During the 2016 election, Donald Trump castigated unauthorized immigrants as “murderers and rapists.” During his presidency, he continued the use of this rhetoric, explicitly linking unauthorized migrants to threatening narratives. Here, we consider three questions: Did Donald Trump and his immigration positions serve as an “anxiety trigger” for Latina/os? Are individuals with contextually stigmatized attributes especially sensitive to Trump and his policy proposals? Is Spanish language itself, an attribute negatively stigmatized in the context of the immigration issue, sufficient to increase deportation anxiety? Utilizing survey experiments of Latina/os, we demonstrate that exposure to a Trump immigration cue is sufficient to increase anxiety about deportation. We also demonstrate that stigmatized attributes predict anxiety, but do not moderate the effect of the Trump cue. Lastly, we provide evidence that survey language affects anxiety among Latina/os. In Studies 1 ( n = 736) and 2 ( n = 1,040), we show that exposure to information about Trump’s immigration agenda significantly increases reports about deportation anxiety. In Study 3 ( n = 1,734), we show that the Trump exposure condition induces heightened anxiety but that Latina/o attributes (language proficiency and use, immigration status, assessed phenotype) and identity strength have an independent effect on deportation anxiety. In Study 4 ( n = 775), we randomized bilingual respondents into Spanish or English language survey protocols and found that comparable bilinguals exposed to Spanish language report higher levels of anxiety compared to English-language survey takers.

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Context: A decade after passage, a majority of Americans now support the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and Republican efforts to repeal it outright have failed. This article investigates whether the policy itself, through its beneficiaries, changed public opinion and sowed the seeds of its defense.Methods: This study used an individual-level panel design to estimate the causal effect of implementation on opinion and electoral outcomes for ACA beneficiaries during the first year of open enrollment.Findings: Individuals who enrolled in plans on the health insurance marketplaces had significantly more positive opinions of the ACA after implementation. Previously uninsured Medicaid enrollees also reported improved opinions, though results were not statistically significant. In contrast, uninsured individuals residing in states that did not expand Medicaid became significantly less supportive of the law. Changes in opinion persisted up to the 2014 midterm elections, and there is evidence that individuals with marketplace insurance became more supportive of Democratic candidates, although not more likely to vote for them.Conclusions: Public support for the ACA was enhanced when its beneficiaries became more positive toward it during implementation. Recent changes to key ACA provisions have the potential to undermine the law's effectiveness, potentially leading to political action as benefits slowly begin to disappear.

PurposeNewly designed schools for centuries have projected fresh ideals regarding how children should learn and how human settlements should be organized. But under what conditions can forward‐looking architects or education reformers trump the institutionalized practices of teachers or the political‐economic constraints found within urban centers? The purpose of this paper is to ask how the designers of newly built schools in Los Angeles – midway into a $27 billion construction initiative – may help to rethink and discernibly lift educational quality. This may be accomplished via three causal pathways that may unfold in new schools: attracting a new mix of students, recruiting stronger teachers, or raising the motivation and performance of existing teachers and students.Design/methodology/approachWe track basic indicators of student movement and school quality over a five‐year period (2002‐2007) to understand whether gains do stem from new school construction. Qualitative field work and interviews further illuminate the mechanisms through which new schools may contribute to teacher motivation or student engagement.FindingsInitial evidence shows that many students, previously bussed out of the inner city due to overcrowding, have returned to smaller schools which are staffed by younger and more ethnically diverse teachers, and benefit from slightly smaller classes. Student achievement appears to be higher in new secondary schools that are much smaller in terms of enrollment size, compared with still overcrowded schools.Originality/valueWe emphasize the importance of tracking student movement among schools and even across neighborhoods before attributing achievement differences to specific features of new schools, that is, guarding against selection bias. Whether new schools can hold onto, or attract new, middle‐class families remains an open empirical question. Future research should also focus on the magnitude and social mechanisms through which new (or renovated) schools may attract varying mixes of students and teachers, and raise achievement.

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