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National

Chip makers who want access to billions of dollars in new federal funding will first have to figure out how workers will access affordable child care, per a new requirement from the Commerce Department.

Why it matters: Parents, particularly women, can't go to work if they can't find child care — a problem that's only grown more acute, first in the pandemic and now in the tight labor market. 

Driving the news: The move is a clear acknowledgement from the administration that child care issues are intertwined with the economy and employment. 

It's also a way for the administration to make progress on expanding child care access after its efforts to pass any nationwide policy fell short. 

The multi-billion dollar CHIPS bill was signed into law last year as a way to bolster the domestic production of semiconductors — a vital component for almost every electronic device we use today — and to help prevent future supply chain crises.

How it works: Companies who want to tap a slice of the $39 billion in funding set aside to build chip manufacturing plants will be required to submit a plan explaining how facility workers, as well as construction workers, will access child care, according to a presentation from the Commerce Department shared with Axios. 

The agency is agnostic on how companies get this done. They could build company-run onsite facilities, or outsource to a vendor. Companies could sponsor care directly or provide vouchers, discounts or cash. 

They'd need to understand what kind of care is actually available in the region, amid a nationwide shortage with a lot of regional variation.

The need for these plans runs along supply and demand lines. In many areas there aren't enough child care workers or facilities, and costs are unaffordable for people who might want to take these chip-related jobs. 

In some regions, care for one child costs 14-18% of a construction workers' gross wages, the presentation says.

What they're saying: The Commerce department said this was a necessary step to take, considering how low unemployment is in the regions looking to build plants. And child care support is a way to draw more workers into the labor market.

"We're not doing this for the sake of putting points on the board for child care policy, but we are acknowledging that when you look at the labor market right now, one of the largest factors keeping people out of the labor market is caregiving responsibilities," Caitlin Legacki, a senior adviser at the Commerce Department, told Axios.  

What's next: The department is set to release its application on Tuesday, as the New York Times first reported, and companies will have to start figuring out child care strategies.

Chip makers must provide child care plan for fund access

The move is a way for the administration to make progress on expanding child care access.

Illustration of a wooden bead and wire child's play set with a dollar sign created from the twisting wire 

CHIP funding

Economy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

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Hundreds of sites important to Black history are at risk of disappearing as buildings sit abandoned, forgotten, or dismissed amid urban renewal and climate change.

Why it matters: The sites tell stories about abolition, civil rights, and Black entertainment. 

Details: Axios Local reporters from around the country this Black History Month searched their cities for sites linked to the story of Black Americans and assessed the status of those sites.

Axios San Antonio's Madalyn Mendoza found that East Commerce Street hotels and restaurants, which comprised a chunk of the city's midcentury Negro Motorist Green Book destinations, had been razed. 

Axios Detroit's Joe Guillen reports that Detroit's Paradise Valley nightclubs, known for hosting music legends like Duke Ellington, were destroyed decades ago in the name of urban renewal.

Axios Boston's Steph Solis found that the Harriet Tubman House, founded as a lodging space for Black women who had migrated from the South, has been sold to a developer.

Zoom out: Buildings like the Ben Moore Hotel in Montgomery, Alabama, where the Montgomery Bus Boycott was planned, have been sitting in ruins for decades, Candacy Taylor, a cultural documentarian, tells Axios.

The facilities are locked in back-and-forth battles among previous owners, cities, nonprofits, developers and lackluster fundraising initiatives. 

The Rossonian Hotel, once the heart of Black Denver's Five Point neighborhood and where Billie Holiday once performed, is another one.

Zoom in: Some sites have been wiped out through neglect and by weather, hurting opportunities for scholars to learn more about history that wasn't formally documented.

A series of storms and hurricanes in Houston, for example, forced officials to demolish a home in the city's Freedmen's Town -- an area built by emancipated people. The home was believed to have been connected to the Underground Railroad to Mexico.

What they're saying: "Not only do we lose memory and legacy, we lose the opportunity to leverage the power of place and historic preservation to revitalize historic black neighborhoods," Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, tells Axios. 

Taylor, the author of "Overground Railroad: The Green Book and The Roots of Black Travel in America," said the sites help show the world how Black people survived and thrived despite racism. 

Yes, but: National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is working to save 200 Black heritage places, from schools to churches. It's awarded millions in grants.

The Action Fund also is giving aid to sites once in the Green Book, including the Hotel Metropolitan in Paducah, Kentucky, a hotel founded by two Black women in 1909. 

The National Park Service also says nine sites in Mississippi connected with the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and the 1964 Mississippi Freedom project soon could be joining the National Park System. Some sites have sat abandoned.

Between the lines: Civil rights advocates, historians and social justice travelers have been mapping out sites in recent years to remember and confront episodes connected with trauma.

Some researchers say the preservation of the sites is part of a movement called "memory work," where scholars engage with the past to revise accounts of history.

The Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal advocacy group, has mapped thousands of sites linked to lynchings of Black people.

But, but, but: There is no national monument or national museum about enslavement.

One fun fact: Descendants of the Clotilda, the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa, later this year will open a heritage center in the community known as Africatown in Alabama.

Africatown was founded by formerly enslaved people on the ship. 

"Overground Railroad: The Green Book and The Roots of Black Travel in America,"

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The rush to save fading Black history

Sites tell stories about abolition, civil rights, and Black entertainment but are endangered.

Blues artist Tada Ikemasu casts a shawdow as he plays outside the Club Vegas Blues Lounge, April 13, 2013, in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Blues artist Tada Ikemasu plays outside the Club Vegas Blues Lounge, April 13, 2013, in Clarksdale, Mississippi. The state is home to many buildings that once housed Juke Joints and gave rise to blues. Many are gone. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Axios

Monday's top stories

Chip makers must provide child care plan for fund access

The rush to save fading Black history

Used car market flashing inflation warning

Yellen makes surprise visit to Ukraine to reinforce U.S. support

Supreme Court will consider constitutionality of CFPB

Kids could soon fall off Medicaid rolls

Americans' spending just isn't slowing down

America's growing hurricane wind problem

New details point to CIA role in Mandela's arrest

New COVID lab leak assessment reignites furor over pandemic origins

Generative AI's money game

California faces another blizzard as severe storms hit the Plains