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U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced a change to an Obama-era rule Thursday that borrower advocates say will put students at risk of being preyed on by schools that are supposed to prepare students for careers.

If the Department of Education decides career-training programs dont adequately prepare their students for employment, those programs can now dispute the agencys findings with their own data with no baseline requirements as to the size of the sample as long as DeVos deems them to be reliable metrics. The announcement is the latest step taken by the Trump administration that slows implementation of the gainful employment rule, which aims to measure whether job training programs are delivering on promises to prepare students adequately for a career.

We really needed this rule to be able to say, At least theres something ensuring our taxpayer dollars are being spent at programs that actually help students, said Jennifer Wang, the director of the D.C. office for the Institute of College Access and Success, a nonprofit that promotes college access. We cant be wasting taxpayer dollars on overpriced ineffective programs that dont prepare students for employment if thats the purpose of the program, Wang added.

Under the rule, developed by the Obama administration, career-training programs, many of which are at for-profit colleges, would be required to prove that their graduates loan payments dont exceed 20% of their discretionary income or 8% of their total earnings. Programs that failed to meet these metrics for multiple years could lose access to federal financial aid a lifeblood for many colleges. The Obama-era Department of Education found earlier this year that more than 800 programs were failing to meet the rules requirements.

The for-profit college industry has come under fire in recent years after two large for-profit college chains collapsed amid accusations that they were misleading students. The gainful employment rule was one of several efforts by officials to crack down on the industry. Borrower advocates have expressed concern for months that DeVoss Department would challenge those rules.

How the Departments new requirements will work

Under the original rule, if schools wanted to use their own surveys of graduates, the surveys had to include at least 50% of the programs graduates. They could also use state data as long as it accounted for at least 30% of graduates.

Earlier this year, DeVoss Department also announced it would give colleges a one-year reprieve in complying with the rules requirements and that it plans to re-litigate the rule itself. On Thursday, the Department also announced it would give colleges an extra 50 days to indicate they intend to appeal the agencys findings about their programs. One of the regulations requirements: Failing programs must provide warnings to students. But if the programs appeal the findings they dont have to provide a warning until the appeal is resolved.

By drawing out the appeal process, the Department is putting more students at risk of signing up for programs with questionable outcomes, Wang said. It will lead to schools reinstating their worst programs and practices because now if youre a failing program you can enroll students without warning them.

Colleges and the Obama administration fought over the rule

The rule has been a battleground for consumer advocates and for-profit college executives since its inception. The Obama administration first began developing it in 2009 and faced multiple court challenges from the industry over its requirements, though the administration ultimately prevailed.

The Department cited the latest legal challenge to the rule from the American Association of Cosmetology Schools as justification for the latest delay in implementation in its announcement. A Department spokeswoman pointed to the discussion of the court order in the announcement when asked about the reasoning behind the change. A judge in that case told the Department it needed to give those schools more time to appeal the debt-to-earnings ratios calculated by the agency.

Borrower advocates say the Department is using that narrow ruling as an excuse to undermine the rule. The DeVos Department of Education is listening to the industry much more than they are students and their families, said Maggie Thompson, the executive director of Generation Progress, the youth advocacy arm of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, said of the latest developments.

The details of the rule were developed through a process known as negotiated rulemaking, which gathers stakeholders to hammer out specifics. It was slated to be implemented on July 1 of this year. Instead, officials plan to convene a new negotiated rulemaking process. Advocates like Thompson have charged that these procedural hold ups are an extra-legal attack on a rule that was developed through the proper channels.

This is a simple rule that I think most people would agree with and thats why theyre trying to attack it in quiet and procedural way, Thompson said.

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DeVos throws lifeline to 800 college programs Obama found questionable - MarketWatch

Nearly all the members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned Friday in protest of President Trumps reaction to last weekends white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.

Sixteen members of the commission signed a joint letter announcing their resignation. The only member not listed on the resignation letter is George C. Wolfe, a theater and film director.

A number are holdovers from the Obama administration, including actor Kal Penn, the Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle star who briefly worked in the Obama White House. Penn posted the resignation Friday on Twitter.

Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the Presidents Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the members wote.

Intentional or not, the first letter of each paragraph in the memo also happens to spell out "R-E-S-I-S-T," which has not gone unnoticed on Twitter.

The committee is the fourth such advisory board connected to the president to see resignations in the wake of Charlottesville. The arts board includes Democratic donors like Andrew Weinstein as well as Vicki Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and author Jhumpa Lahiri, whose novel "The Namesake" was adapted into a film starring Kal Penn.

The letter explicitly mentions Trumps Charlottesville response, which critics have panned because the president blamed both sides instead of just white nationalists. A 32-year-old counter-protestor was killed when authorities say a Nazi sympathizer drove his car into a crowd.

On Tuesday, Trump criticized the "alt-left" for their role in stoking the unrest. "You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, he said.

In their resignation letter, the artists accuse Trump of supporting those who committed the violence, even though the president has referred to the driver of the car as a disgrace to himself, his family, and his country and has condemned neo-Nazis and like-minded hate groups.

Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville, the letter states.

FALLING APART: TRUMP AXES INFRASTRUCTURE ADVISORY COUNCIL

On Wednesday, Trump announced plans to shut down two jobs councils, including his Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum -- which were already coming apart because of resignations over his Charlottesville comments. The White House also said Thursday it would disband the President's Advisory Council on Infrastructure.

The arts and humanities committee was created in 1982 under then-President Ronald Reagan.

Fox News Kristin Brown contributed to this report.

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Obama holdovers on president's arts council quit over Charlottesville - Fox News

Hey, Barack, says the current president to the former. Dont hang up. And so begins the secret phone conversations between Donald Trump and Barack Obama the not-exactly-Smithsonian-worthy recordings under the exclusive domain of TBSs Conan.

The very funny faux-convos, which host Conan OBrien unveiled last night, begin and end with Obamas having twitter-trumped Trump by scoring the most retweets ever for his post-Charlottesville sharing of a Nelson Mandela quote.

Mandela, right, right, says the Trump-a-like. Anyway, you know any other juicy Mandela quotes you could throw my way? Hook a brother up!

Obamas Youre the worst precedes the first phone slam.

Next comes Trumps idea to take a picture with Obama as a sign of racial unity, on a Trump golf course, of course. Ill get you a caddy uniform.

Obama: Jesus. Hang up.

Obama himself initiates the next call, with an invitation. I now have the most liked tweet of all time, he says, by way of introduction. Most liked. All time. Thats ALL time, Donny!

Right I heard you the first time. Whats the invitation?

Says Obama, Oh, the invitation, thats right. I wanted to invite you

Trump: Yeeesss?

Obama: to

Well, just watch the video above for the rest.

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'Conan' Reveals Trump-Obama Tapes: Any Other Juicy Mandela Quotes You Could Throw My Way? - Deadline

The Trump administration has ended Operation Choke Point, the anti-fraud initiative started under the Obama administration that many Republicans argued was used to target gun retailers and other businesses that Democrats found objectionable.

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told GOP representatives in a Wednesday letter that the long-running program had ended, bringing a conclusion to a chapter in the Obama years that long provoked and angered conservatives who saw Choke Point as an extra-legal crackdown on politically disfavored groups.

"All of the department's bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer in effect, and it will not be undertaken again," Boyd wrote in the letter.

The letter was addressed to Jeb Hensarling and Bob Goodlatte, the chairmen of the Financial Services and Judiciary Committees, respectively. Their staffs confirmed they received the letter.

The Republicans had written last week to Attorney General Jeff Sessions for confirmation that the program was over so that businesses that might be targeted could breathe easy.

After the Obama Justice Department began Operation Choke Point in 2013, Hensarling and other conservatives accused them of denying the constitutional rights of businesses like gun dealers and payday lenders by targeting them for scrutiny under the program, cutting off their access to the banking system under the guise of investigating fraud and money laundering.

The GOP said companies were still wary that they could lose access to the banking system, and needed clear guidance from the Trump administration that the program wouldn't be continued.

In a joint statement, Hensarling, Goodlatte, and Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri and Darrell Issa said that the Trump administration has "restored the Department's responsibility to pursue lawbreakers, not legitimate businesses."

The also said that the "Obama Administration created this ill-advised program to suffocate legitimate businesses to which it was ideologically opposed by intimidating financial institutions into denying banking services to those businesses."

Not that the government is totally done with Choke Point. Boyd said the department would follow up on investigations that stemmed from the original program.

Nevertheless, Boyd called Choke Point a "misguided initiative" and said that the administration shares the Republicans' concerns about lawful businesses being scrutinized just because their activities are disfavored. He also noted, though, that some of the responses to subpoenas originally issued as part of the program uncovered criminal activity.

Separately, Luetkemeyer called for the federal banking regulators tasked with cracking down on banks thought to be facilitating crimes to also definitively state that they would stop doing so. Luetkemeyer, who chairs the financial institutions subcomittee, also called for Congress to pass legislation he's authored to prevent the administration from undertaking similar programs in the future.

Some banks have still experienced bank examiners taking issue with certain customers in recent months, said Camden R. Webb, the chair of the firearms industry practice group at the law firm Williams Mullen. The Justice Department's letter was a "great step in the right direction for the gun industry and other industries," Webb said, but businesses have to be realistic that "we don't have any official position statement, at least not presently, from the bank regulators."

Dennis Shaul, the head of the Community Financial Services Association of America that represents some of the targeted payday lenders, said that his group will keep pursuing a lawsuit against the federal government over Operation Choke Point in order to "hold these regulatory agencies accountable" and allow businesses to regain access to the banking system.

Originally posted here:
Trump ends Obama's Operation Choke Point - Washington Examiner

Several websites pushed out a fresh accusation of plagiarism against First Lady Melania Trumpand once again, the alleged source for the supposedly ill-gotten words is former First Lady Michelle Obama.

On Saturday, August 12, as violence escalated in Charlottesville, Virginia, Mrs. Trump took to Twitter with this message: "Our country encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate w/o hate in our hearts. No good comes from violence. #Charlottesville"

Sometime on Sunday, a meme appeared on Twitter, Facebook, and various other websites, that juxtaposed the words of the first lady's tweet and her picture with very similar words purportedly from Michelle Obama: "Our nation encourages freedom of speech, but let's communicate without hate in our hearts. No good comes of that." The former first lady's picture also appears in the meme (shown below), as well as the date when Mrs. Obama allegedly made the remarks, April 16, 2016.

However, there is no evidence that Michelle Obama ever uttered those words or anything remotely close to them. The Obama White House archives do not indicate any speech or remarks by Michelle Obama on the date in question, nor does a broader search turn up any such remarks by the former first lady at any point during her husband's presidency. A review of contemporaneous news reports similarly comes up empty as well.

The photo of Mrs. Obama used in the meme comes from an October 13, 2016 appearance at a Hillary for America campaign event in Manchester, New Hampshire. During her remarks, Mrs. Obama excoriated then-candidate Trump for vulgar remarks in a 2005 Access Hollywood taping. But again, the transcript of the speech contains nothing close to the words in the meme.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, within days the meme and related stories were shared on Twitter and Facebook thousands of times. Rickey Smiley, a comedian and TV-radio personality, featured the false story under the headline "First Lady Forger: Did Melania Trump Just Plagiarize Michelle Obama Again!?" Smiley's Facebook fan page and blog linked to a Raw Story piece which in turn used an International Business Times story as its source. Other sites responsible for wide distribution of the fake meme include an unofficial Bill Maher fan page and AlterNet News.

The meme plays off a 2016 incident in which the speech Melania Trump delivered at the Republican National Convention drew heavily on remarks made by Michelle Obama in 2008. A Trump campaign aide who wrote the speech for Mrs. Trump took responsibility for the uncredited words, saying that she took notes while Mrs. Trump read passages from Mrs. Obama's earlier speech. Those notes were incorporated into the final draft of the speech without attribution. The aide offered to resign, but Donald Trump declined her offer.

The new accusation of plagiarism, while drawn from the 2016 incident, seems to have been largely shared with the understanding that it was likely a hoax. In Rickey Smiley's posting for example, the article ends with "Before you pull out your pitchfork though, know that none of this has been confirmed. No one has proven that Michelle actually said or tweeted those words beforefor all we know, it could just be a meme gone out of control."

Even the original International Business Times story noted that it was an "unproven claim whether Melania stole Obama's words" and "[w]hile the possibility of plagiarism has not been ruled out in the latest instance, reports said the viral meme was most likely a spoof."

Whatever doubts existed, thousands of social media users enthusiastic spread the story based on the sensational headlines. While mainstream news outlets have largely avoided the story for now, Yahoo! News picked up and reprinted the International Business Times version with the headline "Melania Trump Accused Of Copying Michelle Obama Again." But while the IBT story headline included the phrase "Maybe Wrongly This Time," that caveat was missing in the Yahoo! Headline.

While the original source of the meme remains a mystery, the spread of false stories such as this is anything but.

If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email The Weekly Standard at factcheck@weeklystandard.com.

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Fact Check: Did Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama on Twitter? - The Weekly Standard