When the state started writing checks in 2008 from one of the nation’s most generous film incentive programs, productions flocked there, making box-office hits such as Clint Eastwood’s “Gran Torino,” Sam Raimi’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” and Zack Snyder’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

Then Michigan did the math.

After a state economist determined that “the film incentives represent lost revenue” and that their economic benefits were “negligible,” Michigan, which cut funding for police and schools while facing a severe budget deficit, eventually decided to end its incentives.

As the program gradually unwound, “The Avengers” moved to Cleveland and “Iron Man 3” went to Wilmington, North Carolina. Even “Detroit” was filmed in Boston.

Now, almost a decade after the state stopped paying Hollywood, lawmakers think they can no longer afford not to.

“We’re not on an even playing field,” said Dayna Polehanki, a state senator and one of the sponsors of legislation that would thrust Michigan back into fierce competition with dozens of states trying to woo studios. “We’re not even in the game.”

Supporters say a more carefully tailored program will function better than the previous one, creating jobs and invigorating spending. But economists have long been dubious about the value of subsidies for film and television, saying they have plunged state governments into a race to the bottom where the biggest winner, by far, is Hollywood.

A survey by The New York Times found that states have distributed more than $25 billion to film incentive programs.

“You could find almost an unlimited number of better uses for the same dollars,” said Michael Thom, a tax expert at the University of Southern California whose work has been critical of incentives. “Who on earth would say, ‘Keep giving the money to Hollywood; my kid’s school doesn’t need new books’?”

Even as officials have rethought public support of private industry, 38 states now allocate taxpayer dollars to film and TV production. Arizona, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and West Virginia have all introduced programs within the past two years. Like Michigan, Wisconsin has drawn up legislation that would bring back its program.

Many of those states hope to become the next Georgia, which has emerged as a dynamic film hub while spending at least $5 billion on its program. New York has handed out more than $7 billion to lure productions from California, which has dedicated more than $3 billion to try to retain them. And Louisiana, an early catalyst for this arms race, has poured in $3 billion of its own.

But independent fiscal monitors for the states have often found meager returns on investment. A recent report prepared for state auditors in Georgia estimated that the tax revenue returned on each dollar spent on incentives was 19 cents. A similar report from New York determined the return was between 15 cents and 31 cents.

“The film production credit is at best a break-even proposition and more likely a net cost” to the state, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance concluded.

Chiquita Banks, a lawyer who has managed tax incentives for Disney, Fox and Viacom, said studios adeptly navigated the existing system. A big project, she said, might film in Hungary and the state of Georgia before handling virtual effects in New Zealand and postproduction in Canada, dining on a smorgasbord of incentives.

“Why would you leave money on the table that a government is willing to help back you for, to film in their jurisdiction?” Banks said.

Industry advocates say the investments are worth it. Tax dollars can successfully attract projects, and government funding spurs other economic activity. Productions pay catering businesses to feed workers, hoteliers to house their crews and dry cleaners to do the laundry — all of which creates a ripple effect.

Outside experts say that the effects of such spending are overstated and that the initiatives are incredibly costly for state governments. But their academic papers are competing against the promises of lobbyists and the allure of Hollywood stars and exclusive parties.

Jim Runestad, a Michigan state senator who opposes the proposed tax credits, recalled being wined and dined at the residence of a big-name producer in 2015, just before the state eliminated its film incentives.

“They had a carving station where you could carve up anything you wanted, and all the finest food and drinks you could possibly imagine,” Runestad said.

At times, the cozy relationship between politicians and producers unfolded on screen. When the title characters in “Batman v. Superman,” played by Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill, first meet, discerning viewers can also spot a man with less obvious powers.

The man was the former Senate majority leader, Randy Richardville, who had helped push through the incentive program that gave Warner Bros. $35 million to film in Michigan.

Weighing the Costs

After Michigan began subsidizing the film industry, some localities tried to capitalize. The struggling Detroit suburb of Allen Park sold $31 million in bonds to turn a site that had once been occupied by an auto parts manufacturer into a movie studio that it hoped would employ thousands. When the project fell apart in 2010, the city was saddled with debt, and it wound up cutting the pay of its police officers and firefighters.

“The city got taken advantage of,” said Sgt. Grant Peace, a firefighter who took a 10% pay cut, “and it hurt our pocketbooks.”

Independent studies have found that even when movies are made, the incentive programs have mixed to insignificant impact on job creation and economic development. Researchers say each job created by the programs can cost taxpayers more than $100,000.

“If we funded 30% of the cost of building toilets, Georgia would be the toilet capital of the world,” said J.C. Bradbury, an economics professor at Kennesaw State University in Georgia who has studied the state’s program.

“Of course we’ve seen filming here,” he continued. “But the returns on it, I think it’s pretty clear, are zero to negative.”

The film industry argues that evaluating incentives based on a simple analysis of tax dollars in versus tax dollars out fails to capture the extent of their reach. Economic development programs are not intended to raise government revenue and are seldom expected to pay for themselves.

The reports commissioned by the industry, state film offices and other economic development agencies consistently find wide-ranging benefits on the order of $6 or $7 of “economic value” for every $1 invested into a film incentive program. Even the skeptical auditors’ report on Georgia’s program, which found it to be a revenue loser for the state, acknowledged that the program also “induces substantial economic activity.”

Although film projects typically bring workers together for a short period, incentives have generated enough activity in some places, like Atlanta and Albuquerque, New Mexico, to result in long-term infrastructure.

The best evidence that the incentive programs are working, supporters say, lies in the fact that states like Michigan are still pushing to adopt them. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have for years embraced the programs.

“We are a vital American industry, economically and culturally, and we couldn’t be prouder of the career opportunities that our industry supports in all 50 states,” Kathy Bañuelos, a senior vice president at the Motion Picture Association, said in a statement.

‘A Math Trick’

The competition among states intensified after Louisiana turbocharged its incentive program in 2002, when concerns were brewing about runaway production to Canada. Michigan joined the fray in 2008, attracting filmmakers with a tax credit of at least 40% of production costs.

Under that program, studios often wound up with cash from the state that they could use however — and wherever — they wanted. Supporters of the new proposal in Michigan insist it will close loopholes and, by using an incentive known as transferable tax credits, keep more taxpayer dollars at home.

Movie studios that parachute into a state to film often leave with little corporate income tax liability, meaning that a credit for state taxes does them little good.

That is why several states, including Georgia, offer transferable tax credits. When studios sell these vouchers to state taxpayers, often at a slight discount, the studios cash out while the buyers receive modest tax relief. The end result is that a state does not collect vast sums of tax revenue it was owed.

In a review of public records from other states that offer transferable tax credits, the Times found that the money meant to entice movie and TV studios often spills over to companies with limited ties to the entertainment industry, like Walmart, Dr Pepper and Verizon.

The production company behind “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which aired on Netflix, spent $17.2 million on film production in New Jersey. The project received a $5.2 million tax credit that it sold to Apple Inc. for $4.8 million.

The opacity of the process can make it difficult to pinpoint how much revenue the state is forgoing. Tax experts say that makes these programs more politically palatable.

“A math trick to pull the wool over the eyes of Michiganders,” said Patrick Button, an associate professor of economics at Tulane University who has published studies on film incentives.

In Illinois, public records show, Dick Wolf’s “Chicago” franchises have earned nearly $260 million in tax credits in the past six years, with much of those being sold to Comcast. The department store Kohl’s bought more than 70 credits from various productions for a total of $10.6 million.

Some of the tax credits the state handed out with the goal of increasing film and television production were purchased by people whose wealth made the credits worth buying: Foremost was Peng Zhao, the CEO of Citadel Securities, who spent $13 million.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The Strategic Organizing Center union alliance pulled its slate of three board candidates about a week before a Monday shareholder vote on the 11-member board. The announcement comes more than two years into a campaign that has unionized nearly 400 Starbucks stores.

On Tuesday, the alliance said it was “time to acknowledge the progress that has been made and to allow the company and its workers to focus on moving forward.”

“We think it’s imperative that shareholders continue to monitor the board’s performance and Starbucks’ approach to labor relations issues in the coming months — and we plan to continue to hold the company accountable going forward,” the alliance said.

The decision to nominate board members was the unions’ latest attempt to push the company to engage with them.

Starbucks workers began organizing in 2021 with three Buffalo, New York-area stores. Since that campaign began, the National Labor Relations Board has filed numerous complaints accusing Starbucks of taking steps to resist organizing efforts, which the company has denied. According to the union alliance, Starbucks has spent more than $240 million to quash union efforts. The two parties have also sued each other over the union’s right to use a logo that resembles the Starbucks logo.

Starbucks and the union that represents its workers, Workers United, whose parent is part of the labor alliance, said late last month that they were beginning discussions about a “foundational framework” to help reach labor agreements and resolve litigation over the union’s use of the Starbucks logo.

The union alliance said in a statement Tuesday that it had since had “meaningful dialogue” with shareholders who it says are optimistic that the company is focused on repairing its relationship with its workers. Starbucks shareholders last year passed a resolution directing the company to commission an assessment of its labor practices.

“Our board’s focus remains on driving long-term value for all stakeholders, including partners, shareholders, customers and farmers,” Starbucks said in a statement Tuesday.

The news was reported earlier by Reuters.

Two influential advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, last week recommended that shareholders vote for management board nominees, in part because the parties announced they would resume talks.

The alliance’s nominees were not expected to win spots on the board. Analysts at Gordon Haskett wrote in a note last week that the vote was essentially “a referendum on the company’s labor policies and more specifically, the resources SBUX has spent to frustrate union attempts to organize.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

On Jan. 24, the U.S. Embassy in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, issued a security alert advising U.S. citizens “to be aware that 18 murders have occurred in Nassau since the beginning of 2024. Murders have occurred at all hours including in broad daylight on the streets.”

The startling alert was unusual for the Bahamas. In addition to security alerts and other notices released by its embassies, the State Department issues travel advisories for countries to provide the suggested vigilance visitors should take. Currently, the Bahamas has a Level 2 (“Exercise increased caution”) warning.

Many tourism-reliant countries, including Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, currently have Level 2 warnings, and most travelers experience safe and enjoyable vacations. The tourism industry in the Bahamas contributes around 70% of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, and employs half the country’s workforce.

Here’s what you need to know about the security alert and traveling to the Bahamas.

What prompted the alert in the Bahamas?

According to the State Department, “retaliatory gang violence has been the primary motive in 2024 murders,” and it is primarily affecting the local population, particularly on New Providence and Grand Bahama islands, where the cities of Nassau and Freeport are. The warnings mention that the violent crime has been occurring in both tourist and nontourist areas.

What does Level 2 mean?

To help advise Americans traveling to particular countries, the State Department employs a scale from 1 to 4 to indicate the local security situation, starting with the safest, Level 1. The levels can vary within a country, with certain areas considered a greater security risk than others.

According to the department’s website, Level 2 means, “Exercise increased caution: Be aware of heightened risks to safety and security.”

Many parts of the world are under Level 2 advisory, for reasons ranging from street crime to concerns over terrorism. The majority of visitors to those countries do not experience any danger — many are not even aware of the heightened risk indicated by the levels.

Level 3, by contrast, advises Americans to “reconsider” or “avoid” travel (countries such as Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan are now at Level 3). Level 4 means “Do not travel” and emphasizes that “during an emergency, the U.S. government may have very limited ability to provide assistance.” Currently, Russia and Ukraine are among the countries with a Level 4 rating.

What about the rest of the region?

Currently, Turks and Caicos and Cuba are also Level 2 because of concerns over crime. Many areas of Mexico are under elevated warnings ranging from Level 2 (Mexico City) to Level 4 (Colima). On Jan. 23, Jamaica was raised to Level 3 because of crime and uneven medical care, with the State Department warning that “sexual assaults occur frequently, including at all-inclusive resorts.”

Aren’t there sharks in the Bahamas, too?

On Jan. 15, a 10-year-old boy was attacked by a shark while participating in a “shark experience” at a hotel on Paradise Island, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force. He was reported to be in stable condition. In December, an American woman died by shark attack while paddleboarding in the Bahamas, police said.

However, shark attacks are extremely rare in the Bahamas: The Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File indicates that there have only been 29 unprovoked attacks in the country since the 16th century.

How can I stay safe on my trip?

The U.S. Embassy in Nassau offers some guidance for staying safe, advising travelers to use “extreme caution” in the eastern part of New Providence Island — where Nassau is — especially “when walking or driving at night.” Specifically, the Over the Hill neighborhood, south of Shirley Street, should be avoided.

Travelers are also advised to take typical precautions and use common sense: to remain aware of their surroundings (leaving jewelry and electronics at home), to create a personal security plan, not to answer the door if you don’t know who it is and, if things go wrong, not to physically resist any robbery attempt. The U.S. government suggests staying especially vigilant if you’re staying at a short-term-rental property without a security presence, and women traveling alone may want to take special precautions.

Before traveling, consider obtaining traveler’s insurance, including a medical evacuation policy. Most foreign hospitals and doctors do not accept U.S. health insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid.

Another way to stay informed is to enroll in the State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. The free program sends travelers updated information on security situations by email or text message, and makes it easier for a U.S. Embassy to contact you should an emergency arise.

Ultimately, travel comes down to a question of one’s personal comfort. If you interpret a Level 2 warning as sufficient reason to cancel your trip, there’s no shame in making a choice that eases your mind.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

For Biden, it was a matter of principle. He wanted to show the world that the United States was a humane nation, while also demonstrating to his fellow citizens that government could work again.

But those early promises have largely been set aside as chaos engulfs the border and imperils Biden’s reelection hopes. The number of people crossing into the United States has reached record levels, more than double than in the Trump years. The asylum system is still all but broken.

On Friday, in a dramatic turnaround from those early days, the president implored Congress to grant him the power to shut down the border so he could contain one of the largest surges of uncontrolled immigration in American history.

“If given that authority,” Biden said in a statement, “I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

Some of the circumstances that have created the crisis are out of Biden’s control, such as the collapse of Venezuela, a surge in migration around the world and the obstinance of Republicans who have tried to thwart his efforts to address the problems. They refused to provide resources, blocked efforts to update laws and openly defied federal officials charged with maintaining security and order along the 2,000-mile border.

But an examination of Biden’s record over the last three years by The New York Times, based on interviews with more than 35 current and former officials and others, shows that the president has failed to overcome those obstacles. The result is a growing humanitarian crisis at the border and in major cities around the country. Many voters now say immigration is their top concern, and they do not have confidence that Biden is addressing it.

A veteran of the decadeslong search for a bipartisan immigration compromise by late Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the president sought balance. He created legal pathways for migrants and began rebuilding the refugee system even as he embraced some of former President Donald Trump’s more restrictive tactics. But those efforts were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people arriving at the border, and at times, Biden failed to appreciate the growing anger in both parties.

During the 2020 campaign, Biden said he would be an antidote to his predecessor’s anti-immigrant approach. But he has presided over a fierce struggle inside the White House between advisers who favored more enforcement and those who pushed to be more welcoming. That debate played out as the country also shifted. After years of inflation, economic suffering and political polarization, the public is divided about whether the United States — which is home to more immigrants than any other nation — should absorb more.

Biden went from a 2020 candidate who vowed to “end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities” to a 2024 president who is “willing to make significant compromises on the border.” That shift can be seen through the prism of five key moments that document the administration’s shifting approach on a defining issue of his presidency and of the next election.

The children arrive

When children from Central America started crossing by the thousands in spring 2021, many very young and seeking to join a relative already in the United States, the president’s first instinct was compassion. In a meeting in the Roosevelt Room, he ordered his top aides to travel to the border to see the desperate, overcrowded conditions.

He also demanded to see the pictures. Biden believed he was elected to deal with immigration in a humane manner. The sight of thousands of migrant children jammed into crowded border detention facilities, some of whom would later end up in dangerous and brutal jobs elsewhere in the United States, was not what most people imagined under a Biden presidency.

It was the first big test of his immigration agenda and of whether the more welcoming approach he promised would work. During his campaign for the White House in 2020, Biden pledged to limit raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, invest in the asylum system and close private immigration prisons. On his first day in office, Biden had proposed a vast immigration bill to Congress that would have provided a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants already living in the United States without legal permission.

The next day, he paused deportations for 100 days, and even though a federal judge later blocked that policy, some migrants took it as a sign that it was worth a dangerous trek to the U.S. border.

Republicans seized the moment. They declared Biden’s immigration overhaul dead on arrival and warned that human traffickers and smugglers would funnel migrants to the United States with the false promise that the new president was throwing open the border — a risk that some inside the administration agreed with, according to several current and former U.S. officials.

The president dismissed the criticism. He had never been a Democrat who wanted to abolish ICE or decriminalize border crossings. But longtime aides described him as determined to prove to voters that government can work, especially after the chaos of the Trump presidency.

The images of the children in overcrowded camps were the exact opposite of what he wanted to project. At one point, he exploded in frustration about the chaos at the border: Who do I need to fire, he demanded, to fix this?

In the West Wing, the president’s advisers held urgent talks about whether to send the children back to Mexico, but Biden said no, according to a senior official who was in the meeting.

Sending them back, the president said, would be unconscionable and inhumane.

Sending Haitians back

Biden’s more welcoming stance was quickly tested.

In April 2021, he had expanded the number of Haitians who could stay in the United States after fleeing gang violence in their country. But the administration also decided that if a surge of Haitians arrived at the border, the United States would send them right back, using a COVID-era authority known as Title 42.

It did not take long. During a 16-day period in September 2021, 19,752 Haitians crossed into a makeshift camp under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas.

Biden quickly condemned shocking images of Border Patrol officers on horseback rounding up migrants and promised that the officers “would pay.”

But there was also intense pressure from the White House to clear the bridge, one former official said. National security advisers in the West Wing held calls twice a day to coordinate the administration’s efforts to deal with the fallout from a humanitarian crisis that swiftly became a political crisis as well.

Many of the Haitians were allowed to stay in the United States, with notices to appear in immigration court, because of limits on the Border Patrol’s capacity to remove them from the country. But thousands were deported. Some flights took migrants back to Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, while others flew them to less crowded parts of the border within the United States, a practice the administration called “decompression.”

The rapid deportations exposed a split in the administration that would only grow over time.

People close to Biden said he had always supported enforcing the law. Some of his top aides — such as Susan Rice, who served as his domestic policy adviser until last summer, and Jake Sullivan, his national security adviser — embodied that tough-minded approach.

“Migrants and asylum-seekers absolutely should not believe those in the region peddling the idea that the border will suddenly be fully open to process everyone on Day 1,” Rice had said early on in Biden’s presidency.

But others in the administration saw the treatment of Haitians as a betrayal of the values that Biden had promised to uphold.

In meetings, advisers complained that some migrants had been told to board deportation flights without a chance to ask for asylum and without being told where they were going.

“Originally, they said, ‘We’re going to get rid of Trump administration stuff,'” said Daniel Foote, the president’s former envoy to Haiti, who resigned in protest after the administration sent the Haitians back. “But then they realized that this is the only way we can keep people out.”

Pressure was building on Biden to find a solution.

He looked to the one place that could pass meaningful new immigration laws but has not done so in decades: Congress.

The Democratic revolt

Republicans in Washington largely ignored Biden’s entreaties to come to the negotiating table to help fix the immigration system. And out in the country, GOP officials came up with their own plan.

During a news conference in April 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas vowed to “take the border to President Biden” by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities.

It was a stunt, but it worked.

Buses arrived in downtown Los Angeles in mid-June. They dropped off migrants in front of the home of Vice President Kamala Harris in September and again on Christmas Eve. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida sent a planeload of people to Martha’s Vineyard, a vacation getaway for liberal elites. Buses streamed into New York City.

Democratic leaders were overwhelmed. They called for the president to step in, saying the influx was a drain on their resources. Mayor Eric Adams of New York said that without a federal bailout and clampdown at the border, swelling migration “will destroy New York City.”

The people demanding border security were no longer just Republicans like Trump or Stephen Miller, the former president’s top immigration adviser. They were members of Biden’s own party.

The administration scrambled to meet the Democratic demands, providing more money and speeding up the processing of work permits.

But the busing of migrants clearly shifted the discourse around the issue. And polling began to show growing support in the United States for border measures once denounced by Democrats and championed by Trump.

Curbing asylum

Not long after New Year’s Day in 2023, Biden delivered the only immigration speech of his presidency. It was notable in part because the president rarely used the power of his office to press for change the way he did for climate change, tax fairness or support for Ukraine, allowing Republicans to paint him as weak and ineffective.

But in his speech from the Roosevelt Room, he announced tough new restrictions on asylum, the system of laws that has for decades established the United States as a place of refuge for displaced and fearful people across the globe.

Biden repeatedly accused “extreme Republicans” of blocking his efforts to modernize the nation’s immigration laws, refusing to provide billions of dollars for border security and rejecting bipartisan negotiations.

“They can keep using immigration to try to score political points,” he said, “or they can help solve the problem.”

The president’s speech was the culmination of months of frustration and debate inside the administration on how to confront the crisis. But the reaction underscored the difficulties: Human rights groups condemned it as too harsh. Republicans said it was still too lenient.

Biden was responding to the largest movement of displaced people since World War II, with millions fleeing economic decline, political instability and gang violence — from Central America, South America, Africa and elsewhere.

It was not, as Trump often claimed, caravans full of criminals or terrorists. But neither was it people who all had legitimate reasons for claiming asylum to stay in the United States permanently.

Some advisers who tried to appeal to Biden’s heart on the issue eventually left the administration, feeling disillusioned. The ones who remained encouraged the president to listen to his head: The situation at the border was getting worse, and more enforcement was needed.

Republicans said the new rules were still too weak, noting that Biden had voluntarily dropped enforcement of the Title 42 authority. Immigration activists criticized Biden, too, saying he was no better than Trump.

The impact of the political shift soon became obvious as Republicans on Capitol Hill demanded a crackdown on the border in exchange for their votes on one of Biden’s top priorities: sending more military aid to Ukraine.

Three years earlier, Democrats might have balked. But not anymore. Deeply frustrated Democratic lawmakers from Massachusetts vented to Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, in a closed-door session at the Capitol in October 2023.

Their message to the secretary was driven by the financial costs of dealing with the migrants in their state: You have to do something. This has got to stop.

Biden soon sensed an opening to capitalize on the changing dynamic, and on Dec. 6, he made it official.

“I am willing to make significant compromises on the border,” he said. “We need to fix the broken border system. It is broken.”

Keeping them out

After nearly three years of Biden’s presidency, just about every week brought new evidence of the dysfunction.

In New Mexico, a local high school went on lockdown several times a month because of migrants swarming across school grounds. In Texas, homeowners woke up to find migrants sleeping in their garages.

In December 2023, border officers abruptly closed the bridge carrying freight trains from Mexico into Texas at Eagle Pass. It turned out conductors were being bribed to slow down as the trains made their way north through Mexico, allowing thousands of migrants to jump on and cross the border.

Closing the bridge was a last-ditch effort to contain the border, and it was failing. In Eagle Pass, a tentlike facility designed to hold 1,000 detained migrants was housing 6,000. And the number of people coming into the United States was higher than it had ever been: In December, more than 11,000 migrants were crossing the border each day.

Under pressure from angry rail executives and frustrated local officials, Biden called President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. Mexico that month had suspended its own migrant deportations, which help prevent people from traveling north toward the United States, because of a lack of funding. That had to change, Biden said, according to several U.S. officials.

López Obrador urged the president to send a delegation right away to discuss the issue, prompting a last-minute scramble as Biden’s top diplomat and several others abandoned holiday plans.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who had spent much of the year in Ukraine and the Middle East, rushed to Mexico City with Mayorkas and Liz Sherwood-Randall, the president’s homeland security adviser. They returned a day later with a commitment from Mexico to resume enforcement — a relatively small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

As he campaigns for a second term in the White House, Biden has become unapologetic in his calls for more, and stricter, enforcement at the border.

“The American people overwhelmingly agree with what President Biden underlined in his Day 1 reform plan,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, “that our immigration system is broken, and we have an imperative to secure the border and treat migrants with dignity.”

On Saturday, as he fought to save a bipartisan immigration deal from collapse in Congress, Biden made a forceful case for a crackdown on immigration during a campaign event in South Carolina.

He appears ready to run more as a leader determined to keep people out and less as a champion of displaced people.

“If that bill were the law today,” Biden said to applause, “I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

They’ve become a fashion accessory, especially since Stanley has made use of influencer culture to target women and make sales of its tumblers skyrocket. The reach of the bottles has been amplified by social media users.

But social media giveth and social media taketh away. In recent weeks, several widely shared posts on TikTok, Instagram, Reddit and X, formerly known as Twitter, have amplified concerns Stanley cups may contain lead, with one X user calling it “The Leadening.” YouTubers have also jumped into the fray. One TikTok video on the topic was viewed nearly 7 million times.

Some Stanley owners, hoping to check the claims, started to use home lead-testing kits, which experts say are not reliable. A sendup of the Stanley cup phenomenon on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend — a sketch called “Big Dumb Cups” — even mentioned the lead in passing.

The lead discussion has popped up on Facebook comment sections, as in one group with more than 61,000 members called “Stanley Cup Hunters + Drops” — for “passionate Stanley Cup fanatics.”

One person wrote, “If we want to dress up our lead cups with a flower straw cover and a glitter boot and show them off, lets us be!! We know they have lead, you have told us. We don’t care!”

So you might be wondering: Do I have to throw my Stanley cup into the fireplace? (No. In fact, don’t throw anything into your fireplace.) We have some answers for those of you who really want to keep up with the times and drink water fashionably.

Do Stanley cups contain lead?

Yes, according to the company’s website. It says that its “vacuum insulation technology,” which keeps the cup’s contents at an ideal temperature, uses “an industry standard pellet to seal the vacuum insulation at the base of our products.” The sealing material, it says, “includes some lead.”

Once the bottle is sealed, Stanley said, the area is covered with a layer of stainless steel, which the company says makes the lead “inaccessible to consumers.”

But is it dangerous?

No. Almost assuredly, no.

Jack Caravanos, a professor of public health at New York University who studies lead, tested three Stanley cup models of different sizes Monday using an X-ray fluorescence detector, which determines the elements of a material.

“There’s a lot of places where lead can be on a cup like that,” Caravanos said. “It could be on the inside, the outside, the labels, decals. And, I did not find lead — sort of superficial lead on the surface — in any part of the cup.”

“I’m a global exposure expert,” he added. “I’ve done a lot of work in different products and countries. And the threat to human health is really negligible because you’re not going to really put your mouth anywhere near that surface, and it’s not going to readily dissolve into anything that can get into you.”

But what about the area underneath the stainless steel?

For that, Caravanos said he would have to deconstruct the cup itself — by no means an easy task.

“I tried repeatedly to pry open the bottom cap with various tools and failed,” he said. “Perhaps the lead is being used to seal the cap closed. In any case, it should further assure the public that lead material is very unlikely to ever be released from the cup and be made available for ingestion.”

Caravanos said that at-home lead tests on the market today are not considered reliable — and none of them available today are approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. Although on Tuesday morning, Caravanos tried an at-home test on a tumbler and still did not get a positive test.

So we’re all good, right?

That the cups use any sort of lead to begin with showed “poor thinking” on the part of the company, Caravanos said.

“I’m really disheartened and sort of angry that a company like this uses a known toxic ingredient that is banned in many applications for a cup,” he said. “I mean, surely there could have been an alternative.”

A Stanley representative referred to the explanation on the company’s website describing the use of lead in the cups. But in a statement to NBC News, a representative said, “Our engineering and supply chain teams are making progress on innovative, alternative materials for use in the sealing process.”

Lead, which is regulated by the federal government, is still prevalent in the United States, particularly in paint, cookware and water that travels through lead pipes.

“There are many health effects associated with lead exposure, such as reproductive toxicity, cardiovascular disease,” said Maria Jose Talayero, a public health researcher at George Washington University. “And the one that I study the most is the damage to the nervous system, which results in a variety of neurological effects.”

She added, “But it’s a fact that other cups and other manufacturers do not use lead, so why have it in there in the first place?”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

“Get the facts about mail-in voting,” a content label read. “Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud,” the hyperlinked article declared.

This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Trump’s claims about the U.S. voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide-open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.

Since taking control of the site, Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.

Now, his early election-year attacks on a tried-and-true voting method are raising alarms among civil rights lawyers, election administrators and Democrats. They worry that his control over the large social media platform gives him an outsize ability to reignite the doubts about the U.S. election system that were so prevalent in the lead-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As Trump’s victory in New Hampshire moved the race closer to general election grounds, the Biden campaign for the first time criticized Musk directly for his handling of election content on X: “It is profoundly irresponsible to spread false information and sow distrust about how our elections operate,” the Biden campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, said this week in a statement to The New York Times.

“It’s even more dangerous coming from the owner of a social media platform,” she added.

What is angering the Biden campaign is delighting pro-Trump Republicans and others who depict the old Twitter as part of a government-controlled censorship regime that aided Biden in 2020. Under a system now in dispute at the Supreme Court, government officials alerted platforms to posts they deemed dangerous, though it was up to the companies to act or not.

“Oh, boo hoo,” Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer whose firm represents Trump, said of the Democrats’ complaints. Dhillon has sued the company for suspending an election-denying client’s account after receiving a notice from the California election officials — the sort of government interplay Musk has repudiated. She noted the platform was now “a much better place for conservatives,” and said of Musk, “he’s great.”

X did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this week, its CEO, Linda Yaccarino, wrote in a blog post that the platform had expanded its alternate approach to fact-checking misinformation — through crowdsourced “community notes” written by users.

There were no such notes on Musk’s voting messages. But they were on a post by another X user that made the wild claim that Biden won the New Hampshire primary only through ballot stuffing.

The freer flow of false voting information is hardly the only perceived threat to elections building on social platforms, with the rise of artificial intelligence, increasingly realistic deepfakes and a growing acceptance of political violence.

That Biden’s campaign would single out Musk points to the unique role he is already playing in the 2024 election.

No major media owner of the modern era has used his national platform to insert himself so personally and aggressively into a U.S. election.

While Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire, which includes Fox News, has exercised unrivaled influence over U.S. politics for decades, he has largely kept behind the scenes, generally leaving it to his editors, producers and hosts to determine the specifics of the coverage.

And while Facebook is larger than X, its owner, Mark Zuckerberg, is answerable to shareholders and responsive to advertisers. He has sought to avoid being personally drawn into the political fray.

Musk jumped in within days of taking ownership of the site, urging his followers to vote Republican. He has been open in his disdain for Biden, whose White House has at times responded in kind.

Then again, Musk has no shareholder concerns at X, which he took private in late 2022. He has dismissed advertiser complaints or calls to block content that might degrade confidence in democracy.

Exhibiting a distinctly 21st-century form of raw media power, X has also throttled and punished Musk’s perceived competitors and foes while reinstating accounts that were previously banned for content violations, some relating to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. The platform’s algorithm — which dictates how posts are circulated on the site — also now gives added promotion to those who pay to be “verified,” including previously banned accounts.

Among them is @KanekoaTheGreat, a once-banned QAnon influencer who this month circulated a 32-page dossier promoted by Trump that recounted a barrage of false charges about the 2020 election.

It drew nearly 22 million views.

In 2020, Twitter’s “election integrity hub,” which had an open line with outside groups and political campaigns, either deleted or added context to posts with misleading information about voting.

Posts with false information about when and where to vote, for instance, would be removed. Those with misleading information about mail voting, like Trump’s, would get notices pointing users to alerts and fact-checking articles.

As Trump and his allies ramped up their attacks on mail voting — a preferred method for Democrats during the coronavirus pandemic — Twitter expanded its policy to remove or label claims that “undermine faith” in elections.

Those measures proved only so effective. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the other major platforms, which had similar measures, were also awash in election lies, and they faced criticism in the months after the Jan. 6 attack that they didn’t do enough.

Agreeing with critics who say the measures caused unfair and one-sided censorship, Musk said he cut the integrity team last fall because it was in fact “undermining election integrity.” He added, “They’re gone.” (His CEO, Yaccarino, quickly disputed that characterization, saying the work would continue and even expand.)

Maya Wiley, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which communicated regularly with the platforms in 2020, said Musk’s decision had ripple effects. “It’s also given a free pass to folks like Facebook and YouTube,” she said.

X’s more lenient policy still addresses posts that incite violence, that include verifiably false information about voting locations and dates, or that mislead about eligibility laws, “including identification or citizenship requirements.”

Musk’s recent posts appear to bump up against that rule.

On Jan. 10, he responded to a post about the recent influx of undocumented immigrants by writing, falsely, that “illegals are not prevented from voting in federal elections. This came as a surprise to me.” A couple of days earlier, Musk implied that Biden and the Democrats were being lax on immigration because “they are importing voters,” an echo of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that Trump was sharing around the same time.

U.S. law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, under the threat of jail time and deportation. Instances of illegal voting by noncitizens are rare.

Musk has also raised broader doubts about the American election system. On Jan. 8, he wrote that voters in the United States “don’t need government issued ID to vote and you can mail in your ballot. This is insane.” The post was viewed 59 million times.

More than half of states require voters to produce some form of identification at polls, and most that don’t require signatures, affidavits or birth dates; federal law requires identification verification from voters when they register.

In November, he picked up on a story about considerable evidence of widespread absentee-ballot fraud in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and wrote, “The only question is how common it is.”

Where Bridgeport’s trouble is real — enough that a judge ordered a redo of the Democratic primary — it is also rare. Mail ballots have been used for years, and with various safeguards, have proved exceedingly reliable, with bipartisan acceptance, at least before Trump intensified criticism of the method.

Trump failed to provide evidence of any significant fraud in any of his lawsuits contesting his defeat in 2020.

That has not stopped Musk from adding to the steady hum of doubts about the voting system among millions of Americans, contributing to the already-fraught climate for election workers as Trump reprises his stolen-election lies for 2024, some election officials said.

“It bubbles, and keeps the temperature higher,” said Stephen Richer, the county recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, a hot zone for election conspiracy theories. A Republican and longtime admirer of Musk’s business accomplishments, Richer added, “Whether it’s President Trump or Mr. Musk talking about this and keeping it very much a top-of-mind issue, that can potentially make our lives more challenging.”

The Biden campaign shares that concern. “We will continue to call out this recklessness as we carry out President Biden’s commitment to protecting our elections,” Chávez Rodríguez said.

That is, however, the only option the campaign has — the complaint line between the campaign and the platform is dead.

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Founded more than 100 years ago, the Chicago-based group known as NAR has long held sway over the U.S. real estate industry, collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual dues from its 1.5 million members. It owns the trademark to the word “Realtor.”

But in recent years, the organization has been saddled with a barrage of antitrust lawsuits and sexual harassment allegations. Over the past several months, multiple top leaders have stepped down, stoking concerns in the industry that the organization is on the edge of implosion.

Jason Haber, a New York agent with Compass, and Mauricio Umansky, a Los Angeles-based celebrity agent and founder of the luxury brokerage the Agency, told The New York Times that their new group, the American Real Estate Association, could be an alternative.

They are expected to announce their plan for AREA on Wednesday at Inman Connect New York, a real estate conference sponsored by Inman, the real estate news site. NAR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Haber, 46 and a native New Yorker, is a broker and entrepreneur who has also worked in local, state and federal government. He has been one of the most outspoken critics of NAR since August, when the Times revealed widespread allegations of sexual harassment against its then-president, Kenny Parcell. He started the NAR Accountability Project, a grassroots organization that made several demands, including the immediate resignation of Parcell and its chief executive, Bob Goldberg. Both men have since stepped down.

Umansky, 53, is a reality TV regular. He is quickly recognizable to fans of “Buying Beverly Hills,” “Dancing With The Stars” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” where his wife, Kyle Richards, is a series regular (the pair is currently separated). He has also been at loggerheads with NAR; in 2020, he sued the organization over its policies on databases for real estate listings, arguing that they were anti-competitive and damaged a private database of off-market listings that he had created in Los Angeles. NAR, on appeal, asked the Supreme Court to throw that suit out and was denied; it was remanded to district court and is currently pending.

The two agents had planned to start their group at a later date but moved up the clock as they looked at NAR’s legal troubles and leadership drain. The group’s new president abruptly stepped down in early January over what was described as a blackmail threat.

Members were dismayed in October when home sellers in Missouri won a landmark commissions lawsuit against the group. Under an NAR rule, a home seller is required to pay commissions to the agent representing the buyer. Home sellers have long claimed that the rule forced them to pay excessive fees to the agents, but in the case of Missouri, a group finally sued. More than a dozen similar suits have since been filed across the country.

Another NAR rule under legal scrutiny restricts access to most of the private databases used to list homes, called Multiple Listing Services, to NAR members only. Most databases are operated by the local real estate associations that serve as subsidiaries to NAR, and their information is confined to a small geographic area.

Umansky said that AREA will offer its members a nationwide database of home listings as an alternative, built from the technology he acquired for his own private listings service. That platform, which they’re calling the National Listing Service, is currently live with limited listings at theNLS.com.

“A centralized database with access to the full scope of listings across the country is better for everyone in the industry, and someone just had to do it,” Umansky said.

In addition, AREA will allow agents to set their own commission rates and will not require any cooperation between buyer and seller agents.

Organizationally, AREA will not have a president and vice president, Haber said. He emphasized that rather than seeking to replace the 100-year-old association, his goal was to offer something new.

“NAR was too big to fail, until it failed,” he said. “People want something different. We’re setting ourselves up for failure if we try to replicate the NAR model.”

Both men acknowledged that many of the details of their new organization need to be ironed out. They are currently funding the organization with their own money but hope to raise between $50 million and $100 million from investors. They don’t plan to charge for membership for at least another six months, and when they do, they estimate dues will be between $400 and $500, which is about half of what agents pay to NAR and their state and local Realtor organizations.

They don’t yet know where the organization will be headquartered, although they are looking at sites in Florida and Texas. What they do know, however, is their tagline: “Trade Up.”

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The withdrawal of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from the Republican race Sunday effectively left what had recently been a crowded field of candidates down to two: former President Donald Trump, and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

The national Democratic Party, pushed by President Joe Biden, had wanted New Hampshire Democrats to break tradition and move their primary to the end of February. New Hampshire refused, leaving the president’s supporters to mount a write-in campaign for the absent Biden against Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, self-help author Marianne Williams and 19 other Democrats whose names are on the ballot.

After Trump trounced his opponents in the Iowa caucuses last Monday, here is what to watch Tuesday:

Can Nikki Haley pull off a shocker?

After an early January surge in the polls, Haley seemed to be moving toward striking distance of Trump in New Hampshire, and when former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie dropped out Jan. 10, it appeared that she briefly had a shot at consolidating the anti-Trump vote among Republicans, independents and about 4,000 Democrats who had re-registered as independent behind her.

New Hampshire polling in the past few days would indicate that any consolidation has fallen short of what she needs to win. If anything, Trump’s totals have inched upward. But New Hampshire has shocked the prognosticators before. Sen. John McCain beat the overwhelming favorite of the establishment, George W. Bush, in 2000. Hillary Clinton bested a confident Barack Obama in 2008.

The viability of Haley’s candidacy might rest on an upset victory. The next big contest is in her home state, South Carolina, on Feb. 24. Trump holds a strong lead in the polls, but a win in New Hampshire could remind South Carolina Republicans why they voted for her twice to be their governor. A loss might be her Waterloo.

Will Donald Trump all but wrap it up?

Since the Iowa caucuses rose to prominence in 1972, only six candidates have won both the caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in a contested race. Of those six, only Edmund Muskie, a Democratic senator from Maine, failed to capture his party’s nomination, and that was 52 years ago.

Trump’s hold on his party’s base may be more dominant than any of those previous two-state winners, and no presidential candidate in American history has had quite the same incentives to wrap up a nomination as quickly as possible. Facing 91 felony counts from four criminal cases, the former president wants to install ultra-loyal delegates to the Republican National Convention well before any of those cases goes to trial, and certainly before a possible conviction might renew doubts about his fitness for the Republican nomination.

Just before the Iowa caucuses, Christie dropped out in the hope that a stronger alternative to Trump could emerge. But it seemed too late. Trump’s landslide win there chased multiple candidates from the race: Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, and ultimately, DeSantis, who had been hailed by Republicans early on as the strongest alternative to Trump in the race.

A convincing Trump win in New Hampshire, where independents had access to the Republican ballot, would leave Haley hobbled, with few states offering prospects nearly as attractive those in the Granite State. The monthlong slog toward the South Carolina primary, with few resources to draw from and a party clearly falling in line behind Trump could force her from the race as well.

Will New Hampshire voters turn out?

Facing subzero temperatures and punishing winds, Iowa Republican voters largely gave last Monday’s caucuses a pass; just 110,298 showed up, compared with the 186,874 who voted in 2016, the last contested caucuses.

Snow showers are expected for New Hampshire, but temperatures could reach 40 degrees. State officials are predicting New Hampshire voters to set a turnout record. The New Hampshire secretary of state, David Scanlan, forecast voter turnout for the Republican primary will be 322,000, up from the record-setting 287,652 in 2016.

That would be a turnout of more than 60% of the total number of Republican and independent voters eligible to vote, compared with 18% of the eligible Republicans who showed up in Iowa.

For whoever wins, strong turnout could confer more legitimacy going into the long primary season. But Trump has for days raised doubts about the strength of Haley’s coalition, which he said will be dominated by independents and Democrats.

Et tu, Ron?

When Christie dropped from the presidential race, he said his decision was driven by his desire to do nothing that could help Trump return to the White House. But he didn’t endorse Haley, and on a hot mic, he told the world, “She’s going to get smoked,” doing her no favors.

That move was supposed to be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” said John Sununu, a former New Hampshire Republican senator. It would turn the primary into a two-candidate race between the embattled former president and “someone who’s balanced budgets, who’s been a strong conservative leader and who, at the same time, hasn’t left chaos wherever she’s gone.”

No doubt many Christie voters have moved to Haley, though maybe not enough to put her over the top. But he didn’t campaign for her.

Then two days before the primary, another shoe dropped, or another candidate, DeSantis. In his case, he did endorse Trump and in a show of contempt for Haley, called her an old-guard candidate of vanquished Republican corporatism.

Suffolk University tracking polls of New Hampshire before DeSantis departed the race did not show many DeSantis voters available for any candidate; he had about 6% of the vote. But his parting shot at Haley may have sent those few to Trump. The Monday poll had the former president up 57% to 38%.

Tuesday will show whether DeSantis’ backing will help Trump leave her in the dust.

Is there a Democratic primary?

Biden began his campaign for reelection determined to diminish the power of Iowa and New Hampshire in favor of states such as South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan, with more racial, ethnic and economic diversity, which he saw as more representative of the Democratic Party.

Iowa Democrats acquiesced by changing their process. New Hampshire Democrats did not. Biden stuck to his guns.

So when Democrats go to their primary polling places, 21 Democrats will be on the ballot, but the president will not. A group of veteran New Hampshire Democrats are mounting a write-in campaign for Biden anyway, angry at how New Hampshire has been treated but determined not to elevate a long-shot alternative, such as Phillips or Williamson.

If it succeeds, perhaps the chatter of an alternative nominee to the 81-year-old incumbent could be silenced — at least for a while.

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The cuts amount to roughly 2,350 jobs, or about 3.5% of the company’s overall workforce, which includes employees at subsidiaries Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury. The layoffs will be achieved by eliminating some roles and consolidating teams, according to memos seen by The New York Times.

The company also said it would close five of its more than 560 Macy’s stores.

The memos said the decisions were based on consumer research and were meant to make the retailer more competitive by improving its cost structure and driving faster decision making.

The cutbacks were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Tony Spring will take over as Macy’s CEO next month from Jeff Gennette, a company veteran who is retiring after holding the post since 2017. Spring, who ran Bloomingdale’s, was named to the top position in March and has undertaken a research effort alongside Adrian Mitchell, the chief financial officer and chief operating officer at Macy’s.

The company said it would unveil its wider strategy in the near future.

“As we prepare to deploy a new strategy to meet the needs of an ever-changing consumer and marketplace, we made the difficult decision to reduce our work force by 3.5 percent to become a more streamlined company,” a Macy’s spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

In a memo to employees, the company said it would be “offshoring certain areas of the business,” but did not provide details.

As consumers have spent less on apparel and discretionary items over the past year, Macy’s has struggled to increase its sales, and it has been facing pressure to improve its business. In December, an investor group submitted a bid to take the company private at $5.8 billion, which was more than $1 billion above its market value at the time.

The share price has risen more than 50% over the last two months but remains lower than it was a year ago or early in the pandemic.

“Macy’s obviously needs to keep investors satisfied, and its focus on profit has accomplished that at a time when sales performance has been extremely lackluster,” Neil Saunders, managing director of the research and consulting firm GlobalData Retail, said Thursday by email. “However, this strategy comes with an expiry date; ultimately no retailer can shrink itself to success.”

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It has offered them sweeteners, like cheaper housing, tax benefits and cash. It has also invoked patriotism, calling on them to be “good wives and mothers.”

The efforts aren’t working. Chinese women have been shunning marriage and babies at such a rapid pace that China’s population in 2023 shrank for the second straight year, accelerating the government’s sense of crisis over the country’s rapidly aging population and its economic future.

China said Wednesday that 9.02 million babies were born in 2023, down from 9.56 million in 2022 and the seventh year in a row that the number has fallen. Taken together with the number of people who died during the year — 11.1 million — China has more older people than anywhere else in the world, a number that is rising rapidly. China’s total population was 1,409,670,000 at the end of 2023, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

The shrinking and aging population worries Beijing because it is draining China of the working-age people it needs to power the economy. The demographic crisis, which arrived sooner than nearly anyone expected, is already straining weak and underfunded health care and pension systems.

China hastened the problem with its one-child policy, which helped to push the birthrate down over several decades. The rule also created generations of young only-child girls who were given an education and employment opportunities — a cohort that turned into empowered women who now view Beijing’s efforts as pushing them back into the home.

Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has long talked about the need for women to return to more traditional roles in the home. He recently urged government officials to promote a “marriage and childbearing culture,” and to influence what young people think about “love and marriage, fertility and family.”

But experts said the efforts lacked any attempt to address one reality that shaped women’s views about parenting: deep-seated gender inequality. The laws that are meant to protect women and their property, and to ensure they are treated equally, have failed them.

“Women still don’t feel sure enough to have children in our country,” said Rashelle Chen, a social media professional from the southern province of Guangdong. Chen, 33, has been married for five years and said she didn’t intend to have a baby.

“It seems that the government’s birth policy is only aimed at making babies but doesn’t protect the person who gives birth,” she said. “It does not protect the rights and interests of women.”

Propaganda campaigns and state-sponsored dating events goad young people to get married and have babies. In China, it is uncommon for unmarried couples or a single person to have children. State media is filled with calls for China’s youths to play a role in “rejuvenating the nation.”

The message has been received by parents, many of whom already share traditional views about marriage. Chen’s parents sometimes get so upset at her decision not to have children that they cry on the phone. “We are no longer your parents,” they tell her.

Women in China today have a better awareness of their rights because of the rise in advocacy against sexual harassment and workplace discrimination. Authorities have tried to silence China’s feminist movement, but its ideas about equality remain widespread.

“During these past 10 years, there is a huge community of feminists that have been built up through the internet,” said Zheng Churan, a Chinese women’s rights activist, who was detained with four other activists on the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015. “Women are more empowered today,” Zheng said.

Censorship has silenced much of the debate around women’s issues, sometimes tamping down on public discussion of sexual discrimination, harassment or gender violence. Yet women have been able to share their experiences online and provide support to the victims, Zheng said.

On paper, China has laws to promote gender equality. Employment discrimination based on gender, race or ethnicity is illegal, for example. In practice, companies advertise for male candidates and discriminate against female employees, said Guo Jing, an activist who has helped to provide legal support to women facing discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.

“In some ways, women are more aware of gender inequality in every area of life,” Guo said. “It’s still difficult for women to get justice, even in court.” In 2014, she sued a state-owned company, Dongfang Cooking Training School, after she was told not to apply for a job because she was a woman. She prevailed, but was awarded only about $300 in compensation.

A recent uptick in shocking social media postings and news articles about acts of violence against women have grabbed the attention of the nation, like the savage beating of several women in Tangshan at a restaurant and the story of a mother of eight who was found chained to the wall of a shack.

Women often cite such violent acts when discussing why they don’t want to get married. Changes to policies and regulations, including a new rule requiring a 30-day cooling-off period before civil divorces can be made final, are another. Marriage rates have been falling for nine years. That trend, once limited mostly to cities, has spread to rural areas as well, according to government statistics.

Another reason women say they don’t want to get married is that it has gotten harder to win a divorce in court if it is contested. An analysis of nearly 150,000 court rulings on divorce cases by Ethan Michelson, a professor at Indiana University, found that 40% of the petitions filed by women were denied by a judge, often when there was evidence of domestic violence.

“There have been so many strong signals from the very top, from Xi’s own mouth, about family being the bedrock of Chinese society and family stability being the foundation of social stability and national development,” Michelson said. “There is no doubt that these signals have reinforced judges’ tendencies,” he said.

Popular sayings online — such as “a marriage license has become a license to beat,” or worse — are reinforced by news reports. In just one of many similar cases last summer, a woman in the northwestern province of Gansu was denied a divorce petition despite evidence of domestic abuse; a judge said the couple needed to stay together for their children. Another woman in the southern city of Guangzhou was killed by her husband during a 30-day divorce cooling-off period.

In 2011, a Supreme People’s Court ruled that family homes would no longer be divided in divorce, but instead given to the person whose name was on the deed — a finding that favored men.

“That decision really frightened a lot of women in China,” said Leta Hong Fincher, the author of “Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China.”

That sense of panic has not gone away.

“Instead of having more care and protection, mothers become more vulnerable to abuse and isolation,” said Elgar Yang, 24, a journalist in Shanghai.

Policies by the government that are meant to entice women to marry, she added, “even make me feel that it is a trap.”

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