April 27, 2020

VIDEO: Mitch McConnell “truly the most corrupt politician in the U.S.”

Earlier this month, journalist Jane Mayer published a blockbuster report on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a deep dive into the deep corruption of a powerful politician who seems to have no moral compass, no strongly-held values, just an intense desire to increase his own power by aiding the entrenched special interests that fund
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April 21, 2020

Who’s Lobbying To Get COVID-19 Cash to For-Profit Colleges?

Howard “Buck” McKeon, a Republican former chairman of the House Education Committee, heads up the list of lobbyists paid, largely with your federal tax dollars, to lobby Congress to send even more tax dollars to for-profit colleges in the COVID-19 era. Lobbying reports for the first quarter of 2020 show that just a few of
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April 21, 2020

Florida For-Profit College, Getting $17 Million in COVID-19 Aid, Accused of Scamming Black Students

Faced with concerns from critics in Congress and elsewhere that many for-profit colleges will take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to accelerate predatory behavior, the industry’s chief lobbyist, Steve Gunderson, has been repeating his claim that the bad actors among for-profit schools have shuttered, and what remains are sincere, hard-working operations focused on helping students.
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April 15, 2020

Scam Websites, Promising COVID-19 Advice, Steer Students to Predatory Colleges

This article is the first in a new series, produced by Republic Report and the Project on Predatory Student Lending (part of Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center) — COVID College Cons. Steve Gunderson, the Republican ex-congressman who runs CECU, the frequently-dishonest lobbying group of for-profit colleges, emailed his members on Monday, warning that in
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April 13, 2020

DeVos Reversed Obama Decision, Recognized Predatory Colleges As Non-Profit

I’ve been asking for some sixteen months to know why the Center for Excellence in Higher Education dismissed its lawsuit over the Department of Education’s refusal, during the Obama administration, to recognize the controversial for-profit college operation’s troubling conversion to non-profit status. The Obama administration had concluded that the conversion was a sham that mostly benefited
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April 9, 2020

Warren Says COVID Act Denies Aid to For-Profit Colleges. DeVos: Nah.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), joined by three Senate colleagues, wrote to Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Wednesday to point out that the CARES COVID-19 relief act, as drafted, seems to exclude new funding for for-profit colleges. Warren and senators Dick Durbin (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) also noted that the law
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April 8, 2020

This Isn’t The First Time Trump Has Hawked Unproven Pills

President Trump has been aggressively touting the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, despite the lack of significant studies demonstrating its effectiveness, and despite concerns raised by medical professionals about the risks of side effects for some patients and about the need to maintain supplies of the drug for proven uses treating malaria, lupus,
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April 4, 2020

Seven Ways Trump Has Deepened His Corruption During COVID-19

Before COVID-19 struck, Donald Trump was already a deeply corrupt president — leveraging his presidential office to make money for his businesses, engaging in obstruction of the Russia investigation, pardoning cronies, pressuring Ukraine’s leader to launch a phony investigation of Democratic rival Joe Biden, and much more. But as with his incompetence, ignorance, bigotry, malevolence,
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