(Bloomberg) — Tariq Lodhi considers himself to be socially progressive: anti-gun, pro-choice, an advocate for LGBTQ rights. For the last five years, he split his time as a tech engineer between the liberal enclaves of Boston and the Bay Area.
Then, earlier this month, he moved to Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott has been signing a flurry of conservative laws limiting abortion and voter rights, banning mask mandates and handicapping banks’ ability to do business in the state if they don’t support the firearms industry.
By the time Lodhi took the plunge, the decision was easy: The economic and professional opportunities outweighed the cultural warfare coming out of Austin. His new engineering job at Qorvo Inc. is a great fit, and the rapidly growing tech scene north of Dallas is exciting. Back in California, his $2.7 million “shed” in Cupertino was starting to feel cramped. In the Dallas suburbs, he can buy a mansion with a pool in a great school district for less than $1 million.
From outside the state, “it’s easy to buy into the stereotype of what you hear in politics,” Lodhi said in an interview. “I find the local population here very welcoming, very warm, friendly and hospitable.”
Lodhi joins a wave of newcomers that’s helped boost Texas’s population by more than 4 million over the past decade, part of a boom that created one of the fastest growing economies in the U.S. And despite the angst among businesses and economists worried that hard-right politics will make it harder to lure talent, the calculus for anyone considering a move is more nuanced than just focusing on red state versus blue state.
Corporate recruiters, chambers of commerce and many of the companies and people that have helped create the thriving economy suggest it’s going to take more than politics to kill the Texas boom. Low taxes, relatively affordable homes and plentiful jobs are luring new arrivals from across the political spectrum, even those ardently opposed to many of the social policies that Republicans lawmakers have prioritized in recent years.
Tesla, Goldman
Tesla Inc. said this month it will move its headquarters to Texas, following similar announcements by Oracle Corp., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and real estate giant CBRE Group Inc. Finance firms including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have also expanded in the state, helping bolster the size of the Texas economy to $1.9 trillion, the ninth largest in the world if it were its own country.
Austin was the top destination in the U.S. for attracting new workers in the past 12 months, according to data from LinkedIn. The migration primarily came from the San Francisco area, Los Angeles and New York City. Dallas and Houston were also among the 10 U.S. cities for luring talent. Job boards showed almost 800,000 postings for Texas in the third quarter, almost double from a year earlier, according to a report from recruiting firm Robert Half.
Crypto trader Jake Ryan decided he’d had enough of the cost of living, horrible traffic and heart-breaking homelessness of Los Angeles. In 2017, he started hedge fund Tradecraft Capital to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets, and quickly decided he wanted to find a place with a better quality of life for his family where the government wouldn’t get in the way of doing business. He’d gone to University of Texas in Austin, and always wanted to return to the city.
Ryan says he doesn’t care for the conservative politics of the state — especially when it comes to cultural and social policies such as the recently implemented laws regulating transgender kids’ participation in school sports. But Austin is a blue refuge in a red state, and he can live with it.
“I love it,” he said of Austin. “Things are looking up.”
‘Cuts Both Ways’
Corporate recruiters in Texas say politics rarely comes up when talking to job candidates. “These issues pop up periodically — whether it’s Covid or abortion — but they don’t last,” said Carl Taylor, who owns an executive search firm in Dallas. “The long-term value of being in Texas far outweighs the blip of what is the hot news item or current issue that is going on.”
Keith Wolf, a managing director at the recruitment firm Murray Resources in Houston, said that for every candidate who might take a pass on Texas because of the politics, others are drawn to the state to find a better match for their values.
“It cuts both ways,” he said. “Some people are attracted to Texas because of the politics. Maybe they come from a more liberal state and they have more conservative views, and we’ve seen that.”
Laura Huffman, president of the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, said the main reason businesses are relocating to the region is for access to talent. Rarely does she hear about politics.
“Those are not central in conversations we have,” Huffman said. “The issues that come up consistently are of talent, the environment for growing a business, the quality of life.”
‘A Different Energy’
Employers are attracted to Texas by the lack of income taxes, a predictable regulatory climate and a young, growing and skilled workforce, the governor’s press office said in an email.
Still, socially conservative policies are unpopular with many of the highly educated professionals who are in demand, and that will weigh on long-term economic development, according to Ray Perryman, who runs an economic research firm in Waco, Texas.
“This spate of legislation that restricts human rights and well-being cannot help but limit the state’s fortunes in the future,” he said.
Cydny Black moved to Austin from Washington D.C. last year for a job at a boutique marketing agency that specializes in work for mission-driven non-profits. She had heard Austin was a great city for creative types, full of artists and musicians, though she was concerned she wouldn’t feel completely welcome as a progressive Black woman. That proved to be unfounded.
“People have been so kind in Austin,” she said. “I love the East Coast, but it’s a different energy.”
When the Texas legislature started prioritizing culture-war issues this year, Black was disappointed. But instead of being tempted to flee, she’s putting down roots with the hope of helping to foster change. She’s registered to vote and joined the Austin Area Urban League Young Professionals to meet like-minded folks.
“I don’t agree with policies I’m hearing or reading about, so I’m looking for ways to get involved,” Black said.
MONTREAL – A Quebec political party has voted to support one of its members facing backlash for saying that racialized people are regularly disparaged at the provincial legislature.
Québec solidaire members adopted an emergency resolution at the party’s convention late Sunday condemning the hate directed at Haroun Bouazzi, without endorsing his comments.
Bouazzi, who represents a Montreal riding, had told a community group that he hears comments every day at the legislature that portray North African, Muslim, Black or Indigenous people as the “other,” and that paint their cultures are dangerous or inferior.
Other political parties have said Bouazzi’s remarks labelled elected officials as racists, and the co-leaders of his own party had rebuked him for his “clumsy and exaggerated” comments.
Bouazzi, who has said he never intended to describe his colleagues as racist, thanked his party for their support and for their commitment to the fight against systemic racism.
Party co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said after Sunday’s closed-door debate that he considers the matter to be closed.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Democrats who control both chambers of the Virginia legislature are hoping to make good on promises made on the campaign trail, including becoming the first Southern state to expand constitutional protections for abortion access.
The House Privileges and Elections Committee advanced three proposed constitutional amendments Wednesday, including a measure to protect reproductive rights. Its members also discussed measures to repeal a now-defunct state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and ways to revise Virginia’s process to restore voting rights for people who served time for felony crimes.
“This meeting was an important next step considering the moment in history we find ourselves in,” Democratic Del. Cia Price, the committee chair, said during a news conference. “We have urgent threats to our freedoms that could impact constituents in all of the districts we serve.”
The at-times raucous meeting will pave the way for the House and Senate to take up the resolutions early next year after lawmakers tabled the measures last January. Democrats previously said the move was standard practice, given that amendments are typically introduced in odd-numbered years. But Republican Minority Leader Todd Gilbert said Wednesday the committee should not have delved into the amendments before next year’s legislative session. He said the resolutions, particularly the abortion amendment, need further vetting.
“No one who is still serving remembers it being done in this way ever,” Gilbert said after the meeting. “Certainly not for something this important. This is as big and weighty an issue as it gets.”
The Democrats’ legislative lineup comes after Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, to the dismay of voting-rights advocates, rolled back a process to restore people’s civil rights after they completed sentences for felonies. Virginia is the only state that permanently bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting unless a governor restores their rights.
“This amendment creates a process that is bounded by transparent rules and criteria that will apply to everybody — it’s not left to the discretion of a single individual,” Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, the patron of the voting rights resolution, which passed along party lines, said at the news conference.
Though Democrats have sparred with the governor over their legislative agenda, constitutional amendments put forth by lawmakers do not require his signature, allowing the Democrat-led House and Senate to bypass Youngkin’s blessing.
Instead, the General Assembly must pass proposed amendments twice in at least two years, with a legislative election sandwiched between each statehouse session. After that, the public can vote by referendum on the issues. The cumbersome process will likely hinge upon the success of all three amendments on Democrats’ ability to preserve their edge in the House and Senate, where they hold razor-thin majorities.
It’s not the first time lawmakers have attempted to champion the three amendments. Republicans in a House subcommittee killed a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights in 2022, a year after the measure passed in a Democrat-led House. The same subcommittee also struck down legislation supporting a constitutional amendment to repeal an amendment from 2006 banning marriage equality.
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted 16-5 in favor of legislation protecting same-sex marriage, with four Republicans supporting the resolution.
“To say the least, voters enacted this (amendment) in 2006, and we have had 100,000 voters a year become of voting age since then,” said Del. Mark Sickles, who sponsored the amendment as one of the first openly gay men serving in the General Assembly. “Many people have changed their opinions of this as the years have passed.”
A constitutional amendment protecting abortion previously passed the Senate in 2023 but died in a Republican-led House. On Wednesday, the amendment passed on party lines.
If successful, the resolution proposed by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring would be part of a growing trend of reproductive rights-related ballot questions given to voters. Since 2022, 18 questions have gone before voters across the U.S., and they have sided with abortion rights advocates 14 times.
The voters have approved constitutional amendments ensuring the right to abortion until fetal viability in nine states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and Vermont. Voters also passed a right-to-abortion measure in Nevada in 2024, but it must be passed again in 2026 to be added to the state constitution.
As lawmakers debated the measure, roughly 18 members spoke. Mercedes Perkins, at 38 weeks pregnant, described the importance of women making decisions about their own bodies. Rhea Simon, another Virginia resident, anecdotally described how reproductive health care shaped her life.
Then all at once, more than 50 people lined up to speak against the abortion amendment.
“Let’s do the compassionate thing and care for mothers and all unborn children,” resident Sheila Furey said.
The audience gave a collective “Amen,” followed by a round of applause.
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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump says he will nominate anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, putting him in charge of a massive agency that oversees everything from drug, vaccine and food safety to medical research and the social safety net programs Medicare and Medicaid.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social site announcing the appointment. Kennedy, he said, would “Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
Kennedy, a former Democrat who ran as an independent in this year’s presidential race, abandoned his bid after striking a deal to give Trump his endorsement with a promise to have a role in health policy in the administration.
He and Trump have since become good friends, with Kennedy frequently receiving loud applause at Trump’s rallies.
The expected appointment was first reported by Politico Thursday.
A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy is an attorney who has built a loyal following over several decades of people who admire his lawsuits against major pesticide and pharmaceutical companies. He has pushed for tighter regulations around the ingredients in foods.
With the Trump campaign, he worked to shore up support among young mothers in particular, with his message of making food healthier in the U.S., promising to model regulations imposed in Europe. In a nod to Trump’s original campaign slogan, he named the effort “Make America Healthy Again.”
It remains unclear how that will square with Trump’s history of deregulation of big industries, including food. Trump pushed for fewer inspections of the meat industry, for example.
Kennedy’s stance on vaccines has also made him a controversial figure among Democrats and some Republicans, raising question about his ability to get confirmed, even in a GOP-controlled Senate. Kennedy has espoused misinformation around the safety of vaccines, including pushing a totally discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He also has said he would recommend removing fluoride from drinking water. The addition of the material has been cited as leading to improved dental health.
HHS has more than 80,000 employees across the country. It houses the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the National Institutes of Health.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
