it will<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414325/original/file-20210803-15-3nm9mg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C16%2C3764%2C2594&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sen. Dean Heller, right, and President Donald Trump, who endorsed him, at a rally on Sept. 20, 2018, in Las Vegas. Heller lost the reelection.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-looks-on-as-u-s-sen-dean-heller-news-photo/1037056040?adppopup=true">Ethan Miller/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Former President Donald Trump may see himself as a winner, but the candidates he endorses don’t always win. In fact, his endorsement often helps the opponents of his candidates.</p>
<p>That was true in the 2018 midterm elections, and a similar effect could happen in the upcoming 2022 midterms. One early indication: In late July, Republican and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jake-ellzey-texas-congress-runoff-6th-district-susan-wright/">Trump endorsee Susan Wright lost to fellow Republican Jake Ellzey</a> in the special election runoff in Texas’ 6th Congressional District. </p>
<p>The failure of Trump’s endorsement to propel Wright to victory has raised questions among political observers about <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/07/28/donald-trumps-endorsement-record-takes-a-hit-with-jake-ellzeys-win-over-susan-wright/">the sway the former president has in GOP politics</a>. The loss led to <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-team-blames-conservative-failed-endorsment-17aa2dd1-b4be-4ca7-beeb-c74d1d472a09.html">Trump’s inner circle</a> casting about for whom to blame.</p>
<p>While some Trump allies were quick to <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-team-blames-conservative-failed-endorsment-17aa2dd1-b4be-4ca7-beeb-c74d1d472a09.html">point fingers at internal party divisions</a> and Republican infighting, <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-team-blames-conservative-failed-endorsment-17aa2dd1-b4be-4ca7-beeb-c74d1d472a09.html">Trump himself blamed Democratic voters</a> for Susan Wright’s loss. </p>
<p>Trump’s endorsement may have mobilized Democrats and independents, who ultimately voted for <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/29/jake-ellzey-donald-trump-texas-6-congressional-seat/">Wright’s GOP opponent, Jason Ellzey</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12284">Our work</a>, and the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/711407">work of other political scientists</a>, suggests that endorsement backlash frequently occurs in contemporary politics. As political scientists, we observed the prolific tweeting of President Trump and wanted to know whether his endorsements of congressional candidates affected their campaigns and the campaigns of their opponents. </p>
<p>We found that during the 2018 midterm elections, President Trump’s endorsements helped Republicans he endorsed raise money, but also helped their Democratic opponents raise money.</p>
<p>Ultimately Trump’s endorsement was more detrimental than helpful. It led to an increased vote share going to the Democratic opponent of the candidate Trump endorsed.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a lectern in front of American flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414328/original/file-20210803-13-cj13z.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Democrat Nancy Pelosi became Speaker of the House in 2018 when the GOP, including Trump-endorsed candidates, lost control of the House in the midterm elections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/house-minority-leader-nancy-pelosi-holds-a-news-conference-news-photo/1058677340?adppopup=true">Zach Gibson/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The ‘backlash effect’</h2>
<p>Trump endorsed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12284">80 different congressional candidates</a> in the 2018 midterm elections. He tweeted 134 endorsements to 45 congressional candidates and endorsed another 35 congressional candidates at 47 in-person campaign events. </p>
<p>Our research looked at campaign fundraising, turnout and vote share for candidates whom Trump endorsed in the 2018 midterm elections as well as their opponents. </p>
<p>While presidents often campaign for and support candidates for the House and Senate in midterm elections, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3162/036298007782398468">most of that previous activity occurred in person and at the local level</a> rather than on Twitter or some other national platform. Previous presidents also haven’t been nearly as generous in their endorsements as Trump. </p>
<p>President Barack Obama, for instance, endorsed 16 congressional candidates in 2010 and eight candidates in 2014. All those endorsements were given at local events rather than on social media. While <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Endorsements_by_Donald_Trump">Trump has already endorsed 22 candidates leading up to the 2022 election</a>, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Endorsements_by_Joe_Biden">President Joe Biden has endorsed only two</a>. </p>
<p>Trump endorsements did affect the races: Our research found that Trump-endorsed candidates raised more money from more donors immediately following the president’s endorsement.</p>
<p>But an endorsement from President Trump also benefited the endorsed candidate’s Democratic opponent. Democrats took advantage of Trump’s unpopularity among Democrats and independents and <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2018/09/15/donald-trump-endorses-dallas-congressman-pete-sessions-re-election/">made sure that those voters also knew about the endorsement</a>. And while endorsed candidates raised more money, their opponents also raised more money from more donors immediately following the president’s endorsement. </p>
<p>Opponents of Trump-endorsed candidates also benefited from increased mobilization at the polls. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A newspaper headline that reads 'In a major upset against a candidate backed by Donald Trump, Jake Ellzey wins runoff for Fort Worth-area congressional seat.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/414334/original/file-20210803-23-1xx824z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Texas Tribune headline on a story about Jake Ellzey’s runoff victory over a Trump-backed candidate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/07/27/susan-wright-jake-ellzey-texas-6-congressional-seat/">Screenshot, Texas Tribune</a></span>
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<p>Races with a presidential endorsement had higher turnout than comparable races without an endorsement – but that didn’t help the endorsed candidate. Instead, Trump’s 2018 endorsements decreased the endorsed candidate’s vote share by almost 2.5 percentage points compared with candidates in similar districts who did not receive Trump’s endorsement. </p>
<p>Without Trump’s endorsement, Republicans likely would have won control of <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Minnesota%27s_7th_Congressional_District">Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District in 2018</a> rather than having to wait until 2020 for <a href="https://www.startribune.com/michelle-fischbach-ousts-collin-peterson-in-minnesota-s-seventh-district/572948862/">Republican Michelle Fischbach to defeat incumbent Democrat Collin Peterson</a>. Likewise, without <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2018/10/31/macarthur-kim-debate-trump-policies-but-steer-clear-of-trump-676331">Trump’s endorsement of New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur in 2018</a>, our estimates suggest he would have won reelection by about 1.2 percentage points <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-jersey-house-district-3">rather than losing by 1.3 percentage points</a>. </p>
<p>Ultimately, we found that Trump’s endorsements cost Republicans 16 seats – exactly 20% of the 80 candidates he endorsed. That represented 12 in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate. </p>
<h2>Not just Trump</h2>
<p>Other research has also shown that the engagement of national political figures at the local level appears to mobilize supporters and opponents alike. </p>
<p>Visits from presidential and vice presidential candidates in 2016 increased local donations both to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-is-going-back-holding-rallies-he-might-be-helping-biden/">candidates who were visited and their opponents</a>. Notably, Trump campaign rallies in 2016 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/711407">increased donations from the local area</a> to Hillary Clinton’s campaign more than to his own. </p>
<p>These findings suggest that high-profile interventions from divisive political figures ultimately may be unhelpful or, worse, damaging in the general election to the endorsed candidates. While such an endorsement does provide some benefits to the endorsed candidate, it also generates a backlash effect that can ultimately benefit an opponent. </p>
<p>Early indications in Trump endorsements for 2022 suggest they may be even more detrimental than in 2018. In addition to the failure of Trump’s endorsement to carry his preferred candidate to office in Texas’s 6th Congressional District recently, opponents <a href="https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1421201487246643203?s=20">have outspent Trump-endorsed candidates this cycle </a>. </p>
<p>Given both parties’ anticipation of a hotly contested election in 2022, with control of both the House and Senate likely to be up for grabs, party leaders and candidates may want to carefully evaluate whether they need or want the help of both President Biden and former President Trump on the campaign trail. These endorsements may ultimately prompt more backlash than support.</p>
<p>[<em>Understand what’s going on in Washington.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/165416/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Candidates: Be careful what you wish for.Hans J.G. Hassell, Associate Professor of Political Science, Florida State UniversityAndrew Ballard, Assistant Professor, Government, American UniversityMichael Heseltine, PhD. Candidate, Political Science, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1644562021-07-13T22:23:03Z2021-07-13T22:23:03ZCuba protests: 4 essential reads on dissent in the post-Castro era<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411111/original/file-20210713-25-grrygz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C450%2C4891%2C2825&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A rare unauthorized public gathering in Havana on July 11, 2021. Some demonstrators on the streets that day chanted 'Down with the dictatorship.' </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-take-part-in-a-demonstration-against-the-government-news-photo/1233929528?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Street protests erupted across Cuba on July 11, 2021, with crowds of Cubans demonstrating against food scarcity, medicine shortages and economic misery in their island nation. Some demanded “freedom” and the end of “dictatorship” – anti-government sentiments that were soon echoed in the United States by Cuban-Americans and politicians, including President Joe Biden. </p>
<p>In a televised address, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blamed the spontaneous demonstrations – by far the largest mass protests in decades – on U.S. interference and threatened a “battle in the streets.” Protesters say hundreds were arrested.</p>
<p>These four stories describe current conditions in Cuba and the recent history behind this rare public outpouring of anger.</p>
<h2>2018: Cuba gets a new president</h2>
<p>The Communist Party has run Cuba since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Picture of an aged Fidel Castro in olive army garb, smiling slightly" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411112/original/file-20210713-23-1rjr3xo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Fidel Castro in 2010.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/NnXxgX">Ismael Francisco/ Cubadebate</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>For five decades, its leader was the fiery, anti-American revolutionary Fidel Castro. Castro led the country until 2008, when he fell sick and was succeeded by his more subdued younger brother, Raúl. </p>
<p>The younger Castro, also a Cuban Revolution fighter, maintained the his party’s total grip on politics but liberalized Cuba’s Soviet-style economy, recognizing private property and allowing Cubans to run small businesses. He also cultivated a less antagonistic relationship with the United States during the Obama administration.</p>
<p>Raúl Castro’s April 2018 retirement marked the end of the revolutionary era. But the selection of Díaz-Canel as president in April 2018 seemed unlikely to herald the beginning of a new Cuba. </p>
<p>“I don’t expect any drastic changes in direction from Díaz-Canel – at least, not right away,” wrote the American University Cuba analyst <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=WM+Leogrande&btnG=">William LeoGrande</a> shortly after <a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-new-president-what-to-expect-of-miguel-diaz-canel-95187">Diaz-Canel took office</a>. </p>
<p>Díaz-Canel is a seasoned Communist Party insider and Raul Castro’s chosen successor. Castro also remained in Cuba’s government until 2021 as first secretary of the Communist Party, “arguably a post more powerful than the presidency,” says LeoGrande.</p>
<p>Díaz-Canel came into office facing serious problems, including a weak economy and bad relations with the U.S. under then-President Donald Trump. </p>
<p>He also faced a new challenge: the internet, which had just become widely available to everyday Cubans. Access to online information and social media makes it harder for Díaz-Canel to repress dissent as effectively as for his predecessors.</p>
<p>“Internet expansion on the Communist island has produced a growing chorus of domestic critics,” LeoGrande wrote. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cubas-new-president-what-to-expect-of-miguel-diaz-canel-95187">Cuba's new president: What to expect of Miguel Díaz-Canel</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2019: Cuba gets a new constitution</h2>
<p>Those critics gained more leeway to show their discontent in February 2019, when the Cuban National Assembly <a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-expands-rights-but-rejects-radical-change-in-updated-constitution-112578">passed a new Cuban Constitution</a>.</p>
<p>It included provisions that would “substantially expand social, political and economic rights in Cuba,” wrote the Cuban-American scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=A6rP7kYAAAAJ&hl=en">María Isabel Alfonso</a>. </p>
<p>One of those rights was freedom of assembly.</p>
<p>“Previously, Cubans had the ‘right to meet, demonstrate and associate, for licit and peaceful purposes,’” explained Alfonso, “but only as part of a so-called ‘organización de masa’ – the Cuban term for state-run groups.” </p>
<p>The new constitution removes the ‘organizaciones de masa’ restriction, theoretically giving people and civil society groups more freedom to gather. </p>
<p>But Alfonso cautioned that the government could still crack down on “independent organizations – especially if those groups are political in nature.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Police in riot gear walk man in handcuffs down the street" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411109/original/file-20210713-19-tykrv5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Arrests following an anti-government demonstration in Havana on July 12, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-is-arrested-during-a-demonstration-against-the-news-photo/1233949512?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In her Feburary 2019 article, she quotes the Cuban blogger José Gabriel Barrenechea saying that, in Cuba, “spontaneous gatherings are not seen positively and are always perceived to be the product of a foreign power.”</p>
<p>Among other changes, Cuba’s 2019 Constitution also gave constitutional legitimacy to Raúl Castro’s economic reforms and limited Cuban presidents to two five-year terms.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-expands-rights-but-rejects-radical-change-in-updated-constitution-112578">Cuba expands rights but rejects radical change in updated constitution</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>2020: Artists revolt</h2>
<p>Cuba’s new Constitution reflects how Díaz-Canel has largely followed his mentor Raúl Castro’s path of gradually giving Cubans greater economic and social freedoms but resisting pressure for democratic reform. </p>
<p>One result of Castro’s 2009 move to legalize small businesses, for example, was a flourishing of activist art. </p>
<p>As galleries and theaters opened across Cuba, enabling artists to show their work in nongovernment-run cultural spaces, “<a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-cracks-down-on-artists-who-demanded-creative-freedoms-after-unprecedented-government-negotiations-152073">dissident artists took advantage of this newfound freedom to advance their political demands</a>,” says Alfonso. </p>
<p>In 2018, the Díaz-Canel government issued a decree imposing restrictions on independent artistic production and cultural venues, angering many artists. Then, in November 2020, the government raided the home of an artist who openly opposed the government’s decree.</p>
<p>Cuban artists and intellectuals rebelled. Days after the raid, about 300 of them convened via WhatsApp to stage a protest outside the Culture Ministry. They demanded negotiations with the government to restore freedom of expression.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Woman in black wearing a face mask speaks, surrounded by a crowd" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375530/original/file-20201216-19-1q9q8uo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cuban artists regroup after a Nov. 27, 2020, meeting with Cuba’s vice minister of culture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-installation-and-performance-artist-tania-bruguera-news-photo/1229826871?adppopup=true">Yamll Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>“The negotiations would end soon after they began, followed by a major crackdown on dissent,” wrote Alfonso. But “the size, duration and public nature of the artists’ opposition were unprecedented.”</p>
<p>The artists’ uprising was, she says, “a sign of how resistance in Cuba has grown and changed.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cuba-cracks-down-on-artists-who-demanded-creative-freedoms-after-unprecedented-government-negotiations-152073">Cuba cracks down on artists who demanded creative freedoms after 'unprecedented' government negotiations</a>
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<hr>
<h2>2021: The Castro era ends</h2>
<p>Raúl Castro stepped down from his top post in the Communist Party in April 2021, leaving behind a <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-next-for-cuba-and-the-united-states-after-raul-castros-retirement-159002">changed Cuba</a>. </p>
<p>It is no longer a Soviet-backed ideological challenger – or nuclear threat – to the United States. Bereft of international communist patrons and financially isolated from the world by the strict, decades-old U.S. embargo, Cuba is ailing. </p>
<p>For so long the bearded, fatigues-clad Fidel Castro defended the pain of the Cuban people as the righteous struggle of a proudly sovereign nation. Díaz-Canel, born in 1960, lacks Castro’s charismatic ability to invoke the faded revolutionary past.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="People march down the streets of Havana holding Cuban flags" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411110/original/file-20210713-27-wxzmnk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A counterprotest in support of the Díaz-Canel government in Havana, July 11, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-take-part-in-a-demonstration-to-support-the-news-photo/1233931266?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Ever fewer Cubans even remember those heady post-revolution years, says the Cuba historian <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/joseph-j-gonzalez-577624">Joseph Gonzalez</a>. </p>
<p>“Unlike their parents and grandparents, Cubans in their 20s, 30s and 40s never enjoyed a sustained, functional contract with the regime: We provide you a living, and in exchange you give us support, or at least acquiescence.”</p>
<p>Gonzalez says younger generations in Cuba still trust the government to provide free quality health care and education – both achievements of the Castro era.</p>
<p>“But they know it cannot feed, clothe and house its people in any but the most basic way,” he says.</p>
<p>Today Cubans have to hustle to survive; many work two jobs. A recent currency change means cash is scarce and many everyday goods are unaffordable. And after a year keeping the pandemic largely at bay, COVID-19 is surging on the island. </p>
<p>Recent protests suggest some Cubans are sick of so much struggle.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-next-for-cuba-and-the-united-states-after-raul-castros-retirement-159002">What's next for Cuba and the United States after Raul Castro's retirement</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Experts explain the recent history behind the rare public outpouring of anger in Cuba.Catesby Holmes, International Editor | Politics Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1591192021-04-19T12:25:56Z2021-04-19T12:25:56ZBiden administration’s $39 billion child care strategy: 5 questions answered<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/395508/original/file-20210416-19-jdfu0p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7628%2C4773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">High-quality day care has always been scarce in the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/group-of-children-colouring-while-wearing-masks-royalty-free-image/1263061836">FatCamera/E+ via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>States are getting <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/15/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-american-rescue-plan-funding-to-rescue-the-child-care-industry-so-the-economy-can-recover/">US$39 billion from the federal government to support child care</a>. The money comes from the $1.9 trillion relief package that President Joe Biden signed in March 2021 and is on top of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/21/covid-relief-child-care-10-billion-dollars.html">$10 billion for child care included in the $900 billion relief package</a> former President Donald Trump signed in December 2020. The funds will help child care programs stay open and reopen, while also making it easier for some parents to resume paid work, according to details the Biden administration released April 15, 2021.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xc89eGEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">Taryn Morrissey</a>, a former senior adviser on early childhood policy during the Obama administration, answers five questions about how this funding will help parents get back to work and what effects this funding might have on the economy.</em> </p>
<h2>1. How can these funds help parents get back into the workforce?</h2>
<p><a href="https://ballotpedia.org/School_responses_to_the_coronavirus_(COVID-19)_pandemic_during_the_2019-2020_academic_year">Schools</a> and <a href="https://hechingerreport.org/after-mass-closures-too-little-support-post-pandemic-child-care-options-will-be-scarce/">child care centers shut their doors</a> nearly overnight in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic upended daily life, <a href="https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/somethings-gotta-give-6766c5a88d18">disrupting the work-family</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/kids-school-schedules-have-never-matched-parents-work-obligations-and-the-pandemic-is-making-things-worse-142456">balance</a> for households with children.</p>
<p>Mothers have historically shouldered most of the child caregiving, and the <a href="https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/issue-brief/women-work-and-family-during-covid-19-findings-from-the-kff-womens-health-survey/">increased scale of these responsibilities</a> during the pandemic was no different. Not surprisingly, women – especially those with young children – <a href="https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2021/pandemic-pushes-mothers-of-young-children-out-of-the-labor-force#_ftn1">left the workforce</a> by the millions.</p>
<p>As many Americans return to their physical workplaces, more of the estimated <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/childcare-obligations-will-constrain-many-workers-when-reopening-the-us-economy/">one-third</a> of the American workforce – 50 million people – with children under 14 will will likely need child care.</p>
<p>But child care is now even harder to find and afford. <a href="https://www.newamerica.org/in-depth/care-report/first-pillar-care-cost/">Child care centers and other providers operate on razor-thin margins</a>. Many <a href="https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/globally-shared/downloads/PDFs/our-work/public-policy-advocacy/naeyc_policy_crisis_coronavirus_december_survey_data.pdf">permanently closed</a> their doors after the temporary closures. Other child care programs experienced lower enrollment and <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2020/09/03/489900/true-cost-providing-safe-child-care-coronavirus-pandemic/">higher costs</a> during the pandemic, and now must charge parents higher fees and struggle to find staff willing to accept <a href="https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/">very low wages</a>. Some of the child care programs that are open are <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/30/many-child-care-centers-nationwide-still-remain-closed.html">operating at a loss</a>. </p>
<h2>2. Did child care meet the public’s needs before the coronavirus pandemic?</h2>
<p>High-quality child care has been scarce and unaffordable for decades. </p>
<p>In 2018, more than half of Americans lived in “<a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/12/06/461643/americas-child-care-deserts-2018/">child care deserts</a>” – areas with fewer than one slot in a licensed child care program for every three young children. In most areas, the annual <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-child-care-costs-more-than-college-tuition-and-how-to-make-it-more-affordable-92396">cost of full-time, center-based child care for infants exceeds</a> tuition and fees at four-year public colleges. Families with children under age 5 <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2013/demo/p70-135.html">spend on average 11%</a> of their income on child care.</p>
<p>But despite how expensive it is, child care staff – disproportionately <a href="https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/introduction-policy-recommendations/key-findings/">women of color</a> – make poverty wages. In 2019, median wages for child care workers hovered near <a href="https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/the-early-educator-workforce/early-educator-pay-economic-insecurity-across-the-states/">$11 per hour</a>. <a href="https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2020/the-early-educator-workforce/early-educator-pay-economic-insecurity-across-the-states/">Few</a> have benefits like health insurance or paid leave, even during a pandemic.</p>
<p>Research <a href="https://appam.confex.com/appam/2020/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/37310">shows</a> that the low wages in child care and early education <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1118553.pdf">are associated</a> with higher <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0162373720985340">turnover</a>, which leads to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2016.1180516">lower-quality</a> care and poorer <a href="https://curry.virginia.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/epw/70_Teacher_Turnover_in_Head_Start.pdf">measures</a> of children’s readiness for kindergarten.</p>
<h2>3. Is this just a big-city problem for wealthy professionals?</h2>
<p>The lack of affordable, high-quality child care is a problem that cuts across geography and the income spectrum. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/12/06/461643/americas-child-care-deserts-2018/">Rural families and Latinos in general are more likely</a> than others to live in places where licensed child care is particularly hard to find. <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2013/demo/p70-135.html">Families below the poverty line spend about 30%</a> of their incomes on child care, but even families with <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2013/demo/p70-135.html">incomes above 200% of the poverty line spend an average of 7%</a>. </p>
<p>Because it enables parents to work, the child care sector serves as economic infrastructure for society as a whole. The sector itself directly employs more than <a href="https://www.ced.org/childcareimpact">2 million</a> workers and generates an estimated $47 billion in revenue, about the same as spectator sports. And yet a shortage of stable, high-quality care can interfere with both a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-016-9331-3">parent’s employment</a> and their <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/cradle-kindergarten-2ndEdition">child’s development</a>. Prior to the pandemic, the business group ReadyNation estimated that the U.S. economy <a href="https://www.researchconnections.org/childcare/resources/37199">missed out on $57 billion</a> each year in lost earnings, productivity and revenue from the lack of reliable child care.</p>
<h2>4. What will these federal child care funds pay for?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/04/15/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-american-rescue-plan-funding-to-rescue-the-child-care-industry-so-the-economy-can-recover/">federal government has never spent this much</a> in a single year on child care before. </p>
<p>Some $24 billion will be distributed via a <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/media/press/2021/child-care-funding-released-american-rescue-plan">formula</a> to states and territories, which have considerable flexibility in deciding how to spend this money. They can provide relief grants to child care providers to pay their bills or pay off debts, improve their facilities or buy supplies, or to rehire and retain staff by paying higher wages and providing better benefits. </p>
<p>The rest of the funds – $15 billion – will be distributed as supplemental funds for the <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/archive/occ/faq/what-child-care-and-development-fund-ccdf">Child Care and Development Fund</a>, a federal-state partnership that subsidizes child care for children in low-income working families. States can also use funds to expand child care subsidies, increase provider reimbursement rates or reimburse subsidized programs based on enrollment rather than attendance – which becomes a major issue during health emergencies.</p>
<p><a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/pdf-report/child-care-eligibility-and-receipt-2017">Before the pandemic, only 15%</a> of families with eligible children received subsidies, and <a href="https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-03-15-00170.asp">reimbursement rates were very low</a>.</p>
<h2>5. What else can the government do?</h2>
<p>While I believe that the historic amount of aid, <a href="https://www.ffyf.org/timeline-of-covid-19-relief-for-the-child-care-industry-and-working-families/">now totaling about $50 billion</a>, is necessary for the nation’s economic recovery, this one-time infusion of money won’t go far enough to build the early care and education system the U.S. already needed before the pandemic. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>In our book “<a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/cradle-kindergarten-2ndEdition">Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality</a>,” my co-authors and I propose a more comprehensive approach. In addition to expanded child care subsidies for low- and moderate-income working families, it includes paid family leave, public school enrollment beginning at age 3 instead of in kindergarten, and compensation for early care and education staff that is commensurate with their education and experience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Taryn Morrissey has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Peter G. Peterson and Ford Foundations, the Bainum Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Perigee Fund, Advocates for Children of New Jersey, DC Action for Children, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is a former policy adviser in the U.S. Senate and at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute.</span></em></p>This infusion of funds will help struggling child care providers and support parents who have to exit the workforce to care for their kids.Taryn Morrissey, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1582602021-04-16T12:38:12Z2021-04-16T12:38:12ZCuba’s economic woes may fuel America’s next migrant crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393659/original/file-20210406-15-wjdpgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=97%2C53%2C5746%2C3134&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Honduran and Cuban migrants cross the Rio Grande River on the U.S.-Mexico border, June 26, 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/group-of-honduran-and-cuban-migrants-cross-the-rio-grande-news-photo/1152412044?adppopup=true">Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not all of the migrants hoping to claim asylum in the United States are fleeing Central America’s violence-torn “Northern Triangle” of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, contrary to popular perception.</p>
<p>Of the 71,021 <a href="https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/mpp/">asylum-seekers waiting</a> in Mexico for their applications to be processed in the U.S. as of late February, 16% were Cuban, according to federal immigration data. </p>
<p>That makes Cubans the third-largest group of migrants, just ahead of Salvadorans, and after Guatemalans and Hondurans.</p>
<h2>Why Cubans flee</h2>
<p>The Cubans at America’s doorstep are mostly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/world/americas/cuba-economy.html">economic refugees</a>. But since Cubans no longer have <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/01/15/509895837/end-of-wet-foot-dry-foot-means-cubans-can-join-ranks-of-the-undocumented">preferential status over other immigrants</a> – as they did until former President Barack Obama stopped automatically admitting Cubans who made it to the U.S. – claiming asylum is now virtually their only hope of winning entry. </p>
<p>Cubans who can afford it fly to South America or <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/promised-cubans-entry-us-instead-000300782.html">hire smugglers</a> to take them to Mexico in “fast boats” before trekking north to the U.S. border. Those who can’t afford to pay smugglers try to cross the Florida Straits on rafts or small boats called “balsas” – a dangerous 90-mile ocean passage. </p>
<p>So far this year, the U.S. Coast Guard has picked up 180 <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/florida-keys/article250661664.html">Cuban “balseros” at sea</a> trying to reach the U.S. The number is modest – but it’s already more than three times the Coast Guard rescues of Cubans made last year. Cubans intercepted at sea are returned to Cuba under the terms of a 1995 migration agreement. </p>
<p>The current uptick recalls the gradual increase in rafters rescued at sea in the spring of 1994, numbers that rose exponentially that summer, culminating in the “balsero” migration crisis.</p>
<p>Triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union – communist Cuba’s main international partner at the time – the <a href="http://balseros.miami.edu/">1994 exodus</a> saw 35,000 Cubans arrive in the U.S. in two months. </p>
<p>It was the United States’ third Cuban migration crisis. In 1965, some 5,000 Cubans embarked from the port of Camarioca in small boats, landing in south Florida. In 1980, the Mariel boat crisis brought 125,000 Cuban migrants to the U.S. in the so-called “<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article209282994.html">freedom flotilla</a>.”</p>
<p>These migration waves came when the Cuban economy was in crisis and standards of living were falling. All three occurred when Cubans had few avenues for legal migration. With legal routes foreclosed, pressure to leave built over time as the economy deteriorated, finally exploding in a mass exodus of desperate people.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/wleogra.cfm">studying U.S.-Cuban relations for four decades</a>, I believe the conditions that led to these migration crises are building once again. </p>
<h2>Economy in free fall</h2>
<p>Hit by the dual shocks of renewed U.S. economic sanctions during the Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-economy/cuban-economy-shrank-11-in-2020-government-says-idUSL1N2IX1V9">Cuban economy</a> shrank 11% in 2020. </p>
<p>Former President Donald Trump cut off two major sources of Cuba’s foreign exchange revenue: people-to-people educational travel from the U.S., worth roughly US$500 million annually, according to my analysis of data from the <a href="http://www.onei.gob.cu/">Cuban National Office of Statistics</a>, and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-virus-outbreak-cuba-4c08202a7efc0ae5239f832b182795d3">$3.5 billion annually in cash remittances</a>.</p>
<p>The pandemic hammered <a href="https://tourismanalytics.com/cuba.html">Cuba’s tourist industry</a>, which suffered a 75% decline – a loss of roughly $2.5 billion. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cubans wearing face masks wait to buy food near a mural about the Cuban Communist Party and the Cuban Revolution." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393665/original/file-20210406-19-v49bbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cubans wait to buy food in Havana, March 22, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-wearing-face-masks-wait-to-buy-food-near-a-mural-news-photo/1231880881?adppopup=true">Yamil Lage/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These external shocks hit an economy already weakened by the decline in cheap oil from crisis-stricken Venezuela due to falling production there, forcing Cuba to spend more of its scarce foreign exchange currency on fuel. Since Cuba imports most of its food, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/20/world/americas/cuba-economy.html">island nation has experienced a food crisis</a>. </p>
<p>The result is the worst economic downturn since the 1990s.</p>
<h2>Pent-up Cuban demand to emigrate</h2>
<p>The 1994 Cuban migration crisis ended when former President Bill Clinton signed <a href="https://1997-2001.state.gov/regions/wha/cuba/migration.html">an accord</a> with Cuba providing for safe and legal migration. The U.S. committed to providing at least 20,000 immigrant visas to Cubans annually to avoid future crises by creating a release valve.</p>
<p>President Trump replaced President Obama’s policy of normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations with one of “<a href="https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/12/31/cuba-under-maximum-pressure-by-trump-in-2020/">maximum pressure</a>” aimed at collapsing the Cuban regime. </p>
<p>He downsized the U.S. embassy in Havana in 2017, allegedly in response to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/us/politics/cia-havana-syndrome-mystery.html">injuries to U.S. personnel</a> serving there. And he suspended the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which provided upwards of 20,000 immigrant visas annually to Cubans with close relatives in the U.S. </p>
<p>These measures drastically reduced the number of immigrant visas given, closing the safety valve Clinton negotiated in 1994. In 2020, just over 3,000 Cubans immigrants were admitted to the U.S. </p>
<p>Today, some <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article249751498.html">100,000 Cubans</a> who have applied for the reunification program are still waiting in limbo for the program to resume.</p>
<h2>A policy problem</h2>
<p>The migration crisis brewing in Cuba has been largely overlooked while the Biden administration focuses on managing the rush of Central American asylum-seekers and caring for unaccompanied minors at the U.S.-Mexico border. </p>
<p>White House Press Secretary <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article249826558.html">Jen Psaki recently said</a> that Cuba policy is currently under review, but that it’s “not a top priority.” </p>
<p>U.S. officials could head off the migration crisis brewing in Cuba by making the changes to U.S.-Cuba relations <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-02-12/biden-resume-remittances-travel-to-cuba">Biden promised</a> during his 2020 presidential campaign.</p>
<p>Restaffing the U.S. embassy in Havana would make it possible to resume compliance with Clinton’s 1994 migration agreement to grant at least 20,000 immigrant visas annually. That would give Cubans a safe and legal way to come to the U.S. and discourage them from risking their lives on the open seas or with human traffickers. </p>
<p>Lifting Trump’s economic sanctions would curtail the need to emigrate by reducing Cuba’s economic hardship, in part by enabling Cuban Americans to send money directly to their families there. </p>
<p>And reversing Trump’s restrictions on travel to the island would help revitalize the private Cuban restaurants and bed and breakfasts that rely on U.S. visitors. </p>
<p>All these measures would put money directly into the hands of the Cuban people, giving them hope for a better future in Cuba.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158260/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William M. LeoGrande is a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy group.</span></em></p>The dire conditions that brought waves of Cubans to the US in the 1980s and 1990s are again escalating on the communist island, provoked by Trump-era sanctions and the COVID-19 pandemic.William M. LeoGrande, Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1508202021-02-26T13:27:19Z2021-02-26T13:27:19ZA less Trumpy version of Trumpism might be the future of the Republican Party<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385951/original/file-20210223-13-8mn2wv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C0%2C2968%2C2047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is Sen. Marco Rubio, espousing a polished populism, the future of the GOP?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-marco-rubio-speaks-before-the-arrival-of-u-s-president-news-photo/1283437043?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, but his populist ideas may continue to animate the Republican Party.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/one-nation-two-realities-9780190677176?cc=us&lang=en&">scholars of American beliefs and elections</a>, we can envision a less Trumpy version of Trumpism holding sway over the party in coming years. We call it “polished populism.”</p>
<p>Populism is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716216662639">folk-politics</a> based on the premise that ordinary citizens are wiser and more virtuous than supposedly corrupt and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/future-populism-2020s/604393/">self-serving elites</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/10/we-the-people-the-battle-to-define-populism">Populist rhetoric</a> is often expressed in cruder, coarser language than ordinary political speech – less like a politician on a stage and <a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-most-populist-lines-from-trumps-speech-20170120-htmlstory.html">more like a guy in a bar</a>. </p>
<p>Trump, a prime practitioner of populist rhetoric, took this to an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRXESV3R74">extreme</a> with the shorthand of Twitter and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/insider/Trump-twitter-insults-list.html">insults</a> of the locker room.</p>
<p>Polished populists take a different approach, arguing for the <a href="https://www.amacad.org/news/populism-and-future-american-politics">same policies</a> that Trump did – <a href="https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/3/27/15037232/trump-populist-appeal-culture-economy">limiting immigration</a>, redistributing wealth toward the <a href="https://review.chicagobooth.edu/economics/2020/article/populism-puzzle">working class</a> rather than just the poor, opposing the woke policies of <a href="http://yris.yira.org/comments/2666">social justice movements</a>, promoting “America First” foreign and <a href="https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/populism_and_the_economics_of_globalization.pdf">trade policies</a> – but without his overtly antagonistic language. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/bulwark-never-trump-republicans-biden/617025/">Some Republicans</a> are now <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/the-never-trumpers-next-move/609064/">arguing for a rejection of populism and a return to traditional conservatism</a>. Those <a href="https://www.nhbr.com/traditional-republican-values/">long-standing GOP priorities</a> include limited government, strong national defense of American interests abroad, religious values and, perhaps most importantly, ordinary political personalities.</p>
<p>For two reasons – the GOP’s <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-swing-states/">narrow electoral defeat in 2020</a> and the <a href="https://www.axios.com/republican-party-demographics-threat-trump-racism-1524a8a1-c2f1-4183-896f-107420e2d50a.html">changing demographics of the Republican Party</a> – we believe that populist policies, if not rhetoric, will continue to be a dominant theme of the Republican Party.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="President Trump at a massive rally just before the election." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385952/original/file-20210223-14-196zrx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Donald Trump smiles after speaking during an election rally on Nov. 3, 2020, in Grand Rapids, Mich.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-donald-trump-smiles-after-speaking-during-a-rally-news-photo/1229431380?adppopup=true">Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Populism versus traditional conservatism</h2>
<p>The contemporary <a href="https://www.wpr.org/how-reagan-helped-usher-new-conservatism-american-politics">conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan</a> in the 1980s and <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/04/20020430.html">George W. Bush in the 2000s</a> has several facets and factions, but it can be summed up in the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/A-Citizens-Guide-to-American-Ideology-Conservatism-and-Liberalism-in-Contemporary/Marietta/p/book/9780415899000">phrase</a>, “You keep what you earn, it’s a dangerous world, and God is good.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.routledge.com/A-Citizens-Guide-to-American-Ideology-Conservatism-and-Liberalism-in-Contemporary/Marietta/p/book/9780415899000">economic, national defense and social conservatives</a> of previous decades tended to agree that human nature is untrustworthy and society is fragile, so the U.S. needs to defend against external enemies and internal decline. </p>
<p>Populist conservatism accepts those views but adds something different: the interests and perceptions of “ordinary” people against “elites.” <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-populism-and-why-does-it-have-a-bad-reputation-109874">So populism</a> rejects the notion of a natural aristocracy of wealth and education, replacing it with the idea that people it considers elites, including career politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics, have been promoting their own interests at the expense of regular folk.</p>
<h2>The identity divide</h2>
<p>The recent rise of populism in America has been driven in part by a clear economic reality: <a href="https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide-to-statistics-on-historical-trends-in-income-inequality">The expansion of wealth over the last 40 years</a> has gone almost entirely to the upper reaches of society. At the same time, <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/">the middle has stagnated or declined economically</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-erupts-when-people-feel-disconnected-and-disrespected-151423">populist interpretation</a> is that elites benefited from the globalization and technological advancements they encouraged, while the advantages of those trends bypassed ordinary working people. Calls for trade protections and national borders appeal to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-4446.12319">Americans who feel left behind</a>.</p>
<p>Populism also has a <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-political-divide-on-both-sides-of-atlantic-populists-v-cosmopolitans-59876">cultural aspect</a>: rejection of the perceived <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103116305509">condescension</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/education-prejudice.html">smugness</a> of the “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-highly-educated-elites-are-stuck-in-a-nightmare-of-their-own-making/2020/11/13/bcde3c98-25d7-11eb-a688-5298ad5d580a_story.html">highly educated elite</a>.”</p>
<p>In that sense, populism is driven by identity (who someone believes they are like, and perhaps more importantly, who they are not like). For populists, the like-minded are ordinary folk – middle income, middle-brow educations at public high schools and state universities, often middle-of-the-country – and the dissimilar are the products of expensive educations and urban lifestyles.</p>
<p>While traditional conservatism <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/opinion/politics/never-trump-republican-party.html?">has not vanished from the GOP</a>, populist perceptions dominate the new <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/gop-rapidly-becoming-blue-collar-party-here-s-what-means-n1258468">working-class foundations</a> of the party. And those reflect the <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/527863-the-diploma-divide-in-american-politics">emerging divide in education</a>. </p>
<p>The base of the Republican Party has shifted from more wealthy and educated Americans to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/education-gap-explains-american-politics/575113/">voters without college degrees</a>. In the 1990s, whites who did not attend college tended to back Democrat Bill Clinton, but in 2016 they <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/">supported Republican Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton</a> by 39 percentage points. In 2020, it was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/exit-polls-president.html">roughly the same</a> for Trump over Biden. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385953/original/file-20210223-22-zlzwxy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2002, President George W. Bush spoke about the ideals represented in his ‘compassionate conservatism’ to representatives from local community groups in Cleveland, Ohio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-george-w-bush-delivers-a-speech-to-about-3-000-news-photo/51684553?adppopup=true">Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The 2020 outcome and the GOP future</h2>
<p>We believe the Republican Party will be slow to move away from this new identity.</p>
<p>Even after a pandemic, a recession, an impeachment, four years of anti-immigration sentiment and the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump still received <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-popular-vote-record-barack-obama-us-presidential-election-donald-trump/">more votes than any presidential candidate in history not named Joe Biden</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/biden-popular-vote-margin-7-million/index.html">Biden’s overall victory was by a margin of 7 million votes</a>. But his victory in the Electoral College relied on a total of <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/did-biden-win-little-or-lot-answer-yes-n1251845">45,000 votes in three states</a>. This was similar to Trump’s narrow 2016 Electoral College margin of 77,000 votes, also in three states. A strong Republican candidate, a foreign policy problem for the incumbent Democrat or a small piece of luck could shift the presidency back to the other party.</p>
<p>Support for Republicans even <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-increases-share-black-hispanic-vote-1544698">grew somewhat among traditionally Democratic African American and Hispanic voters</a>, despite the GOP’s anti-Black Lives Matter and anti-immigrant rhetoric. </p>
<p>Clearly, Trumpism was <a href="https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/notes-on-the-state-of-the-2020-election/">not repudiated by voters in the way that Democrats had hoped</a>. It is entirely possible that if the pandemic had not occurred – which was a major source of the decline in his support – Donald Trump <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-covid-19-led-to-donald-trumps-defeat-150110">would still be in the White House</a>. </p>
<p>The GOP could conclude that its loss was only due to an outside event and not a fundamental rejection of policy. That would give the party little incentive to change course, aside from changing the face on the poster.</p>
<p>Over the next four years we believe the GOP will solidify the transition to a populist base, though not without resistance from traditional conservatives. </p>
<p>Republican victory in a future presidential election would likely require an alliance between traditional and populist conservatives, with both groups turning out to vote. The question is which one will lead the coalition. </p>
<p>The competition for the 2024 Republican nomination will likely also be a contest between these two party bases and ideologies, with the emerging winner defining the post-Trump GOP.</p>
<h2>The 2024 standard bearers</h2>
<p>The Republican contenders for the 2024 nomination and the new leadership of the GOP include a broad range of populists versus traditional conservatives. </p>
<p>Perhaps a leading indicator of the move toward polished populism is the shift in the rhetoric employed by <a href="https://twitter.com/marcorubio">Marco Rubio</a>. </p>
<p>The senator from Florida was once a traditional conservative, but has shifted toward populism after his trouncing by Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Recently he argued that “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/525585-rubio-gop-must-rebrand-as-party-of-multiethnic-multiracial-working-class-voters%20https:/thehill.com/homenews/news/525585-rubio-gop-must-rebrand-as-party-of-multiethnic-multiracial-working-class-voters">the future of the party is based on a multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition</a>,” defined as “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/525585-rubio-gop-must-rebrand-as-party-of-multiethnic-multiracial-working-class-voters">normal, everyday people who don’t want to live in a city where there is no police department, where people rampage through the streets every time they are upset about something</a>.”</p>
<p>The opposing trend toward rejecting Trumpist populism is exemplified by the shift in the <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2021/magazine-nikki-haleys-choice/">arguments made</a> by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nikki-haley-americans-woke-left-biden-president">Nikki Haley</a>. Haley, the U.N. ambassador under the Trump administration and former South Carolina governor, has <a href="https://6abc.com/nikki-haley-trump-interview-politico-us-capitol-riots/10333025/">rejected Trump’s leadership</a>, now arguing that “<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/538573-haley-breaks-with-trump-we-shouldnt-have-followed-him">we shouldn’t have followed him</a>.”</p>
<p>These two Republicans and <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/531796-five-gop-contenders-other-than-trump-for-2024">several others</a> see a potential president in the mirror. Which one <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/531796-five-gop-contenders-other-than-trump-for-2024">mirrors the current GOP</a> will depend on the realignment or retrenchment between the populists and the traditionalists.</p>
<p>Polished populism – Trump’s policies without his personality – may be the future of the GOP’s identity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/150820/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump’s ticket to the White House was a coarse version of populism. Will his successors in the GOP be different – or simply present a more polished version of his antagonistic rhetoric?Morgan Marietta, Associate Professor of Political Science, UMass LowellDavid C. Barker, Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1518172021-01-05T13:09:24Z2021-01-05T13:09:24ZFewer kids are enrolled in public kindergarten – that will have a lasting impact on schools and equity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375706/original/file-20201217-19-14zuo5k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C5%2C3922%2C2628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A kindergarten student practices social distancing in the playground of her private school.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kindergarten-student-scarlett-bates-on-the-playground-news-photo/1229580824?adppopup=true">Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=255&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377051/original/file-20210104-13-lxsx4t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Public school <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/920316481/enrollment-is-dropping-in-public-schools-around-the-country">enrollment is down</a> across the country. For example, enrollment is down by <a href="https://news.wttw.com/2020/10/16/cps-enrollment-drops-15k-students-amid-pandemic-remote-learning">15,000</a> in Chicago public schools and by more than <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-says-20000-students-started-the-enrollment-process-but-did-not-complete-it/2020/09/11/2aca8a66-f448-11ea-999c-67ff7bf6a9d2_story.html">20,000</a> in the District of Columbia’s public schools. The trend is particularly acute among pre-K and kindergarten students. In an NPR survey of 60 U.S. districts in 20 states, public kindergarten enrollment was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/09/920316481/enrollment-is-dropping-in-public-schools-around-the-country">down 16% on average</a>.</p>
<p>Delaying children’s kindergarten entry is not new, but the pandemic has broadened its scope. And that has the potential to exacerbate already wide educational inequities. As a <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/morrisse.cfm">child and family policy researcher</a> and a parent of two children under 7, I believe the new trend is concerning.</p>
<h2>Why enrollment dropped</h2>
<p>In a typical year, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373713482764">about 5%</a> of kindergarten-age children are “redshirted” – their entry to school delayed. The phrase originally <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redshirt">referred to college athletes</a> who were held back from competing on varsity teams. Parents might <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/is-your-child-ready-kindergarten-redshirting-may-do-more-harm-than-good/">delay kindergarten</a> until their children are more socially, emotionally and physically mature.</p>
<p>Research suggests that this extra year before entering school may <a href="https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1806828">improve children’s attention</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3638">self-regulation</a>. But the academic benefits of redshirting <a href="https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.44.3.641">seem to decline</a> as children <a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/EDFP_a_00191">age into middle and high school</a>. </p>
<p>The reasons for kindergarten delay this past year, however, are unique to the pandemic. </p>
<p>Many families have <a href="https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/somethings-gotta-give-6766c5a88d18">no in-person school option</a> and may be understandably <a href="https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/10/29/most-parents-of-k-12-students-learning-online-worry-about-them-falling-behind/">wary of the effectiveness of online learning</a>, especially for younger children. Parents have long heard from the <a href="https://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/Where-We-Stand-TV-Viewing-Time.aspx">American Academy of Pediatrics</a>, the <a href="https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2019/05/media-use-childhood">American Psychological Association</a> and other groups about the harms of too much screen time, and so some may have opted to avoid it for their children’s schooling.</p>
<p>And, virtual learning simply can’t offer the interactions with toys, physical games, peers and teachers that young children need to build <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-not-just-abcs-preschool-parents-worry-their-kids-are-missing-out-on-critical-social-skills-during-the-pandemic-150434">foundational skills</a> like compromise.</p>
<p>Many parents are also <a href="https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/somethings-gotta-give-6766c5a88d18">incredibly stressed</a> as they try to balance work and family demands – now 10 months into the pandemic. Managing children’s Zoom schedules, organizing learning materials and overseeing at-home assignments adds to an already overflowing plate. The problem is worse for parents who cannot work from home and are left with <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/meeting-school-age-child-care-needs-working-parents-facing-covid-19-distance-learning">few child care options</a>.</p>
<p>For families with in-person or hybrid schooling options, public health measures like masks and social distancing make kindergarten a less welcoming environment. And, of course, health concerns about <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/back-to-school-in-a-pandemic-a-guide-to-all-the-factors-keeping-parents-and-educators-up-at-night/2020/08/05/479542b4-d740-11ea-aff6-220dd3a14741_story.html">catching the coronavirus</a> have led more families to <a href="https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/ihpi-briefs/plans-school-attendance-and-support-covid-19-risk-mitigation-measures-among-parents-and-guardians">keep their children home</a> this year. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young girl raises hand in classroom" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/375725/original/file-20201217-15-77hlzo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">When schools return to in-person learning full time, teachers will have to teach to a wider range of skills and needs among their students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/kindergarten-students-in-the-classroom-of-teacher-ursula-news-photo/1229580600">Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Impact on learning and equity</h2>
<p>In a typical year, boys, white children and children from high-income families are <a href="https://www.educationnext.org/is-your-child-ready-kindergarten-redshirting-may-do-more-harm-than-good/">most likely</a> to be held back. However, this year school enrollment is down disproportionately among <a href="https://news.wttw.com/2020/10/16/cps-enrollment-drops-15k-students-amid-pandemic-remote-learning">Latino</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/nyregion/nyc-schools-reopening-coronavirus.html">Black</a> children. This compounds the inequitable access to in-person schooling. </p>
<p>One <a href="https://medium.com/rapid-ec-project/somethings-gotta-give-6766c5a88d18">survey found</a> that half of Latino, Black and single-parent families had fully remote schools compared to a third of white families. Moreover, limited internet and device access also contributes to <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-remote-learning-is-making-educational-inequities-worse-150709">inequities in remote learning</a>. </p>
<p>What widespread delays in kindergarten enrollment means for children’s learning depends on how they are spending their time when they are not in public school. Some children, especially those from high-income families, are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/your-money/private-schools-wealthy-parents.html">attending private schools</a>, which are more likely to offer in-person schooling. An increasing number of families are <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/homschooling-boom-pandemic/616303/">choosing to home-school</a>. </p>
<p>But for some children, economic insecurity, <a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/execsum/measures-material-hardship">material hardship</a> and increased stress at home can <a href="https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/BFI_WP_2020143.pdf">change family dynamics</a> and lead to <a href="https://medium.com/@TulsaSEED/parents-teachers-and-distance-learning-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-a-snapshot-from-tulsa-ok-5b5fdb54ea18">fewer opportunities for learning</a>. </p>
<p>These pressures are even higher for the families – <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html">disproportionately those of color</a> – who face personal or family illness, unemployment or smaller paychecks. A recent report by the Urban Institute found that in September 2020, <a href="https://www.urban.org/research/publication/forty-percent-black-and-hispanic-parents-school-age-children-are-food-insecure">four in 10</a> Latino and Black families reported food insecurity, compared to 15% of white families – all historically high figures. </p>
<p>Inequities in children’s kindergarten experiences compound <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/publications/cradle-kindergarten">inequities in early childhood experiences</a>. Research consistently shows the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/duke_prekstudy_final_4-4-17_hires.pdf">benefits of early childhood education</a> for children’s development. But access to early learning opportunities has become <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2020/06/22/486433/coronavirus-will-make-child-care-deserts-worse-exacerbate-inequality/">even more inequitable</a> in the pandemic, according to a report from the Center for American Progress.</p>
<p>These inequities exacerbate the already wide racial, ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps. For example, recent evidence suggests that children’s <a href="https://tracktherecovery.org/">progress in math</a> is down, and more so among children in low-income communities. Many <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/12/03/covid-daycare-online-preschool-kindergarten/3787766001/">young children</a> are not meeting the benchmarks for early literacy and numeracy skills, which puts them at risk for <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheets/2005/06/15/why-all-children-benefit-from-prek">long-term academic problems</a>. </p>
<h2>Impact on schools</h2>
<p>When schools eventually reopen full-time, teachers will have to teach to a wider range of skills and needs among their students as a result of these widening achievement gaps. And, it’s likely that the kindergarten class of 2021-2022 will be larger than normal, creating hassles around class sizes, space and staff needs.</p>
<p>For now, the lower enrollment hurts public school budgets. </p>
<p>Schools typically receive public funds based on a per-child allotment that depends on child enrollment and attendance. With enrollment and state and local revenues down, spending on K-12 schools is estimated to <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/school-officials-await-potential-covid-19-related-budget-cuts-magazine2020.aspx">decrease as much as 10%</a> in the 2021 fiscal year. In the long term, public schools may face permanent decreases in enrollment as some families opt to remain in private school or keep homeschooling.</p>
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<p>Decreased funds come at a time when <a href="https://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/school-budget-cuts-amid-covid-19-eight-areas-watch">schools’ costs are up</a>. Schools have had to train teachers in virtual learning and expand health and safety measures, like upgrading ventilation systems and hiring more staff for smaller classrooms. </p>
<p>Public schools will need <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/10/23/926815076/americas-school-funding-crisis-budget-cuts-rising-costs-and-no-help-in-sight">more financial relief</a> to recover. The <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/20/politics/second-covid-stimulus-package-details/index.html">December 2020 COVID-19 relief package</a> includes <a href="https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-health-care-reform-legislation-immigration-coronavirus-pandemic-554c5afcf6bac1ac995b294167a36ff6">US$54 billion</a> for K-12 public education, although it might not be enough to fully repair the damage from the pandemic.</p>
<p>Given the pressures on families, combined with hopeful news about vaccines, it’s not surprising that parents are choosing to wait until next year to send their children to school. While we won’t know the full impact on children’s learning or school budgets for years, fewer children in kindergarten now is likely to have long-term, cascading consequences for everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151817/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Taryn Morrissey has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Bainum Family Foundation, the Perigee Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Advocates for Children of New Jersey. In 2020, Dr. Morrissey is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. </span></em></p>Kindergarten enrollment dropped 16% this year, according to an NPR survey of 60 school districts across 20 states.Taryn Morrissey, Associate Professor of Public Administration and Policy, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.