Politics & Stuff

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Sweden investigates second damaged Baltic Sea telecom cable

https://www.thelocal.se/20241119/sweden-investigates-second-damaged-baltic-sea-telecom-cable

Sweden is investigating a damaged telecommunications undersea cable linking it with Lithuania, said a Swedish minister a day after the announcement that a cable connecting Finland and Germany was cut in what Berlin considers 'sabotage'.

Minister for Civil Defence Carl-Oskar Bohlin told AFP in a written statement that it was "crucial to clarify why we currently have two cables in the Baltic Sea that are not working".

Bohlin added that "relevant Swedish authorities are investigating the events".

The "Arelion" submarine cable between the Swedish island of Gotland and Lithuania has been damaged since Sunday morning, a spokesman for the Lithuanian branch of the operator Telia said on Tuesday.

Internet traffic has been redirected to other international links, Audrius Stasiulaitis said.

"We can confirm that the interruption to internet traffic was not caused by an equipment fault but by material damage to the fibre optic cable," he said.

He added that customers were at this time not being affected by the outage.

On Monday, Finnish operator Cinia reported that a cable connecting Helsinki and the German port of Rostock had been cut for unknown reasons.

Germany and Finland subsequently said they had launched a probe into the damage, warning of the threat of "hybrid warfare".

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius also said Tuesday that the severing of cables between Finland and Germany and from Sweden to Lithuania was a "clear sign that something is going on".

"Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed," Pistorius said on the sidelines of a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels.

"We have to say, without knowing exactly who it came from, that this is a hybrid action. We also have to assume, without knowing it yet, that it was sabotage," he said.

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https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-democrats-long-goodbye-to-the

Former president Donald Trump points at Drake Enterprises in Clinton Township, Michigan on September 27, 2023. (Photo by Nic Antaya for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

As we continue to sort through the wreckage of the 2024 election, one thing has become very clear: Donald Trump gained ground relative to 2020 in almost every state and with almost every demographic group. Even the most reliably Democratic constituencies, including racial minorities, shifted in his direction, an ominous sign that the party’s coalition may not be as solid as they once thought. Indeed, these results shone a spotlight on long-festering problems in the Democrats’ coalition, which have left them a shell of their former selves—as the party not of the multiracial working class but increasingly of society’s elites.

Though it may be hard to believe this fate has befallen the party of FDR, these changes didn’t happen overnight. Democrats were long considered by many Americans to be the party of the common man and woman. Mark Brewer, of the University of Maine, has found that in every presidential election between 1952 and 2004, the trait voters said they most liked about the Democrats was that they were “the party of the working class.” By contrast, the biggest mark against the Republicans was that they were viewed as the party of big business and the upper class.

 

These perceptions created a clear divide between the parties’ coalitions during that period: Democrats were likelier to win lower-educated and lower-income voters while Republicans were the favored party of many college-educated and affluent Americans.

At the same time, the parties had also begun to polarize along racial lines. Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act under President Lyndon Johnson, black Americans almost uniformly threw their weight behind Democrats while white voters—especially working-class, white southerners—began a slow but inexorable slide toward Republicans. For a time, this realignment came at the expense of the Democrats: from 1968 through 1988, they won the presidency just once, in 1976.

However, by the 1990s, the country was growing more diverse and better educated. Bill Clinton was a beneficiary of this new reality, as he made sweeping gains with women, young people, voters of color (especially Hispanics), and college-educated voters. Importantly, he also retained significant support from white Americans and lower-educated voters, who made up the vast majority of the electorate. As Clinton rode this coalition to victory twice—marking the first time since FDR that a Democrat had won two full terms as president—some political observers, including my colleague, Ruy Teixeira, saw the emergence of a new majority, one that could consistently win elections using the formula Clinton had used.

In 2008, Barack Obama built on the Clinton coalition, bringing in even higher levels of support from almost every major party constituency, including blacks, Hispanics, Asians, young people, and women.1 He also notably became the first Democratic nominee since at least 1988 to decisively win voters who held a bachelor’s degree and fared far better with high-income earners than past Democrats had. These were the first signs of a growing professional class whose cultural values had aligned many of them with Team Blue—a departure from the past.

Obama’s two wins confirmed for many Democrats and Republicans the validity of the “emerging Democratic majority” thesis. Gone were the days when Democrats needed to win a majority of white voters, a feat they had found nearly impossible to achieve since the 1960s. Now, the party that represented America’s demographic future stood to lead it as well.2

But no sooner had that consensus come into focus than Donald Trump arrived on the scene. Trump disrupted the Democrats’ plans for building a dominant coalition and, in the process, helped precipitate a dramatic realignment between the two parties—one rooted in economic and social class. This change has tipped the demographic advantage in favor of Republicans and left Democrats at very real risk of losing many of the voters who not long ago were expected to deliver them an enduring majority.

In 2016, non-college-educated voters, a group that had backed Obama by four points in 2012, swung to Trump, who won them by six. This was a core driver of Trump’s win, as these voters made up a whopping 63 percent of the electorate that year. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton gained substantial ground with college graduates, who went from also backing Obama by four points to supporting her by 15—an early sign that Democrats would struggle to win at the national level without a critical mass of working-class voters behind them.

Four years later, as Joe Biden defeated Trump, the education gap grew even wider. Biden improved on Clinton’s advantage with college-educated voters by three more points, while Trump’s margin with non-college voters remained virtually unchanged—likely the difference in the outcome. Even in Biden’s victory, though, there were signs that the traditional Democratic coalition wasn’t holding. The clearest example was the rightward swing of Hispanic voters, who had backed Clinton by 38 points but supported Biden by only 26. There were also more modest signs of eroding support among black and Asian voters. In fact, a key driver of Biden’s win was improvements with white Americans: he lost them to Trump by only 13 points compared to Clinton’s 17-point deficit.

It seems plausible that because Democrats found success in 2020 and unexpectedly did so again in the 2022 midterms, they overlooked real problems under the hood of their coalition. Now, these problems finally caught up with them.

Initial data from the 2024 AP VoteCast survey shows that Kamala Harris matched Biden’s margin with white voters, but Trump made historic gains with non-white voters. He earned the highest share of Asian support since 2004, the highest share of black support since 1976, and the second-highest share of Hispanic support ever (he even nearly won Hispanic men outright). All this points to an American electorate that is becoming less polarized along racial and ethnic lines. While that may be a welcome development for society, it comes at the obvious expense of the Democrats, who had hoped these voting blocs would help them build a demographically dominant coalition for years to come.

Meanwhile, the transformation of the parties along class lines appears to be moving full steam ahead. Harris retained higher levels of support among college-educated voters, winning them by 14 points. But perhaps just as telling: she carried high-income earners (those earning at least $100,000) by seven points—by far the largest margin for a Democratic nominee in the modern era. On the other side, Trump became the first Republican nominee on record to win low-income voters, narrowly carrying them by three points. He also continued growing his advantage with non-college voters, winning them by 13 points—the largest margin for the GOP since at least 1988. And his 44 percent support from union households marked the greatest share for a Republican since Ronald Reagan.

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Looking at this picture, it’s hard not to see that the Democrats are becoming the very thing they have long fought against: the party of the elites. This stands in sharp contrast to their longtime image as the champions of the working class, which is further and further in the rearview mirror. According to political scientist Matt Grossmann, college-educated white voters this year became a plurality of the Democratic coalition for the first time ever, surpassing both non-college whites as well as voters of color.

On a more practical note, this new coalition also risks putting the Democrats on electorally unsound footing. Although college graduates are more reliable voters than their non-college peers, they also constitute a much smaller portion of the population. Without a meaningful share of working-class voters in the mix, the party will struggle to be competitive.

Strategists and pundits will argue in the months ahead about the best path forward for the Democrats, but suffice it to say: from both an electoral and moral standpoint, the party’s aim should be to figure out a path to reclaiming its roots as the party of the people.

Editor’s note: A version of this piece first appeared in Persuasion.

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https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/whats-next-for-independents

The movement away from two-party identification has intensified in recent years, with independents now making up around one-third of the electorate, and an even larger percentage of Americans overall. It’s important to recognize that independents are not a uniform group, and so their motivations and voting behavior differ from year to year. The group remains roughly comprised of a large pool of ideological moderates, two kinds of populist voters, and those who are politically disengaged.

Understanding the diversity of thought among independents, we can still examine recent trends with these voters and see how their past behavior might compare to 2024 when all the data is finalized.

For example, looking at Pew’s validated voter studies over the past few cycles, Donald Trump narrowly won independents on the whole (including party “leaners”) by a 43 to 42 percent margin in 2016 only to lose the group by 9 points to Joe Biden in 2020, 52 to 43 percent. Democrats also won independents by an even wider 15-point margin in the 2018 midterms when they regained control of the House of Representatives.

 

Although we won’t have comparable data for 2024 from Pew for a few months, the national exit poll for this year shows Harris winning all independents (including leaners as does Pew) by a 49 to 46 percent margin after Biden carried the group 54 to 41 percent in the 2020 exits. Despite Trump losing independents overall again in 2024, his 10-point improvement in the margin from 2020 (even if smaller in the validated data next year) clearly helped him to win a decisive if narrow popular vote and Electoral College victory this time around.

Regardless of the finality of the data at this stage, the trends are basically the same across all sources: Trump with a narrow independent win in 2016; Biden with the big advantage in 2020; and Harris likely with a narrow lead among independents in 2024.

What does the recent movement among independents tell us?

In pre-election surveys, independents favored Trump over both Biden and Harris on the two most important issues this cycle—the economy/inflation and immigration—while also trending more conservative on hot-button cultural issues. In contrast, independents generally favored Biden and Harris slightly more than Trump on a host of personal character issues and abortion.

Independents are a skeptical bunch—unimpressed with partisan rhetoric and propaganda and more “show me, don’t tell me.” If Trump and his party can continue to improve with these voters, particularly by delivering positive results on the two big issues of the economy and immigration, Republicans could conceivably maintain their grip on power and perhaps expand these gains in upcoming elections in 2026 and 2028.

However, Trump and the GOP shouldn’t count on independent support going forward.

We know that independents react strongly to economic conditions and do not particularly like the ideological agendas of either party when it comes to policies on economic growth, jobs, inflation, taxes, and spending. Trump’s proposals for across-the-board tariffs, extensive deregulation, and big new corporate tax cuts could turn out well in the eyes of these voters—or not. Likewise, Trump’s leadership style remains a wild card. Some aspects of his “bull in a china shop” demeanor might go over well with independents, while several more years of chaos, incompetence, and corruption like his first term will not.

It remains to be seen how Trump handles his new mandate and if he does things differently than last time.

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Given the inherent distrust and lack of interest in politics among many independents, it is best to exercise some caution in anticipating their reactions to future events and when examining possible vote intentions.

Independents are growing both in size and electoral power almost organically. No party actually represents independents or has the allegiance of these voters, despite some leanings given the forced two-party system. They remain a diverse group in terms of their economic, social, and cultural views. They do not like politics to begin with and do not trust either conservative or progressive partisan media outlets to tell the truth and present unbiased information. Third-party and other emerging membership groups capture some aspects of their opinions, but not fully.

If Democrats want to regain their advantage with independent voters, they will need to present a party brand, leadership, and agenda that is more “pro-worker, pro-family, pro-America” and less ineffective big-government spending and cultural extremism. If Republicans want to gain more support from independents, they will need to show them that they can govern the country respectably as a majority party committed to widely-shared economic growth and common-sense social policies—not excessively online, right-wing culture wars.

Given the internal dynamics and incentive structures of both Democrats and Republicans—and their relationship to ideological outliers within their respective coalitions—it seems unlikely that either party will figure out how to better represent independent voters permanently.

But whichever party manages to get closer to the media independent voter sooner will likely reap the rewards in upcoming midterm and presidential elections.

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The Unbelievable Trump

[Fulham Broadway 16,838]

3 hours ago, IMissEden said:

Officially, there is no group systematically killing young girls in the UK. But there is

Ok. Sources ? Evidence ? which group is it that is systematically killing young girls ?

 

3 hours ago, IMissEden said:

Fucked priorities.

Obviously you feel very strongly about this 'systematic killing of young girls in the UK' and you have it as a priority. What the fuck are you actually doing about it ??

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https://prospect.org/politics/2024-11-19-donald-trump-champion-working-class-discontent/

Donald Trump won the 2024 election because he was the change candidate who championed working-class discontent. He also successfully branded Kamala Harris, so voters worried about the kind of changes she would bring.

Harris had been speaking to more powerful currents of working-class discontent, and that put her in the lead. She promised to help with the cost of living, blamed monopolies for inflation, and vowed to shift power from the billionaires to the middle class. But she became ambivalent about championing those changes. That allowed Trump to regain momentum and win.

I do not believe Trump’s winning coalition will endure. Trump won a mandate on immigration, prices, and anti-“woke” policies, but he’s can’t maintain all of those priorities. Prices won’t rapidly fall unless there’s a damaging recession. His policies may raise interest rates, mortgage payments, and credit card debt. Tariffs may raise prices. And Trump is going to give the billionaires and big corporations the sweetest tax cut possible and make it as hard as possible for workers.

But Democrats will be forced to address many of the challenges raised by this election.

From the moment Joe Biden took office, the great working-class majority grew desperate with spiking prices, the safety of their neighborhoods, and government listening to the biggest corporations and elites and neglecting the concerns of working people.

The Biden administration acted impressively to address the pandemic and provide unprecedented levels of household support. Legislative action reduced health care expenses, invested in infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, encouraged the climate transition, and made big corporations pay more tax. The regulatory agenda showed support for unions and checks on monopolies. But Biden’s job approval was taken down by inflation and migration, like so many other leaders around the world, though other elements of his presidency contributed to his having the lowest approval for a president seeking re-election in recent memory.

You cannot address the party’s position without discussing them.

Everything in this article I shared in real time with the president, where possible, his White House and campaign teams, and then others on the vice president’s team. I don’t believe Biden’s campaign team served him or the country well.

OUR ELECTION WAS DOMINATED BY TWO ISSUES. The most important was the hard-working middle class being hit by high prices and the cost of living, while big corporations make super profits at its expense. The second was the border, and the perception that immigrants were both responsible for rising crime and prioritized for public services, while U.S. citizens went to the back of the line. Both issues saw a double-digit rise in their importance.

Those issues were the reasons two-thirds of the country and 60 percent of our base thought the country was headed in the wrong direction.

Trump focused every day on the awful crimes being committed by immigrants, as he had focused in 2020 on violent cities, “defund the police,” and Black Lives Matter protesters attacking police. For Blacks and Hispanics, crime competed for years with the economy as a top voting issue. In 2024, Trump made immigrants the reason for the prohibitive cost of living in housing and other goods, as well as why federal agencies dealing with natural disasters were broke.

Despite Trump’s effective campaign on his agenda, the cost of living was still the top worry by far—fully 18 points above immigration and the border.

Our base pulled back when Harris couldn’t find an issue where she differed with President Biden. And inexplicably, Harris stopped talking about the middle class and cost of living and, most important, became cautious about criticizing business. She spoke of “a few bad actors,” while “most companies are working hard to do the right thing by their customers and the employees who depend on them.”

Inexplicably, Harris stopped talking about the middle class and cost of living.

This is a time of historic consolidation of industries, historic profits, and stock buybacks that pushed income gains to the top .01 percent. And the public increasingly saw those excess profits as a major cause of inflation. Big business reached its lowest standing in Gallup. And Harris’s biggest advantage over Trump was on who “will work for the rich elites.”

In the closing weekend, Harris put the “cost of living” at the top of her “to do list,” but voters heard more “hope” than “anger.” She talked about taxing big corporations and billionaires, but not about changing government to work for the middle class, not the billionaires and monopolies, as she had earlier.

When Harris pulled back from her aggrieved middle-class narrative and critique of business, Biden’s anchor pulled her down.

The anchor included the perceived out-of-control border, which Trump linked to illegal immigrants committing violent crimes.

Biden’s upbeat economic message was a drag. He thought “Bidenomics” had produced a strong economy that was “the envy of the world.” He was joined by many economists, reporters, and other elected leaders who accepted his definition of a “strong economy”—low unemployment, millions of jobs, real income gains in the last year, soft landing and continued GDP growth, inflation trending down, and America’s economy performing better than any other.

That led to a false assumption that eventually people would feel it and give Biden credit. When reporters asked, why is Biden not getting credit, I was almost belligerent in responding, “Why are you asking? Are you in the bubble too?”

After the election, Ron Brownstein noted on X, “The cumulative weight of inflation is real, even though prices have stopped rising. Hard to avoid the conclusion the big price rises early in Biden’s presidency (and the pain imposed by the high interest rates used to fight them) was the biggest single factor in this election.”

Annie Lowrey wrote powerfully in The Atlantic about home prices jumping 47 percent since 2020, food inflation increasing at double the overall rate—margarine, eggs, peanut butter, crackers, and bread up 40 percent. Then, credit card APRs hit “all-time highs,” with household debt still rising and defaults still elevated.

To be fair, the Prospect has been writing about this dynamic for at least two years. I personally wrote in the Prospect and The Times of London that what matters is how many months people struggle with high prices. As those months tick off, people will only get angrier, rate the economy more poorly, and give you lower ratings on the economy.

Biden’s team could not be persuaded by polling data. At one point, I wrote in an email, “We are going to lose ground unless the President has a different close. There is a reason why his approval is stuck. He’s trying to convince people this is a good economy and it is anything but.”

I could not get people to understand the significance of our base voters putting the cost of living 20 points higher than the next problem. If you don’t start there, they won’t listen. Working people are struggling to pay the bills each month or stay out of poverty. They are looking for empathy and for you to battle the bad guys.

Some are asking whether Trump will benefit from Biden’s economy. The answer: only if prices drop.

BIDEN’S BIPARTISAN BRAND ALSO IRONICALLY put him out of touch with the extreme polarization of our times. “MAGA Republicans” was a way to talk about the Republicans he was fighting, not all Republicans. And the Harris campaign focused on moderate Republicans and Cheney conservatives who might defect. But they didn’t in large numbers. Was Liz Cheney their best closer?

Maybe his bipartisan focus explains why Republicans paid no price for defeating the Build Back Better Act, and in particular ending the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit. The internal Democratic debate focused on Sens. Manchin and Sinema. Biden never attacked Republicans for ending this critical help for families dealing with the high cost of living.

The bipartisan infrastructure law paradoxically may have hurt more than helped. Democrats did events all over the country highlighting the number of jobs and stronger economy expected from this law. Everybody reasonably thought they were talking about “the economy,” but not the “economy” seen by working people.

Meanwhile, Biden’s deep commitment to racial justice evolved into a pervasive identity politics. He always reminded people he ran in 2020 because of what happened in Charlottesville. He embraced “Black Lives Matter,” and promised to address America’s systemic racism. With the Supreme Court taking away Roe v. Wade, Biden ran in 2024 committed to protect constitutional rights for women and racial justice for Blacks.

They saw every voter through the lens of gender and race. Women care most about abortion. Hispanics, comprehensive immigration reform. “Dreamers” and a path to citizenship. Blacks, HBCUs and the legacy of slavery and racism. They insisted on that priority, even when you showed that these voting groups cared much more about affordable health care, a higher minimum wage, strengthened unions, and the expanded monthly Child Tax Credit.

The bipartisan infrastructure law paradoxically may have hurt more than helped.

They changed the primary calendar so South Carolina came first. Biden said, you are the voters who got me here. The campaign didn’t consider what that change meant for Hispanics and Nevada.

He took his campaign launch to an AME church in Charleston. He condemned white supremacy and the MAGA Republicans and described 20 areas of impressive work for Blacks. And when polls showed him short of 2020 with Blacks, he ran an ad that said, “Since day one, he has prioritized equity and racial justice by signing an executive order aimed to address systemic disparities affecting various communities and ensuring the full and fair participation of all communities in American life.”

Because the Black experience and slavery remained so central to Biden, it reinforced a pessimistic view of America that stalled in making progress. His vision lacked the optimism of a President Obama or the recognition of common challenges of a Rev. Martin Luther King. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now,” King once said.

Hispanic communities are optimistic about this country and believe in its exceptionalism. They see themselves as part of a multiethnic America that fled impoverished homelands and expect each generation to do better than the next. And Harris did build on her own mixed ethnic history, frequently saying that “only in America” could her story be told.

But once you see only identity groups and accept imposing the elite’s priorities, you set the stage for a pervasive woke politics. Voters heard a Democratic Party that was working to rewrite American history, add non-gender bathrooms, and support transgender people getting surgery in prison and participating in women’s school sports. All of that featured in Trump’s strongest ads.

That explains why significantly more people feared Biden continuing in office than Trump returning.

HAD JOE BIDEN RETIRED AND THERE BEEN a normal presidential primary, potential nominees would have contested all these issues, and Democratic voters would have chosen the candidate best suited to defeat Trump. The Democrat would have figured out how to be the candidate of change by addressing working-class discontent. They would have addressed those deep concerns about Democrats. The candidate with the best chance of winning would have been strong on taking on big corporations and bringing down prices most of all, while advancing credible positions on crime, respect for police, the border, and woke policies.

Based on my surveys, that kind of candidate would have the best shot of winning the primary and would have looked much stronger against this even more dangerous version of Trump.

I don’t underestimate how difficult the task is facing Democrats. In a survey in the field now, Democrats have the most failing marks on “citizens having priority over non-citizens” and “listening to you, not the elites.”

This election has produced some new norms that will greatly impact what Democrats do right now. Ruben Gallego, who ran in the border state of Arizona, immediately delivered the message on controlling the border. “Our first commercial was about immigration and more border security in Spanish, because we heard about it earlier,” Gallego told CNN over the weekend.

And in the campaign itself, Harris spoke about enforcement first and funding the border wall, and promised to reintroduce that tough law and pass it.

Democrats in the Congress are going to defend the Dreamers and oppose family separation, but I expect a great many to vote for Trump’s funding of Homeland Security, ICE, and the wall.

And see what is happening with transgender rights. An overwhelming 65 percent of voters favor government barring transgender athletes participating in women’s sports. I’m for equality and don’t understand the visceral reaction. Nonetheless, I expect many, if not most elected Democrats to vote for this mainstream position.

Of course, this election suggests many other challenges. But they will have to proclaim that they authentically understand what ordinary Americans are going through.

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Russia steps up talk of using nuclear weapons as Ukraine fires western missiles

Kremlin changes doctrine to lower threshold for retaliation hours after Kyiv is said to have used US-supplied ATACMS long-range missile for first time

https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/russia-nuclear-weapons-attack-ukraine-missile-strike-br57nvzhn

Moscow will consider the use of nuclear weapons in retaliation to attacks on its territory with western-supplied weapons, the Kremlin has said, hours after Ukraine was said to have carried out its first strike on Russia with an American long-range missile.

On the 1,000th day of war between the two countries, President Putin approved an update to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold at which it would consider a nuclear strike.

The revision states that an attack with conventional missiles, drones or other aircraft by a non-nuclear state that is supported by a nuclear-armed one could meet the criteria for a nuclear response.

• Will Russia use nuclear weapons? Putin’s options explained

A Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is launched during a test from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in Russia

RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY/REUTERS

It also said any aggression against Russia by a state which was a member of a coalition would be considered by Moscow to be aggression against it by the whole coalition.

The revision also significantly widens the triggers for possible nuclear retaliation compared with the previous version of the document.

Whereas in the last version the doctrine stated that a nuclear response could be issued in the case of threats to the “existence of the state”, the new update allows for a response to aggression that “poses a critical threat to sovereignty and/or territorial integrity”.

Putin mooted a change to the nuclear doctrine — last updated in 2020 — for several months as Ukraine’s western allies mulled the decision to grant Kyiv permission to fire the US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) deep into Russian territory.

President Biden allowed President Zelensky to use American weapons against Russia after a long period of deliberation

JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The approval of the change would appear to be a direct response to the White House’s announcement on Sunday that it would relax the limitations that it had placed on Ukraine’s use of the weapons.

Putin has continually sought to draw red lines to deter deepening western support for Ukraine, having said on the first day of the war that any attempts by the West to interfere would result in consequences “such as you have never seen in your entire history”.

However, as the war has progressed, those red lines have repeatedly been crossed without consequence, leading many to conclude that the Russian leader has been bluffing.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Ukrainian forces launched their first ATACMS strike on a military facility near the Russian city of Karachev in the Bryansk region, roughly 80 miles inside the border, according to local media.

The explosion in Karachev

Ukraine has argued that long-range weapons will enable it to severely hamper Russia’s supply lines by allowing it to strike at arms depots, air bases and oil refineries.

• How could long-range missiles affect the Russia-Ukraine war?

However, after months of delay over the decision by the White House, the Kremlin is believed to have already moved some military equipment, such as fighter jets, to bases that are out of range. There is also uncertainty about exactly how many of the US long-range missiles Ukraine has at its disposal.

Asked whether the updated doctrine was deliberately issued on the heels of Biden’s decision, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the update was published “in a timely manner” and that Putin instructed the government to update it earlier this year so that it is “in line with the current situation”.

He said: “Aggression by a non-nuclear state with the participation of a nuclear state is considered as a joint attack,” adding that the update should be “studied” abroad.

Edited 8 hours ago by Vesper

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Nato forces deploy ‘game-changing’ new firepower in Finland drill

On the outskirts of the Arctic Circle, only 70 miles from the Russian border, the military alliance is conducting its largest-ever artillery exercise

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/nato-forces-deploy-game-changing-new-firepower-in-finland-drill-r0b7s7j60

The sound of sleigh bells usually ring out around Rovaniemi on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle but deafening “deep strike” howitzer blasts are shattering the serenity this week.

Known as Father Christmas’s hometown, the snow-covered capital of Lapland seems an unlikely setting for Nato’s largest-ever artillery exercise.

However, it is near here, about 70 miles from the Russian border, that thousands of British, American and Finnish troops are drilling new “game-changing” firepower.

The Swedish-made Archers have replaced the British Army’s 30-year-old AS-90 howitzers

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP

In the icy wilderness of the Rovajarvi firing range, a short drive from the city, The Times joined soldiers of 5 (Gibraltar 1779-1783) Battery Royal Artillery on Monday as they deployed Archer howitzers for the first time.

The new 155mm, 52-calibre self-propelled weapon, which can strike personnel and armoured vehicles up to 50km away, has doubled the battery’s effective range.

Moments after firing four rounds, with blasts that blew the phone from the hand of one journalist watching nearby, Major Neil Hart said that the £8 million truck-mounted weapon “delivers destructive firepower” that can “out-range any enemy guns”.

Everything from standard high-explosive rounds through to illuminated shells, smoke bombs and GPS-guided “seeker” munitions can be loaded into its 21-projectile ammunition belt.

Major Barney Ingram said the howitzer could “neutralise” enemy trenches, equipment and moving vehicles

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP

Major Barney Ingram, the battery commander, another soldier braving -7C temperatures during the drill, said that the howitzer would “neutralise” enemy trenches, equipment and moving vehicles with a “mass area effect” on impact.

The Swedish-made Archers have replaced the British Army’s 30-year-old AS-90 howitzers, which were donated to Ukraine last year to help it repel Russian forces.

The weapons are being showcased as Finland hosts its first significant Nato exercise since joining the military alliance more than a year ago, in response to the growing threat from Russia.

The Nordic nation dropped decades of neutrality by becoming a member, in a move that also doubled the size of Nato’s border with Kremlin forces.

• Russia suspected over damage to Baltic Sea telecoms cable

Finland’s top brass say that their accession brings expertise in Arctic and forest fighting to the alliance. After Poland, it also boasts the largest artillery capability of all the Nato nations, with an arsenal of about 1,500 guns.

Despite having a population of just 5.5 million, Finland can muster a wartime force of 280,000 personnel thanks to its conscription service.

• National service in the happiest country: how Finland faces down Putin

The Finnish-led Exercise Lightning Strike is now training more than 3,600 local and allied troops to fight in harsh winter conditions. It is part of Dynamic Front 25, the biggest Nato artillery exercise ever held in Europe. Similar drills are also taking place in Estonia, Germany, Romania and Poland this month.

Finnish soldiers fire their K9 artillery during the exercise

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP

At a different live-firing location several miles away from UK positions, Finnish forces demonstrated their “shoot and scoot” manoeuvres with armoured K9 “thunder” guns.

Three shells were shot in quick succession at targets up to 40 km away before the troops moved on to new tree-lined areas to avoid simulated retaliatory fire from enemy forces.

Lieutenant Antti-Matti Puista, who was leading a platoon of specially-trained Finnish conscripts, said: “In this exercise we’re firing high-explosive shrapnel rounds.

“If you’re on the ground [when a round hits], the shell will explode into a couple-thousand pieces that spread in a 360 degree field a few hundred metres from the point of impact.

“Within a 50m radius there wouldn’t be anything left.”

After the guns finally fell silent in the early afternoon, Colonel Janne Mäkitalo, the Finnish director of the exercise, told The Times that artillery was “the king and queen of the battlefield”.

Thanks to drone and surveillance advancements “everything can be seen on the battlefield”, he said, and “what can be seen on the battlefield can be targeted”.

“You cannot win wars only using only artillery, but you cannot win wars without it,” Mäkitalo added.

Edited 8 hours ago by Vesper

[Vesper 28,796]

Trump Confirms Plans to Use the Military to Assist in Mass Deportations
Mr. Trump’s top immigration policy adviser has discussed using military assets to build detention centers and support civilian immigration agents.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/18/us/politics/trump-military-mass-deportation.html

President-elect Donald J. Trump confirmed on Monday that he intended to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military in some form to assist in his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

On his social media platform, Truth Social, Mr. Trump responded overnight to a post made earlier this month by Tom Fitton, who runs the conservative group Judicial Watch, and who wrote that Mr. Trump’s administration would “declare a national emergency and will use military assets” to address illegal immigration “through a mass deportation program.”

At around 4 a.m., Mr. Trump reposted Mr. Fitton’s post with the comment, “TRUE!!!”

Congress has granted presidents broad power to declare national emergencies at their discretion, unlocking standby powers that include redirecting funds lawmakers had appropriated for other purposes. During his first term, for example, Mr. Trump invoked this power to spend more on a border wall than Congress had been willing to authorize.

In interviews with The New York Times during the Republican primary campaign, described in an article published in November 2023, Mr. Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said that military funds would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries.

The Homeland Security Department would run the facilities, he said.

One major impediment to the vast deportation operation that the Trump team has promised in his second term is that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, lacks the space to hold a significantly larger number of detainees than it currently does.

That has sometimes led to allowing asylum seekers into the country while they await court dates with immigration judges, a practice critics deride as “catch and release.”

The Trump team believes that such camps could enable the government to accelerate deportations of undocumented people who fight their expulsion from the country. The idea is that more people would voluntarily accept removal instead of pursuing a long-shot effort to remain in the country if they had to stay locked up in the interim.

Asked about the proposal, Sabrina Singh, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon, declined to comment, calling it “a hypothetical.” In general, she added, such a plan would typically undergo “a rigorous process” before being enacted, but she declined to elaborate.

Immigrant advocates assailed the move, raising alarms about the potential fallout.

“President-elect Trump’s dystopian fantasies should send a chill down everyone’s spine, whether immigrant or native-born,” said Karen Tumlin, the director of the Justice Action Center, an immigrant advocacy organization. “Not only is what he is describing in all likelihood illegal, this move would be the exact opposite of the legacy of service in which my family members were proud to participate.”

Robyn Barnard, the senior director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, asserted that the consequences would be far-ranging. “Families will be torn apart, businesses left without vital employees, and our country will be left to pick up the pieces for years to come,” she added.

Congressional Democrats responded with a similar level of incredulity, asserting that such a move was all but certain to violate federal laws preventing the use of the military on American soil.

“We’re pursuing whatever we can do to make clear that the Insurrection Act should not permit that use of the military,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to the 1807 law that grants presidents emergency power to use troops on domestic soil to restore order when they decide a situation warrants it. Under that law, “if there is no threat to public order of a fundamental, far-reaching kind, it would be illegal,” he added.

Republicans, however, suggested that Mr. Trump’s proposal might not be a radical departure from the status quo.

“Obviously they’re not law enforcement, but I have to see what their process is,” said Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, who served as the lead Republican negotiator on a bipartisan immigration deal that failed to pass the Senate after Mr. Trump urged the G.O.P. to reject it. “If the National Guard is providing transportation, they do that a lot already.”

Hard-right members of Congress and staunch supporters of Mr. Trump have expressed broad support for his proposal for mass deportations. Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama, chimed in on social media on Monday to back using the military for such an effort, saying Mr. Trump was “100% correct.”

Mr. Miller has also talked about invoking a public health emergency power to curtail hearing asylum claims, as the Trump administration did during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr. Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border amid a surge in asylum seekers and his reprogramming of military funds toward his border wall in 2019 was a face-saving way out of a spending standoff with Congress that had led to a government shutdown. It led to legal challenges that had not been definitively resolved before President Biden took over and halted further construction on the border wall.

Mr. Trump’s team said it had developed a multifaceted plan to significantly increase the number of deportations, which it thought could be accomplished without new legislation from Congress, although it anticipated legal challenges.

Other elements of the team’s plan include bolstering the ranks of ICE officers with law enforcement officials who would be temporarily reassigned from other agencies, and with state National Guardsmen and federal troops activated to enforce the law on domestic soil under the Insurrection Act.

The team also plans to expand a form of due-process-free expulsions known as expedited removal, which is currently used near the border for recent arrivals, to people living across the interior of the country who cannot prove they have been in the United States for more than two years.

And the team plans to stop issuing citizenship-affirming documents, like passports and Social Security cards, to infants born on domestic soil to undocumented migrant parents in a bid to end birthright citizenship.

Mr. Trump has already signaled his intent to follow through on his promises with personnel announcements. He named Mr. Miller as a deputy chief of staff in his administration with influence over domestic policy. And Mr. Trump said he would make Thomas Homan, who ran ICE for the first year and a half of the Trump administration and was an early proponent of separating families to deter migrants, his administration’s “border czar.”

Mr. Homan told The New York Times in 2023 that he had met with Mr. Trump shortly after the now president-elect announced that he would seek office again. During that meeting, Mr. Homan said, he “agreed to come back” in a second term and would “help to organize and run the largest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.”

[Vesper 28,796]

To lower inflation, America needs more immigration to alleviate national labor shortages

New FWD.us-George Mason University study shows that admitting more immigrants can help drive down inflation. The U.S. economy will be stronger and Americans here today will earn more if Congress acts to increase immigration.

https://www.fwd.us/news/immigration-inflation/

Overview

In 2021, the U.S. began facing historic levels of inflation. Experts have posited many factors to explain the increase, including broken supply lines, rising fuel prices, and pent-up demand. But these contributing factors have largely abated, and yet, inflation remains.

Economists, including those at the Federal Reserve, have identified persistent worker shortages, and more specifically immigrant worker shortages, as a major contributor to rising inflation. When labor is in short supply relative to demand, employers offer higher wages, which are in turn passed on to consumers, leading to rising prices. While these worker shortages have occurred for many reasons, a significant driver is the lower number of immigrants who have entered the U.S. in the past several years. 

A new study developed in collaboration with researchers at George Mason University (GMU) aims to quantify the extent to which decreases in immigration, already begun before and nearly frozen during the COVID-19 pandemic, have contributed to inflation for all American consumers. In doing so, the analysis provides a snapshot of the future American workforce which, if not increased by immigration, can spell economic pain for many years to come. By examining immigration as a contributor to inflation, the report seeks to demonstrate how the challenges of an aging workforce, accelerated by the pandemic, can play into rising inflation in the near and long terms, amidst other compounding economic factors that can also raise prices. 

Congress and the Biden Administration should immediately find legislative solutions to increase legal immigration, or risk future inflationary spikes. Our current immigration system requires modernization to meet the economic demands of a new century. This pathway is far preferable to the current track of raising interest rates to slow the economy and potentially land the economy into recession.

"A new FWD.us study developed in collaboration with George Mason University (GMU) aims to quantify the extent to which decreases in immigration before and during the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to inflation for all American consumers."

 

Low immigration and rising inflation during the COVID-19 pandemic 

At the onset of the pandemic, the U.S. saw a sudden population shift to new areas, including suburbs, smaller cities, and more southern locations. And as people moved, their demand for goods and services went with them. At the same time, their destinations faced significant labor shortages, especially in sectors and types of jobs that the resettled remote workers would not fill. In fact, these new destinations needed even more service and manual labor jobs, to meet the unexpected consumer demand

The presence of an immigrant workforce typically can help local communities mitigate sudden labor shortages, particularly in industries such as construction and hospitality. But, as immigration decreased before and during the pandemic, these jobs remained largely unfilled, leading to extreme labor shortages and rising wages. In other words, inflation rose in part because of a tightening labor market.

Mason researchers find that this sudden population shift is associated with a squeeze on labor supply as well as upward pressures on wages and home prices. These upward pressures can lead to higher wages that then lead to increasing costs for consumers. The data analysis estimates a 2.5 percentage point increase in inflation, or $1,500 annual increase for the average household in 2021 to 2022, for those moving from a city experiencing some of the largest population losses (like San Francisco and New York City) to a destination experiencing some of the largest population gains (like Atlanta and Phoenix).

But this inflation may not have occurred if a regular, and growing, inflow of immigrants had been added to the U.S. workforce. These worker shortages resulted partly from a freeze on legal immigration pathways during the pandemic, preceded by years of decreased legal immigration levels under the Trump Administration. During this period, economists estimate that nearly two million working-age immigrants who would have ordinarily entered the U.S. were unable to do so. After Trump Administration immigration limits, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) backlogs, the closure of Department of State (DOS) consulates overseas, border restrictions like Title 42, and overall reduced global movement during the pandemic, the U.S. now needs to restore its immigration system and rebuild its workforce.

In locations experiencing a surge of new U.S. residents, data analysis shows that some of the sharpest wage increases, which reflect worker shortages, occurred in industries typically supported by a large number of immigrants, including construction and hospitality. 

"Increasing immigration would help prevent inflation and stabilize the workforce."

Fortunately, nationwide worker shortages in industries typically supported by immigrants began to subside by the end of 2022 as legal immigration pathways returned and the inflow of immigrants increased month by month. This return to pre-pandemic immigration levels has also coincided with recent reductions in inflation. But these economic challenges—inflation, a strained workforce, and labor market mismatches—will likely continue long after the pandemic is over, and failing to modernize our immigration system will leave the U.S. economy increasingly vulnerable. Increasing immigration would help prevent inflation and stabilize the workforce. 

As an example, FWD.us data analysis examines how one legal immigration pathway used by the Biden Administration—humanitarian parole—has offered a timely and crucial reduction in labor shortages, and likely contributed to lower inflation in recent months. The lesson: policies designed with substantial humanitarian benefit can be good for the economy, and immigration policy that responds quickly to market shifts can stabilize prices for consumers and offer relief to employers, while also providing new workers an opportunity to contribute their skills and knowledge to the U.S. economy.

"Projections show that, without immigration, the U.S. working-age population will not grow in the years ahead."

The pandemic as preview for longer-term demographic challenges

For the past two decades, the U.S. population has been aging as the baby boomer generation reaches retirement age and fewer young people enter the workforce. This is leading to a slowing growth in the working-age population, with fewer people entering the workforce while even more leave it. Meanwhile, America’s demand for goods and services persists, with fewer people lined up to provide them.

The warning bells for this coming demographic crisis in the U.S. have been sounding for some time, but the pandemic put it in sharp relief as a demand for services shot up without an available labor supply. While the majority of workers kept and have kept going to their physical locations for their jobs, for many millions, remote work has been a massive change with huge societal consequences. In essence, these compounding forces – shifting population centers and lower immigration – led the U.S. workforce to experience the effects of long-term demographic decline in a very short period of time. By examining what happened during the pandemic, including the relationship between reduced immigration and increased inflation across the U.S., we can better anticipate what lies ahead if we do not fix our immigration system. The pandemic experience simulated the future challenges the U.S. workforce would face without increasing immigration levels.

Demographic projections produced by Mason researchers show how demographic factors like aging are reshaping the U.S. population, and more specifically the U.S. workforce. Projections show that, without immigration, the U.S. working-age population will not grow in the years ahead. In fact, the U.S. needs to increase immigration levels, not only to make up for the immigration shortfall seen over the past few years, but also to ensure a growing labor supply for the rest of this decade. Without a growing workforce fueled by increased immigration, the U.S.’ global edge will soften, leading the country to become less competitive for talent, innovation, and productivity. No other country that has seen its prime-age working population drop has continued to grow economically. The results of working-age population decline are affordability crises for all Americans, everyone is poorer on average, as well as substantial global competitiveness and security challenges.

Increasing immigration would also have other positive indirect effects, including raising wages for Americans, while at the same time reducing the risk of future inflationary episodes. Projections show that, under an increased immigration scenario, Americans would earn, on average, $1,000 more annually by 2040 compared to a scenario where immigration levels are held constant. By contrast, if the country were to return to significantly lower levels of immigration (similar to those experienced during the pandemic), the average American would stand to earn $16,000 less annually by 2040 than if immigration levels were increased.

With job openings at historically high levels and an employment rate for prime working-age individuals at its highest since 2001, immigration is one of the most immediate and effective economic solutions to lowering inflation and stabilizing it for years to come.

What happened in new destinations across America coming out of the pandemic is what would happen across America in the years ahead as labor demands increased, the population aged, and the economy grew, but the workforce did not grow with it.

"If the country were to return to lower levels of immigration seen during the pandemic, the average American would stand to earn $16,000 less annually by 2040 than if immigration levels were increased."

Congress and the Administration need to create new legal avenues to increase immigration

This study shows that Congress and the Administration have crucial decisions to make: create new legal avenues to increase immigration at all skill and family levels, or risk persistently high inflation in the years ahead. 

Elected leaders must act now before inflation becomes a normalized feature of the U.S. economy. Failing to act—or worse, reducing immigration—would make it impossible for our economy to recover successfully from the pandemic, leaving it crippled by persistent worker shortages and sustained inflation for years to come.

 

In 2020, millions of workers moved to virtual, at-home environments for their jobs. Remote work provided social distancing during the pandemic, but also enabled workers to relocate to new places in new states, far away from their previous physical office location. This led hundreds of thousands of people in 2020 to relocate—about twice as many than before the pandemic—often from major U.S. metros to smaller, more suburban, or more southern communities around the country.

As people relocated to new communities, they contributed to increasing demand for products and services, many of which were not as abundantly available in their new locations. And while many professionals were now working in new communities, there was a fundamental labor mismatch. These new residents were not doing the kind of work that was needed in these new communities to meet the increased demand, much less to fill labor shortages that already existed before they relocated. 

With a high demand for services and a low supply of workers, prices rose in areas across the U.S.—not just for housing and other goods, but also for products that require a large number of service workers to produce them. Elevated demand in these areas drove up the cost of services, for anything from at-home healthcare and personal care services to restaurant dining and home repairs. 

"...households in places like Phoenix or Tampa...faced inflation rates that were 2.5 percentage points higher than households in places like San Francisco and New York City..."

 

Mason researchers found households in places like Phoenix or Tampa—metro areas in the top quarter of movement within the U.S.—faced inflation rates that were 2.5 percentage points higher than households in places like San Francisco and New York City—metro areas in the bottom quarter of movement within the U.S. That translates into an increase of $1,500 in annual expenditures for the average American household that made this move.

Inflation rates were highest in areas that experienced some of the highest levels of new residents within the U.S. These same destinations were also the ones with more severe labor shortages, evidenced by higher job vacancy-to-unemployment rates as well as sharp wage increases. 

Local inflation spikes could have been abated if immigrant workers had been available to fill many of the jobs in these new destination regions. In times of sudden economic shifts, immigrants provide a flexible workforce that can meet new demands in growing industries, particularly in industries that already rely on immigrant workers. The stark absence of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers who did not enter the workforce before and during the pandemic made these new destinations even more unable to meet new, shifting demands. 

In fact, Mason researchers found that labor shortages, a major driver of inflation, were sharp in industries that heavily rely on an immigrant workforce, as evidenced by wage spikes during the pandemic. This shows that the absence of immigrant workers was a particularly strong contributor to inflationary pressures, and that industries that rely on immigrants struggled the most. For example, the correlation between wage increases and the number of new residents was particularly strong in construction and leisure and hospitality, industries where immigrants make up about a fifth of the workforce. 

Wage increases may, on the surface, seem like a good thing for American workers. And, in stable inflation conditions, this is often the case. But not during a time of rising inflation and perpetual worker shortages. The economy can begin an endless wage-price spiral, an economic condition in which wages increase because of a lack of workers and those wage increases are passed on to the consumer. In order to retain workers who see their wages adjusted for inflation falling, employers feel compelled to raise wages again, and this cycle repeats itself. One way out of the spiral, and to stabilize inflation, is to insert new workers into the labor force, moderating the role labor shortages are having on wages.

Within just a few months of coming out of the pandemic, local inflation and immigrant workforce shortages compounded into a national crisis. Come 2022, job openings at the national level skyrocketed. But with immigration returning to near pre-pandemic levels by 2022, worker shortages and inflation eased.

Recent immigration actions provide a limited preview of how increased immigration can tamp down inflation. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants have been paroled into the U.S. for humanitarian reasons since the start of the Biden Administration. Offering these individuals refuge is the right and moral thing to do, but this timely increase in immigration coming out of the pandemic simultaneously helped address labor shortages. 

"On the aggregate, about a quarter of the decrease in job openings from 2022 to 2023 in industries with labor shortages can be traced to paroled immigrants working in the U.S. economy."

FWD.us estimates that about 450,000 individuals who were permitted to enter the U.S. via parole in 2021 and 2022 likely also ended up working in industries with labor shortages. On the aggregate, about a quarter of the decrease in job openings from 2022 to 2023 in industries with labor shortages can be traced to paroled immigrants working in the U.S. economy.

And the Administration’s new 2023 humanitarian parole policy for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV), in addition to extending vital humanitarian benefits to people seeking safety, will certainly help ease worker shortages and thus inflation even further. Assuming paroled immigrants through the CHNV policy take similar jobs as co-nationals who entered the U.S. in recent years, FWD.us estimates some 170,000 of these paroled individuals will likely work in industries experiencing labor shortages.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers shifted to remote environments and relocated across the country. As communities began to reopen, the U.S. faced extraordinary labor shortages that drove inflation and consumer prices up. Our analysis shows that steep declines in immigration levels exacerbated the impact of increased relocation throughout the U.S. and contributed to increased inflation. Economic shifts during the pandemic illustrate what lies ahead for the United States if Congress does not reform the U.S. immigration system.

 

Recent months’ worker shortages are only a preview of the economic disaster that could occur in the years ahead without Congress passing more commonsense immigration policies. Demographic projections prepared by Mason researchers show how our working-age population, those aged 16 to 64 years, is now growing only through immigration. 

“Under a zero-immigration scenario where immigration stopped for the next two decades, the U.S. working-age population would shrink 11% by 2040. And under a low-immigration scenario, the U.S. working-age population would remain relatively flat.”

 

Demographers applied four immigration scenarios to population projections, including: (1) cutting nearly all immigration, or those seen during the pandemic, (2) status-quo levels, or about those we are experiencing now as well as a couple of years before the pandemic, (3) increased  levels, or 50% more than status-quo levels, and (4) zero immigration. (See our Methodology for a more detailed description of immigration scenarios).

Under a zero-immigration scenario where immigration stopped for the next two decades, the U.S. working-age population would shrink 11% by 2040. And under a low-immigration scenario, the U.S. working-age population would remain relatively flat. Both these scenarios, leave the working-age population at a level that our economy cannot sustain, now during a period of labor shortages and for the long term as a significant share of the population continues to age and heads into retirement.

By contrast, if immigration levels were to remain the same as they were a few years before the pandemic and about where they are  today – or the status quo immigration scenario – the working-age population would marginally grow about 6%, or roughly 10 million people, by 2040. For perspective, the current job opening rate is about 6%, reflecting nearly 10 million unfilled jobs.

But the U.S. economy needs new workers now. With record low unemployment, businesses are desperate to hire more employees to meet vital workforce needs. Additional workers cannot be found in our current working-age population. Labor force participation rates for the current workforce have remained stubbornly stable for the past year, indicating that the current U.S. population that is out of the workforce is not a realistic source for new workers in the short or medium term. Research indicates that hundreds of thousands of workers left the U.S. workforce during the pandemic and are not coming back. Many more have reduced the number of hours they are working. These open jobs cannot simply be filled by teenagers looking to enter the workforce early or seniors already in retirement. More workers are needed to meet the shortfall.

Moreover, the era of worker shortages does not appear to be ending anytime soon. For instance, Congress has passed aggressive investments in infrastructure, legislation addressing climate change, and a bill jump-starting semiconductor manufacturing. But without more immigration, many of these investments will be stymied. And, as labor shortages in the past two years have already shown us, the U.S. risks sustained inflation if Congress does nothing legislatively on immigration to prepare for this additional job creation.

The best growth strategy for the U.S. economy and the U.S. workforce to close the immediate labor shortage gap and drive down inflation in the years ahead is to increase immigration. Raising immigration levels by 50% would increase the projected U.S. working-age population by about 13% by 2040—which would provide for current and growing labor needs, while also further expanding the U.S. economy. Doing so would keep our workforce growing at the rate it has for the past two decades. Doing anything less would lead to slowing growth. 

When the U.S. economy grows with increased immigration, all Americans stand to benefit. A growing economy increases productivity and eases inflation, but also raises real wages for everyone.

“GDP per capita is projected to increase by only about 19% during the next two decades, or about $16,000 less annually come 2040, under a low-immigration scenario.”

 

Positive growth in the immigrant labor force, which also represents positive growth in the American workforce, is a win-win for all. Compared with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in 2020, keeping immigration levels as they are or increasing them by half will lead to an increase of some 40% in GDP per person by 2040, according to the FWD.us study in collaboration with Mason researchers.

Economic projections show an even greater financial bonus for everyday Americans, thanks to increased immigration: individual GDP, on average, would be $1,000 greater in 2040 if the U.S. increased immigration levels by 50% in the years ahead. This is because an increase in immigrants will grow the labor force beyond its current level, simultaneously expanding the entire U.S. economy, and permitting everyone to benefit from that expansion.

With increased levels of immigration, inflation will ease as worker shortages lessen. Consequently, raising immigration would solve immediate and longer-term labor demand issues, while allowing for a growing economy, enabling all workers to share in real wage growth rather than wages responding to rising inflation.

However, these economic gains for Americans would be significantly diminished if immigration levels were returned to low or pandemic levels. GDP per capita is projected to increase by only about 19% during the next two decades, or about $16,000 less annually come 2040, under a low-immigration scenario. With lower immigration, the labor force would stay about the same size or even contract, stagnating economic growth and leaving a smaller economy for everyone.

Personal economic gains associated with increased immigration show that immigration spurs a growing economy, benefiting U.S. residents of all backgrounds. Congress should not stand on the sidelines on this potential economic boom for American taxpayers. Instead, it is clear that pro-immigration policies will make most everyone economically better off.

 

“Congress and the Administration need to address these immediate and longer-term workforce challenges by working together on bipartisan legislation to modernize our immigration system.”

As this report makes clear, increasing immigration would benefit the U.S. significantly in many ways. Congress cannot instantly set the immediate trajectory of immigration, however. For some policy proposals, it may take years for new laws to produce meaningful impact. That is why Congress must act now to be able to see a turnaround for our workforce in the years ahead. 

Fighting inflation and reversing demographic trends will require addressing workforce shortages, building strong talent pipelines, and welcoming more permanent immigrants to communities facing decline. Accordingly, FWD.us recommends several possible avenues for legislation to expand immigration pathways, including modernizing legal immigration levels, creating a direct pathway to permanent residency for STEM international students, and creating targeted regional programs to help ensure that every state and community can share in the economic and workforce benefits of immigration.

Meanwhile, the Administration should continue to expand legal avenues for people seeking relief in the U.S., including extending Temporary Protected Status for individuals from countries for which returning would be very unsafe. The Administration should also continue working to expand avenues for highly educated and skilled workers, particularly with STEM skills, to fill critical job openings in emerging industries like A.I. and advanced manufacturing. All these Administrative measures would enable a greater number of immigrants on the sidelines of the U.S. workforce to immediately enter the labor market and address current labor needs. 

Making these changes now will produce the greatest benefits, before an aging population and a lack of workers make rising inflation and labor shortages a permanent feature of our economy. During the pandemic, we saw how a slowdown in immigration can have disastrous effects on the U.S. economy. We cannot wait any longer to see another period of sustained inflation without sufficient wage increases. By then, the economic challenges will be far too great, and the policy shifts all the more difficult to implement and support. 

Congress and the Administration need to address these immediate and longer-term workforce challenges by working together on bipartisan legislation to modernize our immigration system.

 

 

Methodology

The inflation study relies on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) shown are limited by the data points available for inflation. Inflation is measured as the rates for 2022 over 2020.

The inflation study was conducted by Justin Gest, George Mason University and R. Andrew Butters, Indiana University. 

Immigration parole methodology can be found here.

Population projections rely on the cohort component method used by the U.S. Census Bureau and other demographic research organizations. Projections are long-term forecasts based on what we know about populations today and projecting those trends into the future. They allow for different assumptions—like varying immigration rates—to lead to different projected outcomes. 

In this study, baseline population data were drawn from the 2021 American Community Survey (ACS) by age, sex, race, and place of birth (U.S.-born, foreign-born). Projections rely on trends for national mortality and fertility rates from 1990 through 2019. (2020 was avoided because of an unusual year for both mortality and fertility due to the pandemic). 

People both enter the U.S. (immigrants) and leave the U.S. (emigrants). The combined effect leads to a net migration rate, with a positive rate indicating more people entering than people leaving. Different levels of immigration were calculated while keeping emigration constant across all scenarios. The study uses constant net migration rates tied to the broader U.S. population. Consequently, the actual number of immigrants projected to enter the U.S. changes year to year, depending on the immigration scenario level. 

The study considers four immigration scenarios, based on immigration levels in 2017:

1. Zero immigration—no immigration.
2. Cut nearly all immigration—pandemic, or 50% of prepandemic (2017) levels, or roughly 600,000 immigrants entering the U.S. annually
3. Status quo immigration—prepandemic (2017), also similar to current immigration levels, or roughly 1.2 million immigrants entering the U.S. annually
4. Increased immigration—50% more immigration than prepandemic (2017) levels, or roughly 1.8 million immigrants entering the U.S. annually 

The resulting population growth was estimated for each immigration scenario, keeping other population dynamics constant. Population projections for the working-age population are for ages 16 to 64. 

Economic growth, or real GDP, is based on population projections for demographic groups using economic data from the 2021 ACS, and established economic projection modeling from previous studies. These economic projections for GDP per capita, referred to as wages in this report, do not take into account sudden economic shocks, slumps, or recoveries. Economic growth is expressed as GDP using constant 2021 U.S. dollars. 

The population projections study was conducted by Justin Gest, George Mason University; Erin Hoffman, Utah State University; Annie Hines, University of California, Davis; and Ethan Sharygin, Portland State University.

[cosmicway 1,323]

10 hours ago, Vesper said:

Gayism?????

Sod off with your awkward homophobic rantings.

Why don't you stay out of other consenting adults' sex lives?

It really is none of your fucking business.

My experience with so many anti gay crusaders/zealots is that they have serious projection/guilt/denial/latency issues, thus their obsession with it all.

I suggest you deal with your own issues mate, whatever they may be.

Mirror, mirror..........

I only asked for medical informations.
Only Robert F. Kennedy jr rejects medical informations.

[Vesper 28,796]

1 minute ago, cosmicway said:

I only asked for medical informations.
Only Robert F. Kennedy jr rejects medical informations.

Don't condescend to me, cleverclogs.

What the hell is wrong with you that you are so obsessed with us queer folk's sex lives?

Go watch some gay porn or better yet, go to a leather boy bar and gob off to them.

Here is good place to start:

https://www.leathermen.gr/athens-leather-weekend

Pro tip: It will not end well (and I do not mean for them).

Good luck sweetie, you are going to need it!

[cosmicway 1,323]

2 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Don't condescend to me, cleverclogs.

What the hell is wrong with you that you are so obsessed with us queer folk's sex lives?

Go watch some gay porn or better yet, go to a leather boy bar and gob off to them.

Here is good place to start:

https://www.leathermen.gr/athens-leather-weekend

Pro tip: It will not end well (and I do not mean for them).

Good luck sweetie, you are going to need it!

I don't object to the idea.
But you cannot answer the question.

[Vesper 28,796]

17 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

I don't object to the idea.
But you cannot answer the question.

Not 'cannot'.

I simply refuse to play along with your shitbaggery.

Have fun at the Leather Social on Friday at Big Bar.

I am sure you can find a nice bear to make all your fantasies come true.

Maybe even one who will cosplay as a Russian commie bear.

Edited 40 minutes ago by Vesper

[cosmicway 1,323]

31 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Not 'cannot'.

I simply refuse to play along with your shitbaggery.

Have fun at the Leather Social on Friday at Big Bar.

I am sure you can find a nice bear to make all your fantasies come true.

Maybe even one who will cosplay as a Russian commie bear.

You have gone random.
 

Answer the question.