(NEW YORK) — New Mexico is expanding a program that waives the cost of child care, an initiative that could make child care free for many families in the southwestern state.
The announcement from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham last Thursday said the state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department estimates that over 30,000 more families will be able to take advantage of New Mexico’s Childcare Assistance Program starting this May, doubling the number of families who were already participating.
“Beginning May 1, 2022, all families enrolled in the state’s Childcare Assistance Program will no longer owe copays for child care services, making child care cost-free,” the announcement said.
The New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department announcement notes that the expansion will run until June 30, 2023.
Families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level, or $111,000 for a family of four, qualify to have their child care copayments waived. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services determines poverty levels, and for 2022, the federal department set the poverty guideline in the District of Columbia and the 48 contiguous states as $27,750 for a family of four.
The cost of child care in the U.S. is a significant burden for American families.
New survey data from 2019 from the HHS’s Administration for Children and Families shows that many families spend anywhere between 10% to 20% of their household budget on child care, including early child education. Amid the pandemic, many women also stopped working to take care of their kids at home, leading to a slowdown of employees returning to the national workforce.
In New Mexico specifically, think tank Economic Policy Institute estimates that the average cost of child care is approximately $8,617 a year.
Child care workers are also in short supply, and along with the expansion of copay waivers for families, New Mexico will also provide stipends to students who are pursuing higher education in early education.
Eligible students can apply for $2,000 each semester to help pay for their schooling at a New Mexico college or university.
The state is also pledging $10 million in grants to child care establishments to build or expand child care centers in underserved communities.
New Mexicans who are interested in joining the Childcare Assistance Program can visit the state’s “Am I Eligible?” site for more information.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of 2022, after years of growth, according to a new report.
Economists had expected consumer spending to accelerate in March, as rising wages prompted more American spending on services such as dining out and travel.
Watch the full report from ABC’s Good Morning America:
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Wednesday rejected Elon Musk’s request to terminate a settlement agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that he claimed was being abused to silence his speech.
The 2018 deal required Musk’s tweets to be pre-approved by Tesla’s board after Musk mused on Twitter about taking Tesla private. The SEC is investigating whether Musk violated that term in November 2021 when he asked his sizeable Twitter following if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.
Musk argued the SEC lacked the authority to continue its investigation and was only out to harass him.
In rejecting the motion, Judge Lewis Liman cited the SEC’s “broad power” to make sure securities laws are followed.
“The mere fact that SEC brought an action against Musk and a related action against Tesla for Musk’s tweets in August 2018 does not waive the SEC’s sovereign immunity with respect to an investigation the SEC launched in late 2021 regarding conduct that occurred in late 2021, after the 2018 case was settled,” the decision said.
“The judgment against Musk expressly stated that it was to settle ‘only the claims asserted against [Musk] in th[e] civil proceeding.’ It did not give Musk any broader immunity from other SEC investigations or proceedings—including related ones. It thus preserved the SEC’s authority to investigate Musk for additional securities violations or to ask for documents and records from him in connection with an investigation of others should the SEC receive information that suggested he or others violated the securities laws again.”
Musk’s attorney Alex Spiro argued the SEC had misused the settlement as a pretext to launch an “endless, boundless investigation” of Musk’s speech, but the judge also rejected that argument.
“Musk, by entering into the consent decree in 2018, agreed to the provision requiring the pre-approval of any such written communications that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to Tesla or its shareholders. He cannot now complain that this provision violates his First Amendment rights. Musk’s argument that the SEC has used the consent decree to harass him and to launch investigations of his speech is likewise meritless,” Liman said.
(NEW YORK) — Federal prosecutors in New York on Wednesday announced criminal charges against the founder of a private investment firm and its chief financial officer for alleged “manipulative trading” and “deceptive conduct” that led to a multibillion-dollar fraud.
Bill Hwang, the founder of Archegos Capital Management, and Patrick Halligan, the CFO, were charged with racketeering conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud.
According to the indictment, Hwang and Halligan “corrupted the operations and activities of the family office known as Archegos” and used it “as an instrument of market manipulation and fraud.” Family offices serve high-net-worth individuals and families.
Lawrence Lustberg, an attorney who represents Hwang, said he was “extremely disappointed” with the charges.
“We are extremely disappointed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office has seen fit to indict a case that has absolutely no factual or legal basis; a prosecution of this type, for open-market transactions, is unprecedented and threatens all investors,” Lustberg said in a statement. “As you will see when the facts unfold, Bill Hwang is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing; there is no evidence whatsoever that he committed any kind of crime, let alone the overblown allegations that pervade this indictment.”
Mary Mulligan, a lawyer for Halligan, said in a statement that her client is “innocent and will be exonerated.”
The consequences were far-reaching, prosecutors said. The stock prices of a number of companies were manipulated, employees’ savings were gambled and different banks were left with billions of dollars in losses. UBS alone lost $861 million, according to the indictment.
The criminal charges followed the spectacular implosion, in March 2021, of Archegos, which lost billions in mere days. Prosecutors said Hwang traded in a way that hid the true size of his positions from the rest of the investing public.
The alleged criminal conduct pumped Archegos’ portfolio – Hwang’s personal fortune – from $1.5 billion to $35 billion in one year, according to prosecutors.
(NEW YORK) — The road toward an all-electric vehicle future is long and filled with roadblocks concerning high costs and supply chain issues, according to automakers and motor vehicle experts.
However, the head of one of the world’s leading automakers said that motorists are hungry to shift into that new era.
Bill Ford, the chairman of the Ford Motor Company, spoke to ABC’s GMA 3 Tuesday about his company’s push into an all EV fleet. Ford touted that its electric offerings, such as the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning pickup truck, have been sold out.
“We are really betting the company,” he told GMA 3. “I’m so excited by the response that we’ve had to it.”
Ford Motor plans to have half of its fleet be EVs by 2030 and invested $5 billion in EVs this year, of 2021, Ford said.
Still, experts contend that the roadmap to a complete EV adoption has its roadblocks. Supply chain issues have made it harder for vehicle companies to produce the components for the vehicles as fast as other cars, motor vehicle experts said.
The nation’s budding charging infrastructure has left many communities, including those in rural areas, without any option to power an EV.
Ford said the company has been working its way through it, and insisted that the market for EVs would be stronger.
He noted that EVs have fewer moving parts than their gas-powered counterparts and that helps to lower the maintenance costs for customers.
Ford noted the F-150 Lightning’s starting price tag of $39,000.
“This is not a luxury vehicle at the high end of the market, where only a few people can do it. We’re bringing EVs into the range of the average person. We’re bringing EVs into the range of the average person,” he said.
Ford also talked about the concerns that some motorists have about the cost of powering EVs. While the vehicles can plug into a standard outlet, they can charge faster using an in home EV charging kit which can cost thousands of dollars to purchase and install.
President Joe Biden has touted EV infrastructure investments, including an expansion of the nation’s public charging grid, as part of his agenda and has pushed automakers to increase their EV output.
Last year he took a test drive in a F150 Lightning, flooring the truck in front of reporters.
(NEW YORK) — The funds to help states make transportation more sustainable have been promised, but will they be enough to propel the U.S. toward its emissions goals?
While it’s a step in the right direction, the $6.4 billion pledged by the Federal Highway Administration to help states fund projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will barely make a dent in the funds needed to help the U.S. meet its goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, experts said.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced last week that states would receive the money — part of a $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress in November — over five years to create projects that support widespread use of electric vehicles and trail facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists.
“It’s a good start,” Tom Moerenhout, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told ABC News. “But, it’s not a lot of money.”
It will likely require more than $100 billion “to really make a dent into road-based or transportation-based carbon emissions,” which are the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., Moerenhout said.
While roads, bridges and train lines have “really long lifespans,” the decisions states make on where to allocate the funding will need to be strategic, as they will “stick with us through 2050,” Elizabeth Irvin, a senior transportation analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News.
“That’s funding for states to work on transportation projects, where they’re explicitly taking into account both emission reductions and sustainability and also environmental justice,” Irvin said. “Those are all really important things.”
In the coming years, there will be a significant shift in the number of electric vehicles on the road, despite the war in Russia threatening to further disrupt the supply chain, Randy Bell, director of the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank, told ABC News.
The changing market has been evident in the release of more electric crossover and SUVs, which is “what Americans want to drive,” Rawn said.
On Tuesday, Bill Ford, executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company, announced the first shipment of the F-150 Lightning, the first electric version of the top-selling truck in the U.S. for 45 years. Ford had to stop taking orders due to the “tremendous interest” in the Lightning, Ford said, adding that it sold out soon after the plans were announced last year.
The need for charging infrastructure to power these EVs will be “huge,” Bell said, echoing the need to spend money wisely.
“EV adoption is not uniform around the country,” Bell said.
The infrastructure for charging stations will also take the burden off families from having to install charging capabilities at home, Carol Lee Rawn, senior director of transportation at Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit, told ABC News.
“So you don’t have to worry about having a plug at your house,” she said. “You can plug when you go shopping, or when you go to work, and it’s also extremely helpful for businesses that are interested in transitioning to electrification.”
In addition, policymakers will need to consider infrastructure that allows people to walk and ride bikes and scooters safely, Rawn said, adding that E-bikes are becoming a viable alternative for many people.
Countries are now sprinting to meet the ambitious pledges made at COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in October 2021.
The Biden administration has continued to roll out a steady stream of initiatives to ease emissions from the transportation sector.
In December 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its strictest vehicle emissions standards ever for cars and light trucks from model years 2023-2026. In February, the Transportation Department gave states the go-ahead to build electric car charging stations. And earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued new standards for vehicles sold in the U.S., requiring the average fuel efficiency to be at least 40 miles per gallon starting in 2026 — up from the 28 mpg standard enacted under former President Donald Trump.
Currently, the U.S. is not on track to meet its 2030 or even 2050 goals, Moerenhout said, adding that it will be especially important for governments to incentivize the reduction of emissions.
“I think Europe has shown that with tightening fuel emission standards, you can move people into more sustainable practices and incentivize electrification,” Moerenhout said. “But in the U.S., it has just been far too sporadic.”
With the Russian-backed conflict in Ukraine now detracting from the sense of urgency toward climate change, it will be imperative that governments find a way to address energy security and climate action together, Bell said.
“So you may end up with a more pragmatic pathway towards climate action, which ultimately becomes more economic, becomes more politically palatable and becomes much more realizable in the short to medium term,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — A new report diving into the data on vital measures of health and social determinants of health finds that women, and particularly women of color, continue to experience steep pay gaps, that many Americans cannot afford child care and many school districts may be underfunded.
The 2022 County Health Rankings report, shared in advance with ABC News, offers a unique snapshot of whether and how Americans are thriving — or as it may be, surviving.
Metrics like these are meaningful as the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and contends with the “intertwined crises of structural racism and economic exclusion” to examine how living wages or lack thereof “can impact a just recovery,” the report said.
“The data reinforces what we’ve known for some time. People in both rural and urban communities face long-standing barriers, systemic barriers — avoidable barriers — that get in the way of groups of people and places in our country from being able to live long and well,” Sheri Johnson, co-director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, told ABC News.
The rankings find “troubling issues” affecting women and families with children regarding economic security and family support, underscoring what the pandemic has repeatedly laid bare: “glaring failures” within the infrastructures of wage equity, child care costs and school funding.
Equal pay is not just a ‘women’s issue’
Women earn little more than 80 cents for every dollar men earn, on average, for the same work, the rankings find. But that’s not all.
To earn the $61,807 average salary of a white man, an Asian woman must work an extra 34 days, the report said.
A white woman must work 103 more days to earn that same $62,000 salary.
The report said a Black woman must work 223 days to make up that difference, while an American Indian/Alaska Native woman would have to work 266 days.
A Hispanic woman would have to work 299 days to make up that salary difference.
COVID’s prolonged toll “exposed the labor force barriers that prevent full participation of women and caregivers” and “places an additional burden on women with low incomes and women of color, who are the least likely to have employer-provided benefits,” the study said.
An economic security infrastructure that is inequitable for some weakens the entire system, Johnson said.
“There are consequences when we haven’t constructed community conditions for everyone to thrive,” Johnson said.
Child care costs exceed what many Americans can afford
Across counties, a family with two children spends, on average, a quarter of its household income on child care, the report said.
For those making the hourly $7.25 federal minimum wage, child care costs would take up nearly 90% of their annual income.
By that math, the average child care provider likely cannot afford their own services, which would consume more than half their average $25,460 annual income if they had two children.
“That’s pretty striking,” Johnson said — especially when contrasted with the government’s suggestion that families not spend more than 7% of their income on child care.
The rankings find that during the pandemic, the lack of affordable child care forced parents — especially mothers — out of the workforce and also hit child care providers, who were disproportionately women, which harmed families’ and communities’ well-being.
Stark differences in school funding across rural, urban and suburban communities
Half of all counties included in this analysis had school districts operating at a deficit, the rankings find. Among those districts, per-pupil spending, on average, was $3,000 below the annual estimated amount needed to support average test scores.
While schools in large urban metro counties, on average, operated under large deficits, schools in rural counties — the majority of all U.S. counties — were overrepresented among counties with inadequate school funding.
There are “patterns of disinvestment” reflected by the disproportionate geographic spread of school funding deficits, Johnson said.
Many counties in the western and southern U.S. operate with funding deficits. School districts in these counties, on average, spend less than what is estimated to be necessary to achieve national average test scores.
Counties with higher proportions of Black, Hispanic and American Indian & Alaska Native populations experience funding deficits notably greater than most U.S. counties, the report found. Funding deficits are especially high in the Southern Black Belt region.
A solution: relieving the “stress pathways” that exacerbate poor health among those who were already hurting, Johnson said, such as “ensuring equal pay for equal work through policies such as paid family leave, paid sick leave, universal basic income, living wage laws, Child Tax Credit expansion, and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” the report says.
“We can expect more of the same if we do nothing,” Johnson said. “And the same is not fair. It’s not just, and it’s not necessary.”
(NEW YORK) — While Democrats raise alarms and Republicans celebrate Twitter’s announcement Monday that Elon Musk was buying the platform for $44 billion, experts weigh what political impact the world’s richest man will have on the social media giant and whether his private ownership once the sale completes later this year could include clearing the way for Donald Trump’s return.
Some Democrats are already painting a dire picture of the platform’s future, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., calling the sale “dangerous for our democracy,” while Republicans have declared it a victory for “free speech” — with Musk having described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur has long been critical of how Twitter manages its content, pushing for looser moderation, and Republicans have blasted the platform for booting former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, arguing it’s become too heavy-handed against conservatives voices.
“This is a great day to be conservative on Twitter,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., tweeted Monday. “Elon Musk buying Twitter terrifies the left because they don’t want their power to censor conservatives threatened,” she added.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., also touted the news, tweeting, “Elon Musk now literally owns the libs,” and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted, “Free speech is making a comeback.”
Since Musk announced his proposal to buy Twitter via a tweet just 11 days ago, Republicans have largely rallied behind him. He told a TED conference one day after submitting his bid that his takeover plan is about free speech.
“If in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said. “If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously, in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”
Musk has argued that Twitter’s content moderators intervene too much on the platform, calling it the internet’s “de facto town square.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a release announcing the deal Monday. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
“Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” he added.
But experts warn against what the social media giant’s landscape would look like without current misinformation policies in place and if all users who have been kicked off were allowed back on — while voices to fact check them might leave the site in defiance.
Angelo Carusone, president of watchdog media nonprofit Media Matters, said to expect to see Trump’s account to be restored along with a host of other accounts that had previously violated Twitter’s rules.
“Elon Musk will unwind a whole range of very basic protections against harassment, abuse, and disinformation that Twitter has spent years putting into practice — effectively opening the floodgates of hate and lies and using Twitter’s position as a market leader to pressure other social media companies to backslide,” Carusone said in a statement Monday.
“The race to the bottom begins,” he added.
The American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns similar to Warren — with one person, Musk, in this case, also the world’s richest man, obtaining “so much control over the boundaries of our political speech online.”
Musk hasn’t said whether he will allow banned users back on, and Tump has claimed that even if he’s reinstated, he intends to stay off the platform in favor of his own platform.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News Monday. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH.”
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account was permanently suspended in January for “repeated violations” of Twitter’s COVID misinformation policy, reactedto the sale from her government account, saying Twitter violated her freedom of speech “along with an unknown number of Americans.”
“I want everyone else to have theirs back too, if they choose it,” she said.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Twitter announced on Monday that Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is acquiring the social media giant for approximately $44 billion.
Per the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 for every share they own.
“The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing,” said Bret Taylor, Twitter’s independent board chair, in a statement. “The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
The transaction, which was unanimously approved by Twitter’s board of directors, is expected to be finalized later this year pending the approval of stockholders, regulatory approvals and other closing conditions. Once completed, the social media giant will become a privately held company.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” Musk continued.
