WASHINGTON, D.C. – Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she supports changing her state’s flag after residents demanded it be replaced.

Newburyport, Massachusetts, locals pushed a resolution demands that the City Council support an effort to replace the state’s flag and seal. The residents argue that the imagery helps promote what they call the state’s racist history.

‘There are people who are reconsidering the flag in Massachusetts, and I support those efforts,’ Warren told Fox News in a brief exchange on Capitol Hill.

Newburyport residents Marianna Vesey and Linda Lu Burciaga have led the movement, according to the town’s local paper. The flag and seal both depict a Native American holding a bow and arrow. At the top is an arm holding a sword. ‘She seeks by the sword a quiet place under liberty’ is emblazoned in Latin.

Vesey said the state seal supports the idea that White people are ‘in charge of this world and that we have to subdue the Native American people’ through a ‘colonializing and violent depiction.’

‘One of the reasons that we can ignore this so easily is that our White supremacy culture has really allowed for the disappearance of the Native American world,’ she said. ‘We’re really trying to say that they are not gone. They are here among us, and we really need to not only recognize that but to honor it.’

Meanwhile, Burciaga, who called the state flag and seal problematic, criticized the imagery by saying it shows a White hand holding a colonial sword over a Native American’s head.

This is not the first time Warren has picked a fight over a state flag. While running as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, the senator said she supported removing the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi state flag.

Mississippi adopted a new flag in 2021.

Ned Price will step down from his role as a spokesman for the State Department for a new senior position within the department, officials said. 

Price had been the face of the State Department since Jan. 20, 2021. He will now work directly for Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

‘Ned’s firm grasp of the policies underlying our messaging made him that much more effective in his role,’ Blinken said in a statement.. On a personal level, I have constantly benefited from his counsel, as have so many members of the Department. Fortunately, I’ll be able to continue to do that, as Ned will continue to serve at State, working directly for me.’

This story is breaking. Please check back for updates. 

Not long ago, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was courting Reps. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., in the multi-day speaker’s election. The California Republican finally flipped those lawmakers and prevailed on the 15th ballot to be elected House speaker.

It’s unclear who McCarthy may try to court next. But what McCarthy might pursue is normalcy in the House so Republicans can govern in their new majority. The looming clash over the debt ceiling may award McCarthy an opportunity to find accord in politics. Even with President Biden.

The duo will have to get together in some form on the debt ceiling sooner or later. But it’s unclear if McCarthy may try to use this juncture to govern. 

The president and the speaker had one in-person meeting a few weeks ago. That didn’t really count as negotiating — yet. It’s best described as they were ‘talking about something’ in respect to the debt ceiling — even though Biden said he wouldn’t negotiate.

McCarthy could seek a compromise on some sort of spending package. But it’s unclear how this is going to turn out. McCarthy clasped the speaker’s gavel in the wee hours of Saturday morning, January 7. It was the wildest speaker’s election since 1859. McCarthy is now forced to govern. The right may abhor the policies of President Biden and Democrats, but the president and congressional Democrats ran the table in 2021 – advancing nearly every component of their legislative agenda. Sometimes they even did it on a bipartisan basis.

There was the $2 trillion COVID bill Democrats approved in March 2021 on their own. There was the bipartisan infrastructure bill. A bipartisan measure to produce computer chips and fight back against China. There were no government shutdowns. Lawmakers approved a bipartisan measure to assist veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. The sides even crafted a modest agreement to expand some background checks and increase access to mental health after a spate of mass shootings.

It’s far from clear what President Biden and McCarthy can ever conjure up when it comes to the debt limit, not to mention the goal of averting a government shutdown this fall. But a nearly ebullient McCarthy departed the White House conclave with a measured skip in his step.

‘There’s no agreement. But I left this meeting with a better perspective than I had walking into the meeting,’ said McCarthy. ‘I felt as though we were honest with one another. There are times where we were far apart. But we’re not.’

That doesn’t sound like the customary fire and brimstone rhetoric which rains down from many House Republicans these days.

McCarthy could try to set a tone for governing. Especially ahead of a few topsy-turvy months concerning the debt ceiling. No one’s rattled yet. All it could take is a market shock to spark panic. The Treasury Department says the U.S. will hit the debt ceiling in early June. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts the date falls later in the summer. No one truly knows. But that’s why some wonder about courting calm.

‘I would feel better if I (were) the markets based on the meeting I had today (with the President),’ said McCarthy after the White House session.

Not all House Republicans crave political tranquility. The GOP base — and certainly those aligned with former President Trump — regularly sow chaos. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., recently tangled with Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., at the first meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee over a proposal to bar lawmakers from bringing firearms into the panel’s hearing room.Boebert then charged that Huffman was ‘wasting time on political stunts.’

During a debate on the House floor, Boebert lampooned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

‘In western Colorado, we call that a fun weekend,’ quipped Boebert of the ATF.

McCarthy went out of his way to embrace Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and restore her committee assignments after Democrats bounced Greene from panels in 2021. However, McCarthy found himself shushing Greene when she hectored President Biden during his State of the Union address last month. Greene was again in the spotlight when she called for ‘a national divorce’ and asked for red and blue states to separate.

At her first hearing before the House Oversight Committee, Greene argued that the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) violated the ‘civil rights’ of rioters when they laid siege to the Capitol two years ago. Greene also took up the cause of Ashli Babbitt who U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael Byrd shot and killed when she tried to break into the Speaker’s Lobby just off the House floor in the middle of the Jan. 6 riot.

The U.S. Capitol Police and Washington, D.C. prosecutors cleared Byrd. The USCP’s Office of Professional Responsibility says Byrd acted properly since he was authorized to use lethal force ‘when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life including the officer’s own life or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury.’

Greene’s position forced McCarthy to wade back into the Jan. 6 milieu.

‘I think the police officer did his job,’ answered McCarthy when asked by reporters if he agreed with Greene’s suggestion that Byrd murdered Babbitt.

We haven’t even mentioned the headaches posed for House Republicans by Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., and his long list of lies, fabrications and fables. Boebert, Greene, Santos and a few other controversial House Republicans generate most of the press coverage on Capitol Hill these days. The gripping, contentious election for speaker set the tone for what the public expects from the GOP majority. That’s augmented by anything that is outlandish, provocative or fiery from brash voices in the Republican Conference.

Republicans try to mitigate turmoil with oversight hearings and discussion about policies which the public cares about. The border. Fentanyl. China. Inflation. The cost of eggs. Crime. But it’s far from clear that those efforts resonate more with the public than the customary Republican invective.

That’s why some may hope for a modicum of congressional serenity. Polling data after the 2022 midterm elections suggested that voters rejected chaos fueled by candidates aligned with former President Trump. That’s one reason Republicans failed to capture the Senate and partly why the GOP made only minimal gains in the House. Some handicappers expected the party to flip up to 50 seats.

So as McCarthy enters his second month in the Speakership, he faces a challenge of governing. President Biden’s poll numbers are weak. A Fox News poll found that only 36% of all voters embraced the way Biden handled the economy. A mere 31% supported his approach to inflation. The President’s overall job performance rating clocked in at 44%. That’s down three points from January of last year. It marked a full 10 point decline for the president since April 2021.

Nothing great there. But perception of the GOP’s most-extreme ideologies don’t help Republicans with middle-of-the-road voters who are exhausted by mayhem. Unfortunately for the GOP, bedlam could be on full display this summer and fall if there is a brawl over raising the debt ceiling or a potential government shutdown.

The midterms revealed that voters desire order. Not tumult.

Republicans campaigned in 2022 that if voters awarded them the House, they would see action. 

So far, they’ve seen drama in the Speaker’s race election and hyperbolic rhetoric from rank-and-file Republicans.

The only way Republicans can govern is to lower the temperature and deliver results.

House Republicans on Tuesday called on the White House to answer whether it suppressed a statement from the National Archives issued in response to President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. 

The alleged suppression was revealed during a Jan. 31 interview of National Archives general counsel Gary Stern by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability interview. 

Stern told the Committee that NARA drafted a statement on Jan. 9 in response to the news of President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, but someone outside NARA withheld its release from the public. 

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said Stern confirmed with the Committee that Biden can publicly release his communications between his attorneys and NARA but has failed to do so. 

‘Indeed, the Committee learned that President Biden is ‘free to release’ all of his representatives’ communications and can be completely transparent with the American people, if he chooses,’ Comer wrote in a Tuesday letter to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients. 

‘The Committee’s transcribed interview with NARA General Counsel Gary Stern raises more questions regarding the Biden Administration’s involvement in suppressing information related to President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents.’ 

Comer said the Committee has, on several occasions – Jan. 10, 13, and 15 – requested documents from the White House regarding the president’s mishandling of classified materials. The Chairman reiterated those requests in his letter to Zients. 

Comer also requested that the White House release Biden’s personal attorney’s communication with NARA, setting a deadline of March 21. 

Later Tuesday, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called Comer’s claims of White House suppression ‘misleading’ and contradicted by Stern’s interview transcript. 

Raskin called on Comer to release the full transcript of the voluntary transcribed Committee’s interview with Stern. 

‘Committee Republicans continue to make unfounded accusations of disparate treatment by the National Archives and the Department of Justice in their efforts to preserve presidential records and secure classified records,’ Raskin said. 

The Democratic lawmaker released a previously undisclosed letter sent during the previous Congress demonstrating the DOJ’s request to the NARA not to disclose information to the Committee so as to ‘protect the integrity of our ongoing work.’ 

Raskin said Stern had identified the requested documents within a week Comer’s letter and NARA provided those documents for the DOJ to review before the Committee’s requested deadline. 

In Stern’s interview, Raskin said, the general counsel confirmed that the NARA is committed to producing documents responsive to the Committee Republican’s requests while ensuring that it does not interfere with the DOJ’s ongoing investigations. 

‘Committee Republicans have failed to identify any evidence to support their irresponsible claims that the National Archives and the Department of Justice are politically biased and have been uncooperative with their investigation,’ Raskin said. ‘I’m calling on Chairman Comer to release the full, complete and unedited transcribed interview with Mr. Stern, so that the American public can evaluate the facts free from partisan spin.’  

Since the November discovery, Biden’s attorneys have uncovered other documents and so has the FBI, which searched his Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, homes as well as the Penn Biden Center, the think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. Biden has turned over records voluntarily and agreed to the searches.

Discovery of the classified documents touched off a special counsel probe by the Justice Department.

After the news first surfaced about Biden documents, former Vice President Mike Pence said he also had found classified information at his home, and the FBI discovered an additional document with classified markings after he allowed them to search his home in Indiana. Archives officials have asked administrations going back to the Reagan presidency to comb through their records to make sure there are no more classified records or other items that should belong with the Archives.

The issue took on greater significance since former President Trump insistently retained classified material at his Florida estate, prompting the unprecedented FBI seizure of thousands of pages of records last year.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House and NARA for comment. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

The Biden administration’s reported consideration of reinstating family detention for migrants at the southern border marks the latest shift to the center by the administration — which has as a result come under heavy fire from left-wing groups for its moves to secure the border.

Multiple outlets reported on Monday that the administration is considering reviving the detention of migrant families who cross the border illegally. Such a move would mark a significant reversal for the administration — which ended the practice in 2021 and instead released migrant family units into the U.S. interior with notices to appear in court or report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said in a statement that ‘no decisions have been made as we prepare for the Title 42 Public Health Order to lift.’

The spokesperson was referring to the coming end to Title 42, a Trump-era order implemented at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic which allows for the rapid expulsion of migrants at the southern border for public health reasons.

That order is ending on May 11 along with the ending of the COVID-19 public health emergency, and has renewed fresh concerns about a massive spike in migration when the expulsions end.  The administration said last year that it believed that migrant encounter numbers could reach up to 14,000 a day when the order lifts.

That would be on top of what have been historic numbers for the time of year, with 156,000 migrant encounters in January after the 251,000 in December — which marked a new record for any month.

But with the order finally ending, the administration has been taking stricter measures at the border. Alongside a humanitarian parole program that allows 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti in each month, the administration in January expanded Title 42 expulsions to include those nationalities. Those expulsions are expected to continue until Title 8 authorities after May. The administration noted that, despite the high numbers in January, they were significantly lower than December — which officials tied to the new measures.

Most controversially for the left, last month the administration rolled out a proposed rule that would automatically make illegal immigrants who crossed the border illegally and who have failed to claim asylum in a country through which they have traveled.

That ineligibility presumption immediately drew comparisons to the Trump-era transit ban. The administration has repeatedly rejected that comparison — noting it is expanding legal asylum pathways, and is even expanding the use of a CBP One app to allow migrants to make appointments and upload pictures to make asylum claims at ports of entry.

‘We are a nation of immigrants, and we are a nation of laws. We are strengthening the availability of legal, orderly pathways for migrants to come to the United States, at the same time proposing new consequences on those who fail to use processes made available to them by the United States and its regional partners,’ Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement announcing the rule.

But that has drawn strong left-wing pushback, including from immigration activists and some top Democrats, who believe that the administration is chipping away at the right to asylum and is going back on its promises to move away from the Trump-era.

That anger only intensified with the reports on Monday evening that family detention is being resurrected later this year. Some left-wing Democrats immediately took aim at the administration.

‘Locking immigrant families and children into cages along the border is dangerous, ineffective, and wrong,’ Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, said. ‘The Biden Administration did the right thing by ending family detention. We can’t go back.’

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., called the reports ‘deeply disturbing’ and said it would be a ‘grave mistake’ to reinstitute family detention.

‘Instead of relying on costly failed policies that traumatize migrants and cruelly encourage more families to separate, we must focus on building a safe and humane immigration system.’

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is unlikely to see any support from Republicans on the issue. Conservative lawmakers have so far been muted on the asylum rule, taking a wait-and-see approach while attacking the expansion of the humanitarian parole program. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said the asylum rule’s success would be determined by the administration’s political will.

‘The Biden administration has made some proposed rule changes, but the burden is on them to prove that they actually will work,’ he said at the border last week. ‘And that they actually have the political will to defy some of their open borders base in order to fix that catch-and-release system that’s responsible for a lot of the asylum-seekers simply melting into the landscape, never to be heard from again.’

Republicans have blamed the administration for the crisis at the border, arguing that it was the sweeping rollback of Trump-era policies at the beginning of the administration that fueled the crisis in the first place.

The administration has pushed back against that criticism, instead calling for Republicans to back the White House’s funding requests for the border and to pass an immigration reform bill. Republicans have rejected that bill due to its inclusion of a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S.

Advocates for transgender youth in New Hampshire say four bills being considered in three legislative committees would lead to one result: harm to an already vulnerable population.

Two of the measures heard Tuesday would create a ‘parents’ bill of rights’ to expand parental oversight over curriculum and school activities. The House killed a similar bill last year after Republican Gov. Chris Sununu promised to veto it, but conservative lawmakers in both chambers are pushing new versions this session. Sununu hasn’t taken a position on the new bills.

Sen. Sharon Carson, sponsor of a new Senate bill, said it no longer requires schools to automatically notify parents about students’ sexuality or gender identity. But it would require school officials to answer honestly if parents ask.

‘They cannot lie to a parent,’ she told the Senate Education Committee. ‘What lesson are you teaching a child when you say that it’s OK to lie to your parents? As a parent, I find that appalling.’

Many states with Republican-controlled legislatures have enacted similar measures, fueled by parents’ frustration with schools that boiled over during the coronavirus pandemic. And it was the first bill that U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy formally announced earlier this month, fulfilling a major part of the GOP’s election campaign platform last year.

State lawmakers across the country have been approving measures aimed at LGBTQ individuals, from bills targeting trans athletes and drag performers to measures limiting gender-affirming care. Republican lawmakers in more than two dozen states have pushed for bans on gender-affirming care this year, targeting what doctors and psychologists widely consider medically necessary care.

New Hampshire is considering one bill that would designate gender-affirming care for minors as ‘child abuse,’ and another that would ban gender-affirming health care for minors; ban teaching about gender identity in public schools, and weaken the state’s ban on so-called conversion therapy.

Rep. Terry Roy, a Republican from Deerfield, said he sponsored the latter bill to generate discussion.

‘If it turns out that this gender-affirming care is the best thing for our children, then prove it, and then it will be so,’ he told the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee. ‘But if it can’t be proven, then we need to put a pause on it before we do damage to our children that we cannot repair.’

But Rep. Alissandra Murray said the bill has sparked hate, not debate. Murray, a transgender nonbinary Democrat from Manchester, said they received dozens of angry messages about the bill this week. One man said such bills are necessary to protect children ‘from your degenerate filth’ and that when white nationalists take power, LGBTQ individuals ‘will not be able to hold public office or be around children in any capacity.’

‘Clearly, these bills enable hate, they enable violence, and they dehumanize and ostracize trans and queer people, making it even harder to exist in a world that is set against us,’ Murray said.

New Hampshire lawmakers also are considering a bill sponsored by Democrats to provide protections to out-of-state patients accessing gender-affirming health care in New Hampshire. But much of the focus was on the other bills when LGBTQ advocates, including health care providers, parents, students and faith leaders, rallied outside the Statehouse early Tuesday morning.

Abi Maxwell, the mother of a 10-year-old transgender girl, told the crowd that her family moved out of their small town because her daughter was bullied by children and adults alike for her gender.

‘My daughter is just a child like any other and she, like any child, needs to be affirmed and supported in her school, and she need access to the medical care recommended by doctors,’ Maxwell said. ‘That seems so obvious, so basic to what we know about raising healthy children, yet here I am again fighting to protect these rights.’

Former President Donald Trump is pondering his running mate options for another presidential run in 2024, and he is reportedly ‘strongly’ considering former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

Axios reported that Lake is among a short list of women being considered by the former president, as he looks for a way to gain support from White suburban women needed to beat President Biden in 2024.

Lake is a former television news anchor who unsuccessfully ran for Arizona governor in November against Democrat Katie Hobbs.

Trump endorsed Lake during her 2022 campaign. Lake has likewise backed the former president. 

Friends of Trump, though, told Axios that Lake’s downside is that she could outshine him.

Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump, did not immediately respond to questions about the Axios report.

But Cheung commented to Axios, saying, ‘Anyone who thinks they know what President Trump is going to do is seriously misinformed and trying to curry favor with ‘potential’ V.P. candidates.’

He added that Trump will choose his running mate on his own time, and anyone ‘playing the media game are doing so at their own peril.’

Lake, on Tuesday, still had her sights set on becoming the Arizona governor.

‘I am 100% dedicated to serving as Arizona Governor,’ she told Fox News Digital. ‘I will also work to make sure President Trump gets back in the White House ASAP. Anything outside of those two goals is nothing but a distraction.’

‘Our best days are ahead of us, and it all starts with electing America-First candidates all across this country,’ Lake added.

A bill that would prohibit the spouses of South Dakota state lawmakers from serving as lobbyists was defeated Monday in the state House.

Backers described the bill as a much-needed ethics measure, while opponents said it targeted Republican Sen. Julie Frye-Mueller, of Rapid City, and went too far.

Just a month ago, Frye-Mueller was suspended and censured over harassing a legislative aide in a discussion on vaccines and breastfeeding. The exchange occurred in the presence of Frye-Mueller’s husband, Mike Mueller, who is a private lobbyist with the conservative group South Dakota Citizens for Liberty.

He also testified this session in support of a resolution expressing sympathy for those facing charges for the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. That resolution failed to win passage.

Democratic Rep. Linda Duba, who championed the lobbyist measure in the House, said the bill was meant to address ‘a situation in state government that we need to clean up.’

‘This is not targeted at one individual as you might think,’ Duba said. ‘This can happen ongoing if we do not take this action today.’

The measure previously passed the Senate with the backing of Republican Sen. Mike Rohl. He argued legislators are currently not allowed to lobby until several years after leaving office and described the restriction as a common-sense guardrail.

‘It would be extremely easy to be able to hire a spouse to lobby on behalf of something for you, and that money be easily transferred to a legislator,’ Rohl said in an earlier hearing.

Critics, however, said it would have blocked bills that would be good for all citizens, and caused legal action because the bill didn’t distinguish between not-for-profit, volunteer lobbyists with paid, registered lobbyists, as the court has.

‘This bill is like a shotgun blast where a rifle shot might be appropriate,’ Republican Rep. Jon Hansen said.

Similar bills have been proposed in the past and lawmakers are considering taking it up again.

Residents of Vermont’s largest city will vote Tuesday on whether to create a community police oversight board that would have the authority to discipline Burlington police officers, including the chief.

Mayor Miro Weinberger, a Democrat, vetoed a similar measure in 2020 following protests over several use-of-force incidents by Burlington officers and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.

This time advocates gathered enough signatures to get the latest proposal on Tuesday’s Town Meeting Day ballot. If the charter change passes, it would need to be approved by the Legislature and governor.

‘This proposal codifies the principle that police should not oversee themselves. They are accountable to the communities that they serve,’ said Burlington City Councilor Gene Bergman, a progressive, at a recent event promoting the measure.

A number of cities have community oversight boards, but not many have discipline authority. Advocates say the Burlington proposal is based on models in Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. But Weinberger, who along with the acting police chief opposes it, wrote to the City Council that police oversight systems in those cities are ‘dramatically different from what is proposed for Burlington in numerous ways, including their disciplinary authority, structure, accountability, and more.’

Similar to the City Council’s 2020 resolution to reduce the size of the police department by 30%, ‘this initiative is a risky experiment with Burlington’s public safety with little to no precedent or planning,’ Weinberger wrote. He also said it will undermine efforts to rebuild the police department. The city already has a volunteer Burlington Police Commission that reviews all complaints and police uses of force, he said.

Berman pushed back against critics, saying it’s not an experiment, is not biased against police and does not remove the chief from disciplinary decisions. The board must find just cause for discipline, and officers have rights to appeal, he said.

‘Clearly community trust in police has eroded. We know trust is critical for public safety. And to restore and maintain trust we need greater community oversight,’ Bergman said.

The co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s, who got their ice cream start in Burlington and have been pushing for police accountability around the country, also had their say.

‘Burlington has long been home to bold ideas about how to build a better world,’ said Jerry Greenfield. ‘Over the last three decades we’ve seen the city thrive when it leans in and lives up to the values of its residents. That’s what ballot item seven is about. It’s about creating independent civilian oversight of the Burlington police department in order to improve our public safety right here.’

Kansas legislators are considering a proposal that many disability rights advocates say would encourage employers to keep paying disabled workers less than the minimum wage, bucking a national trend.

A Kansas House bill would expand a state income tax credit for goods and services purchased from vendors employing disabled workers, doubling the total allowed to $10 million annually. A committee approved it Monday, sending it to the full House for debate, possibly later this week.

Vendors qualify now by paying all of their disabled workers at least the minimum wage, but the measure would allow vendors to pay some workers less if those workers aren’t involved in purchases of goods and services to earn the tax credit. Supporters argue the bill would enable more vendors to participate, boosting job and vocational training opportunities for disabled people.

The Kansas debate comes as employers nationally have moved toward paying at least the federal hourly minimum wage of $7.25. About 122,000 disabled workers received less in 2019, compared to about 295,000 in 2010, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report to Congress in January.

Critics argue that below-minimum-wage jobs exploit workers such as Trey Lockwood, a 30-year-old Kansas City-area resident with autism, who holds down three part-time jobs paying more than the minimum wage. At one of them, The Golden Scoop ice cream shop, he greets customers and makes ice cream with a ‘spinner,’ a machine he said is like a washing machine. He has money to buy clothes and other things.

‘I feel good about that,’ he said.

His mother, Michele Lockwood, said employers who pay less than the minimum wage aren’t fostering independence.

Neil Romano, a member of the National Council on Disability, agreed, adding, ‘It is very much against the flow of history.’

But other advocates and operators of programs questioned about their wages said the severity of some physical, intellectual and mental disabilities mean such programs can’t be eliminated without depriving people of valuable opportunities.

Cottonwood Inc., in Lawrence in northeastern Kansas, handles packaging for some companies. Its wages are based on the prevailing industry standard in the area of more than $15 an hour, adjusted for a worker’s productivity. As workers get more productive, they earn higher pay.

CEO Colleen Himmelberg said Cottonwood helps workers who need one-on-one support that other employers won’t provide.

‘They’re likely not going to help someone toilet or clean up an accident. There’s the reality,’ Himmelberg said. ‘But that person can work here and still earn a paycheck.’

Pat Jonas, president and CEO of the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation in Wichita, Kansas, said the goal is a more ‘user friendly’ tax credit program shorn of a big burden for some vendors. If employers currently want to participate, while also maintaining below-minimum-wage jobs as vocational training, they must set up a new, separate company or nonprofit paying workers at or above the minimum wage.

‘It’s just sad that everyone can’t be pulling in the same direction,’ Jonas said, adding that the foundation has always paid at or above the minimum wage.

Thirteen states bar below-minimum-wage jobs for disabled workers, including California, Colorado and Tennessee, according to the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which promotes inclusive job policies. Virginia lawmakers sent a bill last month to Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and there’s a bipartisan proposal for a national ban in Congress.

Andy Traub, a Kansas City-area human resources consultant who works with The Golden Scoop and much larger businesses, said there might be a limited place for sheltered workshops, but ‘not as a default setting.’ Groups serving the disabled ought to be required to help them try ‘competitive’ jobs first, he said.

The federal law allowing an exemption from paying the minimum wage dates to the 1930s. It is based on the premise that a lower wage offsets an assumed lower productivity among disabled workers and exempted employers must regularly study how quickly employees do their work. The January report to Congress said 51% of exempted employers’ disabled workers make less than $3.50 per hour and close to 2% earn less than 25 cents hourly.

Some advocates argue they’re still battling traces of attitudes from decades ago, when many disabled people were put in institutions and not educated.

They cite the mid-February meeting of a Kansas legislative committee that highlighted the tax credit proposal’s provisions. The chair of the committee handling the bill, state Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Kansas City-area Republican, defended programs paying below the minimum wage.

‘They are people that really can’t do anything,’ Tarwater told his committee. ‘If you do away with programs like that, they will rot at home.’

Days later, Tarwater said he was referring to severely disabled people. But his comments appalled national and state disability rights groups.

Connecticut state Rep. Jane Garibay, a Hartford-area Democrat, said being paid fairly is ‘part of being valued as a human being.’ She lives with an adult niece with Down syndrome and is sponsoring a bill that would require Connecticut employers to pay workers with intellectual disabilities the state minimum wage, $15 an hour, if they can do a job.

‘It’s as if, as a woman, I would get paid less than a man for doing the same job. We’ve been there, right?’ Garibay said. ‘If you’re doing the same job, it should be the same wage.’

In the Kansas City area, the nonprofit Golden Scoop ice cream shop opened in April 2021 paying its workers $8, plus tips — higher than the state’s $7.25 minimum wage. Amber Schreiber, its president and CEO, praises disabled workers as loyal and enthusiastic. Golden Scoop hopes to open another shop and a plant making ice cream to sell wholesale.

In the Washington D.C. area, a nonprofit, Melwood, phased out below-minimum-wage jobs starting in 2016. President and CEO Larysa Kautz said Melwood had to shut down a print shop with disabled workers doing menial tasks, but it started a recycling sorting service. The organization does government landscaping jobs across the area, and between 900 and 1,000 of its 1,300 workers have significant disabilities, she said.

The report to Congress in January said the number of employers with exemptions allowing them to pay below the minimum wage dropped to fewer than 1,600 in 2019 from more than 3,100 in 2010. Romano said it should fall to 1,300 this year.

‘It requires innovative thinking,’ Kautz said. ‘But there are so many of us that have done it.’