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      Trump and Harris Both Like a Child Tax Credit but With Different Aims

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      Kamala Harris’s campaign is pushing a version of the credit intended to fight child poverty, while Donald J. Trump sees the program primarily as a tax cut for people higher up the income scale.Vice President Kamala Harris has made an expanded child tax credit central to her campaign, and former President Donald J. Trump boasts, “I doubled the child tax credit.” With a quick look, voters might think the child-rearing subsidy the rare matter on which the rival candidates agree.It is anything but. The common vocabulary masks profound differences over which parents the government should help and what constitutes fairness for children in a country of great wealth and inequality.Mr. Trump sees the $110 billion program mostly as a tax cut, which as president he increased to $2,000 per child and extended to high-income families. But his policy denies the full benefit to the poorest quarter of children because their parents earn too little and owe no income tax.Ms. Harris would expand the tax cuts and add a large anti-poverty plan, sending checks to millions of parents with low pay or no jobs. That would turn a tax cut into an income guarantee, in a landmark expansion of the safety net.Supporters of the Harris plan say the payments would shrink child poverty. Critics see an expensive welfare scheme that could weaken the willingness to work.“They’re both talking about something called the ‘child tax credit,’ but they’re not at all talking about the same policy,” said Scott Winship of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lilly Ledbetter, Whose Fight for Equal Pay Changed U.S. Law, Dies at 86

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      Her lawsuit against Goodyear helped pave the way for the 2009 Fair Pay Act, which was signed into law by former President Barack Obama.Lilly Ledbetter, whose lawsuit against her employer paved the way for the Fair Pay Act of 2009 and who dedicated decades of her life to fighting for equal pay, died in Alabama on Saturday, her family said in a statement. She was 86.The cause was respiratory failure, the statement said. In 1979, Ms. Ledbetter got a job at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Gadsden, Ala. “We needed that money to pay college tuition and the mortgage,” she said at Forbes Magazine’s women’s summit in 2021.At first, Ms. Ledbetter earned the same as her male counterparts, she said. But over time, her pay dropped “way out of line” compared to that of her male peers — unbeknown to her. At the factory, she said in 2021, employees could lose their jobs for sharing information about their salaries. It was not until 1998 that Ms. Ledbetter found out, by receiving an anonymous note, that she in fact earned much less than men working the same position.“I was devastated,” she said.In a 2018 Opinion essay in The Times, Ms. Ledbetter wrote that she was also sexually harassed early on in her tenure at Goodyear.After finding out about the pay discrepancy, Ms. Ledbetter went home and talked to her husband. “And we decided to fight,” she said in a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012.Ms. Ledbetter filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1998 and a lawsuit against Goodyear in 1999. In 2003, she won her case at a federal court in Alabama, with the jury awarding her $3.8 million. (In a 2009 interview with NPR, Ms. Ledbetter said that the sum was reduced to a $300,000 cap and $60,000 in back pay.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump vs. Harris Would Be Nothing Without Myths

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are making their appeals to the American electorate on the basis of personality, character and policy. But they are also framing themselves as actors in the American story — the events of the recent past and the deeper narrative of U.S. history carried by the symbol-rich stories of our national mythology.There has been very little common ground expressed between the parties in this election, except the belief that a victory by the opposition would be apocalyptic. Even when they invoke the same historical references, they present them in radically different ways. To Democrats, Jan. 6 was a shameful assault on democracy. To many Republicans, it was a patriotic protest of a rigged election.It’s as if we are living in two different countries, each with a different understanding of who counts as American.Each candidate is trying to pitch the contest to voters as a heroic episode in the unfolding of American history and invites them to imagine themselves as players in the narrative.In the “story wars,” Mr. Trump has an advantage over Ms. Harris: Conservatives have devised over decades a store of established mythological American “scripts,” something liberals have failed to do.Among the big issues at stake in the 2024 election, for both the campaigns and the country, is no less than shaping what it means to be an American and who gets to have power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Here’s Why We Shouldn’t Demean Trump Voters

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      Some of the best advice Democrats have received recently came from Bill Clinton in his speech at the Democratic National Convention.First, he warned against hubris: “We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen, when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.” That’s something that any Clinton understands in his — or her — gut.Second, related and even more important, he cautioned against demeaning voters who don’t share liberal values.“I urge you to meet people where they are,” said Clinton, who knows something about winning votes outside of solid blue states. “I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don’t disagree with them if you do. Treat them with respect — just the way you’d like them to treat you.”That’s critical counsel because too often since 2016, the liberal impulse has been to demonize anyone at all sympathetic to Donald Trump as a racist and bigot. This has been politically foolish, for it’s difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.It has also seemed to me morally offensive, particularly when well-educated and successful elites are scorning disadvantaged, working-class Americans who have been left behind economically and socially and in many cases are dying young. They deserve empathy, not insults.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Dangles New Tax Cut Proposals With Real Political Appeal

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      The most recent and costliest of Mr. Trump’s ideas would end income taxes on Social Security benefits.First it was a tax cut for hotel and restaurant workers in Nevada, a swing state where Donald J. Trump proposed exempting tips from taxes. Then, in front of powerful chief executives gathered in Washington, Mr. Trump floated cutting the corporate tax rate, helping to ease concerns in the business community about his candidacy.Now Mr. Trump is calling for an end to taxing Social Security benefits, which could be a boon for retirees, one of the most politically important groups in the United States.Repeatedly during the campaign, Mr. Trump and Republicans have embraced new, sometimes novel tax cuts in an attempt to shore up support with major constituencies. In a series of social-media posts, at political rallies, and without formal policy proposals, Mr. Trump has casually suggested reducing federal revenue by trillions of dollars.While policy experts have taken issue with the ideas, Mr. Trump’s pronouncements have real political appeal, at times putting Democrats on their back foot. Nevada’s two Democratic senators and its powerful culinary union have endorsed ending taxes on tips, while the AARP supports tax relief for seniors receiving Social Security benefits.“You do have to scratch your head a little bit when someone’s going around offering free lunches everywhere,” said Jesse Lee, a Democratic consultant and former Biden White House official. “We’re all for people having their lunch, but we have to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.”The most recent and most expensive of Mr. Trump’s plans is ending income taxes on Social Security benefits, which could cost the federal government as much as $1.8 trillion in revenue over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That would burn through the program’s financial reserves more quickly and hasten the moment when the government is no longer able to pay out Social Security benefits in full under current law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tulsa Creates Commission on Reparations for Race Massacre

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      The NewsThe mayor of Tulsa, Okla., announced on Thursday the creation of a commission tasked with developing a plan for reparations for the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst racial attacks in U.S. history. The commission will study how reparations can be made to survivors of the massacre and their descendants, as well as residents of North Tulsa.Community members, activists, city leaders, clergy and children prayed in 2019 beside two grave markers for victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre.Joseph Rushmore for The New York TimesWhy It MattersDuring the 1921 massacre, white mobs burned Greenwood, a prosperous neighborhood known as Black Wall Street, to the ground. As many as 300 Black people were killed, hundreds more were injured, and thousands were left homeless. City officials, historians and the courts acknowledge that the massacre has led to generations of racial inequity in Tulsa.Calls for reparations in Tulsa are longstanding and have resulted in apologies, a scholarship program and other actions, but not direct financial redress.The last two known survivors of the massacre, now centenarians, have pursued reparations through the courts, but the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed their case in June.Two reports — one from a commission created by the State Legislature in 2001 and one by a group of Tulsa residents in 2023 — recommended reparations, including financial compensation. The commission announced Thursday, named the Beyond Apology Commission, follows the 2023 report’s calls for the city to create a group to examine and carry out a reparations program.Mayor G.T. Bynum, a Republican, has signaled that he wants this body to make recommendations that would result in tangible action. He wrote a social media post this week that the commission is not intended to be merely a “study group.”He also noted that part of the group’s mission is to produce a plan for a housing equity program by the end of November. (The mayor, who created the commission by executive order, is not seeking re-election, and his term will end in December.)Funds that could be used for that program have already been approved by voters, the mayor said.The debate over reparations has at times divided the city. In 2021, a dispute over who should compensate the survivors and their descendants preceded the sudden cancellation of an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the massacre.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Family Loses 3 Generations of Women in India Crowd’s Panic

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      Vinod Kumar was away from home on Tuesday, as he usually is for days at a time in search of masonry work, when he got the dreadful call.All the women in his family, three generations of them, were dead, crushed in a stampede.For the rest of the day, Mr. Kumar and his three sons went from hospital to hospital searching for their loved ones among the bodies of the 121 people who had died when a large gathering of a spiritual guru broke into deadly panic.Close to midnight, they found the bodies of his wife, Raj Kumari, 42, and daughter, Bhumi, 9, at the government hospital in Hathras, laid out on large slabs of ice among the dozens others in the corridor.“Why did you leave me just like that? Who will scold the children now and push them to go to school?” Mr. Kumar wailed at the feet of his wife.But he couldn’t afford to be entirely lost in grief yet. The body of his mother was yet to be found. He bent over to pick up his daughter for one last embrace. Bhumi wore a yellow top, and her hair was tied in a ponytail with a pink band.“Let her sleep,” Nitin, Mr. Kumar’s oldest son, told him, pulling the girl away from his father to lay her back on the slab so they could continue the search.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Soma Golden Behr, 84, Dies; Inspired Enterprising Journalism at The Times

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      The first woman to serve as the paper’s national editor, she focused on issues of race, class and poverty in rising to assistant managing editor.Soma Golden Behr, a longtime senior editor at The New York Times who was a centrifuge of story ideas — they flew out of her in all directions — and whose journalistic passions were poverty, race and class, which led to reporting that won Pulitzer Prizes, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 84.Her death, in the palliative care unit of Mount Sinai Hospital, came after breast cancer had spread to other organs, her husband, William A. Behr, said.Ms. Golden Behr, whose economics degree from Radcliffe led to a lifetime interest in issues around inequality, was instrumental in overseeing several major series for The Times that examined class and racial divides. Each enlisted squads of reporters, photographers and editors for intensive, sometimes yearlong assignments.“How Race Is Lived in America,” overseen with Gerald M. Boyd, who would become the Times’s first Black managing editor, peeled away the conventional wisdom that the country at the turn of the 21st century had become “post racial.” Its deep dives into an integrated church, the military, a slaughterhouse and elsewhere won the paper the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2001.Another series, “Class in America,” was an examination in 2005 of how social class, often unspoken, produced glaring imbalances in society.Earlier, Ms. Golden Behr oversaw a 10-part series in 1993, “Children of the Shadows,” which pushed past stereotypes of young people in inner cities. The reporter Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer in feature writing for her searing portrait in the series of a 10-year-old boy caring for four siblings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More