All posts tagged "families"

'Chilled out of the labor force': watchdog sounds alarm as ICE spreads child care panic

Increased arrests by immigration enforcement agents under the second Trump administration have created a “chilling effect” on the child care industry, resulting in a decrease in workers and in turn less mothers in the workforce, according to a new report from New America, a progressive Washington think tank.

Unveiled on Wednesday, “The Impact of Increased ICE Activity on the Child Care Workforce and Mothers’ Employment,” revealed that 77,000 U.S.-born mothers with children aged 0 to 5 dropped out of the workforce between January 2025 and July 2025 due to “the rise in immigration enforcement,” said Chris Herbst, a report author.

In 2025, mothers’ labor force participation declined by 3 percent, Herbst said.

In an industry where one in five workers are immigrants, there was a decrease of 39,000 foreign-born child care workers during the same time period.

“Because immigration enforcement has made it more difficult for foreign-born workers to do their jobs, their native-born counterparts who depend on their immigrant colleagues have suddenly found that it's more difficult to do their jobs as well,” Herbst said.

While the majority of foreign-born child care workers are in the United States legally, the increase in arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has still created fear for those working in the industry — especially after widespread coverage of ICE detaining a Chicago daycare worker last month.

There’s been a “pretty big” reduction in the number of Hispanic or Mexican U.S.-born individuals in the child care industry as well, Herbst said.

“These are individuals who should not be afraid of ICE,” Herbst said.

“They are not eligible to be deported, and yet they are also leaving the child care sector, and I think for that reason, one of the potential explanations we have is that they've been chilled out of the labor force.”

‘Fear and confusion’

Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University, said the report provides “some of the very first empirical evidence on the labor market consequences of the recent escalation in immigration enforcement.”

“We think the time is right for this kind of report,” Herbst said, as employment figures for child care workers and mothers of preschool-age children are “particularly important in the context of immigration enforcement.”

Researchers used employment data from the Current Population Survey and ICE arrest data from the Deportation Data Project.

“We think that mothers’ employment may be particularly vulnerable to immigration enforcement insofar as it causes disruptions in the child care industry,” Herbst said.

President Donald Trump notably rescinded a directive under former President Joe Biden that protected child care centers, nursery schools and preschools from ICE activity, Herbst said.

The report found that workers in child care centers, rather than private homes, were more likely to have their work affected by immigration enforcement.

“The center-based sector, this is the formal sector. These individuals, as a result, may feel more exposed,” Herbst said.

“Their wages are reported for tax purposes. Child-care centers are often visited unannounced by state child care regulators, and I think the sort of fear and confusion that the ICE has created may have been felt more deeply by those employed in the center-based sector, and they have maybe moved from centers to private households in an attempt to be less visible and feel more protected.”

Herbst said the report’s “estimates may understate the magnitude” of the effects of ICE arrests on child care workers and mothers.

“What I hope this report does is start a conversation about the potential tradeoffs associated with this kind of immigration policy,” Herbst said.

“The administration has talked a lot about the potential benefits. I don't think that we as a country have really started to reckon with the potential downsides of this kind of policy, and I hope what this report does is start a conversation about those downsides.”

With ICE receiving more than $170 billion over four years for increased enforcement activities, Herbst said, “we as researchers need to stay on the case in terms of uncovering what are the potential impacts of all of this new enforcement energy.”

“I would anticipate in the months and years ahead that we will begin to have kind of a full reckoning of the sort of trade-offs associated with this kind of policy.”

Over the coming months, Herbst said he expects the “disruptive effects” of increased immigration enforcement on mothers and child care workers to be “much greater.”

“Even if you look at just sort of the chilling effects alone, I think people are feeling an unprecedented amount of fear and confusion in this new environment.”

Heed the enduring joy of future first gentleman Doug Emhoff

CHICAGO — When Doug Emhoff, the man who would be America’s first first gentleman, spoke at the Democratic National Convention last night, he brought the personal joy of being married to Kamala Harris.

Emhoff described how he met Kamala on a blind date. In his first phone call to her, at 8:30 a.m. one morning, he left an embarrassingly nervous and rambling voicemail. Kamala kept the recording, and she plays it for him on every anniversary.

ALSO READ: Why Kamala Harris may get a big convention polling ‘bounce’

Emhoff and Harris married in 2014, when Emhoff’s children, Cole and Emma, were still teenagers. Despite Republican innuendo about Harris not having “children of her own,” the Emhoff children clearly love Harris, and aggressively defend her. They call her “Momala,” a name Harris says she wears “proudly.”

It’s obvious that their blended family works. Harris is clear eyed about why that is.

“The thing about blended families,” Harris said, “is if everyone approaches it in the way that there’s plenty of love to share, then it works.”

Navigating early complexities

Aside from stepchildren who are crazy about their stepmom, Emhoff is Jewish, which may help assuage critics determined to paint Harris as antisemitic.

Harris has been vocal about human rights violations in Gaza while at the same time maintaining her support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

Emhoff, who attended Hebrew School and frequently addresses antisemitism, can assure Jewish voters that although Harris might hold Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing leadership in contempt for their aggression against Gaza civilians, her criticism does not translate into antisemitism.

In her marriage to Emhoff, Harris displayed maturity and wisdom. In 2019, long before she was tapped as the Democratic nominee for president, Harris wrote an essay for Elle about their relationship:

“When I met Doug, the man who would become my husband, I also met a man who was a divorced father of two children, Cole and Ella.... As a child of divorce, I knew how hard it could be when your parents start to date other people.” Drawing from her own experience, Harris was cautious and measured. “I was determined not to insert myself in their lives until Doug and I had established we were in this for the long haul. Children need consistency; I didn’t want to insert myself into their lives as a temporary fixture because I didn’t want to disappoint them. There’s nothing worse than disappointing a child.”

Stepchildren — and Americans exhausted from the divisive politics of hate propagated by Donald Trump and his enablers — should all be so lucky.

Attacks on stepmoms are old news

Republicans have been merciless in their attacks against Harris for not having had children of “her own,” and give her no credit for her blended family’s success. Anyone who has been a stepparent knows that stepparents have to navigate complex emotions all around.

Stepmothers, more so than stepfathers, have endured centuries of unfair stereotyping. The evil stepmom as a recurring narrative reflects the family breakup more than the woman involved: a stepparent “steps into” pre-existing conflict between two parents who, for whatever reason, decided to end their marriage.

Psychology Today reports that of all the complications involved, the toughest challenges for a stepmom typically come from the ex-wife, because mothers who leave a marriage often still maintain a strong agenda where their children are involved. Or they may be jealous of the new wife. Even when people desperately want out of an unhappy marriage, they can experience FOMO — the fear of missing out — when a new person steps into their discarded shoes and seems to make a happier go of it.

There’s no FOMO in the Harris-Emhoff household

Centuries of maladaptive stereotypes make it all the more extraordinary that Kerstin Emhoff, Doug’s ex-wife, embraces Harris. Most of all, she approves of Harris’ performance as step parent to her two children.

Kerstin Emhoff defended Harris after video resurfaced showing Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance criticizing Harris and other “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives.”

Kerstin Emhoff told CNN that the attacks against Kamala were “baseless” because “for over 10 years, since Cole and Ella were teenagers, Kamala has been a co-parent with Doug and I.”

ALSO READ: Joe Biden gave his best to us

She continued to say Harris “is loving, nurturing, fiercely protective and always present. I love our blended family and am grateful to have her in it.”

In his Democratic National Convention speech, Doug noted that daughter Emma concurs, and calls Kamala, Doug and Kerstin a “three-headed parenting machine.”

America itself is a blended family

There aren’t many ex-wives who praise the woman who marries their ex-husband. It’s nothing short of extraordinary.

The success of the Harris-Emhoffs, with all the attendant complications of a modern, blended family, suggests Harris possesses the presence and emotional intelligence to navigate complex situations among competing interests.

Emhoff said Kamala “finds joy in pursuing justice,” and hates it when people are treated unfairly.

“Her empathy,” he said, “is her strength.” Kamala “has always been there for our children and I know she’ll always be there for yours, too.”

Emhoff closed his touching, sometimes humorous speech with a word of advice about Harris’ disguised strength as she seeks to become the nation’s first female president.

“Here’s the thing about joyful warriors: they’re still warriors.”

One person likely not feeling joy this week as a result?

A certain former president.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Lawyer gives 'three words' that hammer home need to rein in Trump's attacks on courts

In the wake of rising far-right hostility to the courts, possibly fueled by former President Donald Trump's ongoing attacks against judges overseeing his litigation and even their families, an MSNBC panel had some dark fears about where it's all heading.

"The question I ask again, to all the lawyers is, what is it going to take for a judge to finally say, enough, and either level a giant fine against Trump or take the step that is within their power in these circumstances, if he violates a gag order, and toss him in the pokey for some period of time?" asked analyst John Heilemann. "What's it going to take? Are we ever going to see that or not?"

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin, herself a former litigator, said that is "a really difficult question to answer."

ALSO READ: ‘It’s on my ID’: Presidential candidate Literally Anybody Else explains legal name change

"But I'm also not sure that issuing a further gag order is necessarily the answer here," she added. "I had a conversation earlier today with Michael Cohen, who as we all know is a known witness in this upcoming case ... we can talk about all the ways in which Judge Merchan and his daughter are not currently protected and Michael Cohen is. And Michael Cohen's point to me was, if you think that the gag order changes the universe in which I live as a witness and a known enemy of Donald Trump, you've got something else coming. I walk down the street every day in fear. I get death threats every day because I am a person known to be involved in this proceeding. And the fact that he can no longer speak out against me, even if he abides by that order, doesn't change the daily existence for me and my family."

The fundamental reality, Rubin continued, is that Trump doesn't need to attack or threaten witnesses against him directly anymore — his followers just do that on their own now.

"I think about three words: they are Abigail Jo Shry," said Rubin. "She's the one who called Tanya Chutkan's chambers and made a threat to her voicemail that it is so ugly that I won't repeat it here, except to say Ms. Shry is now under indictment herself. We used to live in a world where the threats to judges were from actual litigants before them. That's the situation in which Judge Salas found herself when her son was murdered by somebody who had been a litigant before her. This was also the case in the case of federal Judge Joan Lefkow, whose husband and mother were murdered by someone who had been a litigant before her. Years before then, there was a federal district judge in New York who was murdered in his backyard by the father of a woman who had a sex bias case against him that he had dismissed."

"But we're far afield from that now," she added. "The threats to judges and their families are no longer even coming from actual litigants. They are coming from adherents to every word that those litigants utter, and words that they might not be uttering at all but people in their universes are uttering as surrogates on their behalf without any fingerprints on it, without any even overt encouragement or direction. That's the atmosphere in which we're living now, and I fear that the gag order itself is insufficient for the times in which we live."

Watch the video below or at the link.

Lisa Rubin on MAGA threat to the courtswww.youtube.com