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Apple didn't raise prices for new iPhones in the U.S. during the pandemic, although the company dealt with parts shortages and said inflation was raising costs.

Young people shut out of the labor market or burned out from overwork are being hired by their parents to do housework and be on hand whenever needed.

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Florida schools have embraced curriculum that shys away from discussing the evils of slavery

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis defended a hard-right school curriculum that went into effect in his state this week while on the campaign trail for the Republican presidential nomination.

At an event in Utah, Governor DeSantis defended how slavery will now be taught in Florida middle schools. Children will now be taught that enslaved persons picked up skills that they later “parlayed” into profitable crafts after slavery was abolished.

“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis told reporters on Friday.

However at the same press conference, the GOP candidate also appeared to back away from the specific assertions of the teachings, saying of the curriculum: “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it.”

He went on to say that the curriculum was “rooted in whatever is factual”.

“It was not anything that was done politically,” he added.

The Florida governor’s hard-right record will likely be a key talking point on the 2024 campaign trail - potentially presenting both a boon for DeSantis in the GOP primary but also a challenge as he seeks to woo moderates in a general election.

Florida Department of Education’s social studies standards for the 2023-2024 school year provide lesson topics for teachers including a “benchmark clarification” which instructs educators to teach students that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”.

It isn’t clear what “their personal benefit” would be in this scenario.

The line is included as part of a broader lesson entitled: “Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).”

The majority of polling puts DeSantis second in the crowded GOP primary field, though he trails former president Donald Trump by a wide margin and faces a number of rivals closing in on his position including Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley.

Video (Twitter)

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The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama must create two congressional districts that would encompass majority-Black electorates. Republicans in the state didn’t listen.

Republicans in the Alabama legislature have passed a new congressional map with only a single majority Black district—ignoring a recent Supreme Court ruling that ordered the creation of a second.

In a June ruling, the conservative-leaning Supreme Court surprised some onlookers when it ruled 5-4 that Alabama’s new map of congressional districts likely violated the Voting Rights Act as an illegal racial gerrymander. Under that map, only one out of Alabama’s seven districts had a majority Black electorate, even though Black residents comprise more than a quarter of the population.

The justices, upholding a lower court’s ruling, ordered Alabama’s Republican-controlled legislature to redo the maps, this time carving out a second Black-majority district, “or something quite close to it.”

But Republicans in the state didn’t go through with it, effectively ignoring the high court’s order, opponents argue.

After a special session convened in response to the ruling, Alabama’s legislature passed a new map on Friday that created only one seat with a majority Black electorate, NBC reported. Another seat included in the revised plan has a 40 percent Black voter base.

The new maps passed a vote on Friday afternoon—as a court-mandated deadline loomed—and got Alabama governor Kay Ivey’s signature that night. They advanced over the objection of Democratic lawmakers, as well as the advocacy groups that successfully challenged the previous maps—and which have promised to fight the new one as well.

"The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups, and I am pleased that they answered the call, remained focused and produced new districts ahead of the court deadline,” Ivey said in a statement Friday night.

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Cornel West, a Green Party 2024 presidential candidate, fights to reach ballots in states with differing laws.

With the 2024 presidential election heating up, debates over the role of third parties are beginning to simmer -- and Democrats fear the Green Party could offer voters an enticing alternative who could hamper their chances in the general election.

At the center of those concerns is newcomer presidential candidate Cornel West, a philosopher and activist who announced his intent to run with the left-wing, populist People's Party on June 5 before switching, saying on June 14 he would seek the Green Party nomination.

Bernard Tamas, a political science professor at Valdosta State University, told ABC News that American third-party candidates don't need to win elections to be influential. Rather, they often "sting like a bee" and shock one of the two major parties to take up issues they're passionate about.

Tamas believes that the best hope for Green Party members is that the Democratic Party will shift towards their preferred positions in an effort to neutralize the threat that they could siphon away voters.

"I don't think anyone in the Green Party has any delusions that they're going to win anything," he said. "This is a way for the progressives, those on the left, to force the Democratic Party to take [seriously] issues that they take seriously."

In other words, Tamas said, the possibility that West might cost Biden the election isn't a coincidence: It's a core part of third parties' strategy.

"They're between a rock and a hard place," he said of the Green Party. "Stepping aside for this election, well, it would effectively end their impact at all."

The stated priorities of the U.S. Green Party's platform are decreasing the U.S. military budget, addressing global climate change through a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, social justice, and democratic reforms like the public financing of elections.

The U.S. Green Party has about 200,000 registered members as of July 2023, according to a party database, and 133 members of the Green Party hold elected office.

So far, the only candidate competing against West for the Green Party nomination is Randy Toler, a co-chair of Florida's Green Party, who has filed to enter the race but has not yet formally begun his campaign. Toler is also running for Florida's open Senate seat in 2024.

With the endorsement of Jill Stein, a two-time Green Party presidential nominee who is now West's campaign manager, and as the only candidate who is actively campaigning so far, West is considered the clear frontrunner in the race.

Like the Democrat and Republican parties, the Green Party nomination will be decided through primaries or conventions across the country starting early next year, culminating in the 2024 Green National Convention. The date of the convention has not yet been announced.

No third party nominee has ever won a presidential election -- but some famous third-party bids, such as that of businessman Ross Perot, may have shifted electoral outcomes, and campaigns from Teddy Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond and others even won a few states.

Who is Cornel West and why is he seeking the Green Party nomination?

According to his staff, West, who is a philosopher and former professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University, switched to seeking the Green Party nomination because it is more widely listed on presidential ballots than his original selection of the People's Party.

In order to appear on the ballot, presidential candidates need to meet state-by-state requirements – a fairly costly and labor-intensive endeavor. In the U.S., only a select few parties, like the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, have the organizational and grassroots support needed to meet those requirements across the country.

"It became clear that he needed a party that could actually get him on the ballot," said Stein.

While the Democratic and Republican parties also have those resources, Stein argued, West sought a third party nomination because he believes neither party met the Green Party's standards on the issues of climate change, the influence of corporations and wealthy donors in U.S. politics, and more.

"Dr. West is acting on the reality of the cards that we've been dealt," said Stein. "If you know anything about the polls, you know that American voters have broken with the system. ... People are hungry for more choices and more voices in this election and Dr. West is speaking to the deeply felt need."

West's candidacy has sparked fears and heated criticism from Democrats that the professor's campaign could "spoil" the election for Biden, pulling votes away from the incumbent in vital swing states and tipping the election towards former President Donald Trump. In 2016, the number of people who voted for Stein, then the Green Party presidential nominee, exceeded Trump's margin of victory in Michigan, though Stein has disputed that she cost Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton the election there, arguing that not all of her voters would have voted for Clinton otherwise.

"I think that Democrats have reason to worry," Tamas said. "1% of the vote, 2% of the vote, could very well shift the election over to the Republican Party."

Stein dismissed that possibility as "propaganda."

"This is about the party elite protecting themselves," she said. "To call that spoiling, when people like Dr. West stand up and offer people another way forward, instead of this pathway that has just been throwing working people, poor communities of color, under the bus, that's just nonsense."

West has also drawn backlash from progressives for a recent op-ed where he praised Florida Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis for supporting a "classical education" oriented around the Western literary canon.

Which voters will West woo?

Given West's background in racial justice, Tamas said the natural inclination would be to believe West could attract African American voters.

But history suggests that might not be the case, Tamas said. Historically, African-American voters have been a fairly risk-averse voting bloc, only voting for candidates that are thought to have good odds of winning.

"They are much less likely to jump on board to a challenge," he said.

However, West's left-wing platform could appeal to a certain base of progressive voters, said Melissa Deckman, a researcher and CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute. This is especially true among younger voters for whom socialism is an appealing economic policy divorced from its negative Cold War-era connotations.

"Generally speaking, the term 'socialism' is not one that is necessarily embraced by the general public. However, younger Americans, especially young women, I found in my research, tend to be more open to the concept of socialism," Deckman said.

"Many Americans would say that capitalism as a system isn't working well for them," she continued. "For example, many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, increasingly because the cost of living is too high."

Deckman also named climate change as a factor shaping some voters' perception of capitalism. West has made the issue a pillar of his campaign, frequently naming "ecological collapse" as one of his key priorities.

The first challenge: Getting on the ballot

The potency of West's campaign could turn on a set of relatively obscure proceedings surrounding ballot access laws. Each state has different rules for who can qualify to appear on the ballot for a certain office. Most states require candidates to gather signatures or pay a filing fee.

But the Green Party argues these laws unfairly benefit well-funded candidates.

"There's always been, even in the Constitution, a check on the people," wrote Tony Ndege, a co-chair of the Ballot Access Committee for the Green Party, in an email to ABC News. "They spin the propaganda of, 'Well, these are the serious candidates.' Well, they're the candidates serious about remaining beholden to big money interests."

The swing state of Pennsylvania could become a key battleground. The Green Party gathered the sufficient number of signatures for ballot access in that state during the last presidential election cycle, but it was disqualified from the ballot due to technical issues with how the requisite signatures were gathered. The Green Party is already on the ballot in two other key swing states: Michigan and Wisconsin.

Taken together, Ndege said he is expecting an "interesting 2024."

"There will always be pushback from those in power when you are doing the right thing. I think that will intensify dramatically as the months continue," Ndege said.

The party has not announced a date or location for its convention.

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“It’s pretty remarkable that you’re not concerned about it, given the fact that they wanted to hang you on on Jan. 6,” Bash told the ex-veep.

Former President Donald Trump warned on a conservative talk-radio show last week that it would be “very dangerous” if he went to prison over the Jan. 6 insurrection, as his supporters are “a passionate group of voters.”

But his former vice president, Mike Pence, who encountered a large group of passionate Trump voters out for his blood two years ago, doesn’t seem worried.

“Everyone in our movement are the kind of Americans who love this country, are patriotic or law-and-order people who would never have done anything like that there or anywhere else,” Pence told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday’s State of the Union. “I have more confidence in the American people than that. I hear my former running mate’s frustration in his voice, but I'm sure the American people will respond in our movement in a way that will express, as they have every right to under the First Amendment, to express concerns that they have about what they perceive to be unequal treatment of the law. But I'm not concerned about it beyond that.”

The winding answer seemingly left Bash flabbergasted, prompting her to note why someone like Pence of all people should be concerned.

“It’s pretty remarkable that you’re not concerned about it, given the fact that they wanted to hang you on on Jan. 6,” she said through a laugh before attempting to move on.

But Pence wouldn’t let that stand, refusing to let the CNN anchor “use a broad brush” to classify everyone at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as being perpetrators of violence.

“The people in this movement, the people who rally behind our cause in 2016 and 2020, are the most God-fearing, law-abiding, patriotic people in this country,” he said. “And I just I won’t stand for those kinds of generalizations because they have no basis in fact.”

But Pence wouldn’t say much about the person being investigated for allegedly helping to perpetuate some of the violence itself: His former boss.

Earlier in the interview, Bash asked Pence whether the Department of Justice should charge Trump if it finds evidence he committed a crime related to the insurrection. The ex-veep, however, would only note that Trump’s actions were inappropriate—though perhaps not criminal.

“I've said many times that the president’s words were reckless that day,” he said. “I had no right to overturn the election. But while his words were reckless, based on what I know, I’m not yet convinced that they were criminal.”

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There is no reason campaigns should run for a year and a half, and Congress actually has the power to end this political insanity.

The first Republican presidential primary debate is scheduled for Aug. 23. It is but one of 10 to 12 such events, in addition to at least eight other forums hosted by outside organizations, to say nothing of the array of town halls and one-on-one interviews which will inevitably appear on cable channels, network news, and any number of fringier online video outlets.

By the time the primary race officially begins with the Iowa caucuses in January, we’ll have had dozens of opportunities to see former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and the probable also-rans who populate the rest of the field deliver their finely-honed canned sniping and consultant-crafted one-liners.

And that’s exactly the problem: Our presidential elections are far too long and much too stupid.

No one wants this. Certainly, no one needs this. Congress can and should cut down on the stupidity by limiting the length, and this is something our lawmakers could manage with ample bipartisan support.

Election law, particularly where campaign finance is concerned, is often a contentious subject. Who gets to donate and how much money they can give, how and when we can vote, where to draw district lines, who will count the votes and who will check their work—these are all questions easily drawn into partisan battles because of the politically disparate effects different answers can have.

But what I’m interested in here is time, and time passes equally for us all. It also happens to be clearly within congressional purview.

Parts of our election timeline are already determined by federal law and the Constitution. Congress fixed the general Election Day in 1845, a decision prompted by the rise of the telegram. National uniformity was needed, the thinking went, because if news could travel more quickly, early results might unfairly sway decisions in later voting states.

“The sheer length of our presidential elections isn’t only annoying and inconvenient. It’s a two-year simmer, cooking our bitterness at politicians and neighbors alike into a reductive concentrate.”

The Constitution also gives Congress the authority to “determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.” That part happens in mid-December, and the electors’ votes are counted in Washington, D.C. by Congress on—I’m guessing you know this one, given how it went last time—Jan. 6.

Finally, the 20th Amendment, adopted in 1933, finishes out the schedule with the president’s inauguration date, Jan. 20, moved up from Mar. 4 due to faster modes of travel.

So here’s my very simple proposal: If Congress can determine when our presidential elections end, it should also determine when they begin. And they should begin much later than they do.

Other, similar countries do not have elections this long. (The United Kingdom, for example, allows official campaigning for just 25 working days.) They’re spared months of televised inanities. They needn’t pretend to care about the nth “debate” which doesn’t deserve the name. They don’t have a six-month primary debacle in which later votes are not just unfairly swayed but rendered completely irrelevant.

We could be free of all that stuff too. Maybe it would take a constitutional amendment, just to be safe, but I don’t think so, given that 1845 precedent.

All Congress needs to do is add three dates to our campaign law: one for the earliest launch of campaign exploratory committees, one for the launch of campaigns proper, and one for a universal primary vote and caucus day.

The crucial question, of course, is what those dates should be. I’d suggest a pretty aggressive schedule of a month for exploration, a month for primaries, and a month to pick the winner. Working back from the election in early November, we wouldn’t be in election mode until—at the earliest—Aug. 1, 2024. I’m practically salivating at the thought.

We could reclaim about 18 (mostly useless) months out of every four years. We could ignore these people’s babbling and bickering, the personal spats and the howling vacuum where policy content ought to be. Candidates would be forced to strategize more carefully, to prune their content to just the most important stuff, just what they can fit in three short months. That’s a discipline they very obviously need.

And a tightly scheduled election wouldn’t mean no debates. My timeline would allow about three debates ahead of each vote, assuming a once-weekly schedule. Paying attention to six two-hour sessions over the course of two months is a reasonable proposition for normal, busy adults who have real things to do in our lives.

From the first primary debate in early September to Election Day, the whole thing would be roughly the length of a British TV series—or a class at your gym, or a book club you actually stick with, or half a semester of school, from the first day through midterms.

We could do this—and we might even be able to do it well. Or at least a little bit better.

The sheer length of our presidential elections isn’t only annoying and inconvenient. It’s a two-year simmer, cooking our bitterness at politicians and neighbors alike into a reductive concentrate. Maybe it’s unavoidable that we’ll hit a political boiling point by Election Day.

With so much power at stake, I suspect that’s true. But it could at least be a quick boil. We might then get burned less along the way.

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Former Sens. Joe Lieberman and Doug Jones on Sunday faced-off in a debate over the viability of No Labels' potential bipartisan third-party presidential ticket in 2024

Former Sens. Joe Lieberman and Doug Jones appeared Sunday on ABC's "This Week" to debate the viability of a bipartisan third-party presidential ticket in 2024 -- and whether that effort could serve as a spoiler in the race for the White House.

Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent who represented Connecticut, is the founding chair of No Labels, which is preparing a possible "unity" ticket that would include both parties and offer, he said, another option for those voters dissatisfied with a potential rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

"We're in this to give the majority of the American people who feel that the major two parties are failing them a third choice, both in policies, such as we're going to release in New Hampshire [on Monday], but also possibly in a third candidate," Lieberman told "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos. "And we've been very explicit ... If the polling next year shows, after the two parties have chosen their nominees, that, in fact, we will help elect one or another candidate, we're not going to get involved."

Jones, an Alabama Democrat and staunch Biden ally who has joined a group to counter No Labels, rejected that thinking.

"Those polls right now mean nothing," he shot back at Lieberman, referencing reticence for both Biden and Trump. "This past weekend, you saw that the Biden-Harris team raised $70 million, 30% of those were new donors," Jones added. "That is not a candidate that is being rejected by the American people.

Of No Labels, he said, "There is no way on God's green earth that they can get to 270 electoral votes, which means they will be a spoiler, one way or another."

Not so, Lieberman insisted. The problem wasn't No Labels, he said. "The problem is the American people are not buying what the two parties are selling anymore. And I think the parties would be wiser to think about that."

Lieberman has experience facing third party bids himself: As the Democratic vice-presidential nominee in 2000, he and presidential hopeful Al Gore lost Florida by a few hundred votes in a state where the Green Party's Ralph Nader got nearly 100,000 ballots, with Lieberman at the time calling any vote for Nader actually a vote for opponent George W. Bush.

The dueling views on No Labels come amid Democratic handwringing over whether the group's plan -- which it says would comprise of one Democrat and one Republican on the same ticket next year -- is more likely to peel off disaffected Republican voters who would vote for Biden in a pure head-to-head with Trump next year.

Lieberman said Sunday that No Labels would hold off on its campaign if Democrats and Republicans both embrace centrism.

"We have said all along that we're not yearning to run a third-party ticket. If one or both parties move more toward the center in their policies ... and maybe think about the two candidates being so unpopular among the American people, we won't run," he said.

Jones said there was already a more moderate option available in Biden, noting the president's cooperation with Republican lawmakers in Congress.

"Look at what he has done, bringing the infrastructure package together, pulling that together for the first time in decades to do infrastructure, for the PACT Act [for veterans], the CHIPS Act [for manufacturing]," Jones said.

"I don't know why in the world somebody thinks that Joe Biden's administration is so far left, unlike a Donald Trump or someone else that is an extreme right," he argued.

In interviews and public statements, the group has repeatedly insisted that while polling proves there's an appetite for a third option in 2024, No Labels would take an "off ramp" if they are wrong.

"That sort of runs against human nature, doesn't it? Once a campaign starts, it's hard to stop," Stephanopoulos pressed Lieberman on "This Week."

"The American people don't like what the two parties are doing," Lieberman responded. "And they particularly don't like the two candidates that they seem set on nominating."

Jones, however, took issue with No Labels largely operating outside of public scrutiny.

"They're not disclosing their donors. They're not playing by the same rules," he said. (A No Labels spokesperson previously told ABC News: "We never share the names of our supporters because we live in an era where far-right and far-left agitators and partisan operatives try to destroy and intimidate organizations they don't like by attacking their individual supporters.")

Jones on Sunday criticized how No Labels might also put together its ticket -- not through a series of public primaries but through back-room discussions that undercut the very pitch Lieberman was making.

"That's not very democratic. That's not a choice," he said. "It's a false choice and really an illusion as to what they're doing."

Even some Republicans have cast doubts on No Labels' viability, pointing to past failures by third-party candidates to make a legitimate run at the White House. The group has also faced roadblocks in its effort to get access to the ballot in all 50 states.

"I think it’s a fool’s errand. ... I’m not in this for show time. I’m not in this, you know, for making a point. I’m in this to get elected president of the United States," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is running for the White House as a Republican, said on "This Week."

"And there are only two people who will get elected president of the United States in November of '24 -- the Republican nominee for president, and the Democratic nominee for president."

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The candidate insisted to Fox News that stories of his campaign’s issues were just attacks by a “corporate press” out to get him.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has seen woe after woe in his campaign for the Republican nomination, forcing him to cut staff and actually engage with traditional media outlets.

But the governor seemingly donned a pair of rose-colored lenses in an interview on Fox News’ MediaBuzz on Sunday, downplaying problems and pointing to his trips to early primary states. It’s there, he told host Howard Kurtz, where he’s found his voting audience—once they meet him in person.

“We were just in Iowa on Friday at the Family Leaders Summit. That was effectively the kickoff to Iowa caucus season,” DeSantis said. “So Iowans are starting to pay more attention to it. We were able to talk to thousands of people over a two-day period, and the number one thing I hear from people is this. They’re like, ‘Yeah, you know, I knew you did good things in Florida, but I hadn’t seen you yet, and now that I’ve seen you, I’m for you.’”

DeSantis’ claim comes despite an avalanche of media reports about his personal awkwardness and questions about whether he has the charisma to succeed on the trail.

DeSantis framed the barrage of negative press stories as the workings of a “corporate press” that does not want to see him “dismantle the administrative state.” He insisted the Republican debates would be another vector for highlighting his personality to voters.

“There’s a lot of Republican voters out there, they like what we’ve done in Florida. They know I’m a good governor,” DeSantis said. “But they haven’t seen a lot about me up close and personal, so that gives us a great opportunity to be able to share our vision.”

Even with six months before a single vote is cast in the race, DeSantis’ time to make that case to voters is short.

The candidate has largely limited sit-down interviews to conservative media outlets, such as Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network. His finances have been strapped, and he burned through nearly $8 million in the first six weeks of his candidacy, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis raised $20 million in the second quarter, millions ahead of Donald Trump, but $14 million of that was from donors who maxed out their donations and $3 million must be set aside for a general election campaign.

There have been signs of a strategy shift. DeSantis fired about 10 event planning staffers on Thursday, according to Politico, though he still boasts the largest campaign staff in the Republican field. CNN also announced that Jake Tapper would interview DeSantis on Tuesday, the governor’s first extended interview on the network since 2017.

DeSantis refused to address these issues head-on during his MediaBuzz interview, instead noting just how well he does—once voters meet him.

“The more I’m out there, the more support we get in these early states, and it is a state-by-state primary,” he said. “So I think it would be political malpractice to be running for president fixated on national rather than Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. So that’s what we’ve done. You can make up ground, and we are making up ground in all those states. That is not really going to be reflected in the national poll because they’re such small states that you’re not going to end up doing that. We have our eye on the prize.”

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A landmark referendum backed by the government would give Indigenous people constitutional recognition and greater say on legislation and policy affecting them.

A proposal by the Australian government to recognize the country’s Indigenous people in the constitution has inflamed a culture war and set off divisive debates — including among Indigenous people themselves.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor government is backing a landmark referendum to enshrine in the Australian Constitution an Indigenous body — known as a “Voice to Parliament” — to advise the government on legislation and policy affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who make up almost 4% of Australia’s population of 26 million.

Unlike other former British colonies such as the United States, Canada and New Zealand, Australia has no treaty with its Indigenous people, who are not mentioned in the 1901 constitution. Like Indigenous peoples in the United States and elsewhere, Indigenous Australians fare much worse than their fellow countrymen on life expectancy, incarceration rates and other measures of socioeconomic well-being.

Supporters say the referendum’s success would improve Australia’s image and help Indigenous peoples in other nations.

“It’s an opportunity for Australia to be unique in the world, sharing over 60,000 years of Indigenous heritage and culture in a practical way that gives greater fairness to Indigenous people,” said Thomas Mayo, director of the nonprofit group Australians for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition, as well as a Kaurareg Aboriginal and a Kalkalgal, Erubamle Torres Strait Islander.

After being approved by the Senate last month, the referendum is expected to be held between October and December. Opposition conservatives are actively campaigning against it, saying that no other demographic in Australian society is allowed such privileges and that they would give Indigenous people excessive power in Parliament.

Earlier this month, thousands of people across Australia turned out at rallies organized by the referendum’s “yes” campaign. But a poll last month by The Sydney Morning Herald found that support for the referendum was at 49%, down from 53% in May.

Australians have voted on 44 referendum proposals since 1901, only eight of which have succeeded.

Polarization over the Voice referendum has fueled racist behavior, Mayo said, including on social media, where he said he had seen “a sharp rise in vile, racist comments towards me and towards other Indigenous people that are advocating for this.”

Nine Entertainment, a major Australian media outlet, apologized last week over a full-page advertisement in its daily newspaper that featured Mayo and was criticized as racist. The advertisement, paid for by the “no” campaign, showed Michael Chaney, chairman of the Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers and a supporter of the referendum, handing money to Mayo, who is depicted as a child standing at his feet.

The referendum also has strong opponents within the Indigenous community.

“Of course it’s creating division, because we’re trying to fit into a framework, a colonialist framework,” said Taylah Gray, a member of the Wiradjuri people and Indigenous rights campaigner who has not yet decided how to vote.

The Voice proposal is a futile and “cosmetic” change, said Gary Foley, a veteran Indigenous activist, member of the Gumbaynggirr people and a professor of history at Victoria University in Melbourne.

He said the referendum was likely to fail due to Australia’s deepening polarization and its reluctance to confront its problematic past.

“The majority of Australians know absolutely nothing of their own history,” he said. “How are Australians today in a position to make an informed decision about something they know nothing about?”

Some Indigenous people who oppose the constitutional change argue that it means ceding sovereignty to those who took their lands by force.

What Indigenous people want, Foley said, “is self-determination — political and economic independence.”

Lidia Thorpe, the first Aboriginal senator from the state of Victoria, said the Voice could override existing Indigenous governance systems.

“I have supported and amplified the voices of the Sovereign ‘No’ camp, which is made up of First Nations people across the country that have never ceded their sovereignty and do not want to be recognised in the colonizer’s constitution,” she told NBC News in a written statement.

Thorpe is instead calling for more concrete actions, saying the government should first implement the recommendations from reports in 1991 and 1997 on the deaths of Aboriginal people in custody and the separation of Aboriginal children from their families.

“Our people are in a desperate situation as a result of record incarceration and child removal rates and the government already has the policies that will make an immediate difference,” said Thorpe, who voted last month against holding the referendum.

Thorpe has urged Australians, who are required to vote by law, to vote no, while Foley is encouraging them to spoil their ballots.

“It’s about time governments enabled Aboriginal people to determine their own destiny, instead of having white racists determine what our destiny is,” he said.

Finlay said she was confident that constitutional recognition would not impede Indigenous sovereignty, and could even breathe life into the treaty process.

“At the moment,” she said, “I don’t see that we have any mechanisms” that will allow a treaty to be negotiated at the federal level.

“The Voice will allow us to do that,” she said.

Every past Indigenous advisory body has ended up being either watered down or abolished as governments have changed, fueling a mistrust of such initiatives among some Indigenous people.

Gray said she remained “wary” of any government structure aimed at improving the lives of Indigenous people, saying they had been subjected to “centuries of violence, displacements, broken promises” by governments from both the left and the right.

But Mayo said enshrining the Voice in the constitution will protect it from the same fate as its predecessors, putting it out of reach of future governments “that either are avoiding accountability or using Indigenous lives and our issues as a political football.”

Despite their opposing views, Foley, Mayo, Finlay and Grayl agreed that a majority “no” vote on the referendum would be irreversibly harmful for Indigenous rights.

“There’s everything to gain if we succeed in being able to self-determine who speaks for us, and to influence the decisions that are made about us,” Mayo said.

If the referendum should fail, he said, Indigenous people will be worse off “because the Australian people will have officially dismissed that long and proud history, heritage and culture.”

“It’ll be officially dismissing a step towards greater fairness in our country,” Mayo said.

A landmark referendum backed by the government would give Indigenous people constitutional recognition and greater say on legislation and policy affecting them.

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California and Colorado have passed laws that would permit noncitizens authorized to work in the U.S. to become police officers, while New Jersey and other states consider similar legislation.

As police departments struggle to recruit and retain officers, some look to a previously untapped pool of applicants to fill job vacancies.

States, including California and Colorado, have begun to pass laws that would permit noncitizens who are authorized to work in the U.S. to become police officers, while others, such as New Jersey, mull similar legislation. The measures make recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program eligible for law enforcement work.

Beneficiaries of the DACA program have historically been barred from holding jobs in law enforcement because of various provisions in state laws.

The DACA program, which provides protections against deportation for people who arrived in the United States without legal status before turning 16 and who have lived in the country continuously since at least 2007, has about 580,000 active recipients in the United States.

Christian Alberto Mendoza-Almendarez, 30, is among them. He was brought to the U.S. at age 7 after his family fled Mexico’s drug cartels.

He has wanted to be a police officer since he was a boy watching his father patrol the streets of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. But his immigration status makes him ineligible in Texas, where he serves as a neighborhood liaison with the Austin Police Department.

He's thinking about moving to California or Colorado to fulfill his dream.

“We’re not here to change the requirements,” he said. “These people have what it takes to become a police officer.”

Before changing its law last year, California required that police officers, or peace officers, be U.S. citizens or permanent residents who were eligible for and applied for citizenship.

In Colorado, DACA recipients previously could not legally carry firearms. Colorado’s new measure, which was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis in April, does away with that prohibition.

"It's a smart policy, especially with fewer and fewer people wanting to go into law enforcement," said Art Acevedo, the interim chief of police for the Aurora Police Department in Colorado, which has 71 open positions.

Acevedo, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba with his family as a young child and headed police departments in Houston, Austin and briefly in Miami, said a person’s nation of origin should have no bearing on their suitability for a career in law enforcement.

Supporters of similar measures have noted that noncitizens who are authorized to work in the U.S. can already serve in the military, making law enforcement work a natural extension.

Critics of such legislation, however, say careers in law enforcement should be reserved for U.S. citizens and that noncitizens should not be able to carry firearms or possess the power to arrest citizens.

Chapin Rose, a Republican member of the Illinois Senate, blasted the legislation that passed the state House and Senate but has not been signed into law, saying during a recent hearing that “there is a greater principle at stake.”

“It’s just a fundamentally bad idea,” he said during the hearing in May. “I don’t care where this individual is from. Australia — they should not be able to arrest a United States citizen on United States soil.”

Police departments across the country have been struggling to recruit and retain officers over the past several years.

The Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement policy group, has attributed the decrease in staffing to “extreme stresses” caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and a decline in police officers’ morale, as well as protests and demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by Minneapolis police, among other issues. But others have attributed the decrease to calls for accountability and police reform spurred by Floyd’s murder, and to officers leaving for higher paying jobs in the private sector.

Joseph Farrow, chief of police for the University of California, Davis, led the effort that prompted the University of California’s development of the law in partnership with the state Legislature.

California’s bill, SB 960, which was introduced in February 2022 and signed into law in September 2022, removed a provision in state law that said a person had to be a citizen to be a peace officer and replaced it with a requirement that peace officers be legally authorized to work in the U.S. It took effect on Jan. 1.

Year after year, Farrow said he has encountered students through his work with the UC Davis Cadet Academy — a popular nonaccredited course offered once a year to those interested in a law enforcement career — who excelled in the program and wanted to be peace officers but were "prohibited because of a law in California that was enacted, some 50, 60 years ago."

He petitioned his bosses at the university to take up the issue and to bring it to the attention of state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who sponsored the bill. Farrow said he testified in support of the bill before the state Senate and Assembly.

Skinner and Farrow both said that most lawmakers had been unaware of the decades-old provision before its removal. One of the biggest hesitations expressed by those who opposed the measure was over vetting the backgrounds of noncitizens, Farrow said, which he believed was a reasonable concern.

“We responded, basically, 'Yeah, that’s an issue,’” Farrow said. “And if we can’t prove identity and we can’t prove background and we don’t have enough information to make sure that the people that we’re hiring are people that would be good representatives of law enforcement, then they don’t get hired, just like anybody else.”

Like Farrow and others who publicly supported these laws, Staci Shaffer, a lieutenant with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado, said these measures didn't water down the requirements or lower the standards for employment. Qualified applicants must still undergo medical and psychological exams, pass fitness tests and attend the academy, in addition to satisfying other criteria.

Shaffer, who testified before Colorado lawmakers, said that she believed it was "draconian" to turn away a noncitizen authorized to work in the country who was otherwise qualified.

"Law enforcement, in my mind, we have a reputation problem," she said. "There's a reputation because of the actions of some officers." Shaffer said she would tell critics of these laws to "get over it." She said she suspected many law enforcement departments, including the Larimer County Sheriff's Office, which is majority white and majority male and has 68 open positions over several departments, could stand to diversify its ranks to better serve its communities.

DeLacy Davis, a retired police officer in New Jersey and a community policing expert, said he believes some of the opposition to these measures "is grounded in straight racism, no chaser. Period."

"I don’t think that we can draw clear lines in the sand and determine, 'Oh, you’re not a citizen, you can’t be qualified. You are a citizen, you must be a good person,'" he said. "The people who killed Breonna Taylor, the people who killed Tyre Nichols, the people who killed George Floyd, all of those were American citizens. I believe, in and of itself, that is a flawed argument — when we talk about citizenship as a basis for determining whether or not you can or cannot effectively police."

Laurence Benenson, vice president of policy and advocacy at the National Immigration Forum, said the organization had fought for the passage of such laws for years. Benenson said staffing issues predate the pandemic, and that police departments across the country have faced difficulties in hiring qualified candidates for at least a decade, and, in some cases, in recruiting younger officers.

“We believe that hiring lawful permanent residents and Dreamers who work in law enforcement jobs is a common sense idea," and that offering these opportunities to people who "already are contributing in a number of other areas" will expand the pool of qualified applicants for law enforcement jobs, he said. "And then we’ll also have an additional benefit of helping those law enforcement agencies better reach communities that they work with, particularly in jurisdictions that have significant immigrant populations."

Mendoza-Almendarez agreed, saying that hiring DACA beneficiaries is a way for law enforcement agencies to put more “well rounded” officers on the force and to make inroads with immigrants.

“I think that’s one step in helping to increase trust with our undocumented community,” he said.

Farrow said his department is fully staffed and that he has recruited one DACA recipient under the new law.

“I think as time goes on, and more and more chiefs and communities understand that this law is there, and here’s the process to do it, I think it’s going to grow,” he said.

Acevedo said the Aurora Police Department was actively recruiting those now eligible for employment under the new law and that the first thing he did when the legislation passed was promote it on a local Spanish-language news station.

“We have started educating the community and we’re hopeful that we will end up getting good candidates,” he said.

Mendoza-Almendarez is among the first people Acevedo hopes to recruit. The two met when Mendoza-Almendarez was a teenager in the Austin Police Department's explorer program and remained friends.

The new opportunity is one he and other DACA recipients welcome, Mendoza-Almendarez said.

“If these people are willing to do so, why are we not allowing people to do that?”