Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• The Radical Courage of Simone Biles’s Exit from the Team USA Olympic Finals - Biles’s decision not to compete on Tuesday is, to many spectators, a heartbreak. It is also a welcome example of an athlete setting her own limits. - link

• Mandela’s Dream for South Africa Is in Ruins - Following the imprisonment of Jacob Zuma, and at a time when inequality is worse than during apartheid, mob violence is threatening the country’s constitutional order. - link

• What Does the Delta Variant Mean for the U.S. Economy? - Predictions of a second “Roaring Twenties” have proved premature. - link

• How the Head of the N.R.A. and His Wife Secretly Shipped Their Elephant Trophies Home - The couple had their names removed from the shipment, and placed an order for the animals’ feet to be turned into “stools,” an “umbrella stand,” and a “trash can.” - link

• The Fury and Mischief of Paula Rego - A new retrospective celebrates one of Britain’s most prominent and inventive artists. - link

From Vox

• Biden is turning back Haitian migrants at sea, echoing a shameful chapter in US history -

  

  Under previous administrations, Haitians have been detained indefinitely and sent back to dangerous conditions.

  The US could soon be facing dual migrant crises stemming from unrest in Haiti and Cuba. In response, the Biden administration has preemptively warned migrants not to try to come to the US by boat.

  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently confirmed that any migrants intercepted by the US Coast Guard off US shores will not be allowed to enter the country — they will be turned back or, if they express fear of returning to their home countries, repatriated to a third country.

  “The time is never right to attempt migration by sea,” Mayorkas said in a press conference earlier this month. “To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States.”

  The policy isn’t new. Past administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have employed this interdiction approach to prevent Caribbean migrants from reaching US shores. But although it was always done under the pretense of protecting migrants from the very real dangers of that journey, it resulted in many Haitians being returned to certain peril in their home country over the years and, under the administrations of Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, languishing in what one federal judge called a “prison camp” at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they were held after being intercepted at sea.

  A. Naomi Paik, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, studied testimonies from those migrants for her book Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in US Prison Camps Since World War II. So I called her up to ask her more about the US’s history of intercepting Haitian migrant boats, what became of the migrants held at Guantanamo, and how the Biden administration can better address the humanitarian needs of Haitian migrants coming to the US today.

  Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.

  Nicole Narea

  When have we seen the US interdicting Caribbean migrants coming by boat before?

  A. Naomi Paik

  We’ve already been doing this for a long time, particularly against Haitian migrants. This is not a new idea. It is a bipartisan issue promoted by both Democrats and Republicans. And so Biden is basically drawing on this tool of interdiction that has been well-developed.

  The policy originated under Ronald Reagan. He brokered a deal so that the Haitian government would accept returnees and restrict migration between the US and Haiti. The concern over Haitian migrants has been a longstanding one over multiple administrations, but Reagan added that transnational piece where we patrol international waters for the specific purpose of turning away migrants.

  George H.W. Bush escalated the interdiction program in the early ’90s after the coup d’état against [Haitian President] Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The coup targeted large swaths of civil society. Tens of thousands of Haitians were forced to leave their homes. And so he authorized the [US] Coast Guard to interdict migrants and then turn them back.

  Nicole Narea

  Is this practice legal?

  A. Naomi Paik

  The legitimacy of [Bush’s policy] was challenged in court. It was a series of three cases filed by Haitian migration advocates against the US state for turning them back right away and for indefinite detention at Guantanamo. Those cases went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that it was within the powers of the president.

  It’s a violation of the principle of non-return in international refugee law. It’s also an infringement on the law of international waters because we’re basically using international waters as borderlands and policing it as if it is the United States.

  Nicole Narea

  I know you’ve written about the detentions at Guantanamo. Could you describe what the conditions were like?

  A. Naomi Paik

  The camp at its peak had tens of thousands of migrants. It was very makeshift in its architecture and its provisions for the migrants. You had these large tents set up on this airfield that was no longer active. But as more and more people started coming, they didn’t even have cots. They were sleeping on the ground on cardboard, and the food provisions were sparse.

  There was a large ad hoc bureaucracy that was managed primarily by the US military but also had to involve immigration authorities and translators to facilitate interviews [for potential protections in the US] and match people who passed their interview with family members in the US.

  But there’s another iteration of the camp that was much smaller, that had several hundred detainees who could not go back to Haiti by international law because they had passed their asylum interviews, but they weren’t allowed into the United States because some of them or their family members were found to be HIV- positive.

  Instead of being under these large tents, they had cabins, but there was no glass in the windows, no partitions setting off rooms for privacy. They were exposed to the weather and the elements. The food was really terrible. Some of the migrants would talk about how the food was spoiled and had maggots in it.

  These people were stuck in Guantanamo for years, waiting for these court cases to work their way through the courts. They put a lot of hope in President Bill Clinton, because during the campaign he said that he was going to let them go, that this was a terrible stain on the US.

  And then when he was elected, he did nothing. The only exit that they were offered was to go back to Haiti. All of them were at risk of dying if they returned, so there was really no choice at all.

  Nicole Narea

  What ultimately happened to the Haitians who were detained there?

  A. Naomi Paik

  The vast majority of migrants who passed through Guantanamo were returned to Haiti. A much smaller percentage were able to be paroled into the United States because they passed their asylum interviews.

  A court case that challenged indefinite detention at Guantanamo was actually successful at the district court level. A judge ruled in favor of the migrants, basically saying that the US government either had to make the camp livable — providing real health care, real housing, education — or they had to release the migrants to anywhere but Haiti. And so [the Clinton administration] decided to release the migrants into the United States because there were no third countries that wanted to take them.

  Nicole Narea

  Could the US ever use Guantanamo as a migrant detention camp again?

  1. Naomi Paik

  That case gave the Clinton administration political cover to allow Haitian migrants into the United States. But the Justice Department also threatened to appeal the decision to a higher court, which would have risked [the migrants’ lawyers] losing and having all their clients stay in detention for the duration of the appeal.

  So they brokered a deal. The US government said, “We’ll let these migrants in. But we want to keep some flexibility. We don’t want this decision by the lower court to have any precedent. So we’ve vacated the precedent.”

  And so that is a really important court case in terms of thinking about what’s happening at Guantanamo now. The torture memos that enabled the use of Guantanamo [to detain terrorism suspects after 9/11] cite that case and say that because the precedent has been vacated, this site can be used for indefinite detention.

  There have been contingency plans around having a migrant camp at Guantanamo. So it’s always been in the US’s toolbox for migration management.

  Nicole Narea

  How can the Biden administration do better this time around when it comes to Haitian migrants?

  A. Naomi Paik

  This is the bigger question about migration altogether — not even just for migrants who travel by sea or asylum seekers from the Caribbean. We as a country need to hold ourselves accountable for creating those conditions that force people to move out from their homelands.

  And so, to me, it seems to be the most logical to not base this system around detention, social control, and exclusion. I think some of the most repressive policies in US migration policy today have been innovated against Haitian migrants, like [extending migration control beyond] US territorial space.

  We now do this with Mexico and with Central America, paying other governments to do our border restriction for us. And what’s most troubling is that it’s kind of growing and spreading well beyond the United States — look at Australia’s policies or Europe’s in the Mediterranean, for instance.

  We have to get rid of the idea that migrants are problems to be controlled and expelled, and think about migrants as people who are leaving because of things that we’ve done to where they live.

  Nicole Narea

  You talk in your book about US imperialism being at the root of Haiti’s instability and out-migration. Could you describe what you mean by that?

  A. Naomi Paik

  You have to go back to the birth of Haiti as a nation altogether. This nation was born from the insurrection of enslaved people against their masters, against one of the most wealthy colonies of one of the most powerful imperial nations in the world at the time [France]. That was terrifying to nations that relied on a slave economy, including the United States.

  People talk about Haiti’s indemnity to France [in which, following the Haitian Revolution, France forced Haiti to pay it 150 million francs to compensate for enslavers’ loss of income, in exchange for France’s recognition of the former colony’s independence] and about how that debt was managed and financed through international and US banks.

  So we actually owe a debt to Haiti for having kneecapped this young country from the very get-go, economically and then also politically. You have to think about the US military interventions in Haiti, including our military occupation in the early 20th century. We supported dictatorial regimes and then undermined democratic regimes that were trying to stand up against the US. We had economic policies that were very extractive.

  We have to actually think about this in the kind of long scope of how not just the United States but much of the world has cast out this country and created the conditions where Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

• LA’s favorite flea market is a teen fashion paradise -

  

  What does a cool high schooler wear these days? For Gen Z, the defining style is that there isn’t one. 

  

  Part of The Schools Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.

  ---

  In the age of meticulously manufactured pop acts like NSYNC and tween sitcoms like Lizzie McGuire, the mall was a youth mecca.

  Too underage for the club and too broke to dine at swanky restaurants a grade above Chili’s, for young people of the ’90s and aughts, the fluorescent lights and endless retail opportunities became an entry point into the worlds of romantic relationships and personal style. On weekends, the cement floors were a proverbial red carpet primed to show off logo-emblazoned Aeropostale polos, freshly bought Skechers, and other relics of the Y2K zeitgeist.

  Fast-forward two decades, and malls are on life support. According to a 2020 report by Coresight Research, the indoor retail model is facing a grim prospect: 25 percent of the country’s malls are set to close within the next five years — a decline accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Iconic department store names continually inch closer toward the brink of bankruptcy, if they haven’t met that fate already. Amazon and the proliferation of online shopping are likely causes, but there’s another, less discussed culprit lurking in the background: the rise of the thrift.

  In contrast to the dwindling mall business, the secondhand apparel market is set to make serious gains. A recent study conducted by online consignment company Thredup and GlobalData, projects the secondhand market to more than double from an estimated $36 billion in five years — making vintage a powerful force even compared to the more than $300 billion traditional US retail fashion sector.

  Once a shopping resource thought of as for ladies who played bingo on Saturdays, pretentious art kids, and those without the means to buy into the brand new consumer cycle, flea markets are now big business for much of Gen Z. In the past several years, this younger generation has continually outpaced boomers and Gen X in the growth of people buying secondhand. Browsing through the heavily perfumed stores of Abercrombie and Hollister has made way for obsessively picking through scores of pre-owned garments.

  Recreating the aesthetic contrived by D-level executives has become significantly less cool than, say, a mishmash of ’90s-era Margiela and Carhartt. The proof is on social media.

  

  Sex in the City premiered before Gen Z was even born, but it hasn’t stopped the proliferation of fashion memes and TikTok videos co-opting Carrie Bradshaw’s clingy cropped halter tops. Rainbow crochet — the type grandmas would buy patterns for in bulk — is a hot vintage commodity among teens on TikTok. And ultra low-rise jeans have ushered in a Y2K fashion renaissance that has exploded on secondhand clothing resale apps like Depop. These seemingly opposing trends have been plucked out of their respective obscurity, time-traveling at warp speed into the closets of teenagers and young adults all over the globe.

  “I think vintage clothes are just better,” says Miza Ahamadi, a 19-year-old thrifting enthusiast. I met Miza, who was home on summer break from Spelman College, at one of LA’s numerous outdoor flea markets with fellow Spelman student and friend Gabby Archibald. Their afternoon of thrift therapy was spent straggling along a trail of professional resellers working booths of curated vintage fashion. Underneath a cramped tent filled to the brim with hanging slip dresses and faded biker jackets, the two women scan a row of baby tees and jeans. “I really like Carhartt and Harley Davidson,” Gabby mentions. “I’m looking for heavier jackets since it’s a lot colder in New York.”

  Most of what they wear has already been owned or worn by someone else, which only adds to the allure. “With fast fashion it just disintegrates after a few washes — it’s just nice to know that it was pre-loved by another person,” says Miza. More than just choosing what’s cute, the act of shopping vintage has become part of their sartorial identities. “I just feel like vintage clothes are going to be more like my aesthetic, more so than like fast fashion, because trends just keep going and coming,” she adds.

  This democratization of trends, enabled by the internet, has allowed even those with limited disposable incomes to take part in the rapid fashion cycle on e-commerce giants like Shein and Amazon. But this widespread accessibility comes at a cost. By now, it’s common knowledge that fast fashion has a devastating impact on the earth, due to the cycle of consuming and disposing of cheaply made clothing. While many companies are pledging to do better through renewable initiatives, buying pre-owned is likely more sustainable. Teenagers and twenty-somethings, who are keenly aware of the dangers of climate change, are taking notice.

  

  Buying secondhand has become a sort of a rebellion against the rapid rise of fast fashion, mass consumption, and homogenous fads. Instead of looking to brands to provide the narrative of how to dress, thrifting provides another option that isn’t frozen in a particular genre or style. Stringent brand loyalty — the type where buying a shirt of every color is normal practice — is largely an unfamiliar concept to a generation that likes to be choosy about when and where they shop. Instead, the bustling resale market has ensured an eclectic mosaic of remixed and recycled trends from decades past: There’s room to fawn over ’90s nylon Prada bags as well as midcentury Emilio Pucci prints.

  The defining Gen Z style is that there isn’t one.

  ---

  

  Melrose Trading Post is a flea market held every Sunday at LA’s Fairfax High School, a diverse public school bordering the scene-y, celebrity hangouts of West Hollywood. With the streetwear-lined blocks of Fairfax Avenue to the west and the luxury boutiques on Melrose Avenue to the north, the market feeds in a continuous crowd of kids who grab oat milk lattes, wearing limited-edition Jordan 1s. Despite the school being virtually next door to this bubble of exclusivity, according to US News & World Report, 80 percent of Fairfax High’s students are economically disadvantaged.

  The Post, which started 24 years ago as a fundraiser for a community arts program, feels like an Etsy page come to life. For a modest admission fee, shoppers can peruse roughly 200 vendors spanning veteran clothing resellers to full-time independent artists. Everything from neon-bright handcrafted furniture to quirky boob candles and psychedelic jewelry have a place in its ecosystem of sellers. But it’s the tents selling vintage that get the most foot traffic.

  These open markets hold racks of nostalgic names like Von Dutch and Bebe, with walls of patchwork leather racing jackets and Hawaiian shirts. It’s perfect for teenagers like Aiveen Gleeson and her group of Orange County friends. “Vintage shopping … honestly it just looks way better than a really expensive outfit. When I get really rich and famous, I’m still going to do a lot of thrift shopping,” she says. Wearing ripped fishnet tights and thick black boots, with her long dark hair parted in the middle, her look feels reminiscent of Stevie Nicks with a sprinkling of Joan Jett. When I spot her, she and her friends Presley Farzam and Rimea Kasprzak are scanning a tray of metal rings. It’s only her second time visiting Melrose Trading Post, but despite her age, she and her friends are already experienced at sifting through bundles of collectibles.

  “Everything I’m wearing is thrifted — I get all my stuff from thrift stores,” Rimea says. “I tend to wear like anything, like I find a lot of men’s clothes too. We just found this one store where everything outside goes for a dollar!”

Gen Z-ers making up the bulk of their wardrobe with secondhand items isn’t uncommon. Before catching a film across the street, Mackenzie Dobias and her boyfriend decided to kill some time checking out the vendors. She estimates that 60 percent of her closet is a mix-match assortment of thrifted items, including the pants and top she’s wearing. “My jeans, I got on Depop,” Mackenzie says before motioning to her blouse, which she got at a shop in Long Beach that she calls “selective.”

Later that bright and blistering Sunday — which also happened to be the 4th of July — I run into a group of teens and young adults shopping in a tent full of pastel-colored crop tops and tiny bodycon dresses. Visiting from Texas, Hannah Ruch made a pilgrimage to the Post with her boyfriend, Mason Cook and his sister, Georgia Cook. “It’s our anniversary, so I’m looking for a dress for dinner,” she says. “I’m from Texas, so the style there is a lot different. I usually just wear sweatpants and a shirt. I’m trying to change it up.”

However geographically or aesthetically boundless this generation’s style might seem, today’s youth fashion is still not without its key influences. While past generations might have looked to Vogue or MTV for inspiration, today’s youth draw from the kinetic network of social media.

“I used to go to a school where people were just extremely judgmental, so I kind of just wore whatever,” says Georgia Cook. “Once I started homeschooling, that’s when I discovered a style that I actually liked, like Emma Chamberlain’s style, and those kinds of people. After I figured that out, then I started to really get into thrifting.” Emma Chamberlain is a 20-year-old YouTuber whose eclectic fashion sense and expansive catalogue of diary entry-esque videos have propelled her into a stratosphere that most social media stars aspire to. Among her uploaded content includes videos titled “Epic Thrift Haul” and “How To Look Cute on Your Period,” along with baggy jeans-clad outfit pics complete with Doc Martens and ’90s-era claw clips.

While the early aughts and the 1990s reign as the two primary eras young fashion lovers have embraced, earlier decades have their fair share of fans. Mason, an actor originally from Oklahoma, was looking to add a pair of bell-bottoms to his closet: “It gives me vibes of the Beatles, like early ’70s. Bell-bottom jeans with Chelsea boots and maybe a blazer.” It’s in stark contrast to the Golf Wang trucker jacket, beaded necklace, and Doc Martens he’s wearing while we talk. “Most of the time I’m wearing streetwear, but if I’m feeling like I want to get dressed up a little bit, I might go for bell-bottoms and Chelsea boots.”

Blaine is a college student from Pomona, but he’s also a student of the internet. From his bucket hat to his loose-fitting Dickies cargo pants, each component of his outfit represents a pointed choice — much of which was sourced from vintage stores. He’s also hyper-specific about his inspirations, many of them ’90s heatthrobs, with Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and resident internet zaddy Jeff Goldblum among his top three fashion icons.

But it’s the SoCal-meets-gangster-infused stylings of Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 revival of Romeo and Juliet that gets him, specifically: “I watched it during my freshman year of high school and ever since then I was like, I want to dress like that.” The influence is apparent in Blaine’s choice of an oversized short-sleeved button down, styled ever so slightly to reveal a white shirt underneath. “I like to mix preppy but make it more comfortable with sneakers instead of dress shoes.”

Like a lot of the young people I meet at Melrose Trading Post, one key segue into shopping vintage for Blaine was through his parents. “I listened to a lot of old hip hop and R&B that my parents listened to,” he said. “So I watched the music videos, and saw all the styles, and decided that’s what I like to emulate; a lot of social media I follow revolves around clothes.”

Launched as a companion social network to Simon Beckerman’s Pig magazine — an independent glossy dedicated to the happenings of youth subculture — in 2011, Depop now occupies a substantial chunk of the resale market. This summer, its craftier e-rival Etsy bought the company for a whopping $1.6 billion, and Depop’s 2020 revenues exceeded $70 million, with gross merchandise sales reportedly hitting $650 million.

Chloe Levine, a 16-year-old seasoned thrifter, uses Depop to gauge which hot items are worth hunting for. It’s where she follows social media personality and model Devon Lee Carlson, the inspiration behind her bedazzled trucker hat and baggy shorts. “I love ’90s movies, and TikTok is huge for fashion,” she tells me.

With approximately 90 percent of Depop’s 30 million users age 26 and under, e-commerce-first bazaars are integral instruments for which the resale market thrives. But as Mason, the young actor I met at the Post, points out, there are advantages to getting in the trenches to source clothing on the ground. “Sometimes you can’t tell from the picture because everything’s different. Coming in person is a lot better because you get a better idea and feel if you like it, and see it in person. Sometimes colors are brighter. So I would definitely choose this or that.”

    <img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-

The secondhand clothing market addresses the needs of an opinionated and tech-savvy generation in a way that corporate sellers and the mall ecosystem have yet to capture. The issue of sustainability as a linchpin for favoring secondhand was a topic that bubbled up several times when speaking with young shoppers at the market. They’re well informed and full of thoughts on the threat the rapid fashion cycle poses to our planet — more so than the average middle-aged adult.

The frenzy for colossal retail space and flashy architectural flagships is now making way for small-scale communal pop-ups with marketing language like “curated” and “vintage.” It’s becoming apparent that the veneer of brand new has lost its luster; kids like their clothes broken in and aged like a full-bodied glass of cabernet sauvignon.

Before Mason took up sourcing 10-year-old Dickies and secondhand work boots, he admits, “I was not happy with my style. I felt like it was lacking. I enjoyed expressing myself through what I wore and I wasn’t really doing that.” He likes the mythology attached to each piece of pre-worn finds that fill places like Melrose Trading Post.

“It’s kind of funny that I can come here and find something that I wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else; something that would probably be one of a kind and has meaning to it. You get a little bit more appreciation for it.”

Indya Brown is a fashion writer, stylist, and market editor at Who What Wear. She was fashion editor at New York magazine’s The Cut.

• How to make the child tax credit more accessible -

  

  Families that don’t file taxes have struggled to access the child tax credit. A more automatic program could help them out.

  The first of the 2021 child tax credits hit parents’ bank accounts in July — but not for everyone. For many of the parents who need it most, accessing the money may be more of a struggle.

  That’s because the IRS — an agency that knows little about the lowest-income Americans, who often don’t file taxes — has been tasked with distributing the money, up to $300 per month per child.

  On July 15, the day payments first went out, the IRS said it sent $15 billion to 35 million families, 86 percent of which was sent via direct deposit. That suggests that the vast majority of initial recipients were from families who earned income and filed taxes, many of them middle- or lower-middle-income parents whose names, addresses, and bank accounts are on file from tax returns.

  More than 10 million children live in poverty, according to 2019 data from the US Census. Of those, the People’s Policy Project estimates that about 7 million live in non-filing households. (Because these families are, by definition, somewhat difficult to track, estimates vary: The Census Bureau says that 36 percent of children in poverty are from families that did not file taxes in 2019, including 55 percent of children in families in deep poverty.)

  Most of these families haven’t signed up to get government stimulus checks, either, effectively leaving thousands of dollars from the government on the table over the past year. The IRS gathered information on an additional 720,000 children in non-filing households where the parents registered to receive stimulus payments.

  But that still leaves millions of children whose parents are eligible for the child tax credit (CTC) but who are not on track to receive it.

  Experts say the problem is fixable. But it will require creativity from the IRS, Congress, and tax help partners on the ground.

  The government will need to improve its website, partner with state and local groups, and redouble its outreach to meet families where they are, either at schools or at state benefits agencies. In the long term, the best solution may be to make the child tax credit as automatic as possible, through solutions such as a sign-up at birth or distribution as an allowance.

  So many people are covered, and the amount of the credit is so significant, that economists have estimated the money could cut child poverty by 40 percent. But for that to happen, the lowest-income families have to be able to actually receive it.

  The problems start with the IRS itself

  One big problem: The IRS does not think of itself as a benefits agency — because it isn’t one.

  Federal agencies like the Social Security Administration — and state agencies that dispense federal funds like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — are set up to process claims quickly and streamline enrollment. (At least in theory; whether they work that well in practice is more complicated.)

But the IRS is fundamentally a collection agency. It knows how to take, and how to refund if it takes too much, but when it comes to doling out benefits like stimulus checks and child tax credits, the onus is on individual Americans to advocate for what they are owed if the agency doesn’t already have their information.

That’s the case for many poor families. In 2020, a single parent with a dependent child had to earn at least $18,650 to be required to file taxes. Some households with lower incomes file anyway in order to claim the earned income tax credit, but about 20 percent of households eligible for the credit never claim it, and the very poorest families are not eligible for the full amount.

When it comes to receiving child tax credits, the IRS offers a portal for non-filers to submit claims. But the system is not mobile-friendly, and thus far, it is only offered in English. The IRS recently released step-by-step guides on using the non-filer tool in six languages, but instructions for accessing them are only available in English and Spanish.

Tax policy experts and community tax help groups noted both of those issues are barriers for their clients, who have had trouble navigating the portal.

“Right now, it’s a system that works really well and is super straightforward for moderate-income and upper- income families, and doesn’t work very well for lower-income families,” Elisa Minoff, a senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy and a leader of the Automatic Benefit for Children Coalition, said. “The North Star should be making this as automatic as possible so families don’t have to take affirmative steps to get the support they need.”

Non-filing families can struggle for a number of reasons — caregivers may be unaware that they qualify for the benefit or unable to figure out the technological component; families may not speak English or have consistent non-mobile internet access or, frankly, time in the day to figure the system out.

Graham O’Neill is the director of partnerships at the Campaign for Working Families, an organization that helps low-income people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey navigate the tax system and claim benefits. One of the biggest problems his clients have, he said, is when someone else — often due to a formal or informal shared custody arrangement — has already claimed the child as a dependent. They can appeal to the IRS, but doing so takes months.

“Life is complicated, especially if you’re a low-income person,” O’Neill said. “There’s a whole lot of situations in life that don’t fit neatly into the way the tax code structures a family.”

Kori Hattemer, the director of financial programs at Foundation Communities, a similar organization based in Austin, said she has clients who filed tax returns for the first time in 2020 in order to access stimulus benefits but have been unable to access them because of an IRS backlog. Many families have come needing help with completing the online portal.

“I feel like there’s a pretty low awareness about it,” Hattemer said. “If they make it permanent and it’s around for several years, it will become part of what people know and understand. But it’s very different than what people have done in the past.”

How can we make the child tax credit more accessible?

There is still time to close accessibility gaps, and to get distribution of the child tax credit right, or as right as possible.

While most parents will receive their credits in monthly installments of $300 per child for six months this year, and for an additional six months in 2022, parents can also receive the entire child tax credit during tax filing season if they sign up between now and then. That gives the IRS about nine months to bring non-filers into its systems.

Democrats are also working on a proposal to extend the child allowance, and they will have some benefits of hindsight as they do so. Filling the gaps that appear to be excluding non-filers can be done, but will take an all-hands-on-deck approach, involving Congress, the IRS, and local tax help groups.

One relatively easy solution would be to increase Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) funding so that local organizations can be as well-resourced as possible to help non-filer families. Democratic Senate aides told Vox that’s a solution they are exploring with the Senate Budget Committee.

VITA organizations can reach non-filers in ways the federal government might struggle to; for instance, O’Neill said his organization is working with the Pennsylvania state government to do child tax credit outreach at state benefit agencies, like TANF offices. Having in-person signups in the waiting rooms of SNAP, TANF, or WIC offices would put less onus on non-filer families.

Other researchers have suggested providing federal funding to have information or sign-ups at pediatricians’ offices and schools — particularly during back-to- school season.

Regardless of where contact with non-filers happens, Kris Cox, the deputy director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the IRS and local VITA partners need to be on the ground.

“The non-filer portal is really important for people who can navigate that type of form, but we know that there are families who will face barriers, whether that’s language, technical, fluency, disability, other things,” Cox said. “In-person assistance will be crucial.”

One idea advocates have thrown out is sending out federal navigators, much like Congress did with the Affordable Care Act, to get families registered. The IRS maintains zip code files to track who is receiving child tax credits, so navigators could be sent to areas with low disbursement rates. Another way to get more federal officials on the ground might be to increase funding for existing IRS tax system care centers, many of which have been shut down or are understaffed.

A third fix would be far less expensive but could require rethinking data privacy laws: mandating communication between benefits agencies like the Social Security Administration and the IRS.

A lot of non-filer families’ information is out there — it’s just in benefit agencies that do not communicate with the IRS, largely due to strict data privacy laws safeguarding tax information. But if those laws could be loosened slightly, or if benefit agencies could give families’ information to the IRS without receiving any information in return, then the IRS could send notices or register those families.

Senate Democratic aides said it’s a possibility they are exploring. In particular, they see potential to link CTC benefits to Supplemental Security Income benefits, whose recipients include low-income parents of children with disabilities. These benefits are sent out through the Social Security Administration but are only received by 1.7 percent of children. It’s not clear, however, that such a change would be able to pass into law and, even if it did, whether the IRS would be able to process all that new data.

“This is not a question of the IRS not having their heart or mind in the right place,” a Senate Democratic aide said. “It’s a question of capacity.”

The child tax credit expansion is new, so getting it to work perfectly will take time

Megan Curran, the director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, said other countries have had child allowances on the books for decades, meaning they have had time to streamline the process: Sign-up comes at birth, with an annual renewal form in public schools. The US could do something similar, offering a sign-up form at the hospital at birth, same as Social Security.

Such a process might also pave the way for making the assistance an allowance rather than a tax credit, through the Social Security Administration — something many experts believe would make distributing funds easier.

“When you look at other countries, they have really easy-to-use websites,” Curran said. “They have different access points, they’re in the communities face to face. Obviously, through the tax system, it’s harder.”

In the absence of a complete restructuring, experts say that for any future benefits, the top factor in increasing participation is just time.

Elaine Maag, an income support program researcher at the Tax Policy Center, said research from the earned income tax credit shows that participation rates take off in a neighborhood when just one family familiar with the EITC moves into that neighborhood and begins talking about it.

“If I’m living in an apartment building with many families with children, and they start talking about this child tax credit and how they just received a payment, I would expect more families to wonder if they might be eligible for this payment as well,” Maag said.

Time may improve the child tax credit program if it is renewed, but in the meantime, non-filer families — and the IRS — will have to overcome challenges baked into the tax system, and the accessibility issues that come with them.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Tokyo Olympics | Mary Kom bows out of Olympics; wins 2 out of 3 rounds but still loses bout - Mary Kom had tears in her eyes and a wide smile on her face when the referee raised Valencia’s hand.

• These rare and new stamps celebrate the greatest sports show on Earth - An ongoing virtual philately exhibition, Olymphila India 2021, celebrates the Tokyo Olympics through various treasured postage stamps of history

• American pole vaulter Kendricks tests positive for COVID - American world-champion pole vaulter Sam Kendricks will miss the Olympics after testing positive for COVID-19.Kendricks’ father posted on social medi

• Tokyo Olympics | India’s Satish Kumar sails into boxing quarterfinals - The 32-year-old two-time Asian Championships bronze-winner prevailed 4-1, a comfortable win for him against Jamaica’s Ricardo Brown

• Tokyo Olympics | Indian archer Atanu’s Oh moment - The Indian’s perfect 10 in the shoot-off stuns the 2012 London gold medallist.

From The Hindu: National News

• Amshipura fake encounter: Father waits for justice, Army says proceedings soon - The wait gets longer as the Army is still finishing legal work six months after completion of its internal inquiry

• Parliament passes Factoring Regulation (Amendment) Bill amid protests - Finance Minister says the Bill would enable MSMEs to access about 9,000 NBFCs, an increase from the current seven available to them.

• World Day Against Trafficking in Persons: COVID-19 pushes vulnerable children into debt traps - Schools have closed, online education is a luxury and in many cases children are pushed into labour and trafficked due to their financial vulnerability.

• Bring home a furry friend - Humane Animal Society in Coimbatore has some pets ready for adoption

• Geo-imaging satellite EOS-03 scheduled for launch in third quarter of 2021, says Jitendra Singh - Intended for the real-time monitoring of natural disasters, the satellite is capable of imaging the whole country four- five times daily, the Minister of State for the Department of Space says.

From BBC: Europe

• Bosnian Serbs defy top UN official Inzko over genocide denial - Ethnic Serb leaders accused of playing down the Srebrenica massacre will now boycott parliament.

• Tokyo Olympics rowing: Ireland’s Paul O’Donovan & Fintan McCarthy win lightweight men’s double sculls - Ireland win their first gold medal of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games as Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy claim the lightweight men’s double sculls.

• German cycling boss sent home from Olympics - Patrick Moster, the sports director of the German Cycling Union, has been sent home from the Olympics after making racist comments during Wednesday’s men’s road time trial.

• UK already undergoing disruptive climate change - Last year was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eighth sunniest on record in the UK, scientists warn.

• Sweden charges man over 1988 Iran prison massacre - Hamid Nouri faces trial over the mass execution of detainees during the Iran-Iraq war.

From Ars Technica

• How Final Fantasy VII radicalized a generation of climate warriors - From activists to families, FFVII’s cautionary, planetary tale still resonates. - link

• Feds list the top 30 most exploited vulnerabilities. Many are years old - Hackers continue to exploit publicly known—and often dated—software vulnerabilities. - link

• Missouri AG wages war on masks as state blazes with delta cases - AG Schmitt, who is running for Senate, accuses “ruling class” of lying about COVID. - link

• Biden says he has deal to lower Internet prices, but the details will matter - Biden strikes $65B broadband deal but didn’t release details on speeds and prices. - link

• Historian recreates Thomas Cromwell’s London mansion in exquisite detail - Why yes, there are floor plans for the 58 rooms, plus servants’ attic garrets. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• Scarlett Johansson is on a plane that crashes on a remote island. -

  She and some regular guy are the only two survivors. They make the best of their situation, scavenge what supplies they can from the plane, and try to keep going.

  They build a little hut on the beach and - both of them having certain “needs” - eventually start hooking up.

  This keep going as months turn into years and they fall in love. One day she notices he looks depressed. Scarlett says to him, “Listen, that plane crash was the best thing that ever happened to me because it means that the two of us are together. If there is anything at all I can do to cheer you up, please let me know.”

  He tells her, “Actually, there is something. Put on a set of my clothes and tuck your hair up under one of my hats. Rub mud on your face so it looks like a beard and start walking down the beach.” Scarlett thinks this is weird but, wanting to make him happy, goes along with it. Once she gets about 200 yards down she turns around and sees her boyfriend running up to her shouting, “BRO! BRO! You’ll never believe who I’m sleeping with!”

  submitted by /u/Jack-the-Knife
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• Two guys are in a bar complaining how they can’t pick up any woman -

  When one points at a man sitting alone at the table. “Look at that ugly mug. We are both better looking, have nicer clothes and more money. Yet every night he take a woman home, sometimes two at the same time.” “True that!” agrees his friend, “we try to talk to girls, get them interested in us. He does none of that, he just sits there entire evening, licking his eyebrows.”

  submitted by /u/NoWingedHussarsToday
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• My wife was hinting at what she wanted for our anniversary. She said, “I want something shiny that goes from 0-100 in 3 seconds.” -

  I got her a weighing scale.

  submitted by /u/oc2128
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• What is the similarity between a bank and sex? -

  In both cases, you lose interest after a withdrawal.

  submitted by /u/Sinkies
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• What is big, long, red, spews a liquid from an opening, generates a lot of excitement among people, adults get to have a big one and children get to have a smaller one, makes people wet and is usually associated with “hot”, and is related to/contains words that begin with F and end with U,C,K? -

  A firetruck :D

  submitted by /u/RolexzeonX
  [link] [comments]