The Biden administration is expected on Thursday to publish its final rule unwinding a Trump-era policy that sought to limit immigration of those it feared may rely on social services.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will unveil a rule that would roll back the Trump administration’s so-called public charge rule, restricting immigration pathways for those seeking to become U.S. citizens only if they are “primarily dependent on the government for subsistence.”
The rule would be a departure from a Trump-era policy requiring prospective new citizens to forecast whether they might at any time rely on government aid, including barring those who received assistance from one program over the course of a year.
The Biden administration stopped defending the Trump-era rule in litigation just months after taking office.
DHS then offered its own proposed update for the rule in February, calling it a break from the “harsh approach” taken by its predecessor that “caused many noncitizens to be fearful of accessing benefits that Congress intended them to have.”
“The 2019 public charge rule was not consistent with our nation’s values,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a press release at the time.
“Under this proposed rule, we will return to the historical understanding of the term ‘public charge’ and individuals will not be penalized for choosing to access the health benefits and other supplemental government services available to them,” he said.
While the Trump-era rule also considered reliance on a broad array of government services as potentially disqualifying, the Biden proposal narrowed that list. Use of food stamps, Medicaid,or housing benefits would not be used to determine if someone was a public charge.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said the push to pass her antitrust bill that aims to rein in the power of tech giants isn’t dead.
In other news, the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint advisory warning that cyberattacks may increase against schools as the academic year begins.
This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Send tips to The Hill’s Rebecca Klar. Someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.
Klobuchar continues push for antitrust bill
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said the push to pass her antitrust legislation targeting the largest tech companies isn’t dead, despite the bill still waiting for a scheduled floor vote.
Klobuchar made her latest plug for her American Innovation and Online Choice Act in an interview with Vox’s Kara Swisher at the Code Conference on Tuesday.
The bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), aims to limit tech companies from preferencing their own products and services over rivals’. It advanced out of the Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support earlier this year, but has yet to be called for a floor vote.
Klobuchar, who chairs the antitrust subcommittee, did not give an exact date or guarantee the vote will happen before the midterms.
“It is really hard to take on these subjects when you have the biggest companies the world has ever known, that control an inordinate part of the economy, opposed to it,” she said in the interview. “It is an incredible amount of money I’m up against. I have two lawyers. They have 2,800 lawyers and lobbyists. So I’m not naive about the David versus Goliath.”
“School districts with limited cybersecurity capabilities and constrained resources are often the most vulnerable; however, the opportunistic targeting often seen with cyber criminals can still put school districts with robust cybersecurity programs at risk,” the advisory reads.
The agencies outlined a series of recommendations for school districts to mitigate cyber threats, like maintaining a strong relationship with their local FBI field office and maintaining password standards.
The violent extremist “boogaloo” movement is showing new signs of activity on Facebook, in spite of the social media platform’s ban on the group, according to a new report from the Tech Transparency Project.
Boogaloo groups and individual “boogaloo bois” have increased their activity on Facebook following the FBI’s search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, the Tech Transparency Project found.
The boogaloo movement appears to “see this moment as a growth opportunity for their movement” and hopes to “capitalize on the wave of far-right anger at the FBI,” the report said.
Meta’s response: Facebook’s parent company Meta noted when it first banned the boogaloo movement in 2020 that it was aware the group would likely attempt to “return to using our platform and adopting new terminology.”
“This is an adversarial space, with perpetrators constantly trying to find new ways to evade our policies, which is why we work with a number of organizations to flag content and stay ahead of evolving trends,” a Meta spokesperson said on Wednesday.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to debate the Journalism and Competition and Preservation Act during a meeting Thursday.
The proposal would give digital news publishers the ability to negotiate collectively with dominant tech platforms, like Google and Facebook, to distribute their content.
A revised version of the proposal was released in August by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). In the House, it was introduced by Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nalder (D-N.Y.) and antitrust subcommittee chair and ranking member Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Ken Buck (D-Colo.).
The News Media Alliance says the bill would help the local news industry after years of tech giants cutting into their revenue.
But the legislation is facing pushback from tech industry group Chamber of Progress and 20 advocacy groups that sent a letter Friday to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee campaigning against the legislation.
In part, they argue a provision in the revised bill that doesn’t allow tech companies to “discriminate against any eligible digital journalism provider,” could force tech companies to host content “regardless of how extreme” it is.
The U.S. National Security Council (NSC) on Wednesday called for Iran to be held accountable for an “unprecedented” cyberattack it said the country committed against Albania in July.
NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a release the United States condemns Iran’s actions and plans to hold Iran accountable for threatening the security of an ally and setting a “troubling precedent” for cyberspace.
A cyberattack temporarily shut down multiple Albanian government digital services and websites on July 15. Prime Minister Edi Rama said in a statement addressed to the Albanian people on Wednesday that an investigation confirmed “without a shadow of a doubt” that the attack was not conducted by individuals or independent criminal organizations, but state-sponsored groups.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.
Welcome to The Hill’s Campaign Report, tracking all things related to the 2022 midterm elections. You can expect this newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday leading up to November’s election.
While Senate races in places Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona have gotten the bulk of the media attention this summer, the Nevada Senate contest is an especially important one to watch.
That’s because it could make or break Democrats’ chances of retaining their majority in the Senate. And in Nevada, which is known for tight races — Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) won her first Senate election in 2016 with just over 2 percentage points — this year’s election is expected to be another nailbiter.
How one GOP strategist summed up the race: “This is the most important race on the map for Republicans or Democrats.”
What Democrats are saying: “Democrats have shown that they have the ability to get out the vote and win close races in Nevada,” one Democratic operative said.
As Caroline Vakil and Julia Manchester write, this swingy Senate race between Cortez Masto and Republican challenger Adam Laxalt in already very swingy state is likely going to hinge on abortion and the economy.
The issue of abortion is going to be a particularly interesting one given that abortion rights up to 24 weeks are already protected in the state.
Democrats are already trying to put Laxalt on defense. The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is airing an ad this week hitting Laxalt on his abortion stance and for previous comments he reportedly made. His campaign told The Hill that the ad was “wildly inaccurate” and “dishonest.”
Another issue to factor into this Senate race? How effectively candidates can court Latino voters, given that one in five (that’s roughly 165,100 people) are expected to vote this November.
Both campaigns, for example, have worked on Latino and Hispanic outreach through ad buys in addition to other means. Other groups have also sought to engage with voters.
“We are making sure that we are not leaving a door behind,” Cecia Alvarado, executive director of the Democratic-leaning group aimed at engaging Latino voters, Somos Votantes, said. “They have been put into the label that this is not a frequent voter, but we don’t believe in those labels. We believe in talking to our communities.”
Oz ramps up attacks on Fetterman
Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and his allies are ramping up attacks on Democratic candidate John Fetterman as recent polls show the celebrity doctor trailing the state’s lieutenant governor.
Wednesday marked one of the sharpest attacks in the contest yet. The American Leadership Action, a political committee backing Oz, rolled out a 30-second ad targeting Fetterman over a 2013 incident in which he brandished a gun at a Black man whom he suspected of committing a crime.
The spot is meant to appeal to Black voters in the state, with the ad airing on networks with robust Black viewership including Black Entertainment Television, the Oprah Winfrey Network, ESPN and MSNBC.
It comes as Oz’s campaign is working to close the gap in polls with Fetterman. Oz has recently attacked Fetterman for not agreeing to participate in upcoming Senate debates. On Tuesday, Oz and retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) held a press conference calling on Fetterman to debate.
The Democrat’s campaign has launched its own series of attacks, many online, against Oz. And Fetterman’s allies are following suit as well. On Wednesday, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched a mobile billboard around Pittsburgh reminding voters of the raucous GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania as Oz and former candidate David McCormick prepared to unite for a national security panel.
And on Tuesday, Fetterman’s campaign rolled out a video contrasting his statements defending legal abortion access for women with those of Oz calling the procedure “murder.”
Last week former President Trump traveled to Pennsylvania to stump for Oz and Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, with the hopes of galvanizing his base around the two GOP candidates. But Oz also appears to be trying to appeal to a more moderate base as well. At a press conference on Tuesday, Oz said that he would have certified President Biden’s 2020 win over Trump, a notable break with the former president.
“I would not have objected to it,” Oz said. “By the time the delegates and those reports were sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it, which is what I would have done.”
AD WATCH
Georgia Senate hopeful Herschel Walker’s (R) campaign is out with a new ad this week accusing Democrats of using “race to divide” the country. In the 30-second spot, called “Bring Us Together,” he airs clips of Democrats like President Biden and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) speaking about race.
“Senator Warnock believes America is a bad country full of racist people. I believe we’re a great country full of generous people. Warnock wants to divide us. I want to bring us together,” Warnock, who is Black, says in the ad.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP group, launched 22 ads in 21 congressional districts on Wednesday. The ads touch on government spending, tax hikes, and crime. The spots will air in CT-05, PA-17, CA-47, TX-28, OR-05, NJ-07, NY-18, CA-13, CA-22, CA-27, CA-45, MI-03, MI-10, MN-02, NE-02, NM-02, OH-13, TX-15, VA-02, WA-08, and WI-03.
POLL WATCH
In Michigan: A Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll shows Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) holding a 13-percentage point lead over Republican challenger Tudor Dixon. The poll shows Whitmer’s increase widening slightly since the last time a similar poll was conducted in July, which showed Whitmer 11 points ahead of Dixon.
In Florida: An AARP-commissioned poll shows Gov. Ron DeSantis (R ) holding a 3-percentage point lead over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist. The polling showed 50 percent of likely Florida voters supporting DeSantis compared to 47 percent backing Crist. The polling, which was conducted by Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research, falls within the margin of error, virtually tying the two.
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading and check out The Hill’s Campaign page for the latest news and coverage. See you tomorrow.
Vice President Harris will lead a presidential delegation to the funeral for former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo later this month, the White House announced on Wednesday.
Harris’s trip will span Sept. 25-29 and will also include a stop in South Korea, her press secretary Kirsten Allen said in a statement.
“Her visit will honor the legacy of Prime Minister Abe and underscore the importance of his leadership in championing the alliance between the United States and Japan and advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Allen said. “Additional members of the delegation will be announced at a later date.”
In addition to attending the state funeral for Abe, who was assassinated in July, Harris will also meet with government officials in both Tokyo and Seoul in order to highlight the United States’ commitment “to a free and open Indo-Pacific, and our shared economic and security interests in the region and around the world,” Allen said.
The trip will represent Harris’s first to Japan and South Korea as vice president. President Biden visited both countries in May in his first trip to the region as president.
Abe was shot and killed in July while speaking at a campaign event. A 41-year-old man named Tetsuya Yamagami was arrested shortly thereafter as the suspect in the shooting.
Back to school season is generally a time of hope and optimism. But for families whose children rely on free or reduced-price breakfast or lunch, this school year is off to a confusing and stressful start. Our students deserve better.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) implemented a waiver program that allowed public schools to serve free meals to all students for the 2020-21 school year. The program also offered schools flexibility around when and how they could serve meals, which was critical during an unpredictable time of school closures and supply chain shortages. Alongside other pandemic aid, the program helped relieve hunger — U.S. food insecurity levels in 2020 did not statistically change from 2019 levels, due to programs like this one.
While the Keep Kids Fed Act extended these critical waivers through the summer, we are now in a position where as of Sept. 30, we need leaders to act — again — so that millions of students do not go hungry.
It’s well-known that school meals benefit students, resulting in fewer visits to the nurse, improved attendance, better test scores, and more. What’s less well-known is that every dollar invested in U.S. school meal programs returns $2 in societal benefits by improving health outcomes and reducing childhood poverty.
Last fall, The Rockefeller Foundation and the Center for Good Food Purchasing released the True Cost of Food: School Meals Case Study, which calculated the total costs and benefits of U.S. school meal programs. The case study found that these programs generate $40 billion in health and economic equity benefits — more than twice what’s spent to run them — for a net value of more than $20 billion every year. That rate of return, which would make any investor envious, calls for more investment, not less.
Eighty four percent of low-income households with school-age children access free or reduced-price lunches at school. The financial benefit of receiving these meals lifts over 722,000 children above the poverty threshold, and addresses some of the factors associated with childhood poverty, including food insecurity.
Our case study found that new investments in school meal programs could create an additional $10 billion in annual benefits to society and help transform communities. By optimizing the ways schools purchase food, including sourcing from local suppliers, a comprehensive program could produce another $1.3 billion in annual net value. Food purchasing dollars can support local economies, worker livelihoods, and environmental health, while also generating more equitable returns to farmers, food workers, and suppliers of color.
School meals are healthier than the average American diet for most of the 30 million children who participate in national programs, scoring better than average on the Healthy Eating Index. On school days, these children consume as much as half their daily calories at school.
Increasing their nutrition quality even further by shifting away from processed meats and foods high in added sugar and sodium, and toward meals higher in whole grains, legumes, and vegetables, could yield an additional $1.5 billion per year by helping to prevent diet-related diseases and providing environmental and climate benefits.
And extending free meals to significantly more children, these programs could generate more than $7.5 billion in societal value each year.
The extension of the USDA’s pandemic relief program was an important stop-gap measure. But to truly nourish the next generation of Americans, we need to stop passing months-long extensions and make healthy school meals available to all students — permanently.
Federal leaders should be following the example set by California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada and Vermont in adopting policies that deliver healthy school meals not only to the relief of students and their families, but to school districts and other community programs which are often tasked with helping to catch those students who fall through the cracks after not qualifying for reduced meals, but who continue to arrive at and depart from school hungry.
Roy Steiner is the Senior Vice President of Food Initiatives at The Rockefeller Foundation.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress has just reported steep drops in student achievement at the nation’s public schools. How will parents respond to the news? Is the downward trend in private education enrollments about to be reversed?
Before COVID-19, private school enrollments were headed downhill. Between 1964 and 2019, the percentage of students attending private schools fell from 14 percent to 9 percent of all school-age children, an all-time low.
Then, in fall 2020, most public schools kept their doors closed. Only 24 percent of public school students attended school in person, as compared to 60 percent of private school children, according to Education Next parental survey (which I helped design). The following May, nearly 80 percent of private schoolers were in class every day, as compared to only half of those at public schools.
Learning online was not good for students. Parents reported learning losses for 64 percent of children at public schools but only 43 percent of children at private ones. Private schools also had greater success in curbing adverse effects on children’s social relationships, emotional well-being and physical fitness.
When they opened, private schools were accused of gambling with their students’ health. Tom Carroll, superintendent of the Catholic archdiocese in Boston, recalls he “started getting letters, people saying, ‘Well, are you going to go to the funeral of every single child that you killed by opening all the schools?’” Kathleen Porter-McGee, head of a Catholic school network in New York, remembers, “it was a scary time…the fear was palpable.”
When COVID spread at school proved minimal and mild, the private school bet paid off. “From the point [when schools announced closures] to roughly the middle of October, the phones kept ringing,” Carroll recalls. “So we gained about 4,400 students,” Our poll indicates a 2 percent gain in private school share between 2019 and 2022. If the survey is on the mark, it means a shift of 1 million students from the public to the private sector.
Despite these short-term gains, ever-rising costs still impede further growth. In 1979, median school tuition was $554. Since that time prices have escalated at twice the rate of the consumer price index. Today, the average tuition at private schools is more than $12,000 annually. What many middle- and working-class families could once afford is now available to them only at considerable sacrifice.
Tuition hikes are likely to continue indefinitely. Education is a labor-intensive industry. It takes as much time today for a teacher to instruct a class of 20 as it did a century ago. For as long as that continues, schools must charge higher tuitions to pay salaries that keep pace with rising wages in the rest of the economy.
Private educators must also worry about competition from charter schools. Like private schools, most charters claim to offer safe, well-disciplined classrooms. But, unlike private schools, charters are tuition-free. “In New York we have to bring our A game, because we’re competing for students against the most well-known and top performing charter networks in the country,” says Porter-Magee.
Homeschooling is emerging as another challenge. The percentage choosing that option has doubled from 3 percent to 6 percent since the pandemic. Homeschooling is also morphing into hybrid forms, such as neighborhood pods, home-private school combinations and micro-schools where parents teach.
The 1,200 high-prestige schools that belong to the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) have the fewest worries. Even though tuition for the approximately 1 percent of the school-age population attending these schools averages a hefty $26,866 a year, they will survive if “one percenters” continue to do well.
Catholic school leaders are more concerned. According to Carol Ann MacGregor, professor at Waterloo University, “Catholic schools educated more than 75 percent of all school children at their peak in the mid-1960s.” But the Catholic share of the private sector dropped to around 50 percent by 1993, and today it is less than 35 percent — an extraordinary loss in market share.
Catholic schools have a fine academic track record. Most studies of college enrollment rates show that Catholic schools typically outperform nearby public schools. Positive impacts of a Catholic education are especially large for African Americans.
But as the supply of teaching nuns waned, Catholic education costs have skyrocketed. Also, dioceses were forced to pay out more than $3 billion dollars in lawsuit settlements to victims of clergy abuse. Nor did it help when increasingly prosperous Catholic immigrants abandoned their cramped religious schools in central cities for spacious public schools and playgrounds in the suburbs.
Christian schools are now the fastest growing segment of the private sector. White Southerners rushed to these institutions when public schools desegregated in the 1960s.
Today, school leaders say they welcome African American students, who constitute 11 percent of their enrollments. According to Jeff Keaton, a leader of the Christian school movement in Virginia, the country is now entering a “second Great Awakening in Christian education.” In Virginia, applications spiked when controversies over critical race theory, the 1619 Project and school gender policy filled the airways during the state’s 2021 gubernatorial campaign.
Is a Great Awakening for private schools at hand? Perhaps. “Millions of American parents . . . are fed up with being considered nuisances and dismissed by the public school establishment,” says Betsy DeVos, former U.S. secretary of Education. Since the pandemic, more than 20 red and purple states have enacted or expanded school-choice laws of direct benefit to private schools.
But the new laws are limited in scope. Even if all the new options were fully utilized, private school enrollments would increase by only 3 percent, leaving the share of students in the private sector below its 1964 level. Unless governments offer larger subsidies to every family that wishes to attend private school, major expansion of the private sector is unlikely.
Paul E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education. He is also the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University.
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge on Wednesday tied her job success to the results she delivers to disadvantaged communities.
“We currently face a 1.5 million home shortage in this country. We need strong, inclusive, sustainable communities and affordable homes for the people that live in them. And if I don’t do more for communities like yours, then I have not done my job and I won’t go out that way,” Fudge told the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB).
NALCAB, a network of nonprofit organizations dedicated to growing wealth among Hispanics, is holding its annual three-day National Conference in Washington, D.C.
The group’s focus is to advance economic mobility in Latino communities, with a focus on building generational wealth through a range of economic activities, including homeownership.
“We are really focused on helping close the racial and ethnic wealth gap, and our members are doing that through all sorts of economic development interventions that all have the aim of advancing economic mobility for Latinos in the United States,” NALCAB CEO Marla Bilonick told The Hill in a recent interview.
Historically, homeownership has been a key builder of wealth in the United States.
While the Latino homeownership rate reached 48.4 percent in 2021, it’s still below the peak 49.7 percent rate in 2007, before the financial crisis, according to a report by The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.
The growth in homeownership over the past two years was outpaced by the homeownership growth among non-Hispanic whites, according to the report, despite faster population growth among Hispanics.
That’s a contributing factor to the ethnic wealth gap, the difference in total average assets between white and Hispanic families.
According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a typical Hispanic family in 2019 owned $38,000 in total wealth, compared to $184,000 for the typical white family.
The Black-white gap was even greater, as the typical Black family owned about $23,000 in total wealth.
Fudge’s invitation as the keynote speaker underlined the importance of homeownership for NALCAB, but the conference is scheduled to touch on a series of economic issues, from business ownership to a session on development for rural communities in Puerto Rico.
The overall focus for NALCAB is to help its member organizations implement asset-building programs in the communities they serve.
“The assets that are being built are homes that are owned, businesses that are owned and grown, jobs that are created,” said Bilonick.
“The recognition that we’re really building assets that can be passed down to a next generation is the way that we focus on closing the racial wealth gap. And of course, there are other levers to be pulled, but all of our members share that in common that they’re looking to advance economic mobility for Latinos through these interventions that help them to build assets,” she added.
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A Michigan judge on Wednesday ruled a state law passed in 1931 that banned abortions cannot be enforced, citing the state’s constitution and the right to privacy that it provides.
Planned Parenthood of Michigan filed the lawsuit against the Michigan state government in April to halt a near-total abortion ban from going into effect. The 1931 law, which was triggered after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, banned all abortions except in situations where the mother’s life was endangered due to her pregnancy.
No exceptions for incest or rape are included in the ban.
Michigan Court of Claims Chief Judge Elizabeth Gleicher wrote in her decision that the law “violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Michigan Constitution.” She found that the law was unconstitutional because it would “deprive women of their right to bodily integrity and autonomy, and the equal protection of the law.”
In her ruling, Gleicher noted that there are no laws that provide support for a mother or her child if they suffer from ill health as a result of pregnancy or lack social support to fall back on or if giving birth forces a woman to forgo pursuing a career or education.
“This is the legal landscape against which the Court must evaluate the undisputed evidence in this case,” Gleicher wrote, further adding that the law would “endanger the health and lives of women seeking to exercise their constitutional right to abortion.”
The defense in the lawsuit had argued that an abortion ban had nothing to do with bodily integrity on the basis that pregnancy did not involve “nonconsensual entry into the body.”
Gleicher wrote in her opinion that this argument was “easily” dispensed, saying, “As any woman who has experienced pregnancy and delivery knows, the process is utterly transformative of every bodily function.”
“When pregnancy is desired, the word ‘intrusion’ is likely low on the list of a mother’s descriptors of the process. But when pregnancy is unwelcome, dangerous, or likely to result in negative health consequences, it is indeed a ‘bodily intrusion,'” Gleicher added.
The judge further pushed back against other arguments raised by the defense, writing, “Michigan’s Constitution protects the rights of all pregnant people to make autonomous health decisions.”
In August, Oakland County Judge Jacob Cunningham had similarly blocked county prosecutors from enforcing the same 1931 law, writing that “the harm to the body of women and people capable of pregnancy in not issuing the injunction could not be more real, clear, present and dangerous to the court.”
The holidays are just a few months away and it’s always better to book flights earlier to save money.
Phil Dengler, co-owner of the travel site The Vacationer, recommends booking Thanksgiving flights before Halloween for the best deal.
Dengler also recommends securing a flight for Christmas by Thanksgiving at the latest to snag a cheaper ticket.
Traveling around the holidays is a pain but booking plane or train tickets can make getting to, or getting away from, loved ones a little less stressful.
The busiest travel days for the Thanksgiving holiday are typically the day before Turkey Day, Wednesday, Nov. 23 and the last day of the holiday weekend Sunday, Nov. 27. So, those who hate traffic jams or crowds should avoid traveling on those days.
For Thanksgiving travel, the cheapest tickets will be up for grabs in June or July but there is still time to find a deal on airfare, according to Phil Dengler, co-owner of the travel site The Vacationer.
“I view Halloween as the cutoff date for getting a reasonable price on a Thanksgiving flight but aim to get booked by the middle of September,” Dengler said in an email. “After Halloween, prices will increase considerably.”
The same rule applies for plane tickets around Christmas time, but travelers should really give themselves a hard deadline before Thanksgiving to avoid shelling out hundreds of extra dollars.
For cheaper flights and less hassle around Thanksgiving Dengler recommends flying out on these days:
Sunday, Nov. 20
Monday, Nov. 21
Tuesday, Nov. 22
Thursday, Nov. 24 ( Thanksgiving Day flights tend to be cheap)
And coming home on these dates:
Friday, Nov. 25 (Black Friday)
Monday, Nov. 28
Tuesday, Nov. 29
Predicting the busiest travel days around Christmas is a little bit trickier. But Dengler expects these days to be the most hassle-filled travel days this December:
Thursday, Dec. 22
Friday, Dec. 23
Monday, Dec. 26
Tuesday, Dec. 27
Instead, Christmas travelers should consider flying out on these days for cheaper and less packed flights:
Sunday, Dec. 18
Monday, Dec. 19
Tuesday, Dec. 20
Saturday, Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve)
Sunday, Dec. 25 (Christmas Day)
And think about booking a flight on these days to come home to avoid the holiday rush:
Workers in the United States work hard, but most live with the anxiety that they or someone they love will experience a health problem that they won’t be able to address without losing their income or even their job. And many parents who are welcoming a new child cannot take paid time away from work to concentrate their attention on their growing family.
A lack of paid family and medical leave harms not just workers and their families but the broader economy by pushing workers out of the labor force and making it harder for them to go back to work when the temporary issue abates.
A federal paid leave program would ensure that workers across the country can continue to support their families when family or medical concerns arise — as they are bound to do. But until the federal government acts, more states need to step up because workers can’t wait any longer. And if the past 30 years have shown us anything, it’s that the market alone won’t provide this support. Only one in four employers currently provide paid family leave, and only one in 20 of the lowest-paid workers benefit from that protection.
Meaningful action at the state level in recent years has improved protections for workers in some regions. This spring, Maryland and Delaware became the newest states to join nine others and the District of Columbia in establishing their own paid leave programs. These programs — in California, Connecticut, D.C., Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington — allowed millions of workers to take time off work to care for themselves or loved ones. Still, roughly two-thirds of U.S. workers live in states without a program.
Why are we the only wealthy nation that lacks a federal program? When our federal social insurance system (composed of programs like Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and Medicare) was established, fewer than 1 in 3 workers were women — and women who worked were mostly women of color, immigrants and women with low socioeconomic status. Policymakers crafting the social insurance system centered the needs of white, male workers with few caregiving responsibilities and pushed female workers’ needs for economic security aside.
Given that nearly every worker today is likely to need to take paid leave at some point in their lives, the lack of paid leave hurts all of us. Indeed, experts across the political spectrum agree that paid leave is crucial to bringing the social insurance system into the 21st century and redressing the inequities baked into our policies. Extending paid family and medical leave to the full workforce is among the key steps that policymakers should consider to assure adequate income across the lifespan according to a recent report from the National Academy of Social Insurance.
The evidence from states that have these programs make their benefits abundantly clear. In Washington state, the most recent state to implement paid leave, over 290,000 claims were approved in 2020 and 2021, providing income to help families pay their bills while they attended to the needs of a new child, their own serious medical need or the medical need of a loved one. In California, which has the longest-established program, the risk of poverty and infant hospitalizations are down while parental involvement and mothers’ employment levels are up.
California’s paid leave law reduced small businesses’ costs and research in both California and New Jersey showed mothers are more likely to work in the five years after having a child, benefiting not only families’ economic security but states’ economic growth.
In the long run, federal action is needed to ensure universal access to paid leave. A range of different state programs poses challenges for multi-state employers, and, of course, passing a new paid leave law in Pennsylvania won’t help workers in Mississippi. But implementing state programs now allows us to experiment with the policy and make improvements. It also provides models for a strong federal paid leave program in the future.
Most importantly, each time a state passes a paid leave law, it creates positive change in the lives of its workers and the strength of its economy. Our state legislatures are powerful, often overlooked, political bodies. They should all ensure that no worker needs to choose between paying the bills or caring for a loved one.
Alix Gould-Werth is the director of Family Economic Security Policy at The Washington Center for Equitable Growth and Kathleen Romig is the director of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
