Who Is Not Voting in California?

Eric McGhee writes at PPIC:

• California’s falling registration rate relative to other states is strongly driven by the growing diversity of its population. California’s Latino and Asian American communities have become eligible to vote at faster rates than their counterparts in other states. At the same time, Latinos and Asian Americans register at lower rates than members of other groups, leading to an overall decline in the registration rate compared with states where the eligible voting population is not changing as quickly.
• The registration problem is especially pronounced for Latinos and Asian Americans more closely connected to the immigrant experience, that is, naturalized citizens and children born in the United States to immigrant parents.
• The behavior of young voters largely accounts for California’s declining turnout in midterm elections. Young people have been voting at slightly higher rates in presidential elections and at much lower rates in midterms than voters of the same age did two decades ago.
•  No other demographic factors significantly drive declining midterm participation. In particular, California’s expanding Latino and Asian American populations are not a significant part of the falling midterm turnout story. Once registered, the voting patterns of these groups have not changed meaningfully over time.

International Views of Trump and the US

Not surprisingly, Trump is damaging America's image abroad.  From Pew:

The sharp decline in how much global publics trust the U.S. president on the world stage is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada. Across the 37 nations polled, Trump gets higher marks than Obama in only two countries: Russia and Israel.

 

Parties and Federalism

Mallory E. SoRelle and Alexis N. Walker write at The Washington Post that Congress has often preempted state and local policy powers.

But federal preemption jumped sharply in the 1970s and again over the past decade. About 6 percent of federal laws enacted between 2000 and 2009 preempt state and local powers, compared with about 3.5 percent during the previous decade.

To learn more about how the parties at the national level approach states’ rights, we surveyed every federal law enacted between 1990 and 2012 that preempted state power in some way. As the figure below shows, we found that both parties have contributed relatively equally to the dramatic increase in federal preemption.

 

The parties enact different types of preemptions. Republicans are more likely to impose what are known as “ceiling preemptions.” These laws cap the amount of regulation states can enact on a particular issue. For example, a ceiling preemption might prohibit states from setting new or more stringent emissions standards for a particular industry.

Democrats, by contrast, are much more likely to limit state power by setting floor preemptions, or minimum standards that states must meet but can exceed if they want to. For example, such a law might set a federal emission standard for a particular industry but allow states to enact tougher emissions standards.

Aging America

From the Census

The nation’s population has a distinctly older age profile than it did 16 years ago, according to new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released today.

New detailed estimates show the nation’s median age — the age where half of the population is younger and the other half older — rose from 35.3 years on April 1, 2000, to 37.9 years on July 1, 2016.

“The baby-boom generation is largely responsible for this trend,” said Peter Borsella, a demographer in the Population Division. “Baby boomers began turning 65 in 2011 and will continue to do so for many years to come.”

Residents age 65 and over grew from 35.0 million in 2000, to 49.2 million in 2016, accounting for 12.4 percent and 15.2 percent of the total population, respectively.

These latest estimates present changes among groups by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin at the national, state and county levels between April 1, 2010, and July 1, 2016. The estimates also present changes over the same period among groups by age and sex for Puerto Rico and its municipios.

Typos, Continued

Another day, another step backward for education. On his Facebook page, Trump misspelled miners.

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Revoking Citizenship

Adam Liptak reports at The New York Times:

The justices unanimously rejected the government’s position that it could revoke the citizenship of Americans who made even trivial misstatements in their naturalization proceedings.

During arguments in April, several justices seemed indignant and incredulous at the government’s hard-line approach in the case, Maslenjak v. United States, No. 16-309.
They asked about a form that people seeking American citizenship must complete. It requires applicants to say, for instance, whether they had ever committed a criminal offense, however minor, even if there was no arrest. A government lawyer, in response to questioning, said that failing to disclose a speeding violation could be enough to revoke citizenship even years later.

Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said that the law required a tighter connection between the lie and the procurement of citizenship.

“We hold that the government must establish that an illegal act by the defendant played some role in her acquisition of citizenship,” she wrote. “When the illegal act is a false statement, that means demonstrating that the defendant lied about facts that would have mattered to an immigration official, because they would have justified denying naturalization or would predictably have led to other facts warranting that result.”

Income Inequality

Many posts have discussed aspects of inequality.

Christopher Matthews writes at Axios:

The jobs market is humming these days, but income inequality continues to grow. Torsten Slok, Chief International Economist with Deustche Bank Securities, sent the following chart to clients on Tuesday, drawn on the most recent work by inequality researchers Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman. Pikkety is the author of the much-discussed 2014 book, Capital in the 21st Century.

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