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Medicaid Enrollment Jumped Throughout the Pandemic, New Report Says

Medicaid Enrollment Jumped During the Pandemic, New Report Says

Medicaid enrollment soared during the coronavirus pandemic, with nearly 10 million Americans joining the public health program for the poor by January, a government report released Monday shows.

80 million people – more than ever in the history of the program – are now on Medicaid insurance, which is shared by the state and the federal government. The new figures show the increasingly important role of the program not only as a safety net, but also as a pillar of American health insurance, which covers a quarter of the population.

“The purpose of Medicaid during times like these is when there is an economic downturn,” said Peggah Khorrami, a researcher at Harvard Chan TH School of Public Health who has studied the program’s surge in enrollments during the pandemic. “As people lose their jobs, Medicaid comes in and we insure people that way.”

The Affordable Care Act transformed Medicaid from a targeted health service aimed at helping specific groups of people – such as expectant mothers and people with disabilities – to a much broader program that provides largely free insurance to most people below a certain income threshold. The exception is in 12 states, mostly in the South, that have resisted expanding Medicaid under the Health Act to cover all adults on incomes up to 138 percent of the poverty line, which would be $ 17,774 for one person this year .

However, the expansion of Medicaid in most states since most of the ACA came into effect in 2014 has proven important during the pandemic, creating a public source of protection for the newly unemployed that did not exist a decade ago. Adult enrollment at Medicaid grew twice as fast as child enrollment in the past year, suggesting that widespread job loss related to the pandemic has created a large group of newly eligible adults.

“There has been significant growth in Medicaid enrollments over the past economic downturn, but their focus has been on children,” said Rachel Garfield, co-director of the Medicaid and Uninsured Program for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “This time around, it’s interesting that a lot of the enrollment is among adults.”

Ms. Garfield also noted that Medicaid coverage rose much faster during this recession than in previous downturns. At the start of the Great Recession in 2009, fewer than 4 million Americans joined the program.

There may also be increased interest among uninsured Americans who were previously eligible for Medicaid but only chose to enroll because of heightened health concerns during the pandemic.

“The surge we are seeing is exactly how Medicaid works: the program steps in to support people and their families during difficult times,” said Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, who oversaw the Medicaid program, in a Biden administration Explanation.

In the years before the pandemic, the number of Medicaid enrollments had decreased. More than a million children lost insurance coverage between December 2017 and June 2019, a trend that rocked health care proponents. Many attributed the changes to new rules during the Trump administration that made it more difficult to sign up for the benefits.

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What to learn about Tuesday’s election

What to know about Tuesday's election

A polling station is believed to have started in the New York City mayor primaries on Saturday, where voters can vote for up to five candidates on June 13, 2021 in New York City, United States.

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The seemingly endless race to replace New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will cross an important threshold on Tuesday as Democrats and Republicans hold their primaries.

Given the Democrats’ dominance in urban politics, that party’s primary code will be watched closely as it will likely determine who will lead the country’s largest city from more than a year of pandemic closings and economic devastation.

While the race initially focused on Andrew Yang, the nationally recognized former presidential candidate, recent polls have shown the competition is wide open. Eric Adams, President of Brooklyn District and a retired police officer, has led the most recent polls.

Mayoral candidates Eric Adams (L) and Andrew Yang

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A total of eight major Democratic candidates and two Republicans are vying to succeed de Blasio, a progressive Democrat who, after eight years in office, is not allowed to run for a third term.

While the primary day is Tuesday June 22nd, the early voting is already in progress. The early voting opened on June 12 and ended on Sunday. Initial reports indicated that voter turnout before day one was more sluggish than expected.

Primaries are hard to predict at the best of times, but this race will likely still be in the air thanks to a change in voting rules.

For the first time this year, a ranking vote will take place during the election, in which voters can name their five preferred candidates in turn.

A polling station is believed to have started in the New York City mayor primaries on Saturday, where voters can vote for up to five candidates on June 13, 2021 in New York City, United States.

Tayfun Coskiun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

In ranking systems, the voting slips are counted in rounds. If no single candidate is the first choice of 50% of the voters in the first ballot, the last-placed candidate is eliminated. In the next round, voters who chose the eliminated candidate as their first choice are counted as their second choice. This process is repeated until a candidate reaches the 50% mark.

A poll conducted earlier this month, which took into account the ranking poll, found that Adams would win in the 12th round. The poll, sponsored by WNBC, Telemundo 47, and Politico, found that Kathryn Garcia, a former New York sanitary officer, came in second, civil rights attorney Maya Wiley in third, and Yang in fourth.

City auditor and mayoral candidate Scott Stringer made a proposal to install portable public toilets in all parks and playgrounds in Bellevue South Park.

Lev Radin | LightRakete | Getty Images

The other key candidates on the ballot are City Comptroller Scott Stringer, nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, former Citigroup Vice Chairman Ray McGuire, and Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Barack Obama.

The Republican candidates are Fernando Mateo, a businessman and activist, and Curtis Sliwa, a talk show host and founder of the controversial crime prevention group Guardian Angels.

When it comes to fundraising, Yang tops the field with the most individual donors according to a list of campaign funding data maintained by Politico. McGuire, the favorite candidate for many on Wall Street, raised the most money.

Over the weekend, Yang and Garcia fought together against Adams in an unusual demonstration of unity to improve their odds on the ranking system. Adams accused the duo of teaming up to block a black candidate. The Yang campaign later called Adam’s racism allegation “crazy”.

The Democratic race largely focused on the candidates’ competing plans for the New York economy, as well as what they would do to curb the increasing gun violence and other crimes. Polls have shown that, with the exception of Covid-19, crime is high on voters’ lists, followed by affordable housing and racial injustice.

The latest New York Police Department data for May showed a 46.7% increase in robberies, assaults by 20.5% and shootings by 73% year over year. The murder rate over the same period was flat.

During the final debate between the candidates on Wednesday, the moderate candidate Adams clashed with the progressive Wiley over the former’s proposal to bring back the controversial stop-and-frisk police tactic.

Wiley said Stop and Frisk was racist, unconstitutional and ineffective. Adams acknowledged the practice has been overused in the past, but said that it can be effective when done correctly.

People protest on the street in front of a protest against the police at a place they call the City Hall Autonomous Zone in support of Black Lives Matter in the Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, USA. 2020.

Carlo Allegri | Reuters

At another point in the debate on Wednesday, Yang challenged Adams about his record in policing. When asked how he would deal with crime in the city, Yang said he had the support of the Captains Endowment Association, a union of which Adams was once a member.

“The people you should ask about are Eric’s former colleagues in the Police Chiefs Union, people who worked with him for years, people who know him best,” Yang said. “You just recommended me as the next New York City Mayor. They think I am a better choice than Eric to protect us and our families. “

Candidates argued over whether cutting funding for the police was a good idea. Some progressives across the country, including influential MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., pushed for the end of police funding last year after the video of George Floyd’s murder by police in Minneapolis became widespread.

A participant holds a Defund The Police sign at the protest. Thousands of protesters filled the streets of Brooklyn in a massive march demanding justice for George Floyd, who was killed by Officer Derek Chauvin, and loudly calling for the police to defuse.

Erik McGregor | LightRakete | Getty Images

Morales, Wiley, Stringer and Donovan support cuts to the NYPD budget while Adams, Garcia and Yang do not, according to local Gothamist news agency. McGuire said Wednesday that he believed defusing the police as the worst idea of ​​any of his rivals.

The discussion about defusing the police sparked one of the most heated exchanges in the debate on Wednesday. McGuire, who is black, said “black and brown” communities did not support defusing the police.

Ray McGuire, a candidate for mayoral of NYC, speaks during a press conference on Asian American leaders and candidates for Mayor of New York City on March 18, 2021 on the National Action Network in New York City the increase in attacks on Asian Americans denounce.

Eduardo Munoz | Reuters

In response, Morales, who is Afro-Latina, said, “How dare you speak as a monolith for black and brown communities?”

“You know what, I just did it,” McGuire replied.

The candidates have also taken different positions in order to free the city from the malaise caused by Covid and the measures that have been taken to stop its spread. Some of the most vivid proposals include the various ways that candidates have suggested to bring direct relief to New Yorkers.

Yang, who campaigned for the Democratic presidential candidacy based on his proposal for a universal basic income of $ 1,000 a month for every American, presented a similar plan for New York. Yang has proposed about $ 2,000 a year for about 500,000 low-income city dwellers.

Adams and others in the race have attacked Yang for his sparse details, particularly with regards to funding his plan. Adams has proposed his own $ 1 billion plan to provide up to $ 4,000 a year in tax credit to low-income residents.

Maya Wiley, a Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, speaks during a press conference with Andrew Yang, who is also running for office, while they campaign in Brooklyn, New York on March 11, 2021.

Eduardo Munoz | Reuters

Another big business proposal comes from Wiley, whose platform calls for a “Works Progress Administration-style infrastructure, stimulus and employment program” that would include a $ 10 billion investment program.

To date, de Blasio has not given any confirmation in the race for his successor. However, the New York Times reported that the Mayor preferred Adams. The newspaper’s own support went to Garcia, whom the editorial staff described as “most qualified”.

Some personal scandals also rocked the race.

In April, Gothamist reported that a former Stringer intern, Jean Kim, alleged that Stringer repeatedly sexually abused her two decades ago. Stringer denied the allegations and coverage from investigative news agency The Intercept has cast doubts as to the veracity of Kim’s allegations, but the allegation nonetheless turned out to be detrimental to Stringer’s campaign. In June, a second woman charged Stringer with sexual harassment and unwanted advances. Stringer said he had no recollection of the alleged behavior.

For his part, Adams was checked to see if he even lived in New York City. While Adams says he lives in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, he and his partner also own a cooperative in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Earlier this month, Politico published an investigation raising questions about Adams’ whereabouts and found that he spent nights campaigning in a government building in Brooklyn.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio waves as he delivers the State of the City speech at La Guardia Community College on February 10, 2014 in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, New York.

John Moore | Getty Images

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Liz Cheney’s Unlikely Journey From G.O.P. Royalty to Republican Outcast

Liz Cheney’s Unlikely Journey From G.O.P. Royalty to Republican Outcast

CASPER, Wyo. — Representative Liz Cheney was holed up in a secure undisclosed location of the Dick Cheney Federal Building, recounting how she got an alarmed phone call from her father on Jan. 6.

Ms. Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, recalled that she had been preparing to speak on the House floor in support of certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s election as president. Mr. Cheney, the former vice president and his daughter’s closest political adviser, consulted with her on most days, but this time was calling as a worried parent.

He had seen President Donald J. Trump on television at a rally that morning vow to get rid of “the Liz Cheneys of the world.” Her floor speech could inflame tensions, he told her, and he feared for her safety. Was she sure she wanted to go ahead?

“Absolutely,” she told her father. “Nothing could be more important.”

Minutes later, Mr. Trump’s supporters breached the entrance, House members evacuated and the political future of Ms. Cheney, who never delivered her speech, was suddenly scrambled. Her promising rise in the House, which friends say the former vice president had been enthusiastically invested in and hoped might culminate in the speaker’s office, had been replaced with a very different mission.

“This is about being able to tell your kids that you stood up and did the right thing,” she said.

Ms. Cheney entered Congress in 2017, and her lineage always ensured her a conspicuous profile, although not in the way it has since blown up. Her campaign to defeat the “ongoing threat” and “fundamental toxicity of a president who lost” has landed one of the most conservative House members in the most un-Cheney-like position of resistance leader and Republican outcast. Ms. Cheney has vowed to be a counterforce, no matter how lonely that pursuit might be or where it might lead, including a possible primary challenge to Mr. Trump if he runs for president in 2024, a prospect she has not ruled out.

Beyond the daunting politics, Ms. Cheney’s predicament is also a father-daughter story, rife with dynastic echoes and ironies. An unapologetic Prince of Darkness figure throughout his career, Mr. Cheney was always attuned to doomsday scenarios and existential threats he saw posed by America’s enemies, whether from Russia during the Cold War, Saddam Hussein after the Sept. 11 attacks, or the general menace of tyrants and terrorists.

Ms. Cheney has come to view the current circumstances with Mr. Trump in the same apocalyptic terms. The difference is that today’s threat resides inside the party in which her family has been royalty for nearly half a century.

“He is just deeply troubled for the country about what we watched President Trump do,” Ms. Cheney said of her father. “He’s a student of history. He’s a student of the presidency. He knows the gravity of those jobs, and as he’s watched these events unfold, certainly he’s been appalled.”

On the day last month that Ms. Cheney’s House colleagues ousted her as the third-ranking Republican over her condemnations of Mr. Trump, she invited an old family friend, the photographer David Hume Kennerly, to record her movements for posterity. After work, they repaired to her parents’ home in McLean, Va., to commiserate over wine and a steak dinner.

“There was maybe a little bit of post-mortem, but it didn’t feel like a wake,” said Mr. Kennerly, the official photographer for President Gerald R. Ford while Mr. Cheney was White House chief of staff. “Mostly, I got a real sense at that dinner of two parents who were extremely proud of their kid and wanted to be there for her at the end of a bad day.”

Mr. Cheney declined to be interviewed for this article, but provided a statement: “As a father, I am enormously proud of my daughter. As an American, I am deeply grateful to her for defending our Constitution and the rule of law.”

The Cheneys are a private and insular brood, though not without tensions that have gone public. Ms. Cheney’s opposition to same-sex marriage during a brief Senate campaign in 2013 enraged her sister, Mary Cheney, and Mary’s longtime partner, Heather Poe. It was conspicuous, then, when Mary conveyed full support for her sister after Jan. 6.

“As many people know, Liz and I have definitely had our differences over the years,” she wrote in a Facebook post on Jan. 7. “But I am very proud of how she handled herself during the fight over the Electoral College…Good job Big Sister.’’

In an interview in Casper, Ms. Cheney, 54, spoke in urgent, clipped cadences in an unmarked conference room of the Dick Cheney Federal Building, one of many places that carry her family name in the nation’s least populous and most Trump-loving state. Her disposition conveyed both determination and worry, and also a sense of someone who had endured an embattled stretch.

Ms. Cheney had spent much of a recent congressional recess in Wyoming and yet was rarely seen in public. The appearances she did make — a visit to the Chamber of Commerce in Casper, a hospital opening (with her father) in Star Valley — were barely publicized beforehand, in large part for security concerns. She has received a stream of death threats, common menaces among high-profile critics of Mr. Trump, and is now surrounded by a newly deployed detail of plainclothes, ear-pieced agents.

Her campaign spent $58,000 on security from January to March, including three former Secret Service officers, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Ms. Cheney was recently assigned protection from the Capitol Police, an unusual measure for a House member not in a leadership position. The fortress aura around Ms. Cheney is reminiscent of the “secure undisclosed location” of her father in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ms. Cheney’s temperament bears the imprint of both parents, especially her mother, Lynne Cheney, a conservative scholar and commentator who is far more extroverted than her husband. But Mr. Cheney has long been his eldest daughter’s closest professional alter ego, especially after he left office in 2009, and Ms. Cheney devoted marathon sessions to collaborating on his memoir, “In My Times.” Their work coincided with some of Mr. Cheney’s gravest heart conditions, including a period in 2010 when he was near death.

His health stabilized after doctors installed a blood-pumping device that kept him alive and allowed him to travel. This included trips between Virginia and Wyoming in which Mr. Cheney would drive while dictating stories to Ms. Cheney in the passenger seat, who would type his words into a laptop. He received his heart transplant in 2012.

Father and daughter promoted the memoir in joint appearances, with Ms. Cheney interviewing her father in venues around the country. “She was basically there with her dad to ease his re-entry back to health on the public stage,” said former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Wyoming Republican and a longtime family friend.

By 2016, Ms. Cheney had been elected to Congress and quickly rose to become the third-ranking Republican, a post her father also held. As powerful as Mr. Cheney was as vice president, he had always considered himself a product of the House, where he had served as Wyoming’s at-large congressman from 1979 to 1989.

Neither father nor daughter is a natural politician in any traditional sense. Mr. Cheney was a plotter and bureaucratic brawler, ambitious but in a quiet, secretive and, to many eyes, devious way. Ms. Cheney was largely focused on strategic planning and hawkish policymaking.

After graduating from Colorado College (“The Evolution of Presidential War Powers” was her senior thesis), Ms. Cheney worked at the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development while her father was defense secretary. She attended the University of Chicago Law School and practiced at the firm White & Case before returning to the State Department while her father was vice president. She was not sheepish or dispassionate like her father — she was a cheerleader at McLean High School — but held off running for office until well into her 40s.

Once in the House, Ms. Cheney was seen as a possible speaker — a hybrid of establishment background, hard-line conservatism and partisan instincts. While she had reservations about Mr. Trump, she was selective with her critiques and voted with him 93 percent of time and against his first impeachment.

As for Mr. Cheney, his distress over the Trump administration was initially focused on foreign policy, though he eventually came to view the 45th president’s performance overall as abysmal.

“I had a couple of conversations with the vice president last summer where he was really deeply troubled,” said Eric S. Edelman, a former American ambassador to Turkey, a Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration and family friend.

As a transplant recipient whose compromised immune system placed him at severe risk of Covid-19, Mr. Cheney found that his contempt for the Trump White House only grew during the pandemic. He had also known and admired Dr. Anthony S. Fauci for many years.

At the same time, Ms. Cheney publicly supported Dr. Fauci and seemed to be trolling the White House last June when she tweeted “Dick Cheney says WEAR A MASK” over a photograph of her father — looking every bit the stoic Westerner — sporting a face covering and cowboy hat (hashtag “#realmenwearmasks”).

She has received notable support in her otherwise lonely efforts from a number of top-level figures of the Republican establishment, including many of her father’s old White House colleagues. Former President George W. Bush — through a spokesman — made a point of thanking Mr. Cheney “for his daughter’s service” in a call to his former vice president on his 80th birthday in January.

Ms. Cheney did wind up voting for Mr. Trump in November, but came to regret it immediately. In her view, Mr. Trump’s conduct after the election went irreversibly beyond the pale. “For Liz, it was like, I just can’t do this anymore,” said former Representative Barbara Comstock, Republican of Virginia.

Ms. Cheney returned last week to Washington, where she had minimal dealings with her former leadership cohorts and was less inhibited in sharing her dim view of certain Republican colleagues. On Tuesday, she slammed Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona for repeating “disgusting and despicable lies” about the actions of the Capitol Police on Jan. 6.

“We’ve got people we’ve entrusted with the perpetuation of the Republic who don’t know what the rule of law is,” she said. “We probably need to do Constitution boot camps for newly sworn-in members of Congress. Clearly.”

She said her main pursuit now involved teaching basic civics to voters who had been misinformed by Mr. Trump and other Republicans who should know better. “I’m not naïve about the education that has to go on here,” Ms. Cheney said. “This is dangerous. It’s not complicated. I think Trump has a plan.”

Ms. Cheney’s own plan has been the object of considerable speculation. Although she was re-elected in 2020 by 44 percentage points, she faces a potentially treacherous path in 2022. Several Wyoming Republicans have already announced plans to mount primary challenges against Ms. Cheney, and her race is certain to be among the most closely followed in the country next year. It will also provide a visible platform for her campaign to ensure Mr. Trump “never again gets near the Oval Office” — an enterprise that could plausibly include a long-shot primary bid against him in 2024.

Friends say that at a certain point, events — namely Jan. 6 — came to transcend any parochial political concerns for Ms. Cheney. “Maybe I’m being Pollyanna a little bit here, but I do think Liz is playing the long game,” said Matt Micheli, a Cheyenne lawyer and former chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party. Ms. Cheney has confirmed as much.

“This is something that determines the nature of this Republic going forward,” she said. “So I really don’t know how long that takes.”

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Home votes to repeal 2002 Iraq Conflict authorization

US President George W. Bush (L) speaks prior to signing the Joint Congressional Resolution to Authorize US Use of Force against Iraq if necessary, October 16, 2002, at the White House in Washington, DC. From L are House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Joyce Naltchayan | AFP | Getty Images

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to revoke the 2002 war permit in Iraq as Congress seeks to limit the president’s discretion in the use of military force.

The chamber passed the measure by a margin of 268 to 161. Forty-nine Republicans backed them except for one Democrat.

The bill goes to the Senate, where the GOP is split over whether to support them. The Chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee plans to proceed next week with its own plan to revoke authorization for the use of military force.

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President Joe Biden supports the House Bill of Representatives to Repeal the Iraq War. His Office of Management and Budget said this week that “the United States has no ongoing military activities relying solely on the 2002 AUMF as its domestic legal basis, and repeal of the 2002 AUMF would likely have minimal impact on ongoing military operations to have.”

Legislators from both parties have feared that leaving the approval in place will give the presidents legal backing to justify independent military strikes. The Iraq war ended almost a decade ago.

The House of Representatives voted to lift the measure in January 2020 after the US launched an air strike in Iraq that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani. The Senate, then held by Republicans, did not pass the bill. The Trump administration named the approval measure as the legal basis for the air strike.

(R) Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hold a critical press conference at the U.S. Capitol on October 4, 2017 in Washington . Direct current.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, spearheaded legislation that the House of Representatives passed Thursday. Lee, a longtime anti-war advocate, was the only House MP who voted against the war permit in Afghanistan in 2001.

“This authority remains on the books and is prone to abuse as Congress failed to act to remove it,” Lee said in the House of Representatives on Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said Wednesday that he would vote on revoking the Iraq warrant this year. He said the revocation of the permit would “remove the risk of a future government resorting to the legal dustbin to be used as a justification for military adventure”.

Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Signaled Thursday that he would oppose the war permit being lifted, despite support for his faction.

U.S. Army Soldiers from 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, Task Force Iraq, man a defensive position on Forward Operating Base Union III in Baghdad, Iraq, December 31, 2019.

US Army | Reuters

“The fact is that the legal and practical application of the 2002 AUMF goes well beyond the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s regime,” he said. “To throw it aside without answering real questions about our own efforts in the region is reckless.”

Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., And Todd Young, R-Ind., Led efforts to overturn the measure in the Senate.

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V.A. Plans to Provide Gender-Affirming Surgical procedures for Transgender Veterans

V.A. Plans to Offer Gender-Affirming Surgeries for Transgender Veterans

WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to offer transgender veterans sex confirmation surgery, veterans affairs secretary Denis McDonough announced at a Pride event in Orlando, Florida over the weekend, in a major shift in available care for former service members.

“This process requires a change in VA regulations and the establishment of guidelines to ensure the equitable treatment and safety of transgender veterans,” said McDonough on Saturday at the event, noting that the change would take time. But he said the surgical needs of transgender veterans were “long-deserved.”

Gender-affirming procedures reconstruct sexual organs corresponding to the sex a person identifies with and have been shown to alleviate serious health concerns such as substance abuse, suicide and suicidal ideation, an administrative official said, explaining the decision to change the policy. The procedures that were once related to cosmetic surgery are now widely recognized as effective treatments for such problems.

The process of changing health benefits for transgender veterans could take years, and it is unknown how many veterans would have sex confirmation surgery. The administrative officer said internal estimates showed fewer than 4,000 veterans would be interested in the care.

There are more than 134,000 transgender veterans, according to an estimate by the National Center for Transgender Equality.

The annual cost of the new services would depend on whether they were provided by the Veterans Affairs Department or by external partners.

“An update to this policy would enable VA to provide transgender and gender-diverse veterans with coordinated, medically necessary, transitional surgical procedures,” a department spokesman said.

President Biden has also sought to restore civil rights protection to LGBTQ people who were eliminated by President Donald J. Trump. On his first day in office, Mr Biden signed an executive order combating discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

As a result, the Department of Health and Human Services banned providers from discriminating against gays and transgender people and restored protection to transgender people seeking shelter and homeless services. The Trump administration had denied them access to same-sex accommodation based on their gender identity.

The policy change in the Veterans Affairs Department is the latest move by the Biden administration to end years of discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members of the military. A Trump-era ban on transgender service providers was lifted on the fifth day in Mr Biden’s office.

“The remains of bigotry remain,” said Mr. McDonough.

He also announced on Saturday that the ministry is changing the name of its LGBTQ health program to LGBTQ + health program, naming it “language that proudly reflects new community standards of inclusion” and anticipating future changes.

“Even something as simple as displaying VA-specific rainbow magnets has been shown to make our hospitals more welcoming,” said McDonough, signaling to LGTBQ + vets that we are there for them. “

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Supreme Court docket guidelines in favor of Nestle in youngster slavery case

Supreme Court rules in favor of Nestle in child slavery case

A farmer prepares to collect a cocoa pod at a cocoa farm in Alepe, Ivory Coast December 7, 2020.

Luc Gnago | Reuters

The Supreme Court on Thursday reversed a lower-court ruling that had allowed six men to sue Nestle USA and Cargill over claims they were trafficked as child slaves to farms in the West African nation of Ivory Coast that supply cocoa to the two giant food companies.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 8-1 majority, said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit erred in allowing the suit on the grounds that Nestle and Cargill had allegedly made “major operational decisions” in the United States.

Thomas said the six plaintiffs, who are from the nation of Mali, improperly sought to sue under the Alien Tort Statute for conduct that occurred outside the United States.

Thomas also said that the plaintiffs had failed to establish that the conduct relevant to the ATS “occurred in the United States … even if other conduct occurred abroad.”

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Paul Hoffman, a lawyer for the men who sued, said during a media briefing on the decision that “obviously we’re disappointed” by the ruling, but also called it “the narrowest possible loss we could have had in this instance.” He noted that a majority of justices in the decision agreed that corporations can be sued under the Alien Tort Statute.

Hoffman also said it is “our intention that we will file an amended complaint” which he said he believes “can satisfy the court’s standards” for making a claim under the ATS.

He said Nestle and Cargill control every aspect of what goes on in the production of cocoa in Ivory Coast, “and they should be held accountable for abetting a system of child slavery.”

The six men who sued claimed that those companies aided and abetted child slavery because they “knew or should have known” that the farms were using enslaved children.

While neither company owns or operates farms in Ivory Coast, they had bought cocoa from them, and also provided the farms with technical and financial resources in exchange for exclusive rights to their crops.

The plaintiffs claimed the companies had economic leverage over the farms, “but failed to exercise it to eliminate child slavery,” Thomas noted in his opinion.

A U.S. district court had originally dismissed the lawsuit after the Supreme Court ruled that the Alien Tort Statute does not apply extraterritorially.

While the plaintiffs were appealing that dismissal, the Supreme Court ruled that courts cannot create new causes of action under the ATS against foreign corporations.

The 9th Circuit appeals court then ruled in the Nestle and Cargill cases that the Supreme Court’s ruling “did not foreclose judicial creation of causes of action against domestic corporations.” The 9th Circuit also ruled that the plaintiffs had properly claimed the ATS applied in the cases because “financing decisions … originated” in the U.S.

But Thomas in his opinion wrote that nearly all of the conduct alleged in the lawsuit “occurred in Ivory Coast.”

He also wrote that a claim of “general corporate activity” in the United States is not sufficient to link to conduct abroad for a claim under the ATS.

“To plead facts sufficient to support a domestic application of the ATS, plaintiffs must allege more domestic conduct than general corporate activity common to most corporations,” the opinion said.

A Nestle spokesperson in a statement on the ruling said: “Child labor is unacceptable. That is why we are working so hard to prevent it.”

“Nestlé never engaged in the egregious child labor alleged in this suit, and we remain unwavering in our dedication to [combating] child labor in the cocoa industry and to our ongoing work with partners in government, [nongovernmental organizations] and industry to tackle this complex, global issue,” the spokesperson said. 

“Access to education and improving farming methods and livelihoods are crucial to fighting child labor in cocoa production. Addressing the root causes of child labor is part of the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and will continue to be the focus of our efforts in the future.”

Cargill in a statement said, “The Supreme Court’s ruling today affirms Cargill’s analysis of the law and confirms this suit has no basis to proceed.” 

“Regardless, Cargill’s work to keep child labor out of the cocoa supply chain is unwavering. We do not tolerate the use of child labor in our operations or supply chains and we are working every day to prevent it,” the privately held company said. “We will continue to focus on the root causes, including poverty and lack of education access. Our mission is to drive long-lasting change in cocoa communities and to lift up the families that rely on cocoa for their income.”

 

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How Republican States Are Increasing Their Energy Over Elections

How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections

LaGRANGE, Georgia – Lonnie Hollis has served on the Troup County’s Electoral Committee in western Georgia since 2013. As a Democrat and one of two black women on the board, she spoke out in favor of the Sunday election, helped voters on election days and moved to a new district in a black church in a nearby town.

But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local electoral law signed by Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, the members of the electoral board were elected by both political parties, the district commissioner and the three largest municipalities in the Troup district. Now the GOP-controlled district commission has sole power to restructure the board and appoint all new members.

“I speak out and know the laws,” said Ms. Hollis in an interview. “The bottom line is that they don’t like people who have any kind of intelligence and know what they’re doing because they know they can’t influence them.”

Mrs. Hollis is not alone. Across Georgia, at least 10 district electoral committees have been dismissed, removed from office, or are likely to be dismissed by local ordinances or new laws passed by the state legislature. At least five are colored and most are Democrats – although some are Republicans – and they will most likely all be replaced by Republicans.

Ms. Hollis, and local officials like her, were some of the earliest victims when Republican-led parliaments took on a massive takeover of the electoral administration in a series of new voting bills this year.

GOP lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, exercised more control over state electoral boards, facilitated the overturning of election results, and conducted several partisan reviews and inspections of 2020 results.

Republican lawmakers in 41 states have tabled at least 216 bills to give lawmakers more power over election officials, according to the United States’ United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization dedicated to protecting democratic norms. Of these, 24 were enacted in 14 states.

GOP lawmakers in Georgia say the new measures are designed to improve the performance of local bodies and reduce the influence of political parties. But the laws allow Republicans to remove local officials they dislike, and since some of them were Black Democrats, franchise groups fear these are further attempts to disenfranchise colored voters.

The maneuvers risk undermining some of the core controls that served as a bulwark against former President Donald J. Trump as he tried to undermine the 2020 election results. If these bills had come into effect after the election, Democrats say, they would have greatly increased the turmoil Trump and his allies created by attempting to overturn the outcome. They fear that proponents of Trump’s conspiracy theories will soon have much greater control over the levers of the American electoral system.

“It is a barely veiled attempt to wrest control from the officials who led one of the safest elections in our history and to place them in the hands of bad actors,” said Jena Griswold, chairwoman of the Association of Democratic State Secretaries and the current one Colorado Secretary of State. “The risk is the destruction of democracy.”

Officials like Ms. Hollis are responsible for making decisions such as choosing mailbox and district locations, sending out election notices, setting early polling times, and certifying elections. But the new laws also target senior state officials, particularly foreign ministers – both Republican and Democratic – who have stood up against Trump and his allies over the past year.

The Republicans in Arizona have tabled a bill that would largely deprive Katie Hobbs, the Democratic Secretary of State, of her powers on election lawsuits and then expire when she leaves office. And they have tabled another bill that would give the legislature more power in setting guidelines for election administration, an important task currently being carried out by the Foreign Minister.

Under Georgia’s new electoral law, Republicans have severely weakened the office of Secretary of State after Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is the current secretary, rejected Trump’s demands to “find” votes. You have dismissed the State Secretary as chairman of the state election committee and relieved his voting rights on the board.

The Kansas Republicans in May vetoed Democrat Laura Kelly to pass laws that would deprive the governor of changing electoral law and the Secretary of State, a Republican who repeatedly vouched for the security of postal votes, from the settlement election-related actions without the consent of the legislature.

And more Republicans who hold on to Mr. Trump’s election lies are running for secretary of state, bringing conspiracy theorists to a critical position within reach. In Georgia, MP Jody Hice, a Republican who voted against confirming President Biden’s victory, is running against Raffensperger. Republican candidates with similar views are running for secretary of state in Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan.

“In virtually every state, every polling officer will feel like they’re under the microscope,” said Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser with the United Democracy Center in the United States.

In the short term, it is local election officials at district and community level who are either deposed or robbed of their power.

In Arkansas, Republicans were stabbed last year when Jim Sorvillo, a three-time state official from Little Rock, lost re-election by 24 votes to Ashley Hudson, a Democrat and local lawyer. It was later found that election officials in Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, inadvertently tabulated 327 postal ballot papers, 27 of which were from the district, during the vote count.

Mr. Sorvillo filed several lawsuits to prevent Ms. Hudson from being seated, and all of them were denied. The Republican faction considered refusing to seat Ms. Hudson and then eventually voted to accept her.

But last month the Arkansas Republicans passed a new bill that would allow a state committee of electoral officers – made up of six Republicans and one Democrat – to investigate a variety of issues at every stage of the electoral process, from registration onwards, and Initiate corrective action “. for the submission and counting of ballot papers to confirm elections. The law applies to all counties, but it is widely believed to be directed against Pulaski, one of the few in the state who favor Democrats.

The draftsman, State Representative Mark Lowery, a Republican from a suburb of Little Rock, said it was necessary to remove voting power from local authorities, who are Democrats in Pulaski County, because otherwise Republicans could not be shaken fairly .

“Without this legislation, you would have been the only authority to turn to the prosecutor for inappropriateness, who is a Democrat and may have done nothing,” Lowery said in an interview. “This gives another level of investigative power to a state-mandated body to oversee the elections.”

When asked about last year’s election, Mr. Lowery said, “I think Donald Trump was elected President.”

A separate new Arkansas law allows a state board to “vote and conduct” elections in a county when a legislative committee determines that there are questions about the “appearance of an equal, free, and impartial election.”

In Georgia, lawmakers passed a unique law for some counties. For Troup County, State Representative Randy Nix, a Republican, said he only tabled the county electoral board reorganization bill – and which will remove Ms. Hollis – after a motion was requested by county commissioners. He said he was not worried that the commission, a party body made up of four Republicans and one Democrat, could influence the elections.

“The commissioners are all elected officials and will face the electorate to answer for their actions,” Nix said in an email.

Eric Mosley, the county manager for Troup County, which Trump scored 22 points, said the decision to ask Mr. Nix for the bill was intended to make the board more bipartisan. It was unanimously supported by the Commission.

“We believed that the ultimate intent of the board of directors was to choose the removal of both Republican and Democratic representation and the real selection of members of the community who invest heavily to serve those members of the community,” Mosley said. “Our goal is to create both political and racial diversity on the board.”

In Morgan County, east of Atlanta, Helen Butler was one of the most prominent Democratic voices in the state on suffrage and electoral administration. As a member of the county electoral committee in a rural Republican district, she also leads the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a group dedicated to protecting the voting rights of black Americans and strengthening their civic engagement.

But Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month after Mr. Kemp signed a local law ending the ability of political parties to appoint members.

“I think this is all part of the local electoral board takeover trick that state lawmakers put in place,” Ms. Butler said. “They say they have a right to say whether an election officer is doing it right, even though they don’t work on a day-to-day basis and don’t understand the process itself.”

It’s not just Democrats who are being removed. In DeKalb County, the fourth largest in the state, Republicans decided not to nominate Baoky Vu to the electoral board again after more than 12 years in office. Mr. Vu, a Republican, had written with the Democrats in a letter that opposed an election-related bill that was ultimately not passed.

To replace Mr. Vu, Republicans nominated Paul Maner, a prominent local conservative with a history of false testimony, including the allusion that the son of a Georgia congressman was killed in “a drug deal gone wrong”.

Back in LaGrange, Ms. Hollis tries to do as much as possible in the remaining time on the board. The additional precinct in nearby Hogansville, where the population is roughly 50 percent black, is a top priority. Although the city only has about 3,000 residents, the city is divided by a railroad, and Ms. Hollis said it can sometimes take a long time to clear a freight car line, which is problematic on election days.

“We worked on it for over a year,” Ms. Hollis said, saying the Republicans had put procedural hurdles in place to block the process. But she was not deterred.

“I’m not going to sit there and wait for you to tell me what to do for the voters there,” she said. “I’ll do the right thing.”

Rachel Shorey contributed to the research.

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Supreme Court docket sides with Catholic adoption company that refuses to work with LGBT {couples}

Supreme Court sides with Catholic adoption agency that refuses to work with LGBT couples

Women pose for a photo outside the U.S. Supreme Court building after the court ruled in favor of a Catholic agency sued after Philadelphia refused to foster children for applying to same-sex couples to become denied foster parents. in Washington, USA, June 17, 2021.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

The Supreme Court on Thursday inflicted a unanimous defeat on LGBT couples in a high-profile case because Philadelphia may refuse to enter into a contract with a Roman Catholic adoption agency that says their religious beliefs prevent them from working with same-sex foster parents.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a statement for a majority in the court that Philadelphia violated the First Amendment by refusing to enter into a contract with Catholic Social Services after learning that the organization was not up for adoption would certify.

“The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which is applicable to states under the Fourteenth Amendment, provides that ‘Congress must not make any law … prohibiting the free exercise of religion,'” wrote Roberts.

“First of all, it is clear that the city’s actions have weighed on the religious practice of CSS by giving them the choice of curtailing their mission or allowing relationships that are incompatible with their beliefs,” he added.

According to long-standing precedents of the Supreme Court, religiously neutral and generally applicable laws can be compatible with the constitution, even if they incriminate religion. However, Roberts said the city’s non-discrimination policy is not generally applicable, citing Philadelphia’s ability to allow exceptions to it.

“Regardless of the level of deference we show to the city, the inclusion of a formal system of fully discretionary exceptions” in their standard care contracts “makes the contractual non-discrimination requirement not generally applicable,” wrote Roberts.

The Chief Justice wrote that Philadelphia had not shown it had an overriding interest in denying Catholic social services an exception to its non-discrimination policy.

“Once the interests of the city are properly narrowed down, they are no longer sufficient,” wrote the George W. Bush-appointed employee.

Roberts admitted that the city had an interest in “equal treatment of prospective foster parents and foster children”.

“We don’t doubt that this interest is a weighty one, because[o]Our society has recognized that gay individuals and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth, ”wrote Roberts, citing the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission case.

“Based on the facts of this case, however, this interest cannot justify denying the CSS an exception for its religious practice,” he wrote.

Remarkably, Roberts’ opinion was closer than conservative activists had hoped. LGBT rights supporters feared the Supreme Court would use the case to set its 1990 precedent known as Employment Division v. Smith, which protects neutral and generally applicable laws that incriminate religion. This precedent gives states and cities leeway to prohibit discrimination in different contexts.

Roberts’ opinion was endorsed by Judges Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Judges Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch agreed with the outcome of the case but did not sign Roberts’ reasoning.

Alito, along with Thomas and Gorsuch, represented the majority decision not to question the Employment Division’s case. Alito wrote that Roberts’ narrow reasoning will make the court’s action temporary at best.

“That decision might as well be on paper sold in magic shops,” wrote Alito. “The city has persistently put CSS under pressure to give in, and if the city wants to bypass today’s decision, it can simply remove the never-used exemption authorization.”

Alito wrote that the Labor Department court “abruptly pushed aside nearly 40 years of precedent and found that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment tolerates any rule that categorically prohibits or orders certain conduct as long as it does not target religious practice.”

“Even if a rule does not serve an important purpose and has a devastating effect on religious freedom, Smith says the constitution does not offer protection. This strict stance is ripe for re-examination,” added Alito.

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Employment Division was drafted by the late Conservative Judge Antonin Scalia.

Barrett, in agreement with Kavanaugh and in part von Breyer, said she found the arguments for overturning Smith persuasive, but added that “there would be a number of problems to be solved if Smith were overridden.”

“We don’t have to grapple with these questions in this case, however, because regardless of whether Smith stays or leaves, the same standard applies,” wrote Barrett.

Barrett said laws that weighed down religious practice must stand a rigorous scrutiny – a legal threshold – before Smith if they give government officials the discretion to make individual exceptions.

“And all nine judges agree that the city cannot stand up to a severe test. So I see no reason in this case to decide whether Smith should be repealed, let alone what should replace him, ”wrote Barrett.

The Court’s decision in the Fulton v. City of Philadelphia case, nos. 19-123, reverses the opinion of the 3rd Court of Appeals, which sided with Philadelphia.

In a statement, Philadelphia City attorney Diana Cortes called the Supreme Court move “a difficult and disappointing setback for the foster youth and foster parents who work so hard to support them.”

“In today’s ruling, the court has usurped the city’s ruling that non-discrimination policies are in the best interests of the children in their care, with worrying consequences for other government programs and services,” she said.

“At the same time, the city is pleased that the Supreme Court has not radically changed existing constitutional law, as requested by plaintiffs, to adopt a standard that would enforce court-ordered religious exemptions from civil duties in any area,” added Cortes.

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Rising From Pandemic, New York Seeks a New Mayor to Face Looming Crises

Rising From Pandemic, New York Seeks a New Mayor to Face Looming Crises

The New York City mayor’s race began in the throes of a pandemic, in a shuttered city convulsed by a public health catastrophe, economic devastation and widespread protests over police brutality.

Now, with voters heading to the primary polls on Tuesday, New York finds itself in a very different place. As the city roars back to life, its residents are at once buoyed by optimism around reopenings, but also anxious about public safety, affordable housing, jobs — and the very character of the nation’s largest city.

The primary election marks the end of an extraordinary chapter in New York’s history and the start of another, an inflection point that will play a defining role in shaping the post-pandemic future of the city. The leading mayoral candidates have promoted starkly divergent visions for confronting a series of overlapping crises, making this primary, which will almost certainly determine the next mayor, the most significant city election in a generation.

Public polling and interviews with elected officials, voters and party strategists suggest that on the cusp of Tuesday’s election, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, is the front-runner, fueled by his focus on public safety issues and his ability to connect in working- and middle-class communities of color.

Yet even on the last weekend of the race, the contest to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio appears fluid and unpredictable, and credible polling remains sparse.

Two other leading candidates, Andrew Yang and Kathryn Garcia, campaigned together on Saturday in Queens and Manhattan, a show of unity that also injected ugly clashes over race into the final hours of the election, as Mr. Adams accused his rivals of coming together “in the last three days” and “saying, ‘We can’t trust a person of color to be the mayor of the City of New York.’”

Mr. Yang, at a later event, noted that he had been “Asian my entire life.” (Mr. Adams later clarified that he meant that Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia were trying to prevent a Black or Latino candidate from becoming mayor.)

The primary election will ultimately offer a clear sense of Democratic attitudes around confronting crime, a major national issue that has become the most urgent matter in the mayoral primary.

The outcome will also show whether New Yorkers wanted a political outsider eager to shake up City Hall bureaucracy, like Mr. Yang, or a seasoned government veteran like Ms. Garcia to navigate staggering challenges from issues of education to evictions to economic revival.

And it will reveal whether Democrats are in the mood to “reimagine” a far more equitable city through transformational progressive policies, as Maya D. Wiley is promising, or if they are more focused on everyday municipal problems.

In recent polls and last-minute fund-raising, Ms. Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, and Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, seem to be gaining late traction, while Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, remains a serious contender even amid signs that his momentum may have stalled.

But other factors may muddy the outcome.

For the first time in New York City, the mayoral nominee will be determined by ranked-choice voting, which allows New Yorkers to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Some New Yorkers remain undecided about how to rank their choices, and whether to rank at all.

And with many New Yorkers accustomed to a primary that usually takes place in September, it is not at all clear what the composition of a post-pandemic June electorate will look like.

For such a high-stakes election, the contest has felt at once endless and rushed. For months, it was a low-key affair, defined by dutiful Zoom forums and a distracted city.

But if there has been one constant in the last month, it has been the centrality of crime and policing to the contest.

“Public safety has clearly emerged as a significant issue,” said Representative Hakeem Jeffries, New York’s highest-ranking House member, when asked to name the defining issue of the mayor’s race. “How to balance that aspiration with fair, respectful policing, I think has been critical throughout the balance of this campaign.”

Six months ago, few would have predicted that public safety would be the top issue of the race, only a year after the“defund the police” movement took hold in the city. Crime rates are far lower than in earlier eras, and residents are confronting a long list of challenges as the city emerges from the pandemic.

But amid a rise this spring in shootings, jarring episodes of violence on the subways, bias attacks against Asian Americans and Jews — and heavy coverage of crime on local television — virtually every public poll shows public safety has become the biggest concern among Democratic voters.

Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia, Mr. Yang and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Citi executive, vigorously disagree with the “defund the police” movement. But no one has been more vocal about public safety issues than Mr. Adams, a former police captain who has declared safety the “prerequisite” to prosperity.

Mr. Adams, who had a complex career at the Police Department and battled police misconduct as a leader of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group, says that he was once a victim of police brutality himself, and argues that he is well equipped to manage both police reform and spikes in violence.

In recent weeks, however, Mr. Adams has come under growing scrutiny over questions of transparency and ethics tied to taxes and disclosures around real estate holdings. That dynamic may fuel doubts about his candidacy in the final days, as his opponents have sharply questioned his judgment and integrity.

If he wins, it will be in part because of his significant institutional support, as a veteran politician with union backing and relationships with key constituencies — but also because his message connects at a visceral level in some neighborhoods across the city.

“Mr. Adams! You got my vote!” Blanca Soto, who turns 60 on Monday, cried out as she walked by an Adams event in Harlem on Thursday.

“I am rooting for him because he’s not going to take away from the police officers,” said Ms. Soto, a health aide, who called safety her top issue. “I do want to see more police, especially in the subways. We had them there before. I don’t know what happened, but everything was good when that was going on.”

Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller; Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary; Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive; and Ms. Wiley have taken a starkly different view on several policing matters. They support varying degrees of cuts to the Police Department’s budget, arguing for investments in communities instead. The department’s operating budget has been about $6 billion. Ms. Wiley, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales have also been skeptical of adding more police officers to patrol the subway.

Ms. Wiley argues that the best way to stop violence is often to invest in the social safety net, including in mental health professionals, violence interrupters and in schools.

Understand the N.Y.C. Mayoral Race

Ms. Wiley, who has been endorsed by some of the most prominent left-wing leaders in the country, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, is seeking to build a coalition that includes white progressives as well as voters of color across the ideological spectrum.

Rival campaigns have long believed that she has the potential to build perhaps the broadest coalition of voters in the race, but polls suggest that she has not yet done so in a meaningful way.

Mr. Jeffries, who has endorsed Ms. Wiley and campaigned with her, said that she offers change from the status quo, “a fresh face” who is both prepared “and is offering a compelling vision for investing in those communities that have traditionally been left behind.”

Mr. Jeffries has said that he is ranking Mr. Adams second, and that if Mr. Adams were to win, it would be on the strength of Black and Latino communities “who have increasingly felt excluded from the promises of New York City, as it has become increasingly expensive.”

A number of campaigns and political strategists see Latino voters as the crucial, late-breaking swing vote, and the leading candidates all see opportunities with slices of that diverse constituency, with candidates including Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley airing new Spanish-language ads in recent days — an Adams spot criticizes Ms. Garcia in Spanish — and Mr. Yang spending Thursday in the Bronx, home to the city’s largest Latino population.

Mr. Yang, who would be the city’s first Asian American mayor, is betting that he can reshape the electorate by engaging more young, Asian American and Latino voters as he casts himself as a “change” candidate.

Mr. Yang was a front-runner in the race for months, boosted by his strong name identification and air of celebrity, as well as a hopeful message about New York’s potential and an energetic in-person campaign schedule.

But as New York reopened and crime became a bigger issue in voters’ minds — and as Mr. Yang faced growing scrutiny over gaffes and gaps in his municipal knowledge — he has lost ground.

His tone in the homestretch is a striking departure from the exuberant pitch that defined his early message, as he sharpens his criticism of Mr. Adams and tries to cut into his advantage on public safety issues. Mr. Yang, who has no city government experience, has also sought to use that outsider standing to deliver searing indictments of the political class.

Ms. Garcia has moderate instincts — she was one of the few leading mayoral candidates to favor President Biden as her first choice in the presidential primary — but she is primarily running as a pragmatic technocrat steeped in municipal knowledge.

She has been endorsed by the editorial boards of The New York Times and The New York Daily News, among others, and has generated palpable traction in politically engaged, highly educated corners of the city, like the Upper West Side, even as Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also vied for the government experience mantle.

“I don’t think New York does that well, as progressive as I am, with a series of progressives who think that we should spend more time dealing with those kinds of issues rather than actual stuff that needs to be done,” said William Pinzler, 74, as he prepared to vote for Ms. Garcia at Lincoln Center. “Kathryn Garcia picked up the garbage.”

But Ms. Garcia, who has struggled to deliver a standout moment during several televised debates, is in many ways still introducing herself, and it is not yet clear whether she can attract the same kind of support citywide.

Asked what lessons national Democrats may take from the results of Tuesday’s contest, Representative Grace Meng, who has endorsed Mr. Yang as her first choice and Ms. Garcia as her second, and appeared with them on Saturday, pointed to questions of both personal characteristics and policy visions.

“How much people prioritize a leader with experience or vision to get us out of the pandemic, but also to address issues like public safety and education — I think that it’ll kind of be a filter through which we see the next round of elections nationally,” she said. “Wherever they may be.”

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Controversial below Trump, federal vacation below Biden

Controversial under Trump, federal holiday under Biden

(L-R) Ninety-four-year-old activist and retired educator Opal Lee, known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth, speaks with U.S. President Joe Biden after he signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law in the East Room of the White House on June 17, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

The scene at the White House on Thursday might have been hard to fathom just one year ago.

A diverse crowd of lawmakers, activists and community leaders — including pop icon Usher, with whom many photos were taken — gathered in the East Room to witness President Joe Biden sign into law a new federal holiday: Juneteenth, which on June 19 commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

With coronavirus infections near record lows in the U.S. amid a full-bore vaccination campaign at all levels of government, few members of the indoors, in-person crowd were seen wearing masks.

“We are gathered here, in a house built by enslaved people,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold the title. “We are footsteps away from where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and we are here to witness President Joe Biden establish Juneteenth as a national holiday.”

“We have come far and we have far to go, but today is a day of celebration,” Harris said.

As she spoke, the president stepped off the podium and approached the front row, then knelt down to embrace Opal Lee, the 94-year-old Texas activist credited as a driving force behind the push for the new holiday.

“I’ve only been president for several months, but I think this will go down, for me, as one of the greatest honors I will have had as president,” Biden told the crowd before signing the bill into law.

The 11th national annual holiday was established just two days before Juneteenth itself, and less than three weeks after the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. It also came on the heels of the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd, the unarmed Black man whose caught-on-tape murder in police custody triggered a nationwide eruption of civil unrest.

At a time when Republicans and Democrats agree on virtually nothing, they came together this week to vote overwhelmingly in favor of making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Yet just a year ago in mid-June of 2020, all of those factors — Tulsa, Juneteenth, the waves of protest and the Covid pandemic — posed problems for then-President Donald Trump, who had come under fire for announcing plans to hold a rally in Tulsa on the holiday.

“I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal after moving the date of the rally. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

The contrast between Trump’s final Juneteenth as president and Biden’s first could hardly be more stark. It illustrates not only the seismic changes at play in the nation and how they shaped the present, but also the difference in how the two presidents have approached issues of race.

The path to a federal holiday

Juneteenth celebrates the date in 1865 when enslaved Black people in Texas finally heard that they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln had issued more than two years earlier.

The Confederate Army under Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox in Virginia on April 9, 1865, a capitulation that led to the end of the Civil War. But it wasn’t until June 19 that Union forces under Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, to deliver General Order No. 3, officially ending slavery in the state.

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” the order reads.

Lincoln had been shot at Ford’s Theatre by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth just five days after Lee’s surrender.

The name “Juneteenth” evolved from numerous different names and spellings over the course of decades, historians note.

While the vast majority of states already recognize Juneteenth as a holiday, activists such as Opal Lee have fought for decades for the day to receive federal designation.

In 1939, when Lee was 12 years old, a White mob set fire to her family’s home. No one was arrested. In 2016, Lee, then 89, began to walk from her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. — some 1,400 miles — to advocate for making Juneteenth a national holiday.

“The fact is none of us are free till we’re all free,” Lee told The New York Times in a June 2020 interview.

One year later, Lee attended the White House ceremony to designate Juneteenth as the the first new holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Previous attempts to pass a Juneteenth bill in Congress were unsuccessful. In 2020, one such bill was blocked in the Senate by Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who objected to the cost of giving federal employees another day off.

This time around, he backed off, saying in a statement: “It is clear that there is no appetite in Congress to further discuss the matter.”

The reason why?

“In two words, it’s George Floyd,” said Karlos Hill, chair of the African and African-American Studies Department at the University of Oklahoma, in an interview with CNBC.

In May 2020, video of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes had set off a firestorm of protests around the country. The officer’s conduct drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, and prompted lawmakers to draft a police reform bill in Floyd’s name.

Chauvin in April was found guilty on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

“It took something that stark to change the conversation,” Hill said.

“These things are connected deeply,” Hill said, explaining that the shock of Floyd’s death “created a space and opportunity for Juneteenth.”

Few lawmakers — even those with complaints about the bill — stood in the way this week, when the legislation introduced by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., flew through Congress.

The bill was approved unanimously in the Senate on Tuesday night. A day later, it passed the House in an overwhelming 415-14 vote. The 14 votes against were all Republicans, while 195 GOP lawmakers voted yes.

Among the Republican criticisms were that the decision to name the holiday “Juneteenth National Independence Day” clashed with the existing Independence Day on July 4. They pointed out that the holiday has also been referred to as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day and other names throughout its history.

Others complained, like Johnson, about the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue lost by giving federal workers another day off. And some lawmakers railed against Democrats for rushing the bill to the House floor, bypassing congressional committees and the opportunity to vote on amendments in the process.

One Republican, Matt Rosendale of Montana, issued a statement before the final vote announcing his opposition to the measure because, he claimed, it was an effort to further “identity politics” and “critical race theory” in America.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, dismissed Rosendale’s stance as “kooky.”

The 14 House members who voted against the bill are: Rosendale; Mo Brooks, R-Ala.; Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.; Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn.; Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.; Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif.; Mike Rogers, R-Ala.; Ralph Norman, R-S.C.; Chip Roy, R-Texas; Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Tom McClintock, R-Calif.; Ronny Jackson, R-Texas; Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.

Trump’s Juneteenth

In a statement Friday afternoon celebrating Juneteenth, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said of her party: “We enthusiastically welcome its adoption as our newest national holiday after President Trump called for it last year.”

In September, Trump as part of a series of overtures to Black voters did promise to establish Juneteenth as a national holiday. But there is much more to Trump’s relationship to Juneteenth than McDaniel’s statement suggests.

In June 2020, with the pandemic raging, no vaccines in sight and then-candidate Biden holding a clear edge in the polls, Trump announced he would return to the campaign trail to hold in-person events.

The marquee event of his campaign kickoff: a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19.

The Trump campaign initially defended the scheduling decision as an opportunity for him to tout his “record of success for Black Americans.” But critics called it a slap in the face for Trump to pick Juneteenth to come to Tulsa, the site of one of the worst White-on-Black massacres in U.S. history, to re-launch his re-election campaign in the middle of a national upheaval about racism.

The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender, in an adapted excerpt from his forthcoming book about Trump’s election loss to Biden, reported that top campaign official Brad Parscale had selected the time and place for the rally, and that he had “dug in” after others urged him to make changes.

Bender reported that Trump, bewildered by the backlash to the rally date, had asked a Black Secret Service agent if he knew about Juneteenth. The agent said that he did know about it, adding, “It’s very offensive to me that you’re having this rally on Juneteenth,” according to Bender.

Less than a week before the rally, Trump tweeted he would move the event to June 20, after hearing from “many of my African American friends and supporters” who have “reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date out of respect for this Holiday.”

On Juneteenth itself, Trump’s White House issued a proclamation celebrating the holiday as a reminder of “both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that must have attended emancipation.”

Less than a month earlier, the Floyd video had prompted millions of people to participate in marches and demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality. Numerous protests led to outbreaks of violence and looting in major cities.

Before the event at Tulsa’s BOK Center, Trump, who at that point was still active on Twitter, took to the social media app to issue an ominous threat for potential counterdemonstrators.

“Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma, please understand you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle or Minneapolis,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a much different scene.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who gave a Juneteenth address in Tulsa that Friday, at the time accused Trump of “provoking an incident” with the tweet.

Trump’s crowd in Tulsa fell short of expectations, failing to fill thousands of seats in the nearly 20,000-capacity arena. But in attendance was Herman Cain, a prominent Black businessman, conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate.

The 74-year-old Cain, a stage 4 cancer survivor, was photographed at the event sitting next to other people, none of whom appeared to be wearing masks.

In early July, Cain was hospitalized with the coronavirus, and he was put on a ventilator as his condition worsened. He died July 30, making him among the most high-profile people in the U.S. to succumb to the virus. Cain’s associates have said there is “no way of knowing for sure” how or where he caught Covid.

The Journal’s Bender reported that Trump raged about his lack of support from Black voters on the day after the Tulsa rally.

“I’ve done all this stuff for the Blacks — it’s always Jared [Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law,] telling me to do this,” Trump told one confidant, Bender reported. “And they all f—— hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me.”

Hill said that the U.S. is now “in a different reality” compared with last June, “in a sense that we’ve witnessed the full fallout from George Floyd.”

“We’ve gone on as if things have rectified themselves, and that’s just not the case,” Hill said. As a federal holiday, “Juneteenth might, just might, give pause to that.”