By GEOFF MULVIHILL

LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. see lower social acceptance for transgender people than those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual, a new Pew Research Center poll found.

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Pew found that about 6 in 10 LGBTQ+ adults said there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of social acceptance in the U.S. for gay and lesbian people. Only about 1 in 10 said the same for nonbinary and transgender people — and about half said there was “not much” or no acceptance at all for transgender people.

Giovonni Santiago, a 39-year-old transgender man and Air Force veteran who lives in Northeast Ohio and was not a participant in the survey, said he feels that acceptance for transgender people has declined in the last few years – roughly in step with the rise of state laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, regulating which school and public bathrooms transgender people can use and which sports they can play.

He said he’s seen acceptance get worse nationally, following the lead of some places that were early adopters of restrictions.

“They were like the anomaly for ignorance and in hatred, especially towards trans people,” Santiago said. “But now we see that it’s just kind of sweeping the nation, unfortunately.”

Still, Santiago said he doesn’t fear for his own personal safety — a contrast with most transgender people, who said they have feared for their safety at some point.

“I guess I don’t feel it as much because I live a life that most people don’t know that I’m trans unless I specifically tell them,” said Santiago, who runs a nonprofit dedicated to supporting transgender youth.

The survey of 3,959 LGBTQ+ adults was conducted in January, after President Donald Trump was elected but just before he returned to office and set into motion a series of policies that question the existence of transgender people.

On his first day, Trump signed an executive order calling on the government to recognize people as male or female based on the “biological truth” of their future cells at conception, rather than accept scientific evidence that gender is a spectrum. Since then, he’s begun ousting transgender service members from the military, and tried to bar transgender women and girls from sports competitions for females and block federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under 19, among other orders.

A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in May found that about half of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling transgender issues, with a range of views on specific actions.

According to the Pew poll, about two-thirds of LGBTQ+ adults said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationally 10 years ago boosted acceptance of same-sex couples “a lot more” or “somewhat more.” The Supreme Court is expected to rule in coming weeks on a major case regarding transgender people — deciding whether Tennessee can enforce a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

Transgender people are less likely than gay or lesbian adults to say they’re accepted by all their family members. The majority of LGBTQ+ said their siblings and friends accepted them, though the rates were slightly higher among gay or lesbian people. About half of gay and lesbian people said their parents did, compared with about one-third of transgender people. Only about 1 in 10 transgender people reported feeling accepted by their extended family, compared with about 3 in 10 gay or lesbian people.

Transgender people are more likely than gay, lesbian or bisexual people to say they feel “extremely” or “very” connected to a broader LGBTQ+ community and to say that all or most of their friends are also LGBTQ+.

Some elements of the experience are similar. About one-third of transgender and lesbian or gay adults said they first felt they might be LGBTQ+ by the time they were 10 and most did by age 13. About half waited until they were at least 18 to first tell someone.

Aubrey Campos, 41, runs a taco truck near a hub of LGBTQ+ bars in Fort Worth, Texas, and also serves as a community organizer. She says her parents were supportive when she came out as transgender at about age 12. But the younger trans people she works with often have very different experiences — including some who were kicked out of their homes.

“Now the times are a little bit dark,” she said. “This is a time that we to come together and make it brighter and make it known that we aren’t going to just disappear.”

By FU TING, KANIS LEUNG, and HUIZHONG WU

HONG KONG (AP) — Chinese students studying in the U.S. are scrambling to figure out their futures after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that some of them would have their visas revoked.

The U.S. will begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students, including those studying in “critical fields” and “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the announcement.

China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the United States, behind only India. In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the U.S.

Rubio’s announcement was a “new version of the Chinese Exclusion Act,” said Liqin, a Chinese student at Johns Hopkins University, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of retaliation. He was referring to a 19th-century law that prohibited Chinese from immigrating to the U.S. and banned Chinese people already in the U.S. from getting citizenship. He said Wednesday was the first time he thought about leaving the U.S. after spending a third of his life here.

Chinese international students are a point of tension

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, called the U.S. decision unreasonable.

“Such a politicized and discriminatory action lays bare the U.S. lie that it upholds so-called freedom and openness,” she said Thursday, adding that China has lodged a protest with the U.S.

The issue of Chinese students studying overseas has long been a point of tension in the bilateral relationship. In 2019, during Trump’s first term, China’s Ministry of Education warned students about visa issues in the U.S., with rising rejection rates and shortening of visas.

Last year, the Chinese Foreign Ministry protested that a number of Chinese students were unfairly interrogated and sent home upon arrival at U.S. airports.

Chinese state media has long hyped gun violence in the U.S. and violent protests during the pandemic, and portrayed the U.S. as a dangerous place that wasn’t safe for its citizens. The tense bilateral relationship has also meant that some Chinese students are opting to study in the U.K. or other countries over the U.S. after the pandemic.

Zou Renge, a 27-year-old public policy master’s student at the University of Chicago, said she had planned to take some time off and work in humanitarian aid programs abroad after graduating at the end of this year.

But now, she will refrain from leaving the U.S. and will look for jobs in the meantime. “In a very uncertain environment, I’ll try my best to find myself a solution,” she said.

Hong Kong seeks to draw in talent amid uncertainty

Some were eager to capitalize on the uncertainty facing international students in the U.S. Hong Kong’s leader John Lee told lawmakers on Thursday that the city would welcome any students who have been discriminated against by American policies to study in the city.

“The students who face unfair treatment can come from different countries beyond the U.S. I think this is an opportunity for Hong Kong,” he said. “We will work with our universities to provide the best support and assistance.”

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That followed a widely shared post by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) inviting Harvard students to “continue their academic pursuits” there after Trump said he would revoke the university’s ability to accept international students.

Other Hong Kong universities including the Chinese University of Hong Kong and City University of Hong Kong also said they would streamline or facilitate applications from international students coming from top universities in the U.S.

Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to China in 1997, is a popular destination for mainland Chinese students to pursue their university degrees because of its international image and relative freedoms.

The city launched a new visa scheme in 2022 to counter the exodus of expatriates and local professionals that occurred after Beijing imposed a national security law to quell dissent and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Will Kwong, managing director at Hong Kong’s AAS Education Consultancy, said his company was helping students with offers from American universities to apply to other institutions, predominantly in Britain and Australia, so that they had alternative choices.

U.S. was known for diversity and this will hurt it, students say

“Having fewer international exchanges is definitely not good for America’s development,” said Zhang Qi, a postdoctoral fellow in Beijing. “This could be a positive change for China’s development. More talented individuals may choose to stay at Tsinghua or Peking University, or with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other top institutions in China, which would benefit the development of domestic science and technology.”

For many, there is little they can do as they now wait for the fallout from the move.

Chen, a Chinese student at Purdue University who only gave his last name out of concern for retaliation by the Trump administration, has been waiting anxiously in China for his visa approval. But he was also angry, and said this was the exact opposite of what he thought the U.S. stood for.

“I was expecting freedom and tolerance. The U.S. was known for its diversity which allows international students to fit in, but it is a pity to see such change,” he said.

Fu Ting reported from Washington, Wu from Bangkok. Associated Press researcher Shihuan Chen and video producer Olivia Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.

It’s hard to think intelligently about public debt and deficits. The economics of fiscal policy is complicated and defies straightforward prescriptions. What’s most striking about budget-making in Washington today, though, is not that legislators are confused about what good debt-management requires. It’s that they’ve just stopped thinking about it.

If passed by the Senate, last week’s vast House budget bill would add between $3 trillion and $5 trillion to deficits over the next 10 years. Yet the plan hasn’t divided the country’s politicians according to whether it’s fiscally reckless. Nowadays, that issue rarely comes up. All that matters is who gains and who loses from the proposed changes to taxes and spending. Whether the economy is heading for fiscal breakdown isn’t Washington’s concern.

In 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said deficits don’t matter, noting that the national debt soared during Ronald Reagan’s time in office (from 21% of GDP to 35%) as the economy boomed. Conscientious fiscal neglect, as one might call it, is nothing new. The difference is that Cheney’s comment was provocative and meant to be: It drew attention and was argued over. Not any longer. Nobody in Congress or the White House thinks it necessary to insist that deficits don’t matter. They’ve simply stopped caring.

This suspension of fiscal anxiety might seem puzzling. Perhaps the public debt is now so big, and on such a fast-rising trajectory, that bringing it back under control seems impossibly difficult. A politician might therefore ask, why worry about it? Without this bill, debt was already on track to exceed 150% of gross domestic product by 2055. But there’s no politically feasible way to rein it in. So why not cut taxes by another few trillion dollars over the next 10 years? Sure, this will raise the debt by another 10 percentage points, but the debt was “unsustainable” anyway, so what’s your point?

It turns out that this pattern — the bigger the debt, the less likely politicians are to address it — is lurking in the data. An International Monetary Fund study in 2010 found that adjustments to fiscal policy in a group of 23 advanced economies were more sensitive to rising debt at low levels of debt than at high levels of debt; beyond a certain point an increase in debt actually resulted in a smaller change in budget policy. A new study of the U.S. found that “fiscal feedback” — the extent to which fiscal policy is tightened when projected deficits go up — has fallen markedly (alongside rapidly rising debt) since 2004.

Admittedly, for much of the past two decades, the view that U.S. deficits don’t matter has been legitimately defensible. The reason is complicated debt dynamics. The gap between the real interest rate on government debt and rate of economic growth plays a crucial role in deciding what’s sustainable. If the interest rate is lower than the growth rate, output will expand faster than the debt plus the cost of servicing it. In other words, given sufficiently low interest rates, the government can run a modest primary (non-interest) budget deficit and still watch the ratio of debt to GDP decline.

For a time after the crash of 2008, and again during the pandemic, the real interest rate was not just less than the growth rate but actually negative. Under such conditions, budget deficits and a falling ratio of debt to GDP can go hand in hand.

Unfortunately, the real interest rate is now back above 2%, which outstrips most estimates of future growth. If this difference persists, a small primary budget surplus will be needed to stop the debt getting any higher. The prospect, even without the House budget bill, is for substantial primary budget deficits as far as the eye can see — and the bill makes these expected deficits materially bigger.

The difference between the required primary surplus and the projected primary deficits is a measure of the fiscal adjustment needed merely to hold the debt ratio constant. It’s about 2-3 percentage points of GDP — between $6 trillion and $9 trillion of tax increases and spending cuts over 10 years — again, not counting the new budget.

You can see why politicians might prefer not to think about this. And it’s always possible that the problem will indeed go away if it’s ignored. A lot can change. Faster growth (maybe thanks partly to the budget bill’s tax cuts, or an AI revolution, or who knows what?) would restrain or even reverse the rise of debt. Spending and revenue projections are usually wrong: With luck, they’ll be wrong in a helpful way. Moreover, estimates of the bill’s fiscal impact leave tariff revenues out of account; these are especially uncertain, with policy fluctuating day by day, but they could put a dent in the projected future deficits.

Still, the fiscal risks seem heavily loaded to the other side. As the debt grows, the fiscal adjustment required to hold it steady keeps getting bigger. All these projections assume no recessions, which would put further upward pressure on deficits. The House has held down the cost of its budget with a new batch of supposedly temporary measures and other accounting gimmickry; correcting for this, the 10-year addition to deficits will be closer to $5 trillion than $3 trillion. The Trump administration’s tariffs, and all their associated frictions, will likely mean lower growth. The U.S. also faces an aging population and the prospect of more tightly restricted immigration — together acting as a further drag on growth and accelerator of entitlement spending.

Looming over all is the likely cost of borrowing. Until recently, very low interest rates granted unbounded fiscal space. Not only that, but they were also an expression of financial markets’ confidence that all would be well — particularly reassuring, given that investors have every incentive to look forward and weigh risks. But lately rates have not only risen, they’ve also registered episodes of alarm about aspects of economic policy. Add the administration’s evident preference for a depreciated currency, and investors can no longer take for granted the safety of U.S. government debt. It might require a bigger risk premium. This suggests an inflection point, at which higher risks raise interest rates, which destabilizes the debt, which raises interest rates, and so on. If things unravel, it could happen very quickly.

Here’s one way to look at it. In recent years, U.S. politicians and investors have agreed, for their different reasons, not to think about rising public debt. If investors change their minds about this, begin to wonder where it all leads, and start to place their bets accordingly, an entirely new fiscal regime kicks in. And if that happens, the politicians’ complacency will hit a wall.

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics. Previously, he was deputy editor of the Economist and chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times.

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Sharing my origin story has become a regular part of my role as a leader and mentor, about how a young boy from Detroit, Michigan, would ultimately move to St. Paul, Minnesota, as an adult to lead one of the most prestigious performing arts centers in the world. While it was undoubtedly a non-linear path, the dots can be connected back to being exposed to the arts as a young person by my elementary school teacher, going on field trips to cultural events on the yellow school bus, and having access to places like the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts.

The arts thrive when they belong to everyone. When the Ordway opened its doors in 1985, our chief benefactor and guiding spirit, Sally Ordway Irvine, had a vision to create a place where ALL the performing arts would be embraced and ALL members of the community would feel welcome. That vision is alive and well 40 years later. The Flint Hills Family Festival, presented by the Ordway, embodies this ethos each summer in downtown St. Paul.

It is a gift to the community, and I am proud to champion the Flint Hills Family Festival. Not just because it’s the country’s largest and longest-running festival of its kind, but because it drives economic impact and contributes to the vitality and vibrancy of our community. I continue to be inspired by teachers, parents and guardians who often make sacrifices to share the power of the arts. As a lifelong learner, I have picked up a thing or two from the youngest festival attendees, like hula-hooping and the power of perseverance.

2025 is a big year of milestones for us. In addition to it being the Ordway’s 40th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of the Ordway Concert Hall opening, this year the festival is celebrating its 25th year. This milestone is a celebration of what happens when businesses and communities prioritize the arts as a public good. Since 2001, the festival has welcomed more than 1 million people to Rice Park in downtown Saint Paul to enjoy live performances, concerts and free activities designed to spark curiosity in toddlers, teens and adults alike. This year, the festival will welcome over 25,000 attendees and will feature more than 270 artists, including local veterans and Grammy winners, alongside interactive art stations run by local educators and volunteers.

For 25 years, the passion of Minnesotans has made this event more than just a music festival for families. It’s an invitation to the arts for the next generation. When families attend the Flint Hills Family Festival, they’re part of a legacy. Many of the first generation of festival-goers – kids whose eyes lit up at their first theater or concert experience in 2001 – are now parents themselves. Some of them will return with their children to this year’s event, passing down a tradition of curiosity and artistic discovery.

Nationwide, 25-year corporate partnerships are becoming increasingly rare. For a quarter century, Flint Hills Resources has partnered with the Ordway as a believer in making the arts accessible to all. Together, we’ve weathered economic downturns, shifting trends and a pandemic, all while keeping these formative experiences affordable. We have worked side-by-side to invest in ensuring families of all shapes, backgrounds and socioeconomic status see themselves represented onstage.

Live, in-person, shared experiences with the arts are more important now than ever. When we experience the arts, it transforms the way we see the world, and most importantly, helps us to better understand our place in it. I believe we have a responsibility to invest in the current and future generations of creatives, as well as our business, civic and community leaders. This can be done by exposing young people (and the young at heart) to the arts through longstanding events like the festival, which runs from May 28-31 at the Ordway in downtown St. Paul.

There is a plethora of data that documents the many benefits of being exposed to the arts, including emotional and social growth, better academic outcomes and being more civically engaged. But you don’t need data to feel it — watch a child’s face decorated with paint light up as they step into a crowd buzzing with music, and you’ll understand why this festival — the largest and longest-running of its kind — isn’t just the Ordway’s or Flint Hills’ legacy. It’s all of Minnesota’s.

Christopher Harrington is president and CEO of the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts in St. Paul.

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