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      Why Rising Diversity Might Not Help Democrats as Much as They Hope

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      Voters of color make up an increasing percentage of the United States electorate, but that trend isn’t hurting Republicans as much as conservatives fear.The Census Bureau released two important sets of data last week that have big implications for American politics — and that challenge some prevailing assumptions for both Democrats and Republicans.The first set of data lays out long-term demographic trends widely thought to favor Democrats: Hispanics, Asian-Americans and multiracial voters grew as a share of the electorate over the last two presidential races, and white voters — who historically tend to back the G.O.P. — fell to 71 percent in 2020 from 73 percent in 2016.The other data set tells a second story. Population growth continues to accelerate in the South and the West, so much so that some Republican-leaning states in those regions are gaining more Electoral College votes. The states won by President Biden will be worth 303 electoral votes, down from 306 electoral votes in 2020. The Democratic disadvantage in the Electoral College just got worse again.These demographic and population shifts are powerfully clarifying about electoral politics in America: The increasing racial diversity among voters isn’t doing quite as much to help Democrats as liberals hope, or to hurt Republicans as much as conservatives fear.The expanding Democratic disadvantage in the Electoral College underscores how the growing diversity of the nation may not aid Democrats enough to win in places they most need help. Just as often, population growth is concentrated in red states — like Texas and Florida — where the Democrats don’t win nonwhite voters by the overwhelming margins necessary to overcome the state’s Republican advantage.As for the Republicans, the widely held assumption that the party will struggle as white voters decline as a percentage of the electorate may be more myth than reality. Contrary to what Tucker Carlson says repeatedly on Fox News about the rise of “white replacement theory” as a Democratic electoral strategy, the country’s growing racial diversity has not drastically upended the party’s chances. Instead, Republicans face a challenge they often take for granted: white voters.One way to think about this is to compare today’s electorate with that of the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were winning in landslides. Democrats, no doubt, have benefited from the increased racial diversity of the country since then: Mr. Biden would not have even come close to winning Georgia in November if its voters were as white they were back in the 1980s. Former President Donald J. Trump would have probably won re-election if he could have turned the demographic clock back to the ’80s and reduced the electoral clout of nonwhite voters. Today’s wave of Republican-backed laws restricting voting rights may be intended to do exactly that.In states like Georgia, where Democrats have needed demographic changes to win, the party has also needed significant improvement among white voters to get over the top.Audra Melton for The New York TimesYet even a return to the racial demographics of the 1980s wouldn’t do nearly as much to hurt Democrats as one might expect. Yes, the November result would have gone from an extremely close win for Mr. Biden to an extremely close win for Mr. Trump. But Mr. Biden would have won more electoral votes than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, even though nonwhite voters had doubled their share of the electorate from 1984 to when Mrs. Clinton sought the presidency. Remarkably, Mr. Biden’s fairly modest gains among white voters helped him as much as the last 30 to 40 years of demographic shifts did.Similarly, Mr. Bush or Mr. Reagan would have still prevailed if they had had to win an electorate that was 29 percent nonwhite, as opposed to the merely 13 to 15 percent nonwhite electorates they sought to persuade at the time.This is not the conventional story of recent electoral history. In the usual tale, the growing racial diversity of the electorate broke the Reagan and Bush majorities and allowed the Democrats to win the national popular vote in seven of the next eight presidential elections.And yet it is hard to find a single state where the increasing racial diversity of the electorate, even over an exceptionally long 30- or 40-year period, has been both necessary and sufficient for Democrats to flip a state from red to blue. Even in states where Democrats have needed demographic changes to win, like Georgia and Arizona, the party has also needed significant improvement among white voters to get over the top.One reason demographic change has failed to transform electoral politics is that the increased diversity of the electorate has come not mainly from Black voters but from Hispanic, Asian-American and multiracial voters. Those groups back Democrats, but not always by overwhelmingly large margins.In 2020, Democrats probably won around 60 to 65 percent of voters across these demographic groups. These are substantial margins, but they are small enough that even decades of demographic shifts wind up costing the Republicans only a couple of percentage points.The new census data’s finding that the percentage of non-Hispanic white voters in the country’s electorate dropped by about two percentage points from 2016 to 2020 might seem like a lot. But with Hispanic, Asian-American and multiracial voters representing the entirety of the increase, while the Black share of the electorate was flat, the growing nonwhite share of the electorate cost Mr. Trump only about half a percentage point over a four-year period.Another factor is the electoral map. The American electoral system rewards flipping states from red to blue, but many Democratic gains among nonwhite voters have been concentrated in the major cities of big and often noncompetitive states. By contrast, many traditional swing states across the northern tier, like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, have had relatively little demographic change.The ability of Democrats to flip red states has been hampered by another pattern: the tendency for Republicans to fare relatively well among nonwhite voters in red states.It’s often said that Latino voters aren’t a monolith, and that’s certainly true. While Hispanic voters back Democrats by overwhelming margins in blue states like New York and Illinois, Republicans are often far more competitive among Latinos and members of other non-Black minority groups in red states — including those Democrats now hope to flip like Texas or Florida.Texas and Florida really would be blue if Latinos voted like their counterparts in New York or Illinois. But instead, Latino population growth has not quite had a strong pro-Democratic punch in the states where the party hoped to land a knockout blow.At the same time, white voters are easy to overlook as a source of Democratic gains, give that these voters still support Republicans by a comfortable margin. But Democrats probably improved from 39 to 43 percent among white voters from 1988 to 2020. It’s a significant shift, and perhaps even enough to cover the entirety of Mr. Bush’s margin of victory in the 1988 election, without any demographic change whatsoever.President Biden won seven states, including Wisconsin, while losing among their white voters.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIt’s a little easier to see the significance of Democratic gains among white voters at the state level. According to AP/Votecast data, Mr. Biden won white voters in states worth 211 electoral votes. Democrats like Jimmy Carter in 1976, Michael Dukakis in 1988 or John Kerry in 2004 probably didn’t win white voters in states worth much more than 60 electoral votes, based on exit poll and other survey data.Mr. Biden even won white voters in many of the states where the growing diversity of the electorate is thought to be the main source of new Democratic strength, including California and Colorado. And he also won white voters in many big, diverse states across the North where Republicans used to win and where nonwhite demographic change might otherwise be considered the decisive source of Democratic strength, like Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland, which voted almost entirely Republican at the presidential level throughout the 1980s.According to the AP/Votecast data, Mr. Biden won seven states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia — while losing among white voters. In these crucial states, Democratic strength among nonwhite voters was essential to Mr. Biden’s victory.But of these states, there are really only three where Mr. Biden clearly prevailed by the margin of the increased racial diversity of the electorate over the last few decades: Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. He did not need to win any of these states to capture the presidency, but he would not have done so without long-term increases in both nonwhite voting power and Democratic strength among white voters.The story is quite different in the Northern battleground states. White voters still represent more than 80 percent of the electorate in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the new census data. The nonwhite population in these states is predominantly Black; their share of the population has been fairly steady over the last few decades. But Mr. Biden won these states so narrowly that the relatively modest demographic shifts of the last few decades were necessary for him to prevail in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.It’s just hard to call it a Great Replacement if Mr. Trump could have won in 2020 if only he had done as well among white voters as he did in 2016. More

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      Swiss Billionaire Quietly Becomes Influential Force Among Democrats

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      Hansjörg Wyss, who recently dropped his bid to buy Tribune Publishing, has been a leading source of difficult-to-trace money to groups associated with Democrats.WASHINGTON — He is not as well known as wealthy liberal patrons like George Soros or Tom Steyer. His political activism is channeled through a daisy chain of opaque organizations that mask the ultimate recipients of his money. But the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has quietly become one of the most important donors to left-leaning advocacy groups and an increasingly influential force among Democrats.Newly obtained tax filings show that two of Mr. Wyss’s organizations, a foundation and a nonprofit fund, donated $208 million from 2016 through early last year to three other nonprofit funds that doled out money to a wide array of groups that backed progressive causes and helped Democrats in their efforts to win the White House and control of Congress last year.Mr. Wyss’s representatives say his organizations’ money is not being spent on political campaigning. But documents and interviews show that the entities have come to play a prominent role in financing the political infrastructure that supports Democrats and their issues.While most of his operation’s recent politically oriented giving was channeled through the three nonprofit funds, Mr. Wyss’s organizations also directly donated tens of millions of dollars since 2016 to groups that opposed former President Donald J. Trump and promoted Democrats and their causes.Beneficiaries of his organizations’ direct giving included prominent groups such as the Center for American Progress and Priorities USA, as well as organizations that ran voter registration and mobilization campaigns to increase Democratic turnout, built media outlets accused of slanting the news to favor Democrats and sought to block Mr. Trump’s nominees, prove he colluded with Russia and push for his impeachment.Several officials from organizations started by Mr. Wyss and his team worked on the Biden transition or joined the administration, and on environmental policy in particular Mr. Wyss’s agenda appears to align with President Biden’s.Mr. Wyss’s growing political influence attracted attention after he emerged last month as a leading bidder for the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain. Mr. Wyss later dropped out of the bidding for the papers.Born in Switzerland and living in Wyoming, he has not disclosed publicly whether he holds citizenship or permanent residency in the United States. Foreign nationals without permanent residency are barred from donating directly to federal political candidates or political action committees, but not from giving to groups that seek to influence public policy — a legal distinction often lost on voters targeted by such groups.Mr. Wyss’s role as a donor is coming to light even as congressional Democrats, with support from Mr. Biden, are pushing legislation intended to rein in so-called dark money spending that could restrict some of the groups financed by Mr. Wyss’s organizations.This type of spending — which is usually channeled through nonprofit groups that do not have to disclose much information about their finances, including their donors — was embraced by conservatives after campaign spending restrictions were loosened by regulatory changes and court rulings, most notably the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in the Citizens United case.While progressives and election watchdogs denounced the developments as bestowing too much power to wealthy interests, Democratic donors and operatives increasingly made use of dark money. During the 2020 election cycle, groups aligned with Democrats spent more than $514 million in such funds, compared to about $200 million spent by groups aligned with Republicans, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.Some of the groups financed by Mr. Wyss’s organizations played a key role in that shift, though the relatively limited disclosure requirements for these types of groups make it impossible to definitively conclude how they spent funds from the Wyss entities.Mr. Wyss and his advisers have honed a “strategic, evidence-based, metrics-driven and results-oriented approach to building political infrastructure,” said Rob Stein, a Democratic strategist.Mr. Stein, who founded the influential Democracy Alliance club of major liberal donors in 2005 and recruited Mr. Wyss to join, added that “unlike most wealthy political donors on the right and left,” Mr. Wyss and his team “know how to create measurable, sustainable impact.”Mr. Wyss, 85, was born in Bern, first visited the United States as an exchange student in 1958, and became enchanted with America’s national parks and public lands. After becoming wealthy while helping lead the Switzerland-based medical device manufacturer Synthes, he began donating his fortune through a network of nonprofit organizations to promote conservation, environmental causes and other issues.The organizations gradually increased their donations to other causes backed by Democrats, including abortion rights and minimum wage increases, and eventually to groups more directly involved in partisan political debates, particularly after Mr. Trump’s election.Asked about the shift, Howard H. Stevenson, who has been close to Mr. Wyss since the two were classmates at Harvard Business School in the 1960s, pointed to Mr. Trump’s sharp reduction to the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. One of Mr. Wyss’s foundations had teamed with five other foundations to commit $1.5 million to preserving the monument. (The Biden administration is now reviewing Mr. Trump’s policy on Bear Ears, which was broadly opposed by Democrats and conservation groups.)“You don’t have to look at people destroying your work to say maybe you want to try and figure out how you respond in the most effective way,” said Mr. Stevenson, who is an adviser to one of Mr. Wyss’s foundations and whose son sits on the board of another Wyss organization.One of Mr. Wyss’s foundations teamed with five other foundations to commit $1.5 million to preserving Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.KC McGinnis for The New York TimesMr. Wyss did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article, and most of the people interviewed either declined to discuss him or requested anonymity to do so.Price Floyd, a spokesman for two of Mr. Wyss’s operations — the Wyss Foundation and Berger Action Fund, both of which are based in Washington — pushed back on suggestions that his giving was intended to help the Democratic Party, suggesting that his focus was on issues important to him.He described Mr. Wyss in a statement as “a successful businessman turned philanthropist who has pledged over a billion dollars to conserve nature and also sought to bolster social welfare programs in the United States.”The Wyss Foundation, which is housed in a stately 19th-century Georgian Revival mansion in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, had assets of more than $2 billion at the end of 2019, according to its most recent tax filing.It is registered under a section of the tax code that prohibits it from spending money to expressly support partisan political campaigns.But it can, and does, donate to groups that seek to influence the political debate in a manner that aligns with Democrats and their agenda, including the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank where Mr. Wyss sits on the board. The organization was started by John D. Podesta, a top White House aide to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. A foundation that Mr. Wyss led as chairman and that has since merged with the Wyss Foundation paid Mr. Podesta as an adviser, and the two men remained close, according to associates.The Berger Action Fund, which shares facilities and staff with the Wyss Foundation, had assets of nearly $65 million at the end of March 2020, according to its most recent tax filing. The fund is registered under a section of the tax code that allows it to spend money supporting and opposing candidates, or to donate to groups that do.Mr. Floyd said Berger Action had its own policy barring “any of its funding from being used to support or oppose political candidates or electoral activities.”Because the recipients of funds from Mr. Wyss’s organizations do not have to disclose many details about their finances, including which donations are used for which projects, it is not clear how they have used the money originating from Mr. Wyss’s operation. But some of the groups funded by Berger Action helped pay for campaign ads helping Democrats and attacking Republicans including Mr. Trump, or gave to other groups that did.The voluntary restriction is potentially notable, given questions about Mr. Wyss’s citizenship.While Mr. Wyss donated nearly $70,000 to Democratic congressional candidates and left-leaning political action committees from 1990 to 2003, he does not appear to have made any such donations to federal candidates or PACs since.Mr. Wyss’s representatives provided the tax filings documenting the expansion of recent giving to politically oriented groups only after requests from a lawyer for The New York Times, and after Mr. Wyss dropped his bid for Tribune Publishing. Such filings are legally required to be made public upon request. The tax filings show that his organizations’ biggest grants in recent years went to entities that mostly dispense funds to other groups, and sometimes act as incubators for new outfits intended partly to serve functions seen as lacking on the left. Voters casting their ballots in Topeka, Kan., in the 2018 midterm elections. While little known by the public, Mr. Wyss and his foundations have come to play an increasing role in financing the political infrastructure that supports Democrats and their issues.Barrett Emke for The New York TimesBetween the spring of 2016 and the spring of 2020, the Berger Action Fund donated more than $135 million to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which has become among the leading dark money spenders on the left, filings from the Internal Revenue Service and Federal Election Commission show.One of the nonprofit groups managed by a for-profit consulting firm called Arabella Advisors, Sixteen Thirty donated more than $63 million to super PACs backing Democrats or opposing Republicans in 2020, including the pro-Biden groups Priorities USA Action and Unite the Country and the scandal-plagued anti-Trump group Lincoln Project, according to Federal Election Commission filings.Another nonprofit managed by Arabella, the New Venture Fund, which is set up under a section of the tax code barring it from partisan political spending, received more than $27.6 million from the Wyss Foundation from 2016 through 2019.Tax filings by the Sixteen Thirty Fund and New Venture Fund do not indicate how they spent the funds from Mr. Wyss’s groups, nor do tax filings submitted by the Sacramento-based Fund for a Better Future, which passes money from donors to groups that push to shape the political process in a way that helps Democrats. The Fund for a Better Future has received the majority of its funding — nearly $45.2 million between the spring of 2016 and the spring of 2020 — from the Berger Action Fund.The Sixteen Thirty Fund, New Venture Fund and Fund for a Better Future did not answer questions about how they spent funds from Mr. Wyss’s organizations, except to say that the money did not go to partisan campaign efforts.Sixteen Thirty and New Venture have helped create and fund dozens of groups, including some that worked to block Mr. Trump’s nominees and push progressive appointments by Mr. Biden.Among the groups under the umbrella of Sixteen Thirty and New Venture is the Hub Project, which was started by Mr. Wyss’s philanthropic network in 2015 as a sort of incubator for groups backing Democrats and their causes, as first reported by The Times. It created more than a dozen groups with anodyne-sounding names that planned to spend $30 million attacking Republican congressional candidates before the 2018 election.In response to questions about donations being passed through to other organizations, Mr. Floyd said the board of the Berger Action Fund has begun in recent years placing “a greater emphasis on supporting other nonprofit organizations or grant-making organizations, like the Sixteen Thirty Fund, that help identify, support and grow promising public interest projects.”Several officials from the Hub Project were hired by the Biden administration, including Rosemary Enobakhare, a former Environmental Protection Agency official in the Obama administration who returned to the agency under Mr. Biden; Maju Varghese as director of the White House Military Office; and Janelle Jones as chief economist for the Labor Department.Molly McUsic — the president of the Wyss Foundation and the Berger Action Fund, and a former board member of the Fund for a Better Future and the Sixteen Thirty Fund — was a member of the Biden transition team that reviewed Interior Department policies and personnel. 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      Blinken Will Visit Ukraine in Show of Support Against Russia

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      The secretary of state will first meet with British officials and other American allies in London.WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will travel to Kyiv next week, a clear signal of the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine’s government against threats from Russia.In a statement announcing the trip, the State Department said Mr. Blinken would “reaffirm unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression.”Mr. Blinken will meet in Kyiv on Wednesday and Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, senior officials and civil society representatives. His visit will be preceded by a three-day stop in London.Mr. Blinken will be the most senior American official to visit Kyiv since Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled there in February 2020, soon after Congress impeached and acquitted President Donald J. Trump on charges that he abused his power by leveraging U.S. policy toward the country in an effort to incriminate Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a Democratic candidate for president, and his son, Hunter.As president, Mr. Biden has offered strong support for Ukraine against Moscow, which annexed Crimea in 2014 — an act the United States has never recognized — and fomented a Russian-backed separatist rebellion in the country’s east that has claimed more than 13,000 lives.But Russia has tested that support, intensifying its military intimidation of Ukraine this spring with a huge troop buildup along the countries’ shared border, which many analysts said could be a precursor to an invasion. Russia announced plans to withdraw many of those forces this month. But earlier this week, John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that it was “too soon to tell and to take at face value” Russia’s claim.Mr. Blinken will begin his trip with his first visit as secretary to London, the site of a Group of 7 foreign and development ministers’ meeting that will lay the groundwork for a gathering of the leaders of the Group of 7 countries in Cornwall in June.The State Department framed Mr. Blinken’s visit as part of a global defense of democracy that Mr. Biden, in an address to Congress and the nation on Wednesday night, called vital to countering the rise of authoritarian China. The State Department spokesman, Ned Price, said Mr. Blinken would be “discussing the democratic values that we share with our partners and allies within the G7.”The meeting of Group of 7 ministers, planned for Tuesday, will open with a session specifically devoted to China, Erica Barks-Ruggles, the senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs, said in a news briefing.Mr. Price added that the foreign ministers would also address the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, as well as issues including human rights, food security and gender equality.Joining the ministers from the Group of 7 countries — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada — in London will be representatives from Australia, India, South Africa, South Korea and Brunei.Their attendance reflects a growing interest on the part of western nations to collaborate more closely with fellow democracies around the world as part of the broader competition with China and other countries exporting authoritarian values, including Russia.Officials from those nations will join ones from the Group of 7 for a discussion on Wednesday about open societies, including media freedom and combating disinformation, Ms. Barks-Ruggles added. Samantha Power, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, will join sessions on how to ensure a sustainable recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.During his stay in London from Monday to Wednesday, Mr. Blinken will meet with Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain and his foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and take part in a wreath-laying ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral honoring soldiers killed in World War II.Even as Biden administration officials have stressed their support for Ukraine’s government, they have also pressured Kyiv to complete reforms within the country’s notoriously corrupt political system. The State Department said that would be a priority for Mr. Blinken, and that progress in that area “is key to securing Ukraine’s democratic institutions, economic prosperity and Euro-Atlantic future.”Briefing reporters on Thursday, Mr. Price said that the United States was “deeply concerned” by a recent move by Ukrainian cabinet ministers to replace the management of the country’s leading energy company, Naftogaz. Mr. Price called the actions “just the latest example of ignoring best practices and putting Ukraine’s hard-fought economic progress at risk.”The trip will be Mr. Blinken’s third overseas since taking office as in-person diplomacy slowly resumes even as the coronavirus ravages much of the world. This month, he visited Brussels and Kabul, and in March he traveled to Asia and then met with Chinese officials in Alaska. More

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      What’s in Biden’s Spending Plan: Free Preschool and National Paid Leave

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      President Biden’s latest proposal is funded by raising taxes on wealthier Americans, and it is likely to encounter Republican resistance for that reason.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s $1.8 trillion spending and tax plan is aimed at bolstering the United States’ social safety net by expanding access to education, reducing the cost of child care and supporting women in the work force.Like the $2 trillion infrastructure plan that preceded it, Mr. Biden’s latest proposal is funded by raising taxes on wealthier Americans, and it is likely to encounter Republican resistance for that reason.Here’s a look at parts of the president’s spending proposal:Free Pre-K and Community CollegeMr. Biden’s plan promises universal free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, as well as two years of free community college for young adults.The plan outlines a $200 billion investment in free universal preschool and another $109 billion over 10 years to make two years of community college free. On top of that, the president is proposing an $85 billion investment in Pell grants, vouchers that low- and moderate-income students use to pay for tuition, fees, books, room and board.The universal free preschool includes children from affluent families. That follows a model that cities like Washington and New York City have used, but some education experts favor programs targeted to helping low-income children.Experts call the plan to fund college education the “biggest expansion in federal support for higher education in at least half a century.”Even though it is broadly popular, free college across 50 states with unique systems and tuition costs, is complicated to carry out. The Biden plan would require states to eliminate tuition for community colleges to receive funding.The president’s pitch is that a high school diploma is no longer enough to ensure success and that making a federal investment in education will increase earnings long term. During the pandemic, unemployed workers without college credentials are having a much harder time finding jobs.Funding for Historically Black Colleges and UniversitiesMr. Biden’s proposal singles out historically Black colleges and universities, known as H.B.C.U.s, as well as institutions that serve members of Native American tribes and other minority groups, for specific funding.Addressing racial equity is a theme that runs through Mr. Biden’s agenda, and the 15-page memo outlining his spending plans notes the extent to which historically Black colleges and universities outperform. While they account for only 3 percent of four-year universities, their graduates account for 80 percent of Black judges and half of Black lawyers and doctors. (Vice President Kamala Harris, the first woman of color to hold the role, is a graduate of Howard University.)Students and alumni gathering at Howard University to celebrate Vice President Kamala Harris’s victory last November.J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressMr. Biden’s plan calls for $39 billion over the next decade to fund two years of subsidized tuition for students from families earning less than $125,000 enrolled in a four-year program at H.B.C.U.s, or institutions that serve members of Native American tribes or other minority groups.During the 2020 presidential campaign, Mr. Biden promised to invest more than $70 billion in such schools, including $20 billion to build research facilities on their campuses.Affordable Child CareMr. Biden’s plan seeks to invest $225 billion to make child care more affordable and allow parents to stay in the labor force and work outside their homes.The plan would give child care providers funding to maintain small class sizes and classrooms that can help children with disabilities. It would also cover all child care costs for working families who are struggling. Administration officials did not say exactly who would qualify to have all child care costs covered, only that it would be a sliding scaled based on earnings compared with the state’s median income. Under the plan, families earning 1.5 times their state median income would pay no more than 7 percent of their income for child care.The plan also seeks to increase wages of early child care providers, who are by and large women of color who currently earn about $12.24 an hour without any benefits. Mr. Biden’s plan would include a $15 minimum wage for early childhood staff.National Paid LeaveMr. Biden is proposing a $225 billion investment over 10 years to cover a nationally mandated 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness leave. The program seeks to provide workers up to $4,000 a month in paid leave, rising to 80 percent for the lowest wage workers.President Donald J. Trump also called for paid family leave in his State of the Union address last year, the first Republican president to take up what has long been a popular Democratic cause.In contrast to Mr. Biden’s approach, the Republican-backed proposal only covered leave for parents of babies or newly adopted children under 6, excluding care for sick family members or leave for personal medical problems. It also did not propose a new source of funding to pay for it. Instead, people could dip into their own future federal benefits, and receive smaller benefits later.NutritionMr. Biden’s plan proposes $45 billion over the next 10 years to combat food insecurity among children.The program would make permanent a summer food program that allows families eligible for free and reduced-price meals during the school year access to meals during the summer at the same rates. Mr. Biden’s plan allocates more than $25 billion to make the program permanent and available to all 29 million children who receive free and reduced-priced meals.The plan also includes $17 billion to expand healthy school meals at high-poverty schools. The proposals would provide free meals to an additional 9.3 million children, about 70 percent of whom are in elementary school. More

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      Biden Underpromises, Overdelivers

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      Like any employee, President Biden has to suffer through periodic performance reviews. Thursday marks his 100th day in office — a time-honored if vaguely arbitrary milestone at which a president’s early moves are sliced, diced and spun for all the world to judge. How many bills has he gotten passed? Whom has he appointed? How many executive orders has he signed? Which promises has he broken? Which constituencies has he ticked off?Mr. Biden took office under extraordinary circumstances, with the nation confronting what he has called a quartet of “converging crises”: a lethal pandemic, economic uncertainty, climate change and racial injustice. Bold policy action was needed. So, too, was an effort to neutralize the toxic politics of the Trump era — which, among other damage, spawned a large reality-free zone in which the bulk of Republicans buy the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.All of which feels like a lot for one mild-mannered 78-year-old to tackle in his first three or so months. Then again, Mr. Biden is built to keep chugging along in the face of adversity, tragedy and lousy odds. That’s how he rolls. And while his first 100 days have been far from flawless, they reflect a clear understanding of why he was elected and what the American people now expect of him.The president moved fast and went big on his signature challenge: confronting the one-two public-health-and-economic punch of the pandemic. He asked Congress for a $1.9 trillion relief package, and Congress basically gave him a $1.9 trillion relief package. Did Republican lawmakers sign on? No, they did not. But the ambitious bill — which went so far as to establish a (temporary) guaranteed income for families with children — drew strong bipartisan support from the public. That was good enough for the White House.Mr. Biden also showed that he knows how to play the expectations game: underpromise, then overdeliver. He initially pledged to get 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses in arms by his 100th day in office. The nation crushed that target in mid-March, prompting Mr. Biden to up the goal to 200 million shots by Day 100. That hurdle was cleared last week.He has fulfilled a range of more targeted promises, largely through executive action. He jettisoned Donald Trump’s repugnant Muslim ban and established a task force to reunite migrant families separated at the southwestern border. He put the United States back in the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He directed federal agencies to conduct internal audits, with an eye toward advancing racial equity, and he rescinded the Trump ban on transgender troops in the military. He hasn’t persuaded Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, but he is upping it for federal contractors.With foreign policy, Mr. Biden has surprised some with his announcement that all U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. Depending on your perspective, this decision is either long overdue or a disaster in the making. Either way, the president wanted to show that he can make the tough calls. More

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      Why Iowa Has Become Such a Heartbreaker for Democrats

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      BURLINGTON, Iowa — Tom Courtney and Terry Davis are former factory workers in Des Moines County along the Mississippi River in eastern Iowa, two men of similar age who skipped college but thrived in a community where blue-collar jobs used to be an engine of upward mobility.In 2008, Mr. Courtney’s daughter Shawna married Mr. Davis’s son Shannon. They celebrated at a rehearsal dinner at the Drake, a steak restaurant on the riverfront in Burlington. The two men are grandparents to Shawna’s daughters from her first marriage, and they occasionally met on the sidelines of Little League games.But as economic decline and social malaise overtook Des Moines County, and Donald J. Trump was embraced by many as an answer, the two men moved in opposite directions. Today they rarely speak. Mr. Davis has become the chairman of the county Republican Party. Mr. Courtney lost his seat as a powerful Democratic state senator in 2016, then tried to win it back last year. He faced an opponent recruited by Mr. Davis.“This was a pretty blue county, but we had a lot of Democrats come over to our side,” Mr. Davis said.Mr. Courtney, who expected a close race, was stunned by the depth of his loss on election night. “As I looked around the state, there were lots of people like me,” he said.“Iowans have changed.”For decades, this state was a reliable wind vane of American politics. In six presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, its voters never deviated by more than one percentage point from the national results.Then in 2016, Mr. Trump pulled Iowa more sharply to the right than any state in the country. The trend continued in 2020, when he ran up wider margins against President Biden than he had against Hillary Clinton in most Iowa counties.Some Democrats believe there are pathways to winning back the working-class voters the party has lost here and in places like it. They point to Mr. Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, the subject of tense negotiations in Washington, which would bring a surge of spending on roads, bridges, child care and clean energy. In Iowa, there are more structurally deficient bridges than any state in the country. Yet, few local Democrats have such high hopes for a political realignment. “There is no short-term elixir,” said Jeff Link, a Democratic strategist in the state.Tom Courtney lost his seat as a powerful Democratic state senator in Iowa in 2016, then tried to win it back last year. Soon after the polls closed, he knew he had no chance. “Iowans have changed,” he said.Jacob Moscovitch for The New York TimesThe 2020 carnage for Iowa Democrats was wide and deep. The party lost a Senate race, gave up two congressional seats and lost half a dozen seats in the state legislature. Unified Republican rule in state government has led Gov. Kim Reynolds to sign permissive gun laws and new restrictions on voting this year, and lawmakers are moving to add a constitutional ban on abortion.Many Democrats now believe that Iowa is all but lost to the party, and that it is time to let go, a view driving a fierce debate over whether to drop the state’s presidential caucuses from their leadoff role in 2024 and beyond. Iowa is small and unrepresentative, more than 90 percent white, and the 2020 election showed that Democrats’ future is in the Sun Belt, with its racially diverse electorate and college-educated suburbanites.Other party strategists are quick to note that Mr. Biden barely won his two Sun Belt pickup states last year, Georgia and Arizona, and that the party can’t afford to bleed more of its traditional voters while making only tenuous inroads with a new constituency.What’s the matter with Iowa, and by extension much of the northern Midwest, for Democrats? Many officials say the party’s cataclysmic losses stem from the erosion in quality of life in rural places like Des Moines County and small cities like Burlington, which are a microcosm for a hollowing out that has led to sweeping political realignments in parts of Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.Schools have closed, rural hospitals are cutting all but bare-bones care, and young people with college degrees have fled for opportunities in Des Moines or Chicago. Employers have backfilled jobs with immigrants, often after weakening unions and cutting pay.“There’s just a discontent, an unhappiness here seeing communities shrink,” said Patty Judge, a Democrat and former lieutenant governor of Iowa. “That makes people very vulnerable to a quick fix. Donald Trump offered that: ‘Let’s make America great again, you’ve lost your voice, let’s have a voice again.’ People have bought into that.”Angela Pforts at her shop in Burlington, Barber and Style. Jacob Moscovitch for The New York TimesMr. Courtney, who is one of eight children of a farm couple he called “strong Roosevelt Democrats,” said that most of his nieces and nephews were “Trumpers,” which confounds him. “They’re not millionaires, most of the family works for wages,” he said. “I don’t understand them.”Mr. Davis’s 95-year-old father is a Democrat. He told his son he always votes for who he thinks will do the best job. “I said, ‘Dad, have you ever voted for a Republican?’” Mr. Davis recalled. “He said, ‘Hell no!’”According to Iowa Workforce Development, a state agency, 1,700 jobs were shed statewide in 2019 outside Iowa’s major cities. It was the third loss in four years, the agency said, “and highlights a trend that is not uncommon in most of the country.”On top of economic factors, other forces forged the Trump coalition in Iowa, as they did elsewhere in places dominated by the white working class: a resentment of immigrants and people of color, and a narrowing of information sources that has pushed conservatives to radio and social media channels where lies and conspiracy theories flourish.A postal carrier in downtown Burlington. There are embers of a downtown revival, but most businesses now line Route 61 west of downtown, where big box stores and chain restaurants draw shoppers from rural towns.Jacob Moscovitch for The New York Times‘Those were my voters’On a recent sunny morning, Mr. Courtney, 73, steered his white S.U.V. around Burlington, a riverfront city with a population of 25,600, which is down by 3.5 percent since 2010. A slender figure with a mustache, silver hair and a soft-pitched voice, Mr. Courtney joined the Air Force out of high school and returned home to work at a Case backhoe plant in Burlington. He rose to become the leader of the union bargaining team before he retired and was elected to the State Senate in 2002.“When I worked there and was bargaining chair, we had 2,300 rank-and-file members,” he said as he drove near the Case plant beside the pewter-colored Mississippi. Today the shop floor is down to 350 workers.“Those were my voters,” he said, passing a nearly empty employee parking lot and a shuttered bar that was once crowded at shift changes. “The last five or six years I worked there, it was nothing to make $70,000 a year. Cars and boats — everybody had all that kind of stuff.” Today, starting wages are about $17 an hour. Burlington rose as a railroad and manufacturing center, and the stone mansions of its 19th-century barons still stand on a bluff above the river. The population peaked around 1970. Although there are embers of a downtown renewal, including a yoga studio and a brew pub, Jefferson Street, the main thoroughfare, was largely deserted on a recent weekday. Most businesses now line Route 61 west of downtown, where big box stores and chain restaurants draw shoppers from rural towns that are themselves losing their economic cores.The visitor’s entrance at the Case factory in Burlington, Iowa. Case’s backhoe plant used to have more than 3,000 employees. Now it has about 350.Jacob Moscovitch for The New York TimesMr. Courtney harks back to a golden era for local Democrats. Des Moines County — not to be confused with the state’s capital city — voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in 10 straight elections before 2016, when Mr. Trump flipped it. Before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Mr. Courtney, who was the majority whip in the State Senate, escorted Mr. Biden, then embarking on his second bid for the presidency, to an interview with editors of The Hawk Eye. In the middle of it, Mr. Courtney’s cellphone buzzed: It was Bill Clinton, pestering him to endorse the former president’s wife. (Mr. Courtney remained neutral.)Mr. Courtney grew up in the rural town of Wapello, 25 miles north of Burlington. He recalled how in 2018 he knocked on doors there for Democrats. “I’d go into neighborhoods that when I was a kid were nice middle-income neighborhoods with nice homes,” he said. “Now today there’s old cars in the yards, there’s trash everywhere. People come to the doors who are obviously poor. Those are Trump people. We’re not reaching those people.”He could not think of a single new factory that opened in Burlington during the Trump years. To Democrats, the fact that Iowans did not punish Mr. Trump in November for failing to bring a renewal of blue-collar jobs speaks to the power of perception over reality.“It’s just this constant slide and they don’t feel like anybody’s doing anything for them, but they believe that Trump was trying,” said Mr. Link, the Democratic strategist. “More than anything, Trump resonated with them in that he was indignant and angry about the status quo, and angry about elites. They’re not getting that same perception from Democrats.”High school students hanging out in the parking lot of the abandoned Shopko in Burlington. Jacob Moscovitch for The New York TimesRepublicans on the riseIn many ways, Mr. Davis, 72, is the obverse of Mr. Courtney. Although he, too, started as a blue-collar worker, an electrician for railroads, Mr. Davis climbed the ranks of management. By the early 2000s he was the superintendent of a Burlington Northern locomotive plant. When the railroad shut down the operation, idling hundreds of union workers in Burlington, Mr. Davis helped with the downsizing. He took early retirement.Mr. Davis had promised his own driving tour of Burlington, but instead sat in his double-cab pickup with a reporter for two hours in the parking lot of a Dick’s Sporting Goods. He wore khaki work pants and a black golf pullover. He spoke in a forceful, folksy voice.Once a Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton, Mr. Davis said he became a Republican because he disagreed with Democrats on abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as what he called handouts to the undeserving.He recalled chatting at a railroad reunion with one of his former electricians who had taken a job at Case. The man told him that he, and many other union workers at the plant, had voted for Mr. Trump.Mr. Davis recalled him saying: “We pay 140 bucks a month to the union, every one of us does. They take that money and give it to a political party that gives it to people that don’t work. The more we thought about it, we thought, ‘I ain’t doing that anymore.’”The electrician added, “You’d be surprised how many of those people voted for Trump.”Terry Davis, the chair of the Des Moines County Republican Party. “This was a pretty blue county, but we had a lot of Democrats come over to our side,” he said.Jacob Moscovitch for The New York TimesLike Mr. Courtney, Mr. Davis expressed some puzzlement about why Mr. Trump had done so well despite not delivering on his promise to bring back blue-collar jobs. “It’s kind of hard to figure,” he said. Mr. Davis was born in Missouri and worked in Kansas City before being transferred to Burlington. He agreed that the quality of life in town was lackluster. “My wife — don’t take this wrong — she’s not going to buy clothes here,’’ he said. “We go to the Quad Cities or Iowa City or Chicago or St. Louis to shop and mainly to kind of get out of town.”He readily acknowledged that Mr. Biden had won the presidency. But he also said that most Republicans in Des Moines County probably believed Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about a stolen election.Democrats say that conservative talk radio, even more than Fox News, has spread conspiracy theories and disinformation to Republican voters. In places like Des Moines County, people now must drive far to see a dentist or buy a pair of shoes, and all of those hours in their cars have increased the influence of right-wing radio.“People are driving all the time, they’ve got their radios on all the time,” Mr. Courtney said. He mentioned a local station, KBUR, “which used to be a nice friendly station.” It was known for a show “to auction things off” and another that was a call-in “question and answer thing,” Mr. Courtney said. Now it broadcasts Sean Hannity for hours each afternoon.Mr. Courtney passed a shuttered middle school. “It’s just hard for me to believe that 15 years ago, we had three big thriving middle schools,” he said, “and today we’re down to nothing like that.”“Folks have left town,” he added.The now-closed Siemens factory in Burlington.Jacob Moscovitch for The New York Times‘There was a racism card’But Mr. Courtney acknowledged another reason, too: white flight to schools in West Burlington. “People will tell you it’s not, but there’s no question it is,” he said. Burlington’s population is 8.2 percent Black. Public school enrollment is 19 percent Black.Barack Obama carried Des Moines County twice, including by 18 points in 2012, before Mr. Trump flipped it. It is one of 31 Obama-Trump pivot counties in Iowa, which has more of them than any other state in the country. A study by sociologists at Iowa State University in 2019 concluded that the state’s hard pivot from Mr. Obama was not because of “economic distress.” It pointed instead to Mr. Trump’s “nativist narrative about ‘taking back America.’”The study found that the counties that gyrated most sharply away from Mr. Obama were almost entirely white.Mr. Courtney does not dispute that racism drove part of that swing, and he has his own theory of why some of the same voters had earlier backed Mr. Obama.“I think they wanted to say they voted for a Black man,” he said. After two terms with Mr. Obama in office, however, Mr. Trump’s brazen attacks on Mexicans, Muslims and other racial and religious minorities gave people permission to indulge inner grievances, Mr. Courtney said. “There was a racism card that came out and people said, ‘I’m sick of this Black guy, I want to go back to a white guy,’” he said. “I hesitate to say that, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.’’Barack Obama carried Des Moines County twice, including by 18 points in 2012, before Donald J. Trump flipped it in 2016.Jacob Moscovitch for The New York TimesThe road back in Iowa for Democrats is long and complicated. The state once prided itself on having more registered independents than Republicans or Democrats, but since 2018, in keeping with national trends toward polarization, independents now rank behind both major parties. Democrats have suffered a net loss of 120,000 registered voters compared with Republicans. Those votes alone are 10 percent of turnout in nonpresidential years.The party’s setbacks have reheated the debate over whether to cancel Iowa’s caucuses as the leadoff nominating contest. Many national Democratic officials argue that a larger and more diverse state should go before either Iowa or New Hampshire. Even some Iowa Democratic strategists have supported killing off the caucuses to focus on local issues and reduce the influence of the national progressive wing of the party.Mr. Courtney said the voters he knew didn’t care much about cultural issues that Democrats elsewhere dwell on, like gun control and immigration. “All they really want to know is where can they get a good job that pays the most money so that they can take care of their family, and we’re not touching on that,” he said.He has cautious hopes for Mr. Biden’s infrastructure proposal. “If we can put people to work making good money building that stuff, it could be like the W.P.A. back in the day,” said Mr. Courtney, whose parents worshiped Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.Even Mr. Davis, the G.O.P. chair, conceded that a robust infrastructure plan that brought jobs to Burlington would make it harder for Republicans to continue their winning streak.“It probably will be tough in four years if things are good,” he said. 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      John Brennan: Joe Biden Should Watch “The Present”

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      On a recent evening I watched “The Present,” a short film by Farah Nablusi, a Palestinian filmmaker, which was nominated for an Academy Award for live-action short film (the winner in the category was “Two Distant Strangers). Ms. Nablusi’s 25-minute film is a powerful, heartbreaking account of the travails of Yusuf, a Palestinian man, and Yasmine, his young daughter, as they traverse an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank twice in a single day.“The Present” establishes its context quickly, opening with images of Palestinian men making their way through a narrow passageway at one of the numerous checkpoints that dot the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians going to work, visiting family or shopping on the opposite side of a security barrier have to bear this humiliating procedure every day.Yusuf sets out with Yasmine to buy an anniversary gift for his wife. He is held in a chain-link holding pen. The ostensible reason is that the Israeli guards want to search him and his possessions more thoroughly. Yasmine sits nearby, watching and waiting in silence.The scene brought back memories of my first visit to the West Bank in 1975, when I crossed the Jordan River and arrived at an Israeli security post. As a student at the American University in Cairo, I was excited about visiting Jerusalem and spending Christmas Eve in Bethlehem. I joined a relatively short line, which moved at a steady and efficient pace.A few feet away, I could see men, women and children in a much longer line fully enclosed by steel mesh fencing labeled “Palestinians and Arabs.” I saw several subjected to discourtesy and aggressive searches by Israeli soldiers.While I was distressed by what I saw, I knew that Israel had legitimate security concerns in the aftermath of the 1967 and 1973 wars, worries that had been heightened by attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets by Palestinian terrorist organizations.Half a century has passed, and the political and security landscape of the Middle East has profoundly changed.Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States last year, have paved the way for four more Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. Hopefully, more Arab leaders will follow suit as there is no reason and little geostrategic sense in continuing to deny the reality and permanence of the state of Israel. (Unfortunately, the accords did nothing for the Palestinians except to obtain a suspension of Israeli plans to illegally annex the West Bank.)There also has been significant progress in reducing violence carried out by Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories. The exception is Hamas, which continues to launch rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip.In the West Bank, Palestinian security and intelligence services have worked closely with their Israeli, Arab and Western counterparts to disrupt extremist networks and prevent attacks. These Palestinian agencies have demonstrated an impressive degree of professionalism over the past two decades.Despite sharply reduced tensions between Israel and the Arab world, the Palestinian people themselves have seen no appreciable progress in their quest to live in their own sovereign state. Political fissures and the ineffective political leadership of the Palestinian Authority have contributed to stymying ambitions for Palestinian nationhood.But that could change. Legislative elections in May and presidential elections in July in the West Bank and Gaza offer Palestinians an opportunity to elect representatives capable of conducting a more effectual political dialogue within the Palestinian homeland and beyond. Palestinian candidates who do not bear the sclerotic reputations of political incumbents, if elected, would help soften the deep-rooted cynicism that many Israeli officials display toward Palestinian negotiators.The major hurdle will be to reverse the trend of diminished interest that the Israeli government has shown in pursuing a two-state solution. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has spearheaded relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank. That expansion has brought along more concrete walls, security barriers and control points, further reducing the spaces where Palestinians can live, graze their flocks, tend their olive groves and vegetable gardens without being challenged by their occupiers.Unfortunately, during the Trump years, the United States ignored Palestinian interests and aspirations. Mr. Trump moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, rejecting the position of all previous U.S. administrations that it would endanger final status negotiations on that contested city. He senselessly severed funding to the Palestinian Authority and ended our contributions to the United Nations for Palestinian refugee assistance.In a welcome change, the Biden administration has authorized the release of $235 million for humanitarian, economic and development programs supporting Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the region.The concluding scene of “The Present” shows Yusuf, tired and hobbled with back pain, increasingly angry and on the verge of violence as he attempts to return home with the anniversary gift. His chilling, emotional outburst made me think of the frustration felt by every Palestinian who has to live with the stifling security measures and political oppression attendant to Israel’s military occupation.It was his little daughter, Yasmine, though, who gave me most pause and concern. She watched her father’s patience, dignity and humanity steadily erode.I can only imagine the imprint such experiences have on the young girls and boys who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They grow up traumatized by injustice, discrimination and violence. They live with the feeling that their existence is controlled by people who don’t care about their welfare, their safety or their future.The Biden administration is dealing with a dizzying array of domestic and international problems but the Palestinian quest for statehood deserves the early engagement of his national security team. The United States needs to tell Israeli leaders to cease provocative settlement construction and the sort of oppressive security practices depicted in “The Present.”A clear signal from President Biden that he expects and is ready to facilitate serious Israeli-Palestinian discussions on a two-state solution would be of great political significance.John Brennan is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More