“If universal childcare is free for all, the families who would benefit most over the long-term would likely be those already thriving economically. Meanwhile the financial benefits for those barely getting by, while vital, could become offset by the resulting increases in other costs.”

(Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

We have reached a defining moment in the movement for universal childcare in New York. Our Mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, rode the issue and just a small handful of others to City Hall. Gov. Kathy Hochul seems intent upon handing him at least a partial win on the issue, seeing it as a potential asset to her re-election effort next year.

The contours of her proposal, and for legislation, are being shaped now. It is crucial that we get this right. 

Universal child care can be transformative, but only if it is built with an honest understanding of how wealth and economic insecurity shape the realities families face. Without that, even a well-intentioned program could help higher-income households pull further ahead while leaving struggling families treading water. The cost of living crisis demands a well-designed program that closes gaps rather than one that inadvertently widens them.

Like Universal Pre-Kindergarten for all four-year-olds in New York City, which was a campaign promise made good by Mayor Bill de Blasio with state funds allocated by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, universal childcare could provide free, high quality, accessible and inclusive care for all infants and toddlers. With increasing numbers of low- and middle-income New Yorkers struggling to stay in the state because they can’t afford the cost of living, solutions to the problem are coming from all sides. 

Families with young children face the highest rates of economic insecurity, with 63 percent living below the threshold in New York State, according to the national True Cost of Economic Security measure created by the Urban Institute, Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies and the Community Service Society. In other words, they do not make or have enough income, assets or other resources to meet their daily needs, save for a rainy day, and invest in their futures. Many have to prioritize basic daily needs and make difficult choices about what expenses are a must.  

For these families, universal childcare would eliminate a major financial burden and help ensure that all children can receive quality early childhood learning, which is essential for their development and foundation for their success in school and in life.  

Indeed, universal childcare would solve the dilemma of childcare affordability. However, it would not address its underlying root cause—which is economic insecurity—and could potentially exacerbate it.  

To illustrate, in New York City, 72 percent of families with children are economically insecure, and the Urban Institute’s measure helps us understand their economic reality. Based on 2022 data, families with children in New York City need on average $165,300 yearly to be economically secure.

For families with children that fall below the economic security threshold, they have an annual average resource gap of $52,600, or a gap of about $260,000 over a child’s first five years. Free universal childcare could provide families with a financial benefit worth about $93,600 total for those five years, according to some estimates.

While that financial benefit sounds significant, it has the potential to deepen the existing economic security gap. Universal childcare alone would not close the resource gap for all families below the economic security line; meanwhile, families already above could be put way further ahead. 

Taking full advantage of free universal childcare, economically secure families would likely be able to use significant amounts of freed up resources to grow their wealth even more. For example, they could purchase more housing or more highly priced homes or simply pay more in rent when competing for homes, thereby driving housing costs up. Lower-wealth households wouldn’t be able to do this; they would need their newfound savings just to make it day to day. 

If universal childcare is free for all, the families who would benefit most over the long-term would likely be those already thriving economically. Meanwhile the financial benefits for those barely getting by, while vital, could become offset by the resulting increases in other costs.     

I highlight this concern not to suggest our government shouldn’t ensure childcare is affordable for all, but with the hopes of helping mitigate any unintended outcomes that could worsen wealth disparity and economic insecurity. What families of different means are able to do with the financial benefits of universal programs matters and is part of what deepens underlying inequalities.

When we seek to fully understand and address the dynamics underlying growing economic insecurity—structural economic deprivation upheld through policies and laws that favor the wealthy and penalize those with few resources—we can and should control for the outcomes we desire. Well-intentioned programs must also tackle root causes, not deepen inequality.

For example, to avoid worsening wealth inequality, policymakers could make childcare universal for all but have higher wealth families contribute directly to the cost. Dare we dream, we could also pair free universal childcare with a shift in the tax burden from lower-wealth families to higher-wealth ones, balancing out the lopsided wealth effects. And, we could and should pay childcare workers fairly and improve their job quality and labor rights. 

I believe in quality childcare being available and accessible for all families, and in a strongly supported childcare workforce. But to succeed in addressing the affordability and economic insecurity crisis facing more and more New Yorkers, our policy solutions must address both the problem and root causes, all while controlling for new harms. 

Jennifer Jones Austin is the CEO and executive director of Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies.

The post Opinion: Universal Childcare—A Caution appeared first on City Limits.

By Jonathan Shorman, Stateline.org

Four Republican states have agreed to help the Trump administration gain access to state driver’s license data through a nationwide law enforcement computer network as part of the administration’s hunt for alleged noncitizen voters.

The Trump administration said as recently as October that federal officials wanted to obtain driver’s license records through the network.

The commitment from officials in Florida, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio comes as part of a settlement agreement filed on Friday in a federal lawsuit. The lawsuit was originally brought by the states last year alleging the Biden administration wasn’t doing enough to help states verify voter eligibility.

The settlement, between the states and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, requires the federal department to continue its development of a powerful citizenship verification program known as SAVE. Earlier this year, federal officials repurposed SAVE into a program capable of scanning millions of state voter records for instances of noncitizen registered voters.

In return, the states have agreed to support Homeland Security’s efforts to access the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, an obscure computer network that typically allows law enforcement agencies to search driver’s license records across state lines. Nlets — as the system is known — lets police officers easily look up the driving records of out-of-state motorists.

The Trump administration and some Republican election officials have promoted the changes to SAVE as a useful tool to identify potential noncitizen voters, and Indiana had already agreed to provide voter records. Critics, including some Democrats, say the Trump administration is building a massive database of U.S. residents that President Donald Trump or a future president could use for spying or targeting political enemies.

Stateline reported last week, before the settlement agreement was filed in court, that Homeland Security publicly confirmed it wants to connect Nlets to SAVE.

A notice published Oct. 31 in the Federal Register said driver’s licenses are the most widely used form of identification, and that by working with states and national agencies, including Nlets, “SAVE will use driver’s license and state identification card numbers to check and confirm identity information.”

A federal official also previously told a virtual meeting of state election officials in May that Homeland Security was seeking “to avoid having to connect to 50 state databases” and wanted a “simpler solution,” such as Nlets, according to government records published by the transparency group American Oversight.

The new settlement lays out the timeline for how the Trump administration could acquire the four states’ records.

Within 90 days of the execution of the agreement, the four states may provide Homeland Security with 1,000 randomly selected driver’s license records from their state for verification as part of a quality improvement process for SAVE.

According to the agreement, the states that provide the records will “make best efforts to support and encourage DHS’s efforts to receive and have full use of state driver’s license records from the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System” and state driver’s license agencies.

The language in the agreement is open-ended and doesn’t make clear whether the pledge to help Homeland Security obtain access to Nlets is limited to drivers from those four states or is intended to require the states to help the agency acquire the records of drivers nationwide.

An agreement to help

The agreement could pave the way for Republican officials in other states to provide access to license data.

Nlets is a nonprofit organization that facilitates data sharing among law enforcement agencies across state lines. States decide what information to make available through Nlets, and which agencies can access it. That means the four states could try to influence peers to share Nlets data with the Trump administration.

“They’re not just talking about driver’s license numbers, they’re talking about the driver’s records. What possible reason would DHS have in an election or voting context — or any context whatsoever — for obtaining the ‘full use of state driver’s license records,’” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research.

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, said in a statement to Stateline that the settlement agreement provides another layer of election integrity and protection as officials seek to ensure only eligible voters are registered. He didn’t directly address questions about Nlets access.

“The SAVE program provides us with critical information, but we must also continue to utilize information from other state and federal partners to maintain clean and accurate lists,” Pate said in the statement.

Two weeks before the Nov. 5, 2024, election, Pate issued guidance to Iowa county auditors to challenge the ballots of 2,176 registered voters who were identified by the secretary of state’s office as potential noncitizens. The voters had reported to the state Department of Transportation or another government entity that they were not U.S. citizens in the past 12 years and went on to register to vote, according to the guidance.

In March, Pate said his office gained access to the SAVE database and found 277 of those people were confirmed to not have U.S. citizenship — just under 12% of the individuals identified as potential noncitizens.

Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

Matthew Tragesser, a spokesperson for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services — the agency under Homeland Security that oversees SAVE — told Stateline last week that USCIS was committed to “eliminating barriers to securing the nation’s electoral process.”

“By allowing states to efficiently verify voter eligibility, we are reinforcing the principle that America’s elections are reserved exclusively for American citizens,” Tragesser said in a statement.

The SAVE program — Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements — was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. In the past, SAVE could search only one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches; federal officials in May also connected the program to Social Security data.

“It’s a potentially dangerous mix to put driver’s license and Social Security number and date of birth information out there … where we really don’t know yet how and when and where it’s going to be used,” Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon said in an interview on Monday.

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Democratic states object

As the Trump administration has encouraged states to use SAVE, the Justice Department has also demanded states provide the department with unredacted copies of their voter rolls. The Trump administration has previously confirmed the Justice Department is sharing voter information with Homeland Security.

The Justice Department has sued six, mostly Democratic, states for refusing to turn over the data. Those lawsuits remain pending.

On Monday, 12 state secretaries of state submitted a 29-page public comment, in response to SAVE’s Federal Register notice, criticizing the overhaul. The secretaries wrote that while Homeland Security claims the changes make the program an effective tool for verifying voters, the modifications are “likely to degrade, not enhance” states’ efforts to ensure free, fair and secure elections.

“What the modified system will do … is allow the federal government to capture sensitive data on hundreds of millions of voters nationwide and distribute that information as it sees fit,” the secretaries wrote.

The secretaries of state of California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington signed on to the comment.

The settlement agreement purports to make this year’s changes to SAVE legally binding.

The agreement asks that a federal court retain jurisdiction over the case for 20 years for the purposes of enforcing it — a move that in theory could make it harder for a future Democratic president to reverse the changes to SAVE.

But Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said he doesn’t expect the settlement agreement would make it more difficult for a future administration to undo the overhaul.

“Should a different administration come in that disagrees with this approach,” Becker said, “I would expect that they would almost certainly completely change how the system operates and how the states can access it and what data the federal government procures.”

Iowa Capital Dispatch reporter Robin Opsahl contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A bevy of youth organizations are pressing lawmakers to pass the “Livable Futures” package—five bills focused on immigration, climate change, housing and transgender rights, crafted in part to push back against Trump administration policies.

Members of several youth organizations with elected officials at the launch of their “Livable Futures” campaign earlier this fall. (Ayman Siam/Office of NYC Comptroller)

This story was produced by an alum of City Limits’ youth journalism training program, CLARIFY (City Limits Accountability Program for Youth)

This fall, 150 New York City youth gathered with elected officials in Brooklyn advocating for lawmakers to pass the “Livable Future” package before the end of this year.

Consisting of five bills focused on immigration, climate change, housing and transgender rights, the group—members of several youth-run organizations, including Fridays For Future NYC and the Youth Alliance for Housing—are pressing for action from the City Council, in part to push back against policies being carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“The fascists are here. They’re invading our cities, crashing our economy and stealing our futures to sell them to the first bidder,” City Councilmember Chi Ossé said in a short social media video regarding The Livable Future Package. 

Ossé, who was 23 when he was elected three years ago as the Council’s youngest member, said his office worked with the participating youth organizations this summer to help craft the legislation. He described the bills as “municipal solutions to national problems.”

The package has also been championed by other elected officials, including Comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and the City Council’s Progressive Caucus voted in October to prioritize the bills for the reminder of this legislative session.

One of the bills, which aims to make it easier for tenant groups and nonprofits to buy distressed buildings, is expected to pass in the coming weeks, as City Limits reported Monday. Another is slated for a Council committee hearing next week. 

But with just two full City Council stated meetings left in 2025, lawmakers have limited time left to act this year.  

Here’s a look at the bills in question, and why young New Yorkers say they’re supporting them. 

Federal immigration officers in The Bronx in January 2025. (Department of Homeland Security photo by Tia Dufour)

Strengthening sanctuary city protections

The first bill introduced by the Livable Future Package is Intro. 214, The New York City Trust Act, which aims to protect New York City’s immigrant population from having their information shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Under President Trump, ICE has aggressively ramped up raids throughout the country, targeting both documented and undocumented people.

New York City’s sanctuary laws restrict how city agencies can share information with ICE, which supporters say ensures that immigrant New Yorkers don’t have to live in the shadows, particularly when it comes to reporting crimes and other abuses. 

However, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Department of Corrections (DOC)—both law enforcement city agencies, the DOC being responsible for management of those in custody—have been previously accused of violating the laws.  

“New York City has scared people in my community off the streets,” said Hadia Ali, a senior in high school and organizer with the YA-YA Network, a youth organization empowering young people to fight for social and economic justice. “God forbid somebody gets detained or deported.”

Intro. 214 would create a “private right of action,” allowing individuals to file legal complaints, and potentially lawsuits, against any city agency violating their rights under sanctuary rules.

“We have a mayor that’s in the pockets of the federal government, and he’s not interested in upholding the sanctuary city laws that make New York the city that it is,” said Ali, referring to outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, who was facing federal corruption charges until the Trump administration dropped them earlier this year, saying the case interfered with the mayor’s cooperation on the president’s immigration crackdown. 

Adams has also called for reforming the city’s existing sanctuary city laws to allow for more cooperation with ICE, citing concerns about public safety.

“This bill would ensure that under any mayor, not just Adams, that the laws that we have in place are being properly and effectively enforced,” Ali said.

Closing building pollution loopholes

Next in the Livable Futures package is Intro. 1180, which strengthens New York City’s Green New Deal for buildings, Local Law 97. 

Youth organizers with the Livable Futures coalition painting
a sign. (Courtesy of Livable Futures NYC)

The law, passed in 2019, sets increasingly stricter limits on how much pollution large buildings can produce—requiring property owners to green their buildings and lower their emissions, or pay penalties. 

But under program rules set out by Mayor Adams’ administration, building owners can purchase Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) to offset annual building emissions that go over their limits—a response to complaints from real estate groups who said the new rules were too onerous for many landlords to comply with.

But environmental critics say the current REC options are too lax, allowing owners to buy their way out of compliance for up to 50 percent of the pollution they’d otherwise have to clean up.  

Intro. 1180 closes this loophole by further limiting REC purchases, meaning building owners could use them to offset no more than 10 percent of emissions over their property’s limits. Supporters say this would compel more landlords to undertake green retrofits, as Local Law 97 intended. 

“Basically what that means is making sure that we’re still enforcing the law, making sure that buildings are improving their energy efficiency,” said Keanu Arpels-Josiah, an organizer with Fridays For Future (FFF) NYC, a youth-led climate justice organization started in 2018 by Greta Thunberg. 

Expanding community ownership models

The third bill in the package is Intro. 902, The Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA), which is similar to policies implemented in cities like Washington D.C. and San Francisco.

Under COPA, landlords of certain buildings who wish to sell would be required to notify the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development. It would then give nonprofits, including Community Land Trusts (CLTs)—land-owning nonprofits run by representatives and community members—opportunities to bid on those buildings before they’re available on the wider market. 

In response to concerns from city housing officials, a recently updated version of the bill specifically targets buildings in financial or physical distress or with expiring affordability requirements, and would give the community groups a 45-day head-start to make an offer. 

Buildings owned by a community land trust in the East Village. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Real estate groups oppose the legislation, saying it unfairly advantages nonprofits and would disrupt the local housing market. But supporters say real estate transactions in the city are already deeply skewed in favor of deep-pocketed developers and investors, and that COPA would level the playing field.

“We are seeing landlords who no longer want their ‘investment property’ and [who are] selling it to large corporate landlords that begin demolishing it and putting up luxury high rises,” said Kasey McNaughton, director of Organizing for the Youth Alliance for Housing (YAH), a community organization fighting for affordable housing and tenants’ rights.

McNaughton has been with YAH for two and a half years, but has been organizing since she was in high school. “A good portion of our city, our neighbors and our community are rent burdened, and I believe that is fully caused by a system, and a history of a country, that has allowed real estate to continuously put profits over people,” she said.

“[Qualified nonprofits and CLTs] want to be able to purchase these buildings from landlords before big corporations or big real estate conglomerates do, and COPA gives them the first chance to do so.”

Shoring up protections for transgender New Yorkers in jail

The final bills—Intro. 625 and Intro. 1027—secure the rights of Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, Nonbinary and Intersex (TGNCNBI) individuals in New York City jails overseen by the Department of Correction. A similar bill introduced by lawmakers in Albany would apply to New York State prisons, if passed.  

According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), transgender inmates are at higher risk for sexual and physical abuses while incarcerated. 

Intro. 625 ensures that TGNCNBI people in city jails are housed safely in accordance with their gender identity and where they feel most safe, while Intro. 1027 ensures they can access gender affirming care and commissary while behind bars. 

These bills also create a private right to action, allowing those harmed by a correctional institution’s failure to comply with these laws to more easily seek justice. 

“In the past eight months we have been constantly under attack. While yes, over time, the queer community has gained more acceptance and progress; we have regressed so far in terms of our rights and safety since Trump’s first term just because of the amount of legislation being passed targeting us,” stated Lorelei Crean, an internationally recognized transgender activist. 

Crean is a lead political organizer for NYC Youth for Trans Rights, a nonprofit started in 2023 after the murder of Brianna Ghey, a transgender teen from the United Kingdom. They have been an activist since childhood, joining the organization in 2024 after Trump’s re-election. 

“We the youth are saying that we want a livable future, that we want to feel safe and protected in our future,” said Crean.

Arpels-Josiah, with FFF NYC, said the legislative package as a whole, “is about understanding the future we are fighting for as a generation, as a youth movement.”

“It’s also a future where all these basic human rights are guaranteed, where we’re able to go home and study and afford the rent,” he said. 

With additional reporting by Jeanmarie Evelly.

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org. Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post 5 Bills NYC Youth Want the City Council to Pass Before the Year Ends appeared first on City Limits.

By Jarrell Dillard, Bloomberg News

U.S. companies shed payrolls in November by the most since early 2023, adding to concerns about a more pronounced weakening in the labor market.

Private-sector payrolls decreased by 32,000, according to ADP Research data released Wednesday. Payrolls have now fallen four times in the last six months. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 10,000 gain.

Wednesday’s weak ADP report risks heightening concerns of a more rapid deterioration in the labor market ahead of the Federal Reserve’s final policy meeting of the year next week. It could hold more sway than usual as one of the few up-to-date reports officials will have by then, as the shutdown delayed the government’s November jobs report.

Policymakers have been torn as to whether they’ll cut interest rates for a third straight meeting as they attempt to balance the slowdown in the job market with still-elevated inflation. Investors, however, widely expect the Fed to lower borrowing costs next week.

“I think it’s still probably going to be a pretty divided decision,” said Veronica Clark, an economist at Citigroup Inc. The expectation is there will be a rate cut, but the guidance will be more hawkish, she said, as the Fed will also provide fresh quarterly economic projections at the meeting.

The S&P 500 opened down and Treasury yields remained lower.

“Hiring has been choppy of late as employers weather cautious consumers and an uncertain macroeconomic environment,” Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP and a contributor to Bloomberg Television, said in a statement. “And while November’s slowdown was broad-based, it was led by a pullback among small businesses.”

Companies with fewer than 50 employees shed 120,000 jobs, the report showed. That’s the largest one-month decline since May 2020. Establishments with 50 or more employees increased headcount.

Professional and business services led the decline in payrolls, followed by information and manufacturing. Hiring in education and health services increased.

Until recently, economists have largely said the labor market is in a state of low hiring and low firing. But a number of large companies like Apple Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. have recently cut workers or announced plans to do so, which risks driving unemployment higher.

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Wage growth

The ADP report, published in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, showed wage growth cooled. Workers who changed jobs saw a 6.3% increase in pay, the lowest since February 2021. Those who stayed put saw a 4.4% gain. ADP bases its findings on payrolls covering more than 26 million U.S. private-sector employees.

With the labor market top of mind for Fed officials, policymakers will also be keenly paying attention to other data sources. Initial applications for unemployment benefits are still relatively low, while employment declined slightly in the Fed’s latest Beige Book survey of regional business contacts.

The November jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, originally due Dec. 5, will now come out Dec. 16 as data collection was halted during the record-long shutdown. That report will also include nonfarm payrolls for October since BLS is skipping a full release for that month, as it couldn’t collect certain data retroactively.

In addition to the monthly reports, ADP recently started releasing separate data on a weekly basis. Payrolls declined in each of the last three readings.

With assistance from Julia Fanzeres and Chris Middleton.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.