This is absolutely Gen Z's and Millennials' opportunity to pick the next president. Together, according to Harvard University pollster, John Della Volpe (2022), they represent close to 40 percent of the electorate. Pretty impressive.

Author Sara Pequeño is on point on the dangers of another Trump presidency. He and his supporters at the state level will enshrine policies that make it unlawful to organize, by curtailing rights to protest and thusly, our First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly. In fact, this is what was exactly at stake last Spring on many college campuses.

If you want to know what's in store should Trump win, do read through conservative extremists' "planned coup" embodied in Project 2025. Use the search terms "abolish" and "eliminate" to get a sense of what is at stake. 

A truly excellent, just-published read is the June 2024 issue of The Nation titled, "The Plot Against America," with commentary from numerous authors on the different sections of Project 2025 as follows:

1) "The Conservative Promise," by Kim Phillips-Fein; 

2) "The Executive," by Chris Lehmann; 

3) "Democracy: The Great Dismantling," by John Nichols;

4) "Justice: A Legal Heist" by Ellie Mystal; 

5) Housing: America's Landlord," by Sasha Abramsky; 

6) "Healthcare: Bad Medicine," by Joan Walsh; 

7) "Climate: License to Drill, Drill, Drill," by Bill McKibben; 

8) "Immigration: Deport, Detain, Deny," by Gaby del Valle; 

9) "China: A New Exclusion Act," by Jake Werner; and 

10) "The Pentagon: Masters of War," by William Hartung.

Among other things, Project 2025 proposes invoking the Insurrection Act, enabling presidents to deploy the military against American citizens protesting their actions—a practice currently illegal. For additional context, refer to the Trump Administration's adoption of Heritage Foundation policy in 2018 recommendations as follows:  Trump Administration Embraces Heritage Foundation Policy Recommendations. 

Moreover, I do concur with Pequeño that a Biden victory means that Gen Z will be in a great position to leverage policies they care for from a Biden administration pursuant to a victory in which they are responsible for those helpful electoral margins.

-Angela Valenzuela

 #2024election

Reference

Della Volpe, J. (2022). Fight: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear and Passion to Save America, St. Martin's Press.

Gen Z voters like me should be mad at Biden. But we can't risk another Trump presidency.

Yes, Gen Z is disappointed with President Biden. But I don't see a way we'll let Trump back in the White House.

Sara Pequeño, USA TODAY | June 2, 2024

We have to make a decision as Zoomers. Are we angry enough at Joe Biden to risk a second Donald Trump presidency? Or do we remember who Trump is and what another four years of his presidency would mean?

Now that the former president is a convicted felon, the idea of him winning in November is even scarier and our responsibility even greater.

We have already proven we have a strong generational moral compass. We've been protesting my entire adulthood – protesting the first Trump presidency, protesting sexual abuse, protesting for Black Lives Matter and now, protesting for Palestine. We know what we believe.

Now is the time to put those values into action. Polling has shown that Gen Z is dissatisfied with Biden. Personally, I’m unenthusiastic about him as a candidate. I do not think we are as progressive as we should be as a world leader, and I think we need someone younger in office.

I still plan on voting for him.

Still, if 2020 was the year of voter mobilization, 2024 is looking to be the year of voter apathy. This is especially true amongst my age cohort, the 18- to 27-year-olds who comprise Gen Z.

Trump is leading in polls, despite everything

Trump is currently outperforming Biden in the polls. Yes, Trump, the candidate who evoked Nazi Germany in a recent post about forming a “unified Reich.” The candidate who is in legal trouble. The candidate who we can’t seem to get away from and who motivated a group of people to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Now, we can add being a convicted felon to that list after Trump was found guilty last week of 34 counts of falsifying business records. While this has yet to be factored into polling data, there's still a chance it doesn't affect people's views on the former president.

Much has been said about Gen Z's hesitancy to vote for Biden. I have personally written a lot about this hesitancy. Thankfully, recent polls look more optimistic. Most recent polling from Harvard shows that Biden leads Trump by 19 percentage points among likely voters ages 18 to 29. 

Biden is not it:Why are Gen Z voters souring on Biden? I decided to ask them about that frustration.

This is the same age group that has created a reputation for voter turnout. We have shown up at the polls. More Zoomers voted in 2022 than any other recent generation during its first midterm, leading to the second-highest midterm voter turnout rate since 2000.

So, while I wish progressives gave us a better option than Biden, this is still our chance to decide the election. And it can't be Trump.

The 2016 election was my wake-up call

After 2016, I realized that voting is not the only solution to our problems. In actuality, voting is one step in the long list of things we can do to shape the country we live in. No president can single-handedly fix everything wrong with the country, despite what we are led to believe as children. It's a long-term fix.

I fear what another four years of Trump would look like and how it will set back any gains progressives have made in recent years. I fear returning to an environment where corruption is tolerated, and hateful ideologies are commonplace.

Many people underestimated Trump in 2016. We can’t repeat that mistake and should remember why we voted him out in 2020.

In 2016, I voted for Hillary Clinton in my first presidential election. I was living in North Carolina and wasn’t positive that the state would go for Trump. In the end, he overwhelmingly won my home county.

For four years, I felt horror cede into numbness as Trump’s antics became commonplace and we came to believe that his administration was normal. While every recent Republican president has objected to progress, Trump has come to represent a deep sickness in American culture. A large chunk of voters seem fine with ignoring racism, sexism and other prejudices so long as there was a celebrity businessman saying it.

MAGA still loves Trump:What do Trump supporters think about his conviction? I went to the courthouse to ask.

The last four years of Biden's presidency have put some distance between our society and the policy decisions of the Trump administration. It has made it easy to forget some of the worst parts of his presidency: being impeached multiple times, separating families at the border, "both sidesing" the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, COVID-19 response and countless lies told to the American public.

We can't go back.

Trump is a present danger to what Gen Z cares about

I don’t enjoy having to make this decision every four years; I wish the Democratic Party considered me more than the stereotypes that exist about young people. I want them, in particular, to consider the world we are inheriting: all of the prejudice, the failures of government and the impending climate crisis.

I’m also going to vote. Even though I dislike Biden, I understand that my civic duty is to help America avoid another Trump presidency.

The atmosphere Trump creates poisons the nation. It feeds our worst instincts, guarantees its corruption, and sets us back.

The Republican Party, the supposed party of law and order, is going to surround a candidate who has enough legal problems to keep him busy for the rest of his life. It’s a level of hypocrisy that no longer shocks me but should keep my generation motivated. 

Unfortunately, there are limited options for fixing that and Biden is still the best option for progressives.

Democrats need to prove their commitment to us

Gen Z is at a crossroads. We could allow the country to fall into the hands of a corrupt man and increasingly extreme Republican Party, or we could vote for a man who is disappointingly moderate but still leans toward the goals we have as a generation. Progress is incremental, and having a Democrat in office means that progressives will have more inroads to meeting their goals for the next four years. It also means that younger progressives can become part of the Biden administration and make political progress toward influence.

I also think older generations need to remember the feeling of being 18, 19, 20 or even 27. 

For those of you demanding answers from Gen Z, consider if there are other people in your life, people in your own generation, who are not voting for president. They exist, and they deserve the same scrutiny being placed on Zoomers this year. We don't know how Gen Z will show up to vote – but we could surprise all of you.

We need to turn out and vote, and I’m confident that enough of us will come to this conclusion in November. We can’t forget how bad Trump really was or lose sight of all the damage Republicans have continued to do after Trump lost.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter, @sara__pequeno and Facebook facebook.com/PequenoWrites

This is a powerful, evidence-based piece on a study by Paradigm that explains well a dynamic in hiring practices that results in white candidates having at least twice the chance of getting hired relative to Black, Brown, nonbinary, disabled, and female candidates of any race—including within firms that are explicitly committed to a diverse workplace.

Key quote based on study results:

Because white people – and white men in particular – historically have been the majority group in most organizations, especially in leadership roles, job candidates recommended through employee referral programs are disproportionately white and male, Paradigm co-founder and CEO Joelle Emerson said.

Related to this, as you can read for yourselves, is that referrals stand a much better chance of getting hired in contrast to others who simply apply for a given position. Another valuable resource is a USA Today investigation of diversity within our nation's most powerful companies which found the following:

The top ranks are still predominantly white and male, while women and people of color are concentrated at the lowest levels with less pay, fewer perks and little opportunity for advancement. (Guynn & Fraser, 2023)

I do hope that this equates to a wake-up call for employers who may either be confused or are not getting the actual truth of what DEI is in the workplace and beyond, as this shall be consequential to workplace productivity. Expressed differently, DEI policies and practices will affect the bottom line, especially considering the growing presence of a non-white population that constitutes an ever larger share of the U.S. workforce.

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Guynn, J. & Fraser, J. (2023, Feb. 16). Corporate diversity database: A USA TODAY investigative series inside the nation’s most powerful companies, USA Today. 

White job candidates are more likely to get hired through employee referrals. Here's why.

Jessica Guynn, USA Today | May 12, 2024

Flashing a polished resume, a sharp cover letter and a LinkedIn profile doesn’t guarantee a foot in the door.

Making the shortlist – let alone the final cut – is not just a matter of sterling credentials. It’s still largely a matter of who you know. And nothing counts more than a company insider putting in a good word with a hiring manager. But research shows these employee referrals don’t give everyone a fair shake.  

White candidates are almost twice as likely to be hired as those from other racial and ethnic groups, even in organizations committed to diversity, according to new findings from diversity strategy and consulting firm Paradigm.

Insular networks are 'a self-perpetuating cycle'

Because white people – and white men in particular – historically have been the majority group in most organizations, especially in leadership roles, job candidates recommended through employee referral programs are disproportionately white and male, Paradigm co-founder and CEO Joelle Emerson said.

“In both our personal and professional lives, our networks tend to be composed of people who look like us," she said. “You essentially have a self-perpetuating cycle."

Job applications were more diverse than referrals in most companies Paradigm studied. 

Black candidates represented 3% of employee referrals but 5% of all job applicants; Latino and Hispanic candidates 4% of employee referrals but 7% of all job applicants; and Asian candidates 28% of employee referrals but 40% of all job applicants, Paradigm found.

“All of this compounds and becomes a disadvantage for candidates of color,” Emerson said. 

‘Wake-up call’ for employers as nation becomes more diverse

Emerson says the Paradigm study comes at a critical moment for organizations as the workforce shrinks and the nation grows more diverse.

Most organizations her firm works with already struggle to hire, advance and retain employees from underrepresented groups – people of color, women and nonbinary people, disabled people, veterans, and the LGBTQ+ community, Emerson said.

“This should be a bit of a wake-up call,” she said. “You very likely have gaps in hiring, performance management, promotions and employee experience that are disadvantaging groups of employees that are currently underrepresented, but growing as a relative proportion of the overall workforce.

Emerson said if employers can't remove those obstacles now, they will struggle to attract the best employees in the future.

The Paradigm study also counters misleading narratives from anti-diversity activists who claim that diversity, equity and inclusion programs discriminate against white people and give underrepresented groups an unfair advantage in hiring and promotions, according to Emerson.

“The data shows that simply isn't the case,” she said.

A USA TODAY investigation of the nation’s largest companies found that the top ranks are predominantly white and male, while women and people of color are concentrated at the lowest levels with less pay, fewer perks and little opportunity for advancement.

Job candidates referred by employees more likely to get hired

Popular in organizations across industries, referral programs are often considered a win-win-win. Job applicants with a personal recommendation have the inside track. Employers get vetted candidates who start sooner and stay longer. And the employee who dropped a friend’s name collects a cash bonus. 

“For many companies, they are the primary or a top source of hired employees,” Emerson said. 

Referred candidates have a much better shot than job hunters who submit their resumes online or who apply through recruiters, staffing agencies and career fairs.

Paradigm looked at data from more than 2 million job candidates and found that referred candidates were over 4.5 times as likely to get hired.

Employee referral programs can harm diversity efforts

Research studies have raised concerns about referral programs for years as have anti-discrimination regulators. 

In 2018, Payscale research found that referral programs benefited white men more than any other demographic group. White women were 12% less likely, men of color 26% less likely and women of color 35% less likely to receive job referrals than their white male counterparts, the compensation data provider found.

"It is recognized that employee referral programs can jeopardize diversity efforts, particularly if your current workforce demographics are not diverse," Payscale's pay equity strategist Ruth Thomas said. "We also know from studying ethnicity pay gaps that lack of professional networks is a driver of pay gaps."

The analysis by PayScale found that a woman hired through a referral program got on average a $3,700 increase in pay, but a man hired through a referral program got more than twice that.

"Unless the workforce is racially and ethnically diverse, exclusive reliance on word-of-mouth should be avoided because it is likely to create a barrier to equal employment opportunity for racial or ethnic groups that are not already represented in the employer's workforce,” the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says on its website. 

In 2017, tech firm Palantir settled a lawsuit by the Labor Department that alleged it discriminated against Asian job applicants in several types of technical jobs.

The problem, the government said, was that Palantir relied too heavily on employees to refer job candidates – more than half of hires came through an employee referral program – disproportionately excluding Asian applicants.

Palantir said the Labor Department’s analysis was flawed.

How to make better, more diverse hires through referrals

Emerson said employee referrals are a smart way for organizations to staff up.

“Who wouldn’t want to hire someone who has a proven track record with colleagues and can work well with the people already in your organization?” Emerson said.

In the past, organizations diversified job referrals by encouraging employees to think about people in their networks who hail from diverse backgrounds. 

“Given the anti-diversity backlash we’re seeing right now, many companies may be less likely to do this right now,” Emerson said. 

But employers can still improve the fairness of employee referral programs, she says.

◾ Ask every job candidate the same questions and evaluate their answers using the same criteria.

◾ Conduct candidate debriefs to explore why interviewers prefer one candidate over others.

◾ Do not disclose to interviewers that a candidate was referred by someone inside the company.

◾ Consider whether candidates gave stronger answers or have more relevant experience, or did they “vibe more” with interviewers.

I want it for me': 1st-generation College Student Beats COVID Barriers to stay in School

This in-depth account of college student, Guillerminia Gutierrez Martinez' struggles, with getting through college provides a good sense of what many immigrant families are coping with in the context of the current pandemic. 

If navigating college is hard in normal times, one can only imagine just how difficult things are for them now. Most positively, it points to the resilience, intelligence, aspirations, and dogged determination of students that emanate from among the most marginal sectors of society.  

I so admire them. Thanks to Jorge Haynes for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

Lindsay Schnell, USA TODAY

Published 5:20 PM CDT May. 20, 2021 Updated 4:35 PM CDT May. 21, 2021

Leer en español

Guillermina Gutierrez Martinez picked at her cuticles and let out a shaky breath. Her left leg bounced nervously as her right foot nudged the accelerator. She balled up her fist and pushed away a tear, clearing her vision of the road ahead. 

Will they think I’m a failure? Will they lie to their friends because they’re ashamed?

Crammed into her 2007 Ford Fusion were remnants of her life in the University of Washington dorms: A king-size grey Mexican blanket, storage containers bursting with winter clothes, a suitcase stuffed with textbooks and a camera. This is what she’d packed two years ago when she left her hometown to chase a college education, the dream of so many first-generation Americans and their parents. 

It was May 2020. Two months earlier, COVID-19 had exploded just 13 miles from UW, shuttering campus and moving classes online. Guillermina thought the extra free time meant she could take on more; while enrolled in 15 credits she doubled her work hours from 20 per week to 40 at the downtown Seattle Target, desperate to help her family as the economy cratered. But the dueling responsibilities crushed her. She fell behind on homework. When she discovered she could withdraw without financial penalty in the seventh week of a 10-week spring term, Guillermina dropped out.
Guillermina Gutierrez Martinez talks about her upbringing while driving around Mount Vernon, Washington, her hometown. A keychain replica of the Fearless Girl statue on Wall Street is pictured hanging on her keys. The souvenir from New York City reminds Gutierrez Martinez to keep pushing herself.BRIAN MUNOZ, USA TODAY

One week later, she was hurtling backward: back to her house, back to parents she couldn’t look in the eye. 

She sniffed and wiped her nose with her sleeve as “Breathe,” from the “In the Heights” soundtrack, filtered through her car speakers: 

When Guillermina first heard that song in high school, she made a silent promise to herself that she’d get out too — to get an education, a profession, her own home. 

Continue reading here.

Hi Friends,

I've been away from the blog for awhile, successfully getting off the grid while away on a family vacation in Scotland and Ireland. I'll publish some of my thoughts and reflections on this later.  We've had a great time and the trip has provided much-needed respite.

I must say that no matter how far away from home we are, not a day or night goes by that I don't feel a deep sense of concern for what is happening in our country, particularly the far-reaching ramifications of Trump's zero-tolerance policy.  

It's disturbing to be across the ocean and to read presumably authoritative reports that Trump's immigration policy is no different from that of either the Obama or Bush administrations.  Of course, their source for information is nothing more than Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's false statements to that effect in the context of a June 18, 2018 press briefing.

The USA Today piece below provides clarity regarding Trump's zero-tolerance policy and how it's simply not true (also see 5 ways Kirstjen Nielsen's press conference on family separation was a total disaster by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, June 19, 2018).  

Such false, blanket statements distort the truth, mislead the public, and justify cruelty.  

And the suffering continues...   

-Angela Valenzuela

Fact check: Did the Obama administration separate families?

Lori Robertson  Factcheck.org

Published 4:54 p.m. UTC Jun 23, 2018

In this Nov. 29, 2016, file photo, President Barack Obama walks with his physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, right, towards a waiting Marine One as he leaves Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., after visiting wounded service members.

Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP

In defending its “zero tolerance” border policy that has caused the separation of families, the Trump administration has argued that the Obama and Bush administrations did this too. That’s misleading. Experts say there were some separations under previous administrations, but no blanket policy to prosecute parents and, therefore, separate them from their children.

“Bush and Obama did not have policies that resulted in the mass separation of parents and children like we’re seeing under the current administration,” Sarah Pierce, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, told us.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said at a June 18 press briefing: “The Obama administration, the Bush administration all separated families. … They did — their rate was less than ours, but they absolutely did do this. This is not new.”

Nielsen went on to explain that there is indeed something new, as we wrote in another article on this topic. Under a “zero tolerance policy” on illegal immigration announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in early April, the administration is now referring all illegal border crossings for criminal prosecution. By doing that, parents have been separated from their children, because children can’t be held in detention facilities for adults.

DHS told us that 2,342 children were separated from their parents between May 5 and June 9.

But DHS couldn’t provide any statistics on how many children may have been separated from their parents under the Obama administration.

Instead, when we asked, it pointed to numbers that show 21 percent of apprehended adults were referred for prosecution under President Barack Obama. From fiscal year 2010 to fiscal 2016, there were 2,362,966 adults apprehended illegally crossing the Southern border, and 492,970 were referred for prosecution, those figures show. But that doesn’t tell us anything about how many children may have been separated from their parents under Obama.

More: Trump's 'zero tolerance' immigration policy sparks outrage in Central America

More: Another chaotic week: How Trump scrambled to address border crisis

More: Trump berates Democrats as he begs for their votes on immigration bill

And we don’t have such statistics to compare the past to the present.

“We have not seen any data out of the current or prior administration on how many cases that were prosecuted were individuals who arrived with minors,” Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told us in an email. “So we cannot make any guesses or assumptions about how many separations based on prosecution there were or are.”

Brown said that even though DHS says 2,342 children have been separated from their parents in about one month, we don’t know what percentage of those cases are due to prosecutions for illegal crossings, and how many are due to other policies that would require separations — such as suspicion of trafficking, another outstanding warrant or insufficient proof of a family relationship.

We asked DHS if it would provide such a breakdown, but we haven’t received a response.

MPI’s Pierce said that the likely reason information isn't available on child separations under previous administrations is because it was done in “really limited circumstances” such as suspicion of trafficking or other fraud.

“Previous administrations used family detention facilities, allowing the whole family to stay together while awaiting their deportation case in immigration court, or alternatives to detention, which required families to be tracked but released from custody to await their court date,” Brown and her co-author, Tim O’Shea, wrote in an explainer piece for the Bipartisan Policy Center’s website. “Some children may have been separated from the adults they entered with, in cases where the family relationship could not be established, child trafficking was suspected, or there were not sufficient family detention facilities available. … However, the zero-tolerance policy is the first time that a policy resulting in separation is being applied across the board.”

Jeh Johnson, DHS secretary under the Obama administration, told NPR earlier this month that he couldn’t say that family separations “never happened” during his tenure. “There may have been some exigent situation, some emergency. There may have been some doubt about whether the adult accompanying the child was in fact the parent of the child. I can’t say it never happened but not as a matter of policy or practice. It’s not something that I could ask our Border Patrol or our immigration enforcement personnel to do,” Johnson said. 

The Obama administration faced a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America trying to cross the border in 2014. Cecilia Muñoz, director of the Obama administration’s Domestic Policy Council, told the New York Times this month that a multi-agency team was considering “every possible idea” at the time, including separating families. “I do remember looking at each other like, ‘We’re not going to do this, are we?’ We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea,” the Times quoted Muñoz saying. “The morality of it was clear — that’s not who we are.”

Brown told us that while the Obama administration “did separate some families,” it also tried to detain families together. In 2016, a court ruling limited how long children with their parents could be in family detention centers. That ruling confirmed that a 1997 settlement applied to both unaccompanied and accompanied minors, as we’ve explained before. 

“At that point,” Brown said, “family detention dwindled and most families were released into the US, either on their own with a notice to appear or under Alternatives to Detention, which could be an ankle bracelet or a supervised monitoring provision where they had to check in with ICE regularly until their immigration court hearing.”

On June 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing Nielsen to keep families in custody together “during the pendency of any criminal improper entry or immigration proceedings involving their members” at least “to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations.”

Published 4:54 p.m. UTC Jun 23, 2018