The Senate confirmed Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The student-loan industry could face a crackdown as yet another Elizabeth Warren ally takes a top oversight job for Biden

Ayelet Sheffey
Thu, September 30, 2021, 2:54 PM·3 min read

The Senate confirmed Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Chopra helped create the bureau with Elizabeth Warren and cracked down on the student-loan industry.

He joins other Warren allies in Biden's ranks fighting for student-loan borrowers.

Yet another ally of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren - one of the biggest advocates for student-loan borrowers in Congress - joined President Joe Biden's ranks on Thursday.

Before leaving for recess, the Senate confirmed Rohit Chopra to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the government's consumer protection and oversight agency. Chopra previously served in the CFPB as its first student-loan ombudsman, and he was with Warren when she created the agency in 2011 to ensure people across the country are being financially protected. Now, he joins CFPB as student-loan companies face more stringent regulations leading up to February's payment restart after more than a year's pause. In recent weeks, three servicers have said they'll be shutting down, leaving 16 million borrowers to transition to new companies.

After Chopra's nomination was announced in January, Warren wrote on Twitter that she worked closely with him "to set up the CFPB and fight for America's children."

"It's terrific that President-elect Biden picked Rohit to run the @CFPB," Warren wrote. "He's been a fearless champion for consumers at the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and will be a fearless champion leading the consumer agency."

Chopra left the CFPB in 2015 and was sworn in as a Federal Trade Commissioner in 2018, during which he worked to protect consumers from unfair business practices. But his work at the agency suggests the student-loan industry will be facing much stricter oversight from here on out.

As the agency's first student-loan watchdog, he primarily focused on unearthing problems with student-loan companies and ensuring the millions of borrowers across the country were not being mistreated. Chopra helped President Barack Obama establish the Student Aid Bill of Rights, which improves how the companies interact with borrowers, and in 2013, he led the bureau in discovering that more than 7 million borrowers were in default on their debt.

Since then, the CFPB has revealed a number of findings of student-loan abuses, and in some cases, has taken legal action against the companies. For example, the agency sued Navient, one of the biggest student-loan servicing companies in the US, in 2017 for "illegally failing borrowers at every stage of repayment," including causing borrowers to take on more debt than they could pay off.

Now that Chopra is confirmed to lead the agency, he will likely continue enforcing fair student lending. During his March confirmation hearing, Chopra said he will focus on protecting Americans with debt and he acknowledged the challenges that will come in February when the student-loan payment pause lifts.

"We are at a critical moment when so many borrowers are going to have to restart their payments," Chopra said during the hearing. He added that he will ensure the restart is "happening lawfully so we can avoid an avalanche of defaults when any moratorium might end."

Three student-loan companies have already announced their plans to shut down their services at the end of this year, bringing additional administrative hurdles to the already substantial burden the Education Department has with resuming payment collections for 43 million borrowers.

And Richard Cordray, the head of the Federal Student Aid office and another Warren ally, suggested in a conference earlier this month that those shutdowns are occurring because those companies do not want to be held to higher accountability standards under Biden.

Insider reported in July on the student-loan advocates that have joined Biden's ranks, and with Chopra now leading the government's consumer watchdog agency, more reforms to the student-loan industry are likely to come.

Fourth student loan servicer quits, Warren decries 'broken system'

Aarthi Swaminathan
·Reporter
Thu, September 30, 2021,

Major student loan servicer Navient (NAVI) is quitting the federal servicing business, the company announced Tuesday, handing off its 5.5 million borrowers holding about $280 billion in federal student loans to Maximus, another servicer.

Advocates and progressive lawmakers led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) heralded the move, in light of Navient's troubled relationship with the federal government's consumer protection bodies.

But the departure adds another challenge when the Education Department (ED) looks to end the student loan payment pause in January — especially after four other servicers quit in the past year.

"Even under the best of circumstances, this is a monumental task," Persis Yu, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, told Yahoo Finance. "It's a process that needs to be managed very slowly and deliberately, [and] I have a lot of concerns about whether or not that can actually be done in the timelines that we have."

Signage is seen on the offices of Navient in Wilmington, 

Delaware, U.S., June 9, 2021. 

REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

'Need to have hand-holding to this entire process'

With Navient's announcement, roughly 16.3 million student loan borrowers will be getting a new loan servicer in 2022.

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency — which services around 8.5 million student loan borrowers — and Granite State — which services around 1.3 million borrowers — both called it quits in July. Utah Higher Education Assistance Authority, which pulled out in October 2020, serviced around 1 million student loan borrowers.

The departures come as the majority of the 43 million student loan borrowers across the U.S must start paying their loans again. The payments have been paused, without interest, since March 13, 2020, with the Biden administration recently extending the pause through January 31, 2022.

Advocates expressed deep concern about the transfer process, given the short timeline between October and February 2022. The U.S. government, which owns trillions of dollars in student loan debt, has already expressed that ending the payment pause needs to be carefully managed.

Navient’s departure aside, these transitions are going to be tricky, especially given uncertainty around whether the servicers "have the staff capacity to handle the influx of borrowers who are going to be confused and are going to need to have hand-holding to this entire process,” Yu said.

Richard Cordray, chief operating officer of Federal Student Aid, which handles the trillion-dollar student loan portfolio, said in a statement that his agency is still reviewing documents and information from both Navient and Maximus "to ensure that the proposal meets all legal requirements and properly protects borrowers and taxpayers."

Richard Nicholls, 22, a graduate in engineering from The City College of New York is on his phone after his commencement ceremony in Manhattan on May 31, 2019. REUTERS/Gabriela Bhaskar

'Behind the scenes company'

Maximus for its part has expressed its intention to provide high-quality service for student loan borrowers with the payment pause ending. Maximus spokesperson Eileen Cassidy Rivera said in a statement to Yahoo Finance that the company was "committed to ensuring a seamless transition for student loan borrowers" and to help borrowers manage the re-starting of repayment come 2022.

But Yu and other advocates also expressed concern that Maximus, despite being a government contractor over the years, had largely been out of the public eye and doesn’t provide the same services that Navient does.

Maximus has until now run debt collection and management for ED, according to a blog post by the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC). And not many borrowers are aware of the company's existence, said Yu.

"Maximus is a company that has not been subject to much public scrutiny. It is a servicer, but it doesn't do the functions that Navient, [the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency], and the other ones do," Yu explained. "So we don't have a track record of how it helps borrowers navigate income-based repayment."

And being a very "behind the scenes company," she added, "it's concerning that Navient can just choose its replacement and choose someone who is not in the public eye, and who has no track record."

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES - 2019/07/23: U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks at a press conference during the introduction of a bill to cancel students loan debt held at the Capitol in Washington, DC. 

(Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)More

Navient's problems

Navient has long been in the crosshairs of advocates and progressive lawmakers who believed the company was responsible for shoddy servicing, such as steering student loan borrowers into high-cost repayment plans or for deceptive practices from New Jersey to Washington.

Its departure was welcomed.

“Navient has spent decades misleading, cheating, and abusing student borrowers. The Federal student loan program will be far better off without them," Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in a statement.

"Ultimately, the student loan system is broken,” she continued. “The only way to guarantee that borrowers do not face the same predatory behavior from Navient’s replacement is to cancel student debt, so that no borrower’s future is held hostage by corporations profiting off their financial distress.”

—

Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.

GLOBALIZATION IS GLOBAL FORDISM

Spain to negotiate with China's Great Wall Motor to take over Nissan plant


FILE PHOTO: The logo of Nissan is seen through a fence at Nissan factory at Zona Franca during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Barcelona

Joan Faus
Fri, October 1, 2021,

BARCELONA (Reuters) -Spanish authorities and Nissan will enter talks with China's Great Wall Motor over a possible takeover of the Japanese carmaker's plant in Barcelona, which is due to shut in December, they said on Friday.

National and regional authorities, together with Nissan, also picked Spanish electric motorcycle manufacturer Silence and local engineering firm QEV Technologies - which leads an electric vehicle production hub integrated by Swedish manufacturers Inzile and Volta - to negotiate the fate of two smaller plants.

Nissan's three Barcelona plants employ around 3,000 people directly and 20,000 indirectly.

But only 1,600 direct jobs are at stake since the rest of the workers will benefit from early retirement and other measures, a CGT union source told Reuters.

The source said Great Wall was interested in the larger plant and would study whether it might have use for the other two, while Silence and QEV Technologies are only interested in the smaller factories.

"We are convinced we will be able to find solutions that are beneficial to everyone," Nissan's industrial head in Spain, Frank Torres, said in a statement.

In a severe blow to Spain, Europe's second-largest car producer, Nissan announced last year it would shut its three factories as part of a global restructuring.

It initially said the plants would close by December 2020 but later pushed the date back a year, as it started looking for an alternative industrial project with authorities.

Great Wall Motor has not made public its plan for the factories, but a source with knowledge of the talks said it could keep around 1,300 jobs.

A project presented by Belgian carmaker Punch for Nissan's plants has been left out of the upcoming negotiations, although officials said no option was fully excluded.

(Reporting by Joan Faus and Inti Landauro, editing by Andrei Khalip and Louise Heavens)

As renewable energy surges, North Texans want underserved communities to have access


Haley Samsel
Fri, October 1, 2021

Rosa Orenstein’s passion for renewable energy started with a horrific event: the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In the aftermath, Orenstein thought about how fossil fuel dependency was driving U.S. involvement in the Middle East, where Americans wanted to protect their oil interests.

“I started thinking about: How do we get off this fossil fuel dependency?” Orenstein, a Dallas attorney, said. “Then I started looking around until I came to the conclusion that solar was the ultimate answer because it can be distributed to the smallest unit and to the largest unit.”

A lot has changed since Orenstein began her journey to become chair of the North Texas Renewable Energy Group, which formed in early 2001.


Solar energy is growing more popular by the year, with 46% of U.S. homeowners stating they have given serious thought to adding panels at their home, according to a 2019 Pew Research Center survey. The Labor Department projects wind turbine technicians will have one of the fastest growth rates of all occupations between 2019 and 2029, with solar panel installers right behind.

Orenstein, who has been involved with NTREG for 18 years, knows the organization must continue its core mission of helping interested residents explore their renewable options.

But she’s also ready to lead the group toward its next goal: educating underrepresented communities about clean energy, and ensuring people of color and women benefit from the surge of renewable jobs expected in Texas.

“We have to expand and include the new technologies that are coming in, and include low-income and moderate-income communities, people of color and underserved communities so that they, too, can be part of this energy revolution,” Orenstein said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made achieving those milestones more challenging, Orenstein said. But the organization has made every effort to adapt, including taking its annual DFW Solar Tour to a virtual format.

The event, which showcases homes and businesses using renewable energy and energy conservation technology in unique ways, is set for Saturday, Oct. 2 from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

While Zoom presentations can’t replicate traveling throughout North Texas to visit solar installations, attendees will still have an interactive experience through Q&A sessions with presenters from Dallas College, the city of Cedar Hill and homeowners across the region, according to Mark Witte, NTREG’s event chair.

“We’re excited about this year because the people that are on the solar tour have done a very good job with their solar installations that produce a lot of energy, and they save a lot of money,” Witte said. “It’s good for other people to hear that message from the people that have done it and can talk to all the difficulties and whatnot associated with getting it done.”

For those less familiar with the specifics of energy efficiency or panel installation, organizers offer Solar 101 sessions to answer questions about purchasing, financing and conserving energy on their properties.

NTREG also helps members address obstacles to adopting solar technology, including opposition from homeowners associations that restrict where panels can be installed — or if they can be installed at all. Changing attitudes toward renewables have begun to reach HOAs and the attorneys who represent them, Orenstein said.

“There is a recognition that sooner or later, it’ll just be a question of where and how the installations will be installed and not whether they should be installed in any neighborhood,” Orenstein said. “I have not seen people stopping because of opposition to solar. I’ve seen people working to resolve the challenge that is in front of them, so they can get their energy system installed.”

Orenstein wants the growing opportunities to save money on energy through solar and conservation to reach communities that need it most. Before the pandemic, NTREG hosted mobile learning events where leaders would travel to community centers, including the Martin Luther King center in south Dallas, to connect residents with information and resources about solar power.

“I know that having everything up online is great, and we’re getting a lot of participation not only locally but even from overseas,” Orenstein said. “I do regret that the coronavirus has not made it possible for us to reach into other communities that we want to make sure participate in this.”

While COVID-19 has eliminated those events for the time being, NTREG is taking other steps to bring underrepresented groups into the fold.

As part of a partnership with the Texas Solar Energy Society, the organization is launching a diversity internship program that will pay students at least $15 per hour for 10 weeks of part-time work at a renewable energy company.

College students from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply, and the organization is particularly focused on recruiting from UT Arlington, Tarrant County College, Texas A&M University-Commerce and Dallas College, according to GreenSourceDFW. Orenstein is hoping to fill six positions each for the fall and spring semesters, and provide a local mentor to each student.

Those plans reflect NTREG’s growing mission, and its desire to take its educational events to the next level, Orenstein said. In the next decade of the organization’s advocacy, she and Witte hope to see the group grow participation and provide a location for visitors to witness how these energy systems work.

As technology improves and solar energy becomes more affordable to the general public, North Texas will have an important role to play, Orenstein said.

“I think it’s a question of how we handle the transition as best as possible recognizing that we live in this region that is one of the largest producers of oil and natural gas in the world,” Orenstein said. “But because of that, Texas is also one of the answers that can move the needle in clean energy once this transition starts.”

'Government Bans Words' Seems Like a Free Speech Issue

Jack Holmes
Thu, September 30, 2021

Photo credit: Andy Manis - Getty Images

For years, we had to hear about the grave threat to free speech—and a free society itself—posed by students on college campuses who had become Shock Troops in the Woke Wars. They were using the threat of pitchfork-mob cancellation to terrify conservative professors, fellow students, and visiting speakers away from speaking hard truths we all need to hear, like whatever kernels of wisdom Milo Yiannopoulos—remember that guy?—or Ben Shapiro had to offer the students of Berkeley. Never mind that these events were often stunts, ruses to create opportunities for meta-commentary about The Intolerant Left rather than an actual attempt at a dialogue on the purported issue at hand, and that these renegade free thinkers can, like anyone else, be found wielding social opprobrium to crush speech they do not like. Other people who used their speech to tell you your speech sucks became part of the authoritarian vanguard, hell-bent on SILENCING! you and forcing you to put your preferred pronouns in your email signature. This was, in its totality, a matter of grave national concern.

Anyway, now state governments are trying to ban words. We can expect to see all these same free-speech warriors snap to attention, surely. I'm not a constitutional law professor, but Government Bans Words strikes me as a First Amendment issue. The Wisconsin assembly is the latest state legislature to tackle the existential threat posed by Critical Race Theory, a phrase that has come to mean, for many people, "things that make me uncomfy," and which is so dangerous that any speech related to it must be policed by the government. The Wisconsin State Journal has the details:

In testimony before an Assembly committee last month, Wichgers said the bill would ban the teaching of concepts including “Social Emotional Learning,” “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” culturally responsive teaching, anti-racism, conscious and unconscious bias, culturally responsive practices, diversity training, equity, microaggressions, multiculturalism, patriarchy, restorative justice, social justice, systemic racism, white privilege, white supremacy and “woke,” among others.

Look, even if you think racism is not a problem in America—an impressive bit of psychological contortion!—surely you'd see there is a problem in banning "social justice" from public-school curriculums. Also, as the State Journal notes, there is no indication that any K-12 school in Wisconsin is teaching CRT, normally the purview of law schools and academic journals. (One right-wing activist said the quiet part out loud on this already, proudly admitting that the goal was to make Critical Race Theory a catch-all term for perceived excesses of the left.) But what's actually happening in reality is irrelevant.

"The idea that we are going to say that one race is superior, that one religion is better than the other, that one sex has certain characteristics that make it better than the other, that is preposterous, it should never happen," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Tuesday. Great! Luckily, no one is suggesting that and it isn't happening. (Vos of course had the unmitigated gall to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. later in this slapdick treatise.) This is a neat look into the psychology here, though, which boils down to the old adage that when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Acknowledging that Milwaukee's history and its present have been fundamentally informed by redlining policies that enforced racial segregation is not a statement that Black people are superior to white people. It happened, it is bad, and we should talk about it and do something about it.

Photo credit: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS - Getty Images

It's funny that Vos brought up religion, though, and not just because he hails from the same party as many of the folks who can be found hollering that America is a Christian nation. (James Madison is having a terrible day, wherever he may be.) All this reminds me of my days in catechism class, where asking the wrong question could shut down the discussion and possibly get you on God's naughty list. Even discussing the prospect that Black people might have a bumpier ride in America is a grave horror, it seems. The only solution, in the free state of Wisconsin, is for the government to ban such discussions in public schools. Just like in catechism class, the mark of a strong argument is refusing to have one at all. Helpfully, the State Journal provides the full list of words that, according to Republican Chuck Wichgers of Muskego, the government intends to prohibit:

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

Action Civics

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Culturally responsive teaching

Abolitionist teaching

Affinity groups

Anti-racism

Anti-bias training

Anti-blackness

Anti-meritocracy

Obtuse meritocracy

Centering or de-centering

Collective guilt

Colorism

Conscious and unconscious bias

Critical ethnic studies

Critical pedagogy

Critical self-awareness

Critical self-reflection

Cultural appropriation/misappropriation

Cultural awareness

Cultural competence

Cultural proficiency

Cultural relevance

Cultural responsiveness

Culturally responsive practices

De-centering whiteness

Deconstruct knowledges

Diversity focused

Diversity training

Dominant discourses

Educational justice

Equitable

Equity

Examine “systems"

Free radical therapy

Free radical self/collective care

Hegemony

Identity deconstruction

Implicit/Explicit bias

Inclusivity education

Institutional bias

Institutional oppression

Internalized racial superiority

Internalized racism

Internalized white supremacy

Interrupting racism

Intersection

Intersectionality

Intersectional identities

Intersectional studies

Land acknowledgment

Marginalized identities

Marginalized/Minoritized/Under-represented communities

Microaggressions

Multiculturalism

Neo-segregation

Normativity

Oppressor vs. oppressed

Patriarchy

Protect vulnerable identities

Race essentialism

Racial healing

Racialized identity

Racial justice

Racial prejudice

Racial sensitivity training

Racial supremacy

Reflective exercises

Representation and inclusion

Restorative justice

Restorative practices

Social justice

Spirit murdering

Structural bias

Structural inequity

Structural racism

Systemic bias

Systemic oppression

Systemic racism

Systems of power and oppression

Unconscious bias

White fragility

White privilege

White social capital

White supremacy

Whiteness

Woke

All these specifics, though, are a sideshow. As with all the other state governments trying to police speech, the Wisconsin legislature has no legitimate role here. A parallel bill is determined to ban private companies from doing diversity training for employees! This is the kind of thing the First Amendment was actually concerned with, as opposed to college students telling you to fuck off. The latter is what this country is all about.

OF COURSE THEY DID

'Entitled Know-It-Alls' Ivanka Trump And Jared Kushner Hijacked COVID Response, Book Says

Mary Papenfuss
Fri, October 1, 2021

“Obnoxious know-it-alls” Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner hijacked the nation’s first major response to the COVID-19 pandemic last year just as deaths from the disease were escalating — and botched it, former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham reveals in her new book.

The couple, who had no experience in government or with government policy, had no business being top White House advisers to then-President Donald Trump, Grisham wrote in her book, “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” according to an excerpt published Friday by Politico.

When Grisham initially worked as Melania Trump’s press secretary, “we had all” — including the first lady — “come to call Jared and Ivanka ‘the interns’ because they represented in our minds obnoxious, entitled know-it-alls,” she recounted.

As the coronavirus pandemic — “one of the most important crises to hit the country in a century” — emerged, the “interns were behaving true to form,” Grisham added.

After the World Health Organization first declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, the couple insisted in an Oval Office meeting that Donald Trump deliver a televised address to the nation, according to Grisham.

“Ivanka kept chiming in, ‘But I think there should probably be an address to the nation tonight,’” Grisham wrote. “Finally, Ivanka turned to her most powerful ally besides her father. ‘Jared, don’t you agree?’”

Then the push was on. The big question: What was the message?”

Eventually, Donald Trump directed everyone — including Vice President Mike Pence and Dr. Anthony Fauci — to exit into the Cabinet Room and “figure out what to do,” according to the former press secretary.

Kushner, who was “sitting next to the vice president of the United States, commandeered the meeting and was calling all the shots,” Grisham recalled.

“As many times as I had seen him behave that way with members of senior staff, that particular time made me uneasy because it was with the vice president. It was disrespectful, and I remember feeling both embarrassed and disgusted,” she added.

Despite Kushner’s power in the White House, he “was not an expert on anything he advised — shutting down borders, the economic consequences, the health consequences — yet he alone seemed to be deciding the nation’s first actions to address one of the most devastating crises in our history,” Grisham wrote.

Meanwhile, “Ivanka was also doing her ‘my father’ wants this and ‘my father’ thinks that routine, making it impossible for staff members to argue a contrary view,” she noted.

Kushner ended up writing Trump’s speech, but it included a “number of misstatements and sloppy wording,” and it “sowed confusion,” Grisham wrote, and the staff had to deal with the fallout.

Grisham says in the book that she told Donald Trump “many times” that if he lost reelection in 2020 it “would be because of Jared.”

It “was my fervent opinion that his arrogance and presumption had grown over the years, and he threw his power about with absolutely no shame,” she wrote. And when things turned out badly, he would always blame others, added Grisham, who called Kushner “Rasputin in a slim-fitting suit.”

Kushner, who was slammed by medical experts a year ago for comparing COVID-19 to the common flu, didn’t end his involvement in the nation’s coronavirus response with the speech. He met with his own team developing some kind of COVID plans even though Pence was supposed to be in charge.

The late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s grandson Max Kennedy volunteered to work on Kushner’s COVID-19 task force and ended up sending a complaint to Congress about what he had witnessed.

Kennedy detailed a poorly managed operation to procure desperately needed medical supplies run by an inexperienced crew of volunteers. There appeared to be no vision, no strategy and no real leadership, he said. He described the operation as a “family office meets organized crime, melded with ’Lord of the Flies.’”

Kushner reportedly predicted last year that New York would “suffer” with COVID, coldly adding, “That’s their problem.” He said the “free market” would solve the problem and that fighting a pandemic is “not the role of government.”

More than 400,000 Americans died of COVID during the Trump administration. As of Friday, the death toll had reached nearly 700,000.

Read the full excerpt from Grisham’s book in Politico here.

Also on HuffPost

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Rep. Cori Bush testifies 

about being raped, 

becoming pregnant 

and getting an 

abortion as a teenager

Thu, September 30, 2021, 9:36 AM

At the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on abortion rights and access, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., testified about her experience being raped, becoming pregnant and getting an abortion. Bush said, "Choosing to have an abortion was the hardest decision I had ever made. But at 18 years old, I knew it was the right decision for me."

Video Transcript

CORI BUSH: In the summer of 1994, I was a young girl all of 17 years old, and had just graduated high school. Like so many Black girls during that time, I was obsessed with fashion and gold jewelry and how I physically showed up in the world. But I was also very lost.

For all of my life, I had been a straight-A student, with dreams of attending college and becoming a nurse. But high school early on was difficult for me. I was discriminated against, bullied, and as time passed, my grades slipped and, along with it, the dream of attaining a full scholarship to a historically Black college. That summer, I was just happy that I passed my classes and that I finished high school.

Shortly after graduating, I went on a church trip to Jackson, Mississippi. I had many friends on that trip, and while there, I met a boy, a friend of a friend. He was a little older than I was, about maybe 20 years old. That first day we met, we flirted. We talked on the phone. While on the phone, he asked me could he come over to my room. I was bunking with a friend and hanging out, and said he could stop by. But he didn't show up for a few hours, and by the time he did, it was so late that my friend and I had gone to bed.

I answered the door and quietly told him he could come in, imagining that we would talk and laugh like we had done over the phone. But the next thing I knew, he was on top of me, messing with my clothes, and not saying anything at all. What is happening, I thought. I didn't know what to do. I was frozen in shock, just laying there as his weight pressed down upon me. When he was done, he got up, he pulled up his pants, and without a word, he left. That was it.

I was confused. I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. I asked myself, was it something that I had done? The next morning, I wanted to talk to him. I just wanted to say something to him, but he refused to talk to me. By the time that trip ended, we still hadn't spoken at all.

About a month after the trip, I turned 18. A few weeks later, I realized I had missed my period. I reached out to a friend and asked the guy from the church trip to contact me. I waited for him to reach out, but he never did. I never heard from him. I was 18. I was broke, and I felt so alone. I blamed myself for what had happened to me.

But I knew I had options. I had known other girls who had gone to a local clinic to get birth control, and some who had gotten abortions. So I looked through the yellow pages and scheduled an appointment. During my first visit, I found out that I was nine weeks-- nine weeks pregnant. And then there, the panic set in. How could I make this pregnancy work? How could I, at 18 years old and barely scraping by, support a child on my own? And I would have been on my own.

I was stressed out, knowing that the father wouldn't be involved. And I feared my parents would kick me out of the home. The best parents in the world, but I feared they would kick me out. My dad was a proud father, and always bragging about his little girl and how he knew I would go straight to college and become attorney general. That was his goal for me. So with no scholarship intact and college out of the foreseeable future, I couldn't bear the thought of disappointing my dad again. I knew it was a decision I had to make for myself, so I did.

My abortion happened on a Saturday. There were a few other people in the clinic room-- waiting room, including one other young Black girl. I overheard the clinic staff talking about her, saying she had ruined her life, and that's what they do, they being Black girls like us. Before the procedure, I remember going in for counseling and being told that, if I move forward with this pregnancy, my baby would be jacked up because the fetus was already malnourished and underweight, being told that if I had this baby, I will wind up on food stamps and welfare.

I was being talked to like trash, and it worsened my shame. Afterwards, while in the changing area, I heard some girls, all white, talking about how they were told how bright their futures were, how loved their babies would be if they adopted, and that their options and their opportunities were limitless. In that moment, listening to those girls, I felt anguish. I felt like I had failed.

I went home. My body ached, and I had this heavy bleeding. I felt so sick. I felt dizzy, nauseous. I felt like something was missing. I felt alone, but I also felt so resolved in my decision. Choosing to have an abortion was the hardest decision I had ever made, but at 18 years old, I knew it was the right decision for me. It was freeing, knowing I had options. Even still, it took long for me to feel like me again until most recently, when I decided to give this speech.

So to all the Black women and girls who have had abortions and will have abortions, we have nothing to be ashamed of. We live in a society that has failed to legislate love and justice for us, so we deserve better. We demand better. We are worthy of better. So that's why I'm here to tell my story. So today, I sit before you as that nurse, as that pastor, as that pastor, as that activist, that survivor, that single mom, that congresswoman to testify that, in the summer of 1994, I was raped, I became pregnant, and I chose to have an abortion.

  

Data shows vaccine mandates 

have dramatically increased 

health care worker inoculation numbers

Marquise Francis

·National Reporter & Producer

USA TODAY

Fri, October 1, 2021

At the end of a week that began with fears of severe staffing shortages at New York hospitals due to the state’s Monday deadline for health care workers to get vaccinated, data showed a dramatic increase in vaccination.

Ninety-two percent of hospital staff members and nursing home staff have now received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul reported this week. On Aug. 24, just 71 percent of hospital workers had received one dose of the vaccine, according to state figures.

“This new information shows that holding firm on the vaccine mandate for health care workers is simply the right thing to do to protect our vulnerable family members and loved ones from COVID-19,” Hochul said in a press release praising the “dramatic action” that her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, announced in late July as a way to slow the spread of the virus.

High rates of compliance with vaccine mandates are being seen in other states as well. Despite headlines showing fringe resistance nationwide, the vast majority of health care workers are getting their shots.

At Houston Methodist Hospital, one of the first to announce a vaccine mandate, just 153 hospital staff members, or 0.58 percent of more than 26,000 employees, were fired or resigned because they refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19.

Health care workers are vaccinated at a medical center in Portland, Ore. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)

At Novant Health System in North Carolina, 175 workers, or 0.50 percent, of the 35,000-person workforce have been terminated due to vaccine noncompliance. And at Indiana University Health, which employs a workforce of roughly 28,500 people, just 125 employees no longer have a job because they refused to take the vaccine.

All of these hospitals have, in turn, hired vaccinated health care workers to fill the open positions left by those who refused to be inoculated for a disease that has so far killed nearly 700,000 Americans.

Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and a public health professor at George Washington University, says mandates are critical for any kind of substantial progress on the pandemic.

“We are seeing all across the country that vaccine mandates work,” Wen told Yahoo News. “If there are people who remain unvaccinated, there is a higher likelihood that they could end up becoming infected and being out of work for that reason, [in turn] infecting other people and causing other people to be out of work.”

A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showed that unvaccinated people are 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who are vaccinated. Many hospitals saw those statistics play out in real time over the summer months when, thanks to the Delta variant, infections spiked. More than 97 percent of all COVID-19 patients in hospitals over that period were unvaccinated.

A health worker with syringes at a vaccination site in New York City. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

But for critics of the vaccine, including some health care workers who choose not to get inoculated, the data does not outweigh what they see as an infringement of personal liberty.

Dr. Mollie James, a critical care doctor in Queens, N.Y., has been treating COVID-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic. But last Monday was her last day on the job because of what she calls a “ridiculous vaccine mandate.”

“Mandates are not health care,” James told Yahoo News. “Many doctors and nurses in New York have already had COVID, so we have the protection of natural immunity — which has been shown to be far more durable than the vaccine.”

But according to a CDC study released in August, “COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone, and ... vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.” the agency says on its website.

James has been a surgeon for the past 11 years at multiple hospitals in the New York City area and two major Midwestern health systems. She’s now looking to go into a private practice and says she’s also willing to seek employment in states that don’t have vaccine mandates.

“At this point, it seems likely that every person will end up getting the virus, so early outpatient treatment should be our primary focus,” she said, adding, “My colleagues are generally supportive of me; most are infuriated that early outpatient therapy has been censored and led to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.”

Anti-vaccine protesters in Farmingdale, N.Y. (Steve Pfost/Newsday RM via Getty Images)

For many, outpatient treatment begins and ends with the COVID-19 vaccine.

“This is not just about your individual choice about whether or not to be vaccinated — it’s also about the health and well-being of everybody else around you,” Dr. Alyssa Burgart, a bioethicist and pediatric anesthesiologist at Stanford University, told Yahoo News. “And that's the core tenet of vaccination.”

As vaccine mandates for health care workers grow in popularity, a similar dynamic is playing out in school districts where vaccine mandates have been implemented.

With its 150,000 employees, New York City’s public school district is the nation’s largest. Come Friday at 5 p.m., school personnel will be required to have at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine or face termination. As of Monday, 97 percent of principals and about 95 percent of teachers had been vaccinated, according to city and teachers' union data, and about 87 percent of nonteaching staff had received the vaccine.

Still, some schools have longer noncompliant lists than others. The city’s teachers' and principals' unions have pushed back on the upcoming deadline, saying the tight window would leave many schools ill equipped. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio first announced the mandate in late August, but after an unsuccessful court challenge this week to the mandate guidance, some school staff members had only days to get vaccinated.

“At this point, principals and superintendents have been reaching out consistently to tell us that they are concerned about not having enough staff,” Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, said during a press conference last Friday. “I've heard from several schools that have anywhere between 30 and 100 people currently on a noncompliant list.”

“It’s not just teachers and administrators that are needed in schools,” Cannizzaro added. “We need to have our custodial staff, our paraprofessionals, our kitchen staff, our school aides and, of course, our school safety agents.”

The mayor’s office is choosing to move forward with the policy that could cost some staff members their jobs.

“We have thousands and thousands of vaccinated, experienced substitute teachers ready to go,” de Blasio said last week. “That's the obvious first go-to, but it's also true that central staff has thousands of educators, certified educators, who could step into different roles if needed.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio at the opening of a vaccination center for Broadway workers in April. (Noam Galai/Getty Images)

But de Blasio made clear that he hoped workers would simply comply with the mandate.

“The reality we’re seeing right now is we think the overwhelming majority of our educators and staff are going to be there on Monday, having gotten that first dose and moving forward,” he said.

While vaccine hesitancy has helped account for low inoculation rates nationwide, it’s clear that mandates, and the threat of job termination, have helped increase the percentage of vaccinated Americans.

And while critics have assailed governments and businesses that have put the mandates in place for what they perceive as infringing on their rights, Wen believes that misses the point about why vaccines are needed.

“If you are a health care worker treating vulnerable patients, if you’re a teacher working around children too young to be vaccinated, it’s your responsibility, first and foremost, to not get them sick,” she said. “If you're a health care worker, you are required to be vaccinated against the flu every year. You are required to show proof of vaccination against hepatitis, against measles and chickenpox. We need to look at COVID-19 no differently.”

Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images, John Moore/Getty Images, J. Conrad Williams, Jr./Newsday RM via Getty Images

No cheap, easy or quick fix'; Hospitals oust unvaccinated workers in preview of 50-state mandate

Ken Alltucker, USA TODAY

Sat, October 2, 2021

New York this week gave the nation an early glimpse of what the Biden administration's 50-state vaccine mandate for health care workers might look like.

The Empire State's hospitals dismissed or suspended dozens of workers for failing to meet a Monday deadline requiring workers get at least their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Anticipating service disruptions from frontline health workers quitting or getting fired, health systems from New York City to upstate delayed non-emergency operations, cut clinic hours and paid travel nurses up to $200 an hour to fill vacant shifts.

The dismissals represented a small percentage of workers at large health systems. Most holdout employees got vaccinated in the days leading up to Monday’s deadline as Gov. Kathy Hochul touted a 92% immunization rate among hospital staff this week.

"I’m not going to sugarcoat it – it’s certainly been difficult," said Bea Grause, president of the Healthcare Association of New York State.

Despite the short-term headaches, Grause said the mandate is critical "to put COVID-19 in the rearview mirror" and protect workers, patients and the communities they serve.

“There’s no cheap, easy or quick fix to it, and we’re just going to have to problem solve as we move forward,” she said.

'More and more jobs open'

President Joe Biden last month announced all hospitals that take Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement must vaccinate their workers. The agency that oversees those federal health programs has yet to announce details on when a national mandate will take effect.

While health leaders acknowledge and support mandatory vaccination, some worry workforce disruptions punctuate a widespread shortage of health care workers at hospitals and clinics nationwide. The number of health job openings swelled during the pandemic with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting 1.8 million health care openings as of July, up from 1.1 million open jobs in July 2020.

Staffing agencies that provide nurses and other temporary health care workers said requests from hospitals have surged during the pandemic. And once the Biden mandate kicks in for hospitals, requests for contract nurses are likely to go higher to fill vacancies amid a nationwide labor shortage.

New York hospitals have achieved a high vaccination rates and hospitals and health facilities have plenty of current and retired health pros to draw from. Perhaps the bigger disruptions will come in smaller communities with lower vaccination rates, said Todd Walrath, CEO of ShiftMed, which places nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses and registered nurses with hospitals and nursing homes.

"We continue to see an erosion of available workers, and more and more jobs open," Walrath said.

Nevertheless, states are pushing ahead with mandates.

Large California hospitals reported vaccination rates above 90% for a mandate that took effect Thursday for hospital and other health care workers. Two other states, Maine and Connecticut, delayed deadlines to give hospitals and workers more time to comply. Maine's vaccination deadline for health care workers was pushed back a month to Oct. 29. Connecticut's state hospital and nursing home employees must get vaccinated by Oct. 4, a week later than the state's original deadline.

Private health systems are pursing their own mandates, even in states that don't have a broader mandate for health care workers. North Carolina-based Novant Health last week suspended 375 unvaccinated workers and gave them five days to comply with its mandate. Nearly 200 were vaccinated and the remaining employees were dismissed or quit.

About 99% of the health system’s 35,000 employees across 800 locations agreed to get vaccinated.

Carl Armato, president and CEO of Novant Health, said in a statement the health system has added travel workers throughout the pandemic to plug coverage gaps. In the last week, the health system hired more than 150 health workers.

“Without a vaccine mandate for team members, we faced the strong possibility of having a third of our staff unable to work due to contracting, or exposure to, COVID-19,” Armato said in a statement. “This possibility only increases heading into a fall season with the more contagious and deadly delta variant.”

People gather at City Hall to protest vaccine mandates on August 09, 2021, in New York City.

Rural hospitals brace for mandate

Other experts agree that vaccine mandates are necessary. Not only must hospitals ensure workers are healthy, they must set an example for patients and families, said Dr. Kenneth Campbell, an assistant professor in the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.

As a former operations analyst for the Cook County Health & Hospitals System, Campbell helped implement the Chicago-based health system's policy requiring employees get flu shots. The vast majority complied. A small number of objectors were suspended.

Hospital executives are accustomed to worker shortages caused by strikes, retirements or chronic staffing gaps. And even though more workers might quit or be dismissed for refusing COVID vaccination, Campbell said it's a necessary tradeoff.

"If we don’t make this stand now, we can lose this war," said Campbell. "Thousands and thousands more lives can be lost."

Rural hospitals faced chronic doctor and nurses shortages before the pandemic began, and things worsened over the past 18 months, said Alan Morgan, CEO of National Rural Health Association.

Rural communities have higher rates of unvaccinated people, and COVID death rates are higher that metro areas. Unlike large urban hospitals that can recruit staff from big cities and suburbs, rural hospitals don't have the labor pool or financial resources to tap in times of crisis.

Morgan is concerned the federal government hasn't articulated a plan to address inevitable staffing gaps at rural hospitals. The Biden administration could reassure rural hospitals if it released a plan that included steps such as deploying public health service workers and Federal Emergency Management Agency teams, providing funding for hospitals to hire travel nurses or sharing information about available federal grants, Morgan said.

Morgan cited New York Gov. Hochul's plan to make National Guard troops available to plug staffing gaps at as the "the type of leadership we need" to assist rural hospitals.

"There are a lot of tools available," Morgan said. "But to date, there’s been no indication there's any plan, other than the administration saying we don’t anticipate a problem."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New York's COVID vaccine law provides a glimpse of Biden's mandate

Hitting the Books: Why that one uncle of yours continually refuses to believe in climate change


Andrew Tarantola
·Senior Editor
Sat, October 2, 2021

The holidays are fast approaching and you know what that means: pumpkin spice everything, seasonal cheer, and family gatherings — all while avoiding your QAnon adherent relatives like the plague. But when you do eventually get cornered by them, come prepared.

In his latest book, How to Talk to a Science Denier, author Lee McIntyre examines the phenomenon of denialism, exploring the conspiracy theories that drive it, and explains how you can most effectively address your relatives' misplaced concerns over everything from mRNA vaccines to why the Earth isn't actually flat.

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How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Other Who Defy Reason, by Lee McIntyre, published by The MIT Press.


Belief in conspiracy theories is one of the most toxic forms of human reasoning. This is not to say that real conspiracies do not exist. Watergate, the tobacco companies’ collusion to obfuscate the link between cigarette smoking and cancer, and the George W. Bush–era NSA program to secretly spy on civilian Internet users are all examples of real-life conspiracies, which were discovered through evidence and exposed after exhaustive investigation.

By contrast, what makes conspiracy theory reasoning so odious is that whether or not there is any evidence, the theory is asserted as true, which puts it beyond all reach of being tested or refuted by scientists and other debunkers. The distinction, therefore, should be between actual conspiracies (for which there should be some evidence) and conspiracy theories (which customarily have no credible evidence). We might define a conspiracy theory as an “explanation that makes reference to hidden, malevolent forces seeking to advance some nefarious aim.” Crucially, we need to add that these tend to be “highly speculative [and] based on no evidence. They are pure conjecture, without any basis in reality.”

When we talk about the danger of conspiracy theories for scientific reasoning, our focus should therefore be on their nonempirical nature, which means that they are not even capable of being tested in the first place. What is wrong with conspiracy theories is not normally that they have already been refuted (though many have), but that thousands of gullible people will continue to believe them even when they have been debunked.

If you scratch a science denier, chances are you’ll find a conspiracy theorist. Sadly, conspiracy theories seem to be quite common in the general population as well. In a recent study by Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood they found that 50 percent of Americans believed in at least one conspiracy theory.

This included the 9/11 truther and Obama birther conspiracies, but also the idea that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is deliberately withholding a cure for cancer, and that the Federal Reserve intentionally orchestrated the 2008 recession. (Notably, the JFK assassination conspiracy was so widely held that it was excluded from the study.)

Other common conspiracy theories — which run the range of popularity and outlandishness — are that “chemtrails” left by planes are part of a secret government mind-control spraying program, that the school shootings at Sandy Hook and Parkland were “false flag” operations, that the government is covering up the truth about UFOs, and of course the more “science-related” ones that the Earth is flat, that global warming is a hoax, that some corporations are intentionally creating toxic GMOs, and that COVID-19 is caused by 5G cell phone towers.

In its most basic form, a conspiracy theory is a non-evidentially justified belief that some tremendously unlikely thing is nonetheless true, but we just don’t realize it because there is a coordinated campaign run by powerful people to cover it up. Some have contended that conspiracy theories are especially prevalent in times of great societal upheaval. And, of course, this explains why conspiracy theories are not unique to modern times. As far back as the great fire of Rome in 64 AD, we saw conspiracy theories at work, when the citizens of Rome became suspicious over a weeklong blaze that consumed almost the entire city — while the emperor Nero was conveniently out of town. Rumors began to spread that Nero had started it in order to rebuild the city in his own design. While there was no evidence that this was true (nor for the legend that Nero sang while the city burned), Nero was apparently so upset by the accusation that he started his own conspiracy theory that it was in fact the Christians who were responsible, which led to the prevalence of burning them alive.

Here one understands immediately why conspiracy theories are anathema to scientific reasoning. In science, we test our beliefs against reality by looking for disconfirming evidence. If we find only evidence that fits our theory, then it might be true. But if we find any evidence that disconfirms our theory, it must be ruled out. With conspiracy theories, however, they don’t change their views even in the face of disconfirming evidence (nor do they seem to require much evidence, beyond gut instinct, that their views are true in the first place). Instead, conspiracy theorists tend to use the conspiracy itself as a way to explain any lack of evidence (because the clever conspirators must be hiding it) or the presence of evidence that disconfirms it (because the shills must be faking it). Thus, lack of evidence in favor of a conspiracy theory is in part explained by the conspiracy itself, which means that its adherents can count both evidence and lack of evidence in their favor.

Virtually all conspiracy theorists are what I call “cafeteria skeptics.” Although they profess to uphold the highest standards of reasoning, they do so inconsistently. Conspiracy theorists are famous for their double standard of evidence: they insist on an absurd standard of proof when it concerns something they do not want to believe, while accepting with scant to nonexistent evidence whatever they do want to believe. We have already seen the weakness of this type of selective reasoning with cherry-picking evidence. Add to this a predilection for the kind of paranoid suspicion that underlies most conspiracy-minded thinking, and we face an almost impenetrable wall of doubt. When a conspiracy theorist indulges their suspicions about the alleged dangers of vaccines, chemtrails, or fluoride — but then takes any contrary or debunking information as itself proof of a cover-up — they lock themselves in a hermetically sealed box of doubt that no amount of facts could ever get them out of. For all of their protests of skepticism, most conspiracy theorists are in fact quite gullible.

Belief in the flatness of the Earth is a great example. Time and again at FEIC 2018, I heard presenters say that any scientific evidence in favor of the curvature of the Earth had been faked. “There was no Moon landing; it happened on a Hollywood set.” “All the airline pilots and astronauts are in on the hoax.” “Those pictures from space are Photoshopped.” Not only did disconfirming evidence of these claims not cause the Flat Earthers to give up their beliefs, it was used as more evidence for the conspiracy! And of course to claim that the devil is behind the whole cover-up about Flat Earth could there be a bigger conspiracy theory? Indeed, most Flat Earthers would admit that themselves. A similar chain of reasoning is often used in climate change denial. President Trump has long held that global warming is a “Chinese hoax” meant to undermine the competitiveness of American manufacturing.

Others have contended that climate scientists are fudging the data or that they are biased because they are profiting from the money and attention being paid to their work. Some would argue that the plot is even more nefarious — that climate change is being used as a ruse to justify more government regulation or takeover of the world economy. Whatever evidence is presented to debunk these claims is explained as part of a conspiracy: it was faked, biased, or at least incomplete, and the real truth is being covered up. No amount of evidence can ever convince a hardcore science denier because they distrust the people who are gathering the evidence. So what is the explanation? Why do some people (like science deniers) engage in conspiracy theory thinking while others do not?

Various psychological theories have been offered, involving factors such as inflated self-confidence, narcissism, or low self-esteem. A more popular consensus seems to be that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism that some people use to deal with feelings of anxiety and loss of control in the face of large, upsetting events. The human brain does not like random events, because we cannot learn from and therefore cannot plan for them. When we feel helpless (due to lack of understanding, the scale of an event, its personal impact on us, or our social position), we may feel drawn to explanations that identify an enemy we can confront. This is not a rational process, and researchers who have studied conspiracy theories note that those who tend to “go with their gut” are the most likely to indulge in conspiracy-based thinking. This is why ignorance is highly correlated with belief in conspiracy theories. When we are less able to understand something on the basis of our analytical faculties, we may feel more threatened by it.

There is also the fact that many are attracted to the idea of “hidden knowledge,” because it serves their ego to think that they are one of the few people to understand something that others don’t know. In one of the most fascinating studies of conspiracy-based thinking, Roland Imhoff invented a fictitious conspiracy theory, then measured how many subjects would believe it, depending on the epistemological context within which it was presented. Imhoff’s conspiracy was a doozy: he claimed that there was a German manufacturer of smoke alarms that emitted high-pitched sounds that made people feel nauseous and depressed. He alleged that the manufacturer knew about the problem but refused to fix it. When subjects thought that this was secret knowledge, they were much more likely to believe it. When Imhoff presented it as common knowledge, people were less likely to think that it was true.

One can’t help here but think of the six hundred cognoscenti in that ballroom in Denver. Out of six billion people on the planet, they were the self-appointed elite of the elite: the few who knew the “truth” about the flatness of the Earth and were now called upon to wake the others.

What is the harm from conspiracy theories? Some may seem benign, but note that the most likely factor in predicting belief in a conspiracy theory is belief in another one. And not all of those will be harmless. What about the anti-vaxxer who thinks that there is a government cover-

up of the data on thimerosal, whose child gives another measles? Or the belief that anthropogenic (human- caused) climate change is just a hoax, so our leaders in government feel justified in delay? As the clock ticks on averting disaster, the human consequences of the latter may end up being incalculable.