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      Biden extends pause on federal student loan payments to end of August

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      Biden extends pause on federal student loan payments to end of AugustNearly 37 million borrowers have been affected by the pause, with a delay of $195bn of payments since start of pandemic Joe Biden announced the pause on federal student loan collections in the US will be extended until 31 August.The pause on federal student loans first started at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 under the Trump administration. This is the seventh time the pause has seen an extension since then.“We are still recovering from the pandemic and the unprecedented economic disruption it caused,” Biden said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that data from the Federal Reserve suggested that if collections were to resume, “millions of student loan borrowers would face significant economic hardship, and delinquencies and defaults could threaten Americans’ financial stability”.Nearly 37 million borrowers have been affected by the pause, with a delay of $195bn of payments since the start of the pandemic, according to the Federal Reserve of New York.In addition to the extension, the White House announced that borrowers who have defaulted or are delinquent on their loans will get a “fresh start” on their payments once collection resumes. Consequences experienced by borrowers who have defaulted on their student loans include having tax refunds withheld, wage garnishment and diminished social security benefits.“During the pause, we will continue our preparations to give borrowers a fresh start and to ensure that all borrowers have access to repayment plans that meet their financial situations and needs,” the education secretary, Miguel Cardona, said in a statement.Advocates for those with student debt, who have been pushing the Biden administration to extend the pause for weeks, praised the continuation of the pause but noted that the five-month extension was too short for borrowers and for the Department of Education to get ready to restart collections.“The pause is a temporary measure that should be in service of a long-term fix, or borrowers may be back in the same crunch four months from now,” Abby Shafroth, interim director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Loan Borrower Assistance Project, said in a statement.The announcement of the extension also comes off the back of a rally held in Washington DC on Monday urging Biden to cancel student debt outright. Calls for Biden to cancel student loans have gained momentum over the course of the pandemic. At the end of March, dozens of Democratic lawmakers signed a letter asking Biden to extend the pause until at least the end of the year and “provide meaningful student debt cancellation”.Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who signed the letter, tweeted on Tuesday that extensions could be read as “savvy politics” but still leave borrowers with instability.“I don’t think those folks understand the panic and disorder it causes people to get so close to these deadlines just to extend the uncertainty,” she tweeted.I think some folks read these extensions as savvy politics, but I don’t think those folks understand the panic and disorder it causes people to get so close to these deadlines just to extend the uncertainty. It doesn’t have the affect people think it does.We should cancel them. https://t.co/ZvkGRwliLT— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 5, 2022
      The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who also signed the letter, said that the extension was “a very good thing” but added that Biden should move forward with broader debt cancellation.“The president should go further and forgive $50,000 in student loans permanently. It’s a huge burden on so many people,” Schumer told reporters on Wednesday.As a candidate for president, Biden supported the idea of cancelling at least $10,000 of student loans per person. Since entering office, Biden has been mum on any plans to cancel student debt.Last month, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, suggested that the administration was considering policies that go beyond a pause extension saying: “The question whether or not there’s some executive action on student debt forgiveness when payments resume is a decision we’re going to take before payments resume.”TopicsUS educationBiden administrationHigher educationUS politicsJoe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Republican retracts false claim schools placing litter boxes for ‘furry’ students

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      Republican retracts false claim schools placing litter boxes for ‘furry’ studentsNebraska’s Bruce Bostelman apologises for repeating rumor that schools accommodating children who self-identify as cats A Nebraska state lawmaker apologized on Monday after he publicly cited a persistent but debunked rumor alleging that schools are placing litter boxes in school bathrooms to accommodate children who self-identify as cats.State senator Bruce Bostelman, a conservative Republican, repeated the false claim during a public, televised debate on a bill intended to help school children who have behavioral problems. His comments quickly went viral, with one Twitter video garnering more than 300,000 views as of Monday afternoon, and drew an onslaught of online criticism and ridicule.Bostelman initially said he was “shocked” when he heard stories that children were dressing as cats and dogs while at school, with claims that schools were accommodating them with litter boxes.“They meow and they bark and they interact with their teachers in this fashion,” Bostelman said during legislative debate. “And now schools are wanting to put litter boxes in the schools for these children to use. How is this sanitary?”The rumor has persisted in a private Facebook group, “Protect Nebraska Children,” and also surfaced last month in an Iowa school district, forcing the superintendent to write to parents that it was “simply and emphatically not true”.Bostelman had said that he planned to discuss the issue with the CEO of the Nebraska department of health and human services. He also alleged that schools were not allowing kids to wear flags, but didn’t give specific examples. In 2016, Lincoln’s public school district briefly asked students not to fly American flags from their vehicles after one flag was pulled from its holder, but school officials later apologized.The false claim that children who identify as cats are using litter boxes in school bathrooms has spread across the internet since at least December, when a member of the public brought it up at a school board meeting for Midland public schools north-west of Detroit.The claim was debunked by the district’s superintendent, who issued a statement that said there had “never been litter boxes within MPS schools”. Still, the baseless rumor has spread across the country, and become fuel for political candidates, amid the culture wars and legislative action involving gender identification in schools.Hours after his remarks, Bostelman backtracked and acknowledged that the story wasn’t true. He said he checked into the claims with state senator Lynne Walz, a Democrat who leads the legislature’s education committee, and confirmed there were no such incidents.“It was just something I felt that if this really was happening, we needed to address it and address it quickly,” Bostelman said.The furor over public school restrooms comes as a growing number of conservative states seek laws to ban transgender students from using bathrooms that match their gender identity. TopicsNebraskaUS politicsUS educationRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race bill

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      West Virginia Republicans miss own deadline to pass schools race billSupermajority runs out of time to greenlight House version of bill but does pass abortion restriction Republicans who enjoy a supermajority in the West Virginia legislature nonetheless failed to pass a controversial bill restricting how race is taught in public schools because they missed a midnight deadline in the final moments of the 2022 session.Butt of the joke: Bette Midler fires back at West Virginia governor Jim JusticeRead moreLawmakers spent weeks during the legislative session debating and advancing proposed bills similar to the Anti-Racism Act of 2022. It wasn’t immediately clear why Republicans waited until late on Saturday to take a final vote. The act had passed the Senate and House overwhelmingly and the vote was merely to greenlight the House version. “We took the vote, but essentially that didn’t matter because it didn’t make deadline,” Senate spokesperson Jacque Bland said, adding that the education bill now has no path to becoming law. A separate bill restricting abortion access did pass, minutes before midnight. It bars parents from seeking abortion because they believe their child will be born with a disability. It provides exemptions in the case of a medical emergency or in cases where a fetus is “non-medically viable”. Republican lawmakers appeared unhurried as the clock ticked down on Saturday, spending about an hour passing resolutions honoring two outgoing senators. Supporters of the Anti-Racism Act of 2022 said it would prevent discrimination based on race in K-12 public schools, banning teachers from telling students one race “is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”. The bill said students can’t be taught moral character is determined by race, or that a person by virtue of their race “bears responsibility for actions committed by other members of the same race”. It would have created a mechanism for reporting complaints and for the legislature to collect data on how many complaints are substantiated each year. It did not specify punishment. Legislators convened at the snowy state Capitol on Saturday with dozens of bills to finalize. The House speaker, Roger Hanshaw, arrived late to a debate on the state budget bill because he was delayed by a car accident on roads which were still being cleared. The bill dealing with disabilities and abortion was passed minutes before midnight, following 90 minutes of discussion. It now moves to the desk of the Republican governor, Jim Justice. “This is about science and morality,” said Republican Kayla Kessinger. “It’s about, ‘When does life begin?’ and whether or not it has a value.” Democrats voiced their opposition, with Evan Hansen saying the bill does nothing substantial to help people with disabilities and their families. “This is an attempt to use people with disabilities as props for an anti-abortion agenda, something that the disability community has not asked for, as far as I know – and that’s just wrong,” Hansen said. “It creates government overreach into personal family medical decisions.” A physician who violates the law could see their license to practice medicine suspended or revoked. The bill also requires physicians to submit a report, with patients’ names omitted, to the state for each abortion performed and whether “the presence or presumed presence of any disability in the unborn human being had been detected”. The reports would include the date of the abortion and the method used, as well as confirming the doctor asked the patient if they chose an abortion because the baby might have a disability. These reports must be submitted within 15 days of each abortion. That bill wasn’t the only abortion-related legislation brought forward but lawmakers declined on Saturday to take up a bill banning abortions after 15 weeks. Lawmakers voted 90-9 to send a $4.635bn budget to the governor’s desk after two hours of discussion on the House floor. The bill includes 5% pay raises for state employees and teachers and an additional bump for state troopers. The budget does not include a 10% personal income tax cut passed by the House last month. Lawmakers also promised that social workers in the foster care system will see a 15% pay raise. After a bill to provide the increases was essentially gutted, they advised the Department of Health and Human Resources to provide the raises by eliminating open positions. Additionally, lawmakers passed a bill decriminalizing fentanyl test strips, which can signal the presence of synthetic opioid in illicit drugs. Other bills repealed the state’s soda tax and banned requiring Covid-19 vaccination cards to enter state agencies or public colleges and universities. TopicsWest VirginiaRepublicansRaceUS politicsUS educationnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida bill

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      ‘Don’t Say Gay’: Disney clashes with DeSantis over Florida billEntertainment giant suspends political donations as CEO apologises for silence and governor hits back with ‘communist’ barb The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, claimed the Walt Disney Company was too cozy with communist China, as the chief executive of the tourism and entertainment criticized a state bill that bars teachers from instructing early grades on LGBTQ+ issues.Disney accused of removing gay content from Pixar films Read moreDeSantis, who has not yet signed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, also reportedly criticized Disney as “woke”, after the company’s leader opposed the legislation.Controversy surrounding the bill could cut off a significant fundraising pipeline for Florida Republicans: Disney said it would suspend political donations in the state.The move came after the Disney chief executive, Bob Chapek, experienced extensive blowback for not using the company’s influence to thwart the controversial bill.“I do not want anyone to mistake a lack of a statement for a lack of support,” Chapek said early this week in a memo obtained by USA Today.“We all share the same goal of a more tolerant, respectful world. Where we may differ is in the tactics to get there.“And because this struggle is much bigger than any one bill in any one state, I believe the best way for our company to bring about lasting change is through the inspiring content we produce, the welcoming culture we create, and the diverse community organizations we support.”Chapek’s first public statements on the bill came in a shareholder’s meeting on Wednesday.“We were opposed to the bill from the outset but we chose not to take a public position on it because we thought we could be more effective working behind the scenes engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,” he reportedly said.Chapek claimed such efforts had taken place for weeks. The executive said he had called DeSantis to express Disney’s “disappointment” with the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.Chapek posted a statement online and emailed staffers on Friday, saying Disney was wrong to stay silent as the Republican-majority Florida legislature greenlit a bill he called “yet another challenge to basic human rights”.Republicans contend that parents, not educators, should discuss gender issues with children in early grades. The bill bars prohibits instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through grade three.DeSantis, who has indicated that he supports the measure, has chafed at calls for a veto. A potential frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he sent a fundraising email that said: “Disney is in far too deep with the communist party of China and has lost any moral authority to tell you what to do.”The statement shocked Republicans and Democrats. Disney theme parks are a multibillion-dollar economic engine for Florida. The company has given outsize amounts to state parties and politicians and holds significant influence in state government.DeSantis also criticized Disney at a campaign event in South Florida Thursday.“Companies that have made a fortune catering to families should understand that parents don’t want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classroom,” DeSantis said. “Our policies will be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not the musing of woke corporations.”Rick Wilson, a former Republican operative now part of the Lincoln Project, told the Associated Press: “The weird hypocrisy of Florida politics right now is DeSantis has been happy to take Disney’s money but to pass a bill that’s anathema to the values of their customers and their institution.”A Republican lawmaker who didn’t want to be named because he or she did not want to comment publicly against the governor told the same outlet Disney was the third-highest contributor to state Republican candidates. Disney has given millions to both Democrats and Republicans.Disney opened a theme park in China six years ago and has landed access to that country’s booming film market. It has also been accused of altering content to satisfy China’s leaders.DeSantis’s critics charged that he was opposing Disney out of his ambition to win the Republican primary.“It’s really pretty shocking,” former Republican governor Charlie Crist, now a Democratic congressman who hopes to challenge DeSantis, told the AP.Outcry as Georgia lawmakers aim to pass Florida-style ‘don’t say gay’ bill Read moreCrist noted that DeSantis has gone head-to-head with other industries important to Florida, pointing to a legal fight with cruise companies which wanted passengers to show proof of Covid-19 vaccinations.“Now it’s Disney. Who’s next on the hit list for this governor?” Crist commented.The Democratic US congressman Darren Soto also questioned the governor’s attack.“This is another strike in the hate agenda that Governor DeSantis is pushing right now,” Soto said, noting that Florida’s budget relies heavily on sales tax generated by Disney and other theme parks.“Now he’s putting that in jeopardy because he wants to attack LGBTQ+ families, families that make up a fundamental part of the Disney atmosphere.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsFloridaRon DeSantisRepublicansLGBT rightsWalt Disney CompanyUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schools

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schoolsNobel laureate’s classic debut was removed from libraries but backlash and lawsuits prompted vote to restore

      Books bans and ‘gag orders’: the crackdown no one asked for
      A banned book by the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be available again to high school students in a district in St Louis, Missouri, after the Wentzville school board reversed its decision to ban The Bluest Eye, in the face of criticism and a class-action lawsuit.‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’: meet the teens of the Banned Book ClubRead moreThe board made national news last month when it voted 4-3 to removed the book from school libraries, citing themes of racism, incest and child molestation.Morrison’s 1970 debut novel is one of several titles, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and L8R, G8R by Lauren Myracle, to have gained the attention of school boards in conservative US areas.The Wentzville ban was imposed after a challenge by a parent exercising the right to request titles not be available to their children. Backlash was swift, critics saying the board had violated first amendment rights.In a letter of protest, the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Missouri Library Association said: “We encourage you to reexamine the depth of your commitment to education in the truest sense, and to find your courage in the face of baseless political grandstanding at the expense of educators and students in your district.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued the district on behalf of two students. According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the board accepted a review committee’s recommendation to retain Morrison’s book, voting 5-2 on Friday to rescind the ban. An ACLU official, Anthony Rothert, welcomed the news but warned that books remain suppressed including All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. Challenges against two other books had been withdrawn, the Post-Dispatch reported.The board also approved the retention of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero, which faced challenges regarding language and depiction of rape.“Wentzville’s policies still make it easy for any community member to force any book from the shelves even when they shamelessly target books by and about communities of color, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups,” said Rothert. “Access to The Bluest Eye was taken from students for three months just because a community member did not think they should have access to Toni Morrison’s story.”Many library associations argue that parents of minors should be able to control their children’s reading but should not make books unavailable to others.Opponents of Morrison’s book, including conservative lawmakers, urged the school board to maintain its ban. After the decision, board member Sandy Garber maintained that The Bluest Eye “doesn’t offer anything to our children”.According to the American Library Association, which monitors challenges to books, calls for bans are increasing.“It’s a volume of challenges I’ve never seen in my time at the ALA – the last 20 years,” the director of the ALA office of intellectual freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, told the Guardian in November. “We’ve never had a time when we’ve gotten four or five reports a day for days on end, sometimes as many as eight in a day.Reuse this content More

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      San Francisco mayor: recalled school board members were distracted by politics

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      San Francisco mayor: recalled school board members were distracted by politicsCovid closures and attempt to rename schools deemed named for figures linked to injustice, including Abraham Lincoln, fueled vote San Francisco school board members recalled from their posts this week allowed themselves to become distracted by politics, the city’s mayor said on Sunday.Florida governor: school districts that defied no-mask mandate to lose $200m Read moreVoters overwhelmingly approved the recall of board president Gabriela López, vice-president Faauuga Moliga and commissioner Alison Collins.The board was enveloped in controversy over Covid regulations and closures; an attempt to rename 44 schools deemed to be named for figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices, among them Abraham Lincoln; and remarks by Collins about Asian Americans.The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, spoke to NBC’s Meet the Press. Discussing her obligation to name replacements, she said: “I’m going to be looking for people that are going to focus on the priorities of the school district and not on politics, and not on what it means to run for office, and stepping stones, and so on and so forth. “We need people who want to be on the school board to make a difference, and who meet those qualifications to do the job.”Breed sidestepped suggestions the recall showed voters rejecting progressive policies.“My take is that it was really about the frustration of the board of education [not] doing their fundamental job,” she said. “And that is to make sure that our children are getting educated, that they get back into the classroom. And that did not occur. They were focusing on other things that were clearly a distraction.“Not to say that those other things around renaming schools and conversations around changes to our school district weren’t important, but what was most important is the fact that our kids were not in the classroom. “And San Francisco … we’ve been a leader during this Covid pandemic. In some cases, we have put forth the most conservative policies to ensure the safety of all San Franciscans. And our vaccination rates, and our death rates and other numbers demonstrate that we are a clear leader. “But we failed our children. Parents were upset. The city as a whole was upset, and the decision to recall school board members was a result of that.”School boards have become battlegrounds across the US, often as conservative parents and activists look to control what children are taught and how schools deal with Covid.Breed said: “This is not a Democratic/Republican issue. This is an issue about the education of our children.”She also said parents wanted “someone who is going to focus on … making sure that children get the education that they need in our schools, dealing with the challenges of learning loss, dealing with the mental health challenges that exist”.López, the board president, said her recall was the “consequence” of her “fight for racial justice”, and added: “White supremacists are enjoying this, and the support of the recall is aligned with this.”Breed said: “Well, of course [that’s] not the right kind of reaction. And the fact that we’re still even listening to any of the recalled school board members is definitely a problem. Bills to ban US schools’ discussion of LGBTQ+ issues are threat to free speech – reportRead more“… This person is making it about them when it really should be about our kids who have suffered, not just in San Francisco but all over this country as a result of this pandemic.”Her host, Chuck Todd, asked: “How much of this was about renaming the schools of George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, and [Senator] Dianne Feinstein [and] how much of it was also parents upset that the rules were changed at how you got into some specific magnet schools?”Breed said it “was probably both. But at the end of the day, our kids were not in school. And they should’ve been.”“… And yes, of course there were people who were probably upset about some of the proposed changes. But those are discussions that are important to have, but not at the expense of making sure that the priority of what the school district is there to do is met.”TopicsSan FranciscoCaliforniaUS educationRaceCoronavirusUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Holocaust book Maus hits bestseller list after Tennessee school board ban

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      Holocaust book Maus hits bestseller list after Tennessee school board banAuthor Art Spiegelman says decision to ban Pulitzer-winning novel that depicts Jewish people as mice is ‘demented’ The Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus: A Survivor’s Tale has become a bestseller on Amazon, after a Tennessee school board banned it.Last week, according to meeting minutes, 10 school board members in McMinn county agreed to remove Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum, citing “rough, objectionable language” and sketches of naked women they deemed unsuitable for 13-year-old students.By the American cartoonist Art Spiegelman and first published in 1986, Maus describes the experiences of Spiegelman’s parents in Nazi concentration camps and his mother’s suicide. The book depicts Jewish people as mice and Nazis as cats.“We don’t need to enable or somewhat promote this stuff,” McMinn county board member Tony Allman said, adding in reference to the murder of 6 million Jewish people in the second world war: “I am not denying it was horrible, brutal and cruel.“It shows people hanging,” he said. “It shows them killing kids. Why does the education system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy.”Another board member, Mike Cochran, said: “If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it. You put this stuff just enough on the edges, so the parents don’t catch it but the kids, they soak it in. I think we need to relook at the entire curriculum.”Spiegelman, 73, told CNBC he was “baffled”.“It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” he said, adding that the board was acting in “Orwellian” fashion.“I’ve met so many young people who … have learned things from my book,” he said. “I also understand that Tennessee is obviously demented. There’s something going on very, very haywire there.”As news of the McMinn ban spread, Maus shot on to multiple top 10 lists in Amazon book categories. As of Monday morning, The Complete Maus was second in Amazon’s overall bestseller category. In history, it ranked first. In second world war history, Maus I, the first installment of the novel, also ranked No 1. Variations took the first, second and third spots as bestsellers in literary graphic novels.Efforts have also emerged to make Maus more accessible to students. One professor at a North Carolina college offered eighth-grade and high-school students in McMinn county a free online class.“In response to Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II being removed from the schools by McMinn county, Tennessee school board members, I am offering this free online course for any McMinn county eighth-grade or high school students interested in reading these books with me,” said Scott Denham of Davidson College.“I have taught Spiegelman’s books many times in my courses on the Holocaust over many years,” he added, on his website.Richard Davis, owner of the Nirvana Comics bookstore in Knoxville, Tennessee, offered to loan The Complete Maus to any student. Davis also set up a GoFundMe campaign to buy additional copies. Created with a target of $20,000, it had raised more than $80,000 by Monday.“Art Spiegelman’s masterpiece is one of the most important, impactful and influential graphic novels of all time,” the page said. “We believe it is a must-read for everyone.”TopicsHolocaustTennesseeUS educationSecond world warUS politicsnewsReuse this content More