US population now less than 60% white, 2020 census finds – as it happened (original) (raw)

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Politics recap

Joan E Greve

Joan E Greve

Texas Republicans have deputized law enforcement to find House Democrats who have fled the state capitol in order to deny the quorum needed to pass dramatic new voting restrictions.

Law enforcement has been tasked with bringing in Democrats after the state Supreme Court allowed for their civil arrests. “Earlier today the House Sergeant-at-Arms deputized members of Texas law enforcement to assist in the House’s efforts to compel a quorum. That process will begin in earnest immediately,” said Enrique Marquez, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan, in a statement.

Democrat Gene Wu told the Texas Tribune that he and 44 of his colleagues have gotten temporary protection from the warrants from Harris County.

“Nobody can detain or drag us back to the House floor against our will,” Wu told the Tribune. “We will not be willing participants in the silencing of our communities.”

Read more on the escalating fight over voting restrictions in Texas here:

The National Congress of American Indians released a statement on the US Census results, celebrating findings that the American Indian and Alaska Native has increased, and urging Tribal Nations to participate in redistricting efforts.

“NCAI is excited to see the 2020 Census results that show a more diverse America,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp. “We are also excited that the official redistricting season can now begin with today’s release of the redistricting data. We are encouraging all Tribal Nations to participate in their local and state redistricting efforts to ensure that Tribal Nations are fairly represented and have access to the resources they need and deserve.”

The American Indian and Alaska Native increased from 5.2m in 2010 to 9.7m in 2020.

“Today, we are pleased that the 2020 Census data show the increase in diversity in the United States, and a large increase in the AI/AN population,” said Dante Desiderio, NCAI Chief Executive Officer. “American Indians and Alaska Natives are a fundamental part of American history, and we hope these data inform efforts to ensure that our schools teach more American Indian and Alaska Native history in their courses about American history. Tribal Nations make significant contributions to the local, state, and regional economies and have a rich and vibrant culture that contributes positively to the past and current history of the United States.”

Nearly half of American workers don’t earn enough to afford a one-bedroom rental

Andrew Witherspoon and Alvin Chang report:

Nearly half of American workers do not earn enough to rent a one-bedroom apartment, according to new data.

Rents in the US continued to increase through the pandemic**,** and a worker now needs to earn about 20.40anhourtoaffordamodestone−bedroomrental.ThemedianwageintheUSisabout20.40 an hour to afford a modest one-bedroom rental. The median wage in the US is about 20.40anhourtoaffordamodestone−bedroomrental.ThemedianwageintheUSisabout21 an hour.

The data, from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, shows that millions of Americans – from Amazon warehouse workers to cab drivers to public school teachers – are struggling to pay rent. For the poorest Americans, market-rate housing is out of reach in virtually all of the country.

About 14% of Americans fell behind on rent payments during the pandemic – roughly double the figure before the pandemic. A federal moratorium on evictions has kept renters from being kicked out of their homes, but the moratorium lapsed last month, only to be extended into early October for those in regions hardest hit by the pandemic.

And it’s not just big cities skewing the data. A two-bedroom rental – a reasonable size for a family – would stretch the budgets of renters in most US counties.

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Read more:

More than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents reported in US since pandemic started

Maya Yang

More than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents have been reported across the United States since the coronavirus pandemic began, according to a report released on Thursday.

Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that tracks and responds to racially motivated hate crimes towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, received 9,081 reports between 19 March 2020 and this June. A total of 4,548 hate crimes occurred in 2020 and another 4,533 occurred in 2021.

Since the coronavirus was first reported in China, members of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities across the US have faced bigotry in the form of verbal harassment and physical attacks. Many blame Donald Trump for helping to stir anti-Asian sentiment by using racist terms when referring to the virus, such as “Chinese virus” and “kung flu”.

According to the report, 63.7% of the incidents involved verbal harassment and 16.5% involved shunning – the deliberate avoidance of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. About 13.7% of the reports were of physical assault, the third-largest category of total reported incidents. Civil rights violations accounted for 11% of the incidents while online harassment made up 8.3%.

Incidents reported by women made up 63.3% of all reports.

The number of seniors – 60 years old and older - reporting hate crimes increased from 6.5% in 2020 to 7.2% in 2021. Since the pandemic began, the majority of the headline-making attacks have involved senior Asians across the country, with many being beaten, kicked, shoved or stabbed.

“When you encourage hate, it’s not like a genie in a bottle where you can pull it out and push it back in whenever you want,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. “There’s too much perpetuating these belief systems to make them go away.”

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Analysis: US deserves big share of blame for Afghanistan military disaster

Julian Borger

Julian Borger

The UK just announced it is joining the US in sending additional troops to Afghanistan to help evacuate nationals. amid the rapid advance of the Taliban.

As one provincial capital after another has fallen to the Taliban, the message from Washington to the Afghans facing the onslaught has been that their survival is in their own hands.

“They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation,” Joe Biden said. Jen Psaki, the White House spokeswoman, added: “They have what they need. What they need to determine is whether they have the political will to fight back.”

But despite more than $80bn in US security assistance since 2002 and an annual military budget far in excess of other developing nations, Afghan military resistance to the Taliban is collapsing with greater speed than even most pessimists had predicted. There is talk among US officials of Kabul falling in months – if not weeks.

Interviews with former officials who have been intimately involved in US policy in Afghanistan point to an interconnected webs of factors behind the implosion, some of them long in the making, some a result of decisions taken in the past few months.

While there is consensus that a failure of leadership and unity in Kabul has played an important part in the domino-fall of defeats, there is also agreement that the attempt to put all the blame on the Afghans obscures the share of responsibility of the US and its allies for the military disaster.

The candid assessments of US and allied officials and soldiers recorded in congressionally mandated “lessons learned” reports obtained by the Washington Post make clear some of the problems so evident today had their origins at the onset of the US-led military presence in the country.

Read more:

Meet Joe Biden’s secret weapon: the woman who wrangles with Congress

Daniel Strauss

In the early days of the Biden administration members of the new president’s White House legislative affairs team had a meet-and-greet with Senate Republicans’ chiefs of staff. At the head of this Democratic delegation was Louisa Terrell, Biden’s White House director of the office of legislative affairs.

Terrell, speaking to the audience of powerful Republican aides, laid out how she worked. She felt even in these politically polarized times compromise should be pursued. They wouldn’t agree on everything, but there were deals to be had. At the same time Terrell said, according to four sources with knowledge of this meeting, her team had a job to do and planned to do it.

Terrell’s speech illustrated how she is the tip of the spear of the Biden administration’s team as she fulfills one of the most difficult jobs in America’s deeply divided political landscape: Biden’s congressional fixer and legislative guide. Terrell is the leader of the team that takes a proposal from the White House and shepherds it through the winding and sometimes narrow halls of Congress so it can get back to the president’s desk to become law**.** She is the person who aims to get things done and who is in charge of ushering policy proposals through the congressional maze.

During his presidential campaign and, essentially, through the moment he stepped into the Oval Office as president, Joe Biden has argued that big bipartisan deals are worth pursuing and possible even now. Biden, a multi-decade veteran of the Senate, has argued his roots into both parties in Congress run deep and can produce expansive bipartisan deals.

Enter Terrell, a longtime Biden hand and former chief of staff to senators whose résumé also includes stints at some of the most establishment corners of the modern American economy – McKinsey & Company, Yahoo and Facebook among others. She may not have much of a public profile outside Washington’s corridors of power, but inside Terrell is a vital player. She has been in the room at the most pivotal moments of the major legislative initiatives during the Biden administration.

Read more:

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

The Guardian’s Sam Levine has more details on the latest data from the 2020 Census:

America’s white population declined over the last decade while US metro areas were responsible for almost all of the country’s population growth, according to significant new data released Thursday by the US census bureau.

Overall, the white-alone population fell by 8.6% since 2010, the bureau said on Thursday. Non-hispanic whites now account for around 58% of America’s population, a drop from 2010 when they made up 63.7% of the population. It was the first time that the non-hispanic white population has fallen below 60% since the census began.

The most diverse states in America, as measured by the bureau’s diversity index, were Hawaii, California, Nevada, Texas, Maryland, the District of Columbia, New Jersey and New York. In Texas, the white and Hispanic or Latino population are getting much closer. Whites made up 39.7% of the population, while Hispanics and Latinos made up 39.3%. The bureau also said there was a sharp spike in the number of people who identified as multiracial.

“Our analysis of the 2020 census show that the US population is much more multiracial and more racially and ethnically diverse than what we measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, the director and senior adviser of race and ethnic research and outreach, in the census bureau’s population division.

The latest 2020 Census data from the US Census Bureau shows that several New York boroughs had stronger than expected population gains over the past decade.

Queens county saw the largest rise in population, increasing its resident count by 8% over ten years, per Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report.

Large U.S. counties w/ stronger than expected Census counts (vs. estimates):

1. Queens, NY +8%
2. Brooklyn, NY +8%
3. Honolulu, HI +5%
4. Bronx, NY +5%
5. Manhattan, NY +5%
6. Westchester, NY +4%
7. Suffolk, NY +4%
8. Nassau, NY +3%
9. Cook, IL +3%
10. Allegheny, PA +3%

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 12, 2021

Overall, the New York congressional delegation is expected to shrink by one seat due to the results of the 2020 Census, after the state came up 89 residents short of keeping its current number of House seats.

The Census numbers mean New York will only have 26 House seats moving forward, continuing a decades-long decline in the state’s population and (accordingly) its congressional representation.

Wasserman said the Census data from New York City “almost single-handedly saved New York from losing two congressional seats” and came close to saving both seats.

Poring over the data, and it's clear NYC's stronger-than-expected count almost single-handedly saved New York from losing two congressional seats; in fact it came close to saving New York all 27 of its seats.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) August 12, 2021

The Guardian’s Dani Anguiano reports on San Francisco’s new vaccine mandate:

San Francisco will require residents to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination to enter restaurants, gyms and movie theaters and other public spaces. It is set to take effect on Monday.

The move comes as the Delta variant has led to a rise in US cases, primarily among the unvaccinated. New York City last week became the first in the US to mandate that people show proof of vaccination for indoor dining, gyms and entertainment venues.

But the mandate is more stringent than the requirement announced by New York. San Francisco will require proof of full vaccination for all customers and staff, while New York mandated proof of at least one shot for indoor activities.

Vaccines are our way out of this pandemic. They're how we can live our lives together, safely.

San Francisco will be requiring proof of vaccination for patrons and employees in a number of indoor settings, including bars, restaurants, gyms, and large events.

— London Breed (@LondonBreed) August 12, 2021

Los Angeles is considering a similar move requiring people to have at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine before going to indoor restaurants, bars, gyms, movie theaters and other venues.

On Wednesday, governor Gavin Newsom said all employees at public and private schools in California will have to show proof of vaccination or face weekly testing.

California officials have re-introduced safety measures in response to the Covid resurgence. The state’s public health department has recommended residents wear masks in public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status, and multiple counties have reinstated mask mandates.