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"What it means to be a partisan centrist": At WelcomeFest, a billionaire-backed vision for Democrats
Centrist Democrats are trying to replicate the movement politics that drive the progressive wing of the party, but it's not clear that the party's moderates — boosted by billionaire donors — can build the same sort of grassroots support that has driven more left-wing campaigns. A political consultant and co-founder of the Welcome Party, Lauren Harper Pope, told Salon that 'WelcomeFest,' kicking off Wednesday in Washington, D.C., is the 'largest public gathering of centrist Democrats.' The goal, she said, is to seek 'advice from Democrats who overperformed this cycle' and discuss "what it means to be a partisan centrist." 'We respect the very robust and multifaceted effort on the progressive faction of the party over the last few years. They had a lot of clear coherency behind it, and there was a lot of action,' Harper Pope told Salon. 'We are essentially just trying to emulate that faction of the party.' The 2025 event, the theme of which is 'responsibility to win,' features elected Democrats such as Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., and Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash. The event also includes some notable figures from the party, like Adam Jentleson, Sen. John Fetterman's, D-Penn., former chief of staff; Derek Thompson, a columnist at The Atlantic and co-author of 'Abundance'; and Matt Yglesias, proprietor of 'Slow Boring' on Substack. Harper Pope described the Welcome Party and an associated PAC as an attempt to organize and support centrists in the Democratic Party, mirroring efforts by those on the more left-leaning side of the party. In terms of strategy, Harper Pope described a formation similar to that of the Justice Democrats, except instead of supporting progressives, the Welcome Party would support centrists. And, instead of putting up primary challengers against incumbents in deep blue districts, the Welcome Party would support candidates in purple districts where they think a more liberal candidate, who might prevail in a Democratic primary, would be at a disadvantage in a general election and might also be a mismatch for the district. Another key point of comparison is the funding behind the groups. While the Justice Democrats PAC received over 25,000 donations in 2024, a cycle when they were not even supporting new candidates, the Welcome PAC received just a few bulk of the PAC's money came from a handful of donors with familiar names, like James Murdoch, the liberal-leaning son of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Combined, James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn Murdoch, donated $2.5 million to the Welcome PAC in 2024, according to FEC filings. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn founder and critic of former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, donated $671,000 to Welcome PAC in 2024. Samuel Walton, the grandson of Walmart founder Samuel Walton, donated $825,000 to Welcome PAC. Joshua Bekenstein, a co-chairman of Bain Capital, alongside his wife, Anita Bekenstein, donated a collective $375,000. Harper Pope said the goal, shared by centrist think tanks like Third Way, is to win by meeting voters where they are. A recent Gallup poll found that 45% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning moderates want the party to move toward the center. 'We want to be representative of the party overall, and I think the majority of those voters are people who are less progressive,' Harper Pope told Salon. 'If the centrist faction of the Democratic party can be strong, robust and vibrant, it can help us not only win more elections but also help us have the liberal democracy we aspire to.'
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2 days ago
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Petty, abusive — and popular: Why New York Democrats are afraid to speak out against Andrew Cuomo
Democrats who were once vocal critics of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are sitting on the sidelines of the New York mayoral primary, and insiders think it's because Cuomo's victory appears inevitable. At the same time, critics argue that they're letting Cuomo off the hook. Democrats who vocally criticized Cuomo in the past, like Gov. Kathy Hochul and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., have declined to remind the public why they called on Cuomo to step down. Hochul called the allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo 'repulsive' in 2021 and now says that she'll 'deal with whatever the voters decide to deal with.' Gillibrand, who called the allegations against Cuomo 'serious and deeply concerning,' now compliments Cuomo, saying that 'He has a lot of talent as an executive.' Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., called for Cuomo's resignation in 2021, issuing a joint statement with other New York Democrats saying, 'It is clear that he engaged in inappropriate, unlawful and abusive behavior.' He has since endorsed the former governor in the mayoral primary, saying 'we need not a nice guy, but a tough guy like Andrew Cuomo.' Gillibrand's office responded to a request for comment from Salon by referencing comments the senator made in an appearance on WNYC, when she said: "The question being asked today is what's my opinion about someone after they've resigned, after they've taken the penalty that I called on them to take? Do they have any say from you one way or the other? And my answer to that is everyone gets to decide in this election who they want to vote for. It's up to New Yorkers. It is not up to me. And that's it." Hochul's office did not respond to a request for comment. Former New York Gov. David Paterson, who immediately preceded Cuomo as the state's chief executive, told Salon that elected Democrats coming out against Cuomo at this stage of the race probably won't matter. Given many Democrats' unpopularity in New York, he argued that criticism might even help Cuomo in the primary. Paterson said that the bigger question in his mind is why haven't voters in New York City 'taken him to task.' 'I'm not advocating that they should, I'm just wondering why they haven't done that," Paterson said. "Somebody has a commercial: 'Andrew Cuomo spent $60 million of your money defending himself against allegations.' Now that's a pretty significant amount of money, and it's a pretty significant amount of money and it's to review someone now running for office, and the public paid for all his legal bills. That's an interesting subject, but it doesn't seem to matter." In Patterson's view, Cuomo is almost certain to win the New York City mayoral primary, which discourages elected Democrats who have spoken out against Cuomo in the past from doing so again. New York state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, was first elected in 2010, the same year Cuomo was elected governor. He said that Cuomo's personal and political style helps explain Democrats' reluctance to speak out. 'He was vengeful and petty, and certainly politically popular and politically powerful,' Rivera said. 'He's somebody who's been an abusive bully, who only cares about himself, how people perceive him, and how people view him, and he does not particularly care about well-being, regardless of what he says. His actions say something different.' Rivera said that Cuomo has held a grudge against him because of his outspoken criticism of him, alleging that the former governor even moved an early COVID vaccine distribution site from his district because it was the district he represented. Cuomo has denied the allegation. 'For the sake of a political slap on my face, because I was one of the only people who stood up to him publicly, he made the decision to put it someplace else and that means that there's people in my district who died because they did not have early enough access to the vaccine, based on a political decision that he made to be some sort of payback,' Rivera said. Jasmine Gripper, co-director of the New York Working Families Party, told Salon that there is deep irony in Cuomo promising to fix the city's problems as a mayoral candidate, because many of the city's problems stem from Cuomo's time as governor. The Working Families Party previously endorsed Cuomo in the 2018 New York gubernatorial general election, even after backing activist Cynthia Nixon in the Democratic primary and criticizing Cuomo as a corporate Democrat. The endorsement, however, came after Nixon declined to run on the Working Families Party line in the general election. The party, which had to receive 50,000 votes in November or else lose its party line, ultimately decided to endorse Cuomo at the last minute. It is not likely to ever do so again. 'New York City lost hundreds of mental health beds while Andrew Cuomo was governor. He is the reason why our mental health infrastructure in the city was decimated and, as a result, we see the people in our streets with nowhere to go, and the people experiencing homelessness — that is Andrew Cuomo,' Gripper said. 'The reason why our subways are delayed and flooding, and not up to date, is because of Andrew Cuomo.' Gripper pointed to Cuomo's record working with Republicans in the state Senate to sideline Democrats in the upper chamber as another topic that deserves to be discussed in the mayor's race. Gripper said that, working with the IDC, Cuomo was able to sideline priorities for many New Yorkers, like investments in transit, public edcation, healthcare and housing, while simultaneously raiding the MTA budget and cutting funding for schools. "Andrew Cuomo helped orchestrate a coup where a group of Democrats decided to conference with Republicans, and so Republicans, plus what they call the IDC, the Independent Democratic Conference, gave Republicans control of our state Senate and that structure existed for many years,' Gripper said. 'He was holding the line for the wealthy, for the billionaires, for the developers, and at the expense of everyday working people. And he really was holding the line against New York City and not adequately funding the city the way he should have been.' Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told Salon that Cuomo had nothing to do with the formation of the IDC. Politico has, however, reported as far back as 2014 that, while the IDC was not the governor's idea, Cuomo and top aides made it "very clear they wanted the IDC to work with Republicans to run the Senate." Susan Kang, a professor of political science at John Jay College who has written extensively on New York under Cuomo and the IDC, told Salon that this sort of maneuvering to prevent a Democratic-controlled legislature was typical of Cuomo during his time as governor. Kang also referenced the post-2010 Census redistricting process, in which Cuomo signed off on maps drawn by the state legislature, with the then Republican-controlled state Senate proposing legislative districts designed to help them retain control of the chamber. The same deal allowed Assembly Democrats to draw maps that helped protect their incumbents. The maps Cuomo signed off on carefully underrepresented voters in New York City by packing more voters into the city's state Senate districts compared to upstate, Republican-dominated districts. When Cuomo was sued over the issue, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York found that population distortion across the state Senate districts had fallen just within the legal limit courts have allowed under the 14th Amendment. In practical terms, this means that, despite campaigning on independent redistricting, Cuomo signed off on a carefully-calculated maximal gerrymander designed to reduce the power of New York City's largely Democratic voters and help Republicans maintain control of the state Senate. Thirteen years later, Cuomo is running for mayor of New York City, pitching himself as the candidate who will stand up against a Republican administration in Washington. Kang said that, politically speaking, having a Republican-controlled state Senate was useful for the former governor because it meant 'he got to control the spigot of changes coming out of Albany.' 'I think he wants to present himself as sort of like a bipartisan compromise-maker in a state where you don't have to do that,' Kang said. 'But he wouldn't have to do that, if he hadn't propped up this artificial division." While the exact effects on what legislation made it into law are hard to quantify and still debated, critics blame the conference for blocking major legislation on ethics in government, reproductive health care and health care more broadly, voting rights, climate change and even earlier versions of the Child Victims Act, which extended the period that victims of child sexual assault have to bring civil critics have highlighted Cuomo's handling of COVID as an area ripe for scrutiny, especially his handling of nursing homes during the crisis, which has received renewed interest given the Justice Department's investigation into his congressional testimony on the topic. Dennis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York, told Salon that the full impact of Cuomo's COVID-era policy of discharging recovering COVID patients into nursing homes is unknown, but that it likely contributed to new infections in nursing homes. Nash also criticized the subsequent effort from the administration to undercount the number of deaths among nursing home residents by excluding residents who were infected in nursing homes but who died in hospitals from official tallies. A 2022 state audit conducted by the comptroller's office found that New York's health agency undercounted COVID-related deaths in nursing homes by at least 4,100. 'This greatly obscured the scale of the crisis. It also compromised the ability to learn from what happened in a very high-stakes situation. We can't evaluate the effectiveness or harm of policies if our government officials and agencies are not transparent about the outcomes. New York eventually corrected the death count, but I think really only after external investigations forced its hand,' Nash said. Patterson said that the nursing home fiasco and its subsequent cover-up point to one of Cuomo's core political instincts: 'Don't ever admit to anything.' 'He just doesn't do it. Somewhere, he must have read a book that said, 'Don't ever admit to anything.' And that has largely worked in his favor,' Paterson said. Cuomo has publicly admitted that there was a "delay" in the reporting of some nursing home-related deaths during the pandemic, though he has stopped short of apologizing for either the policy or the undercount. In congressional testimony in 2024, Cuomo said he did not review a State Health Department report on nursing home deaths, a statement that appears to be contradicted by emails between Cuomo's aides, according to the New York Times. Azzopardi, Cuomo's spokesperson, told Salon that New York's nursing home policy was consistent with federal guidance and that the issue had been "weaponized and politicized for purely electoral purposes for years." Azzopardi referenced a report from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, obtained by ABC News in early January of 2025, which found that DOJ officials were directed to "focus specifically on New Jersey and New York despite having been provided data indicating that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care issues were in other states." The same report found that in October of 2020, a Justice Department Office of Public Affairs official proposed a plan to leak information to the New York Post pertaining to information related to nursing home deaths in New York and New Jersey. That official texted another OPA official in mid-October 2020 that the leak would "be our last play on them before the election but it's a big one." Paterson said that he's advised Cuomo to reflect on his record, whether it be relating to the nursing home issue or his multiple sexual harassment scandals, and say, 'If something such as this came up again, I'm pretty sure I would handle it differently.' In Patterson's view, such reflection would open 'the door for people to embrace your humanity.' 'And this is a conversation that he and I have had over the years. He agrees with me when we have the general conversation, but he never seems to adapt it. And I guess the reason that he's never adapted is that it's never actually come back to bite him,' Paterson said.
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2 days ago
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Petty, abusive — and popular: Why New York Democrats are afraid to speak out against Andrew Cuomo
Democrats who were once vocal critics of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo are sitting on the sidelines of the New York mayoral primary, and insiders think it's because Cuomo's victory appears inevitable. At the same time, critics argue that they're letting Cuomo off the hook. Democrats who vocally criticized Cuomo in the past, like Gov. Kathy Hochul and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., have declined to remind the public why they called on Cuomo to step down. Hochul called the allegations of sexual harassment against Cuomo 'repulsive' in 2021 and now says that she'll 'deal with whatever the voters decide to deal with.' Gillibrand, who called the allegations against Cuomo 'serious and deeply concerning,' now compliments Cuomo, saying that 'He has a lot of talent as an executive.' Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., called for Cuomo's resignation in 2021, issuing a joint statement with other New York Democrats saying, 'It is clear that he engaged in inappropriate, unlawful and abusive behavior.' He has since endorsed the former governor in the mayoral primary, saying 'we need not a nice guy, but a tough guy like Andrew Cuomo.' Gillibrand's office responded to a request for comment from Salon by referencing comments the senator made in an appearance on WNYC, when she said: "The question being asked today is what's my opinion about someone after they've resigned, after they've taken the penalty that I called on them to take? Do they have any say from you one way or the other? And my answer to that is everyone gets to decide in this election who they want to vote for. It's up to New Yorkers. It is not up to me. And that's it." Hochul's office did not respond to a request for comment. Former New York Gov. David Paterson, who immediately preceded Cuomo as the state's chief executive, told Salon that elected Democrats coming out against Cuomo at this stage of the race probably won't matter. Given many Democrats' unpopularity in New York, he argued that criticism might even help Cuomo in the primary. Paterson said that the bigger question in his mind is why haven't voters in New York City 'taken him to task.' 'I'm not advocating that they should, I'm just wondering why they haven't done that," Paterson said. "Somebody has a commercial: 'Andrew Cuomo spent $60 million of your money defending himself against allegations.' Now that's a pretty significant amount of money, and it's a pretty significant amount of money and it's to review someone now running for office, and the public paid for all his legal bills. That's an interesting subject, but it doesn't seem to matter." In Patterson's view, Cuomo is almost certain to win the New York City mayoral primary, which discourages elected Democrats who have spoken out against Cuomo in the past from doing so again. New York state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Bronx Democrat, was first elected in 2010, the same year Cuomo was elected governor. He said that Cuomo's personal and political style helps explain Democrats' reluctance to speak out. 'He was vengeful and petty, and certainly politically popular and politically powerful,' Rivera said. 'He's somebody who's been an abusive bully, who only cares about himself, how people perceive him, and how people view him, and he does not particularly care about well-being, regardless of what he says. His actions say something different.' Rivera said that Cuomo has held a grudge against him because of his outspoken criticism of him, alleging that the former governor even moved an early COVID vaccine distribution site from his district because it was the district he represented. Cuomo has denied the allegation. 'For the sake of a political slap on my face, because I was one of the only people who stood up to him publicly, he made the decision to put it someplace else and that means that there's people in my district who died because they did not have early enough access to the vaccine, based on a political decision that he made to be some sort of payback,' Rivera said. Jasmine Gripper, co-director of the New York Working Families Party, told Salon that there is deep irony in Cuomo promising to fix the city's problems as a mayoral candidate, because many of the city's problems stem from Cuomo's time as governor. The Working Families Party previously endorsed Cuomo in the 2018 New York gubernatorial general election, even after backing activist Cynthia Nixon in the Democratic primary and criticizing Cuomo as a corporate Democrat. The endorsement, however, came after Nixon declined to run on the Working Families Party line in the general election. The party, which had to receive 50,000 votes in November or else lose its party line, ultimately decided to endorse Cuomo at the last minute. It is not likely to ever do so again. 'New York City lost hundreds of mental health beds while Andrew Cuomo was governor. He is the reason why our mental health infrastructure in the city was decimated and, as a result, we see the people in our streets with nowhere to go, and the people experiencing homelessness — that is Andrew Cuomo,' Gripper said. 'The reason why our subways are delayed and flooding, and not up to date, is because of Andrew Cuomo.' Gripper pointed to Cuomo's record working with Republicans in the state Senate to sideline Democrats in the upper chamber as another topic that deserves to be discussed in the mayor's race. Gripper said that, working with the IDC, Cuomo was able to sideline priorities for many New Yorkers, like investments in transit, public edcation, healthcare and housing, while simultaneously raiding the MTA budget and cutting funding for schools. "Andrew Cuomo helped orchestrate a coup where a group of Democrats decided to conference with Republicans, and so Republicans, plus what they call the IDC, the Independent Democratic Conference, gave Republicans control of our state Senate and that structure existed for many years,' Gripper said. 'He was holding the line for the wealthy, for the billionaires, for the developers, and at the expense of everyday working people. And he really was holding the line against New York City and not adequately funding the city the way he should have been.' Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told Salon that Cuomo had nothing to do with the formation of the IDC. Politico has, however, reported as far back as 2014 that, while the IDC was not the governor's idea, Cuomo and top aides made it "very clear they wanted the IDC to work with Republicans to run the Senate." Susan Kang, a professor of political science at John Jay College who has written extensively on New York under Cuomo and the IDC, told Salon that this sort of maneuvering to prevent a Democratic-controlled legislature was typical of Cuomo during his time as governor. Kang also referenced the post-2010 Census redistricting process, in which Cuomo signed off on maps drawn by the state legislature, with the then Republican-controlled state Senate proposing legislative districts designed to help them retain control of the chamber. The same deal allowed Assembly Democrats to draw maps that helped protect their incumbents. The maps Cuomo signed off on carefully underrepresented voters in New York City by packing more voters into the city's state Senate districts compared to upstate, Republican-dominated districts. When Cuomo was sued over the issue, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York found that population distortion across the state Senate districts had fallen just within the legal limit courts have allowed under the 14th Amendment. In practical terms, this means that, despite campaigning on independent redistricting, Cuomo signed off on a carefully-calculated maximal gerrymander designed to reduce the power of New York City's largely Democratic voters and help Republicans maintain control of the state Senate. Thirteen years later, Cuomo is running for mayor of New York City, pitching himself as the candidate who will stand up against a Republican administration in Washington. Kang said that, politically speaking, having a Republican-controlled state Senate was useful for the former governor because it meant 'he got to control the spigot of changes coming out of Albany.' 'I think he wants to present himself as sort of like a bipartisan compromise-maker in a state where you don't have to do that,' Kang said. 'But he wouldn't have to do that, if he hadn't propped up this artificial division." While the exact effects on what legislation made it into law are hard to quantify and still debated, critics blame the conference for blocking major legislation on ethics in government, reproductive health care and health care more broadly, voting rights, climate change and even earlier versions of the Child Victims Act, which extended the period that victims of child sexual assault have to bring civil critics have highlighted Cuomo's handling of COVID as an area ripe for scrutiny, especially his handling of nursing homes during the crisis, which has received renewed interest given the Justice Department's investigation into his congressional testimony on the topic. Dennis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York, told Salon that the full impact of Cuomo's COVID-era policy of discharging recovering COVID patients into nursing homes is unknown, but that it likely contributed to new infections in nursing homes. Nash also criticized the subsequent effort from the administration to undercount the number of deaths among nursing home residents by excluding residents who were infected in nursing homes but who died in hospitals from official tallies. A 2022 state audit conducted by the comptroller's office found that New York's health agency undercounted COVID-related deaths in nursing homes by at least 4,100. 'This greatly obscured the scale of the crisis. It also compromised the ability to learn from what happened in a very high-stakes situation. We can't evaluate the effectiveness or harm of policies if our government officials and agencies are not transparent about the outcomes. New York eventually corrected the death count, but I think really only after external investigations forced its hand,' Nash said. Patterson said that the nursing home fiasco and its subsequent cover-up point to one of Cuomo's core political instincts: 'Don't ever admit to anything.' 'He just doesn't do it. Somewhere, he must have read a book that said, 'Don't ever admit to anything.' And that has largely worked in his favor,' Paterson said. Cuomo has publicly admitted that there was a "delay" in the reporting of some nursing home-related deaths during the pandemic, though he has stopped short of apologizing for either the policy or the undercount. In congressional testimony in 2024, Cuomo said he did not review a State Health Department report on nursing home deaths, a statement that appears to be contradicted by emails between Cuomo's aides, according to the New York Times. Azzopardi, Cuomo's spokesperson, told Salon that New York's nursing home policy was consistent with federal guidance and that the issue had been "weaponized and politicized for purely electoral purposes for years." Azzopardi referenced a report from the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, obtained by ABC News in early January of 2025, which found that DOJ officials were directed to "focus specifically on New Jersey and New York despite having been provided data indicating that the nursing homes with the most significant quality of care issues were in other states." The same report found that in October of 2020, a Justice Department Office of Public Affairs official proposed a plan to leak information to the New York Post pertaining to information related to nursing home deaths in New York and New Jersey. That official texted another OPA official in mid-October 2020 that the leak would "be our last play on them before the election but it's a big one." Paterson said that he's advised Cuomo to reflect on his record, whether it be relating to the nursing home issue or his multiple sexual harassment scandals, and say, 'If something such as this came up again, I'm pretty sure I would handle it differently.' In Patterson's view, such reflection would open 'the door for people to embrace your humanity.' 'And this is a conversation that he and I have had over the years. He agrees with me when we have the general conversation, but he never seems to adapt it. And I guess the reason that he's never adapted is that it's never actually come back to bite him,' Paterson said.
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2 days ago
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"Amen" at the end of the long day: Laid-off workers seek community and solace online
When Melanie Ehrenkranz, the founder of the 'Laid Off' Substack newsletter, launched her newsletter for unemployed workers in August 2024, she didn't expect to create a vibrant, active community of over 11,000 readers in less than a year. In addition to the newsletter, Ehrenkranz also runs a Discord community, which offers its members additional ways to connect, support each other and navigate the uncharted waters of unemployment during the second Trump term. This community is private for paid readers at the monthly fee of $5. While the particular kind of financial strain and psychological pressures that characterize unemployment have been around as long as there have been jobs, the scale of layoffs, the transformative nature of AI that is upending entire industries, stubborn inflation, economic uncertainty and new ways social media is connecting people again post-pandemic makes 2025 a unique time to be navigating the ever-shifting job market. 'This moment feels heavier,' Ehrenkranz told Salon. 'People aren't just getting laid off — they're getting ghosted, strung along, maybe even experiencing their second or third or fifth layoff in their career.' Magenta Fox, one of the members of the community Ehrenkranz created, has been laid off since 2023. Fox says this period of unemployment is 'vastly different' from the other times she was laid off, in 2009 and during 2016-2018. 'With this search, I've paid for resume rewrites and interview coaching— something I've never done at any point in my career,' Fox said. 'And it seems like there's no end in sight. At least with the Great Recession it seemed like there was an effort in Washington to try to make things better.' This time around, Fox found her interactions with recruiters more cutthroat. 'I've had recruiters no-show on calls and write rude emails— something I've never gotten from anyone, recruiter or no, in my professional life, ever,' she said. The uptick in ghosting behavior from recruiters adds to the mental health toll job hunting can take. 'The psychological effect was really enormous,' said New York-based Dio Martins, who has been recently laid off and has just landed a new remote opportunity. Martins found networking and connecting with friends helpful in his job search. 'It's incredible how helpful a little text message can be to someone, just reminding you that you're not alone, and to keep trying things,' he said. As of late May 2025, U.S. employers cut nearly half a million jobs, which is a 93% jump compared to the same period last year. So far, 2025 has been a brutal year for US employees. Major U.S. employers like Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Blue Origin, Estée Lauder, Kohl's, Southwest Airlines, Walmart and Business Insider have announced major layoffs ranging from hundreds to thousands of jobs. Inspired by communities like Rachel Karten's Link in Bio Discord and Julia Harrison's Saloon Substack, Ehrenkranz wanted to remove the stigma from being unemployed and create a nurturing environment for those looking to get back on their feet. 'I noticed a lot of readers were using the Substack Chat to share their stories and ask for advice, and so I wanted to create a space that had more layers to it for people experiencing job loss to connect,' Ehrenkranz said. 'The intention behind the Discord, similar to the overall mission, is for people to feel less alone and to destigmatize layoffs. And also to have some fun and maybe make some friends.' Over time, she noticed that members started using the Discord as a way to deal with the day-to-day pressures of job searching, both online and in person. 'I've seen people in the Discord share advice on how to post about their layoff on LinkedIn without it feeling cringe, how to wear their hair in a Zoom job interview, how to respond to a hiring manager that ghosted them after several rounds of interviews, and how to tweak their resume so it doesn't get trashed by ATS software,' she said. 'I've also increasingly seen folks trying to meet up outside of the Discord, whether it's in a vent session on Google Meet or grabbing drinks during the week.' Ultimately, the mental health break and human connection is what online communities like 'Laid Off' offer its members: without the gloss or pretenses of traditional social media or the unproductive bureaucracy of an unemployment office. 'In this economy, finding full-time employment is like finding a needle in a haystack,' said 25-year-old Niya Doyle, one of the people Ehrenkranz profiled for her newsletter. Doyle made a TikTok about how she was laid off, one of many who turned to social media to seek solace from others going through the same experience. 'I just saw a lot of my FYP even before I got laid off,' she said. 'I guess it makes it feel like you're not alone. It's comforting.' Whether it's Substack comments, Reddit forums, Discord communities or TikTok posts detailing their layoff experiences, more job seekers are finding comfort in numbers on social media, making their isolating experience of a layoff a little bit more palatable. 'They're the co-workers I wish I had, in a way,' Fox said about the Laid Off community. 'We exchange tips and share rejection stories. I feel like I can go there to vent without being seen as a bummer.'
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2 days ago
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Hungrier kids, missed check-ups: Trump's cuts to childcare make it a lot harder to be a parent
'People don't think about those parents,' Angelique Marshall, a Washington, D.C.-based at-home childcare provider, told Salon. Most of the parents the 56-year-old serves have children with disabilities and don't have much flexibility in their schedules. 'They have to go to work to be able to take off when the children need surgery or they have a serious illness or impact on their life.' Under the Trump administration, the nation's pandemic-stressed child welfare system has taken a hit through temporary funding freezes, staffing cuts and Project 2025-aligned moves to weaken critical programs. The changes — some part of President Donald Trump's effort to slash social spending — place a strain on the government's distribution of funds and support for programs like Head Start and the Child Care and Development Fund, argued a group of U.S. senators in an April letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. By the time those changes trickle down to providers like Marshall and the families she serves, the impacts feel much more like crashing waves. That's why Marshall counted herself — and her students — among the attendees of last month's "Day Without Child Care" action in Washington, D.C. Organizers had asked that parents call off work and providers close their doors to demonstrate how critical childcare is to the nation's daily grind. But Marshall chose to keep the doors of her daycare, Ms. P's Child and Family Services, open; her parents, she said in a video call, can't afford to go without work for a day, even if it's in protest. At Washington's Freedom Plaza, a makeshift field day took place, where children enjoyed free swag, food and activities. Meanwhile, parents and providers shared stories during a rally at the plaza while organizers with SPACEs in Action, a nonprofit advocacy organization, led visits with city council members to advocate for early childhood education funds. 'Children and families with low-income wages, they won't get a quality start in education at all, and it's not because a child can't learn, it's because the underinvestment effect that they have [on] the overall potential,' Marshall said. 'We're going to see a downslide if they don't get the help and support they need because you're talking about defunding them, but you're not talking about what you're going to do with them.' The administration's effort to cut some 10,000 jobs at the Department of Health and Family Services has resulted in a roughly 37.5% reduction in staff at the Administration for Children and Families, which oversees childcare and child welfare programs. Those layoffs included staff of the Office of Child Care and Office of Head Start, a federal program that provides early childhood education, social and health services to more than 750,000 children of low-income families up to age 5 — and that was flagged for elimination in Project 2025. The reduction in force also shuttered five of the 10 ACF offices, which helped ensure that grants reached individual facilities in 22 states and five territories, and acted as liaisons between program administrators and the government. The Trump-backed reconciliation bill passed by the House on May 22 also stands to make matters worse for children and families. The bill threatens to cut more than $700 billion from Medicaid and nearly $300 billion from SNAP through 2034, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates of an earlier version of the bill. Medicaid serves more children than any other age group, while SNAP provides food assistance for more than 40 million people, including some 16 million children. Marshall said she became a childcare provider in 1995 out of need, having searched for nearly five years for someone who could care for her daughter, who she said has intellectual disabilities, while she worked for the federal government. After exhausting all of her options, she opened Ms. P's Child and Family Services in the downtown Washington area to provide services to middle- and low-income families with disabled children. Not long after she opened her doors, she realized that other parents of children with disabilities faced similar hurdles while not fully understanding how best to support their kids with the limited knowledge of disabilities available at the time. The issues she faced have become more complicated for her and the families she works with, as childcare has become less affordable. Living in Washington under Trump also means that a good portion of her clients are federal workers — or at least they used to be. Marshall said that several of the parents she serves have lost their jobs as a result of DOGE's recommended federal layoffs, which a judge blocked on May 22. Combined with threats to federal funding for public assistance, it has been too much for many of them to bear, she said. 'We're supporting the most vulnerable children in the District of Columbia and their parents who are working, and the ones who work in the federal government, who lost their job, who're now having mental health issues and breakdowns and anxiety — I mean, they're unpacking a lot of new things, and people are not realizing it,' she said. Potential funding cuts to needed federal services, alongside the stress of job loss and parenting a child with a disability, create layers of hardship that many of these parents are struggling to navigate, Marshall added. 'That's like an onion.' As her families adjust to the upheaval in their lives, Marshall said she's had to make some changes herself. She has had to lay off two members of her four-person daycare staff since January on account of Congress' 2025 budget change for D.C. Even with the pay equity fund's support, the increased costs and 80-to-100-hour work weeks associated with providing care for children with a range of disabilities also mean she's unable to pay her remaining staff more than the mandated minimum, let alone what she believes they're worth. While Marshall said she's left the door open to her former employees to return should they choose if the funding increases again, she's also had to work with parents to find temporary solutions to the problems introduced by their new normal. In some cases, she's helped some parents with resumes as they start job hunts, facilitated exchanges of leftover baby formula and clothing, and connected them with others to create a sort of weekend childcare network. 'It's all about strategizing and thinking through some things,' Marshall said. 'I mean, if we got two parents who lost their jobs and on the weekends you want to work, let's see if this parent will be able to take care of your child, since they have the same disability. It's all about community and building it.' In Washington, SPACEs in Action organizers pressed council members to vote for Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser's then-upcoming budget proposal, which promised to fully fund child care programs, including the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, a fund that supports childcare facilities in offering competitive minimum wages and healthcare for staff. Destynee Bolton, a childcare organizer for SPACEs in Action, told Salon that they also wanted to make sure that the funding included increases and adjustments to account for inflation and program educators' growth in credentials. Meanwhile, the city is facing a $1.1 billion shortfall for the 2025 fiscal year after Congress decided to revert its budget to the 2024 fiscal year allotment, following the House of Representatives' refusal to vote on a new proposal. While Bowser has invoked a law allowing the city to autonomously increase its budget, she also planned to reduce city spending by $410 million in response to the federal budget together with the threats to public assistance, these potential cuts to local dollars will only worsen the inequities in education, food security and health care access already affecting the district, Bolton said. 'That means a child loses their education, and then they lose that access to food security, in addition to Medicaid services being cut as well,' she said in a video call. 'Not being able to have that security — that means that children and families, low-, middle-income, working families, won't be able to go to doctor's appointments and get health advice that they would need.' Bowser, however, unveiled her response to the district's budget deficit on May 27, which included full funding for core childcare programs like the Child Care Subsidy Program and the pay equity fund. While her proposed budget still needs approval from the D.C. Council, the mayor also asserted that the city was still calling on Congress to restore its spending to its initial budget. Both Bolton and Marshall say that a substantial federal and local investment in early childhood education through a comprehensive approach to the workforce and revenue raisers, as well as an equitable tax system, would alleviate the difficulties that low- and middle–income families face. 'If high earners in D.C. are to contribute at the same level that low- to middle-income individuals have to contribute, that would help a lot with the programs that we have in the district,' Bolton said. 'They're able to have more viability because it's always the same thing every year — something always ends up on the chopping block.' The impact of New Mexico making childcare free for about half of the state's children is a prime example of the value of adequate investment in childcare, Bolton added. Five years after implementation, the state began to see the percentage of New Mexicans falling below the federal 'supplemental' poverty drop from 17.1% between 2013 and 2015 to just 10.9% today, according to The Guardian. Simultaneous wage increases for childcare workers in the state had a similar effect, with just 16% of childcare providers living in poverty compared to 27.4% in 2020. Marshall questioned where the funds the Trump administration has recouped from layoffs and federal funding freezes will be going — and why it couldn't go to childcare. 'I believe that the United States of America is one of the most industrialized countries, but we do not budget childcare as an essential part of the infrastructure. Why not?' she said. 'But let me tell you, you can tell a lot about the heart of the nation when you have to care for the most vulnerable children and the seniors, and when you don't care and you're just throwing things away, what are you doing?'
