motherjones--2020-10-26--A Radical New Plan for MeToo Turns Away From “Law and Order” Feminism

Not long after Brett Kavanaugh landed a lifetime gig on the Supreme Court , Mónica Ramírez started thinking about what it would take to make survivors of sexual violence into a political force to be reckoned with .
The founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women , Ramírez had worked with survivors for much of her career ; after the # MeToo hashtag went viral she ’ d penned an open letter to Hollywood actresses on behalf of female farmworkers , helping spark the Time ’ s Up movement against workplace discrimination and harassment .
But looking back in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that not enough had changed after # MeToo became a phenomenon .
Survivors had told their stories and shared their pain , but politicians responded with little more than platitudes .
“ We heard all of this talk , ” Ramírez says .
“ What we didn ’ t see was the passage of laws to make things better for survivors.
” She sent a memo to a group of prominent advocates she calls her “ sisters in the work ” : Fatima Goss Graves , the president and CEO of the National @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Poo , the cofounder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance ; and Tarana Burke , the racial and gender justice activist who founded the original “ me too.
” Movement in 2006 to organize survivors , especially women and girls of color .
“ What would it look like if we really figured out how to position survivors as a voting bloc ?
” Ramírez recalls asking them .
That fall , the four women launched the hashtag # MeTooVoter in an effort to get Democratic presidential candidates talking about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It may have worked : In November , NBC News ’ Kristen Welker asked former Vice President Joe Biden about it at a debate in Atlanta .
“ We have to just change the culture , period , and keep punching at it and punching at it and punching at it , ” Biden said .
“ It ’ s a gigantic issue.
” But the organizers had much bigger ambitions than making # MeToo a debate talking point .
“ We ’ ve already driven so much change in our culture on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a virtual summit for survivors last month .
“ Now it ’ s time to drive change in our policies and politics.
” At that event , they released the “ Survivors ’ Agenda , ” a sweeping vision for the political future of the movement against sexual violence .
Crafted with input from dozens of organizations and a survey of more than 1,100 survivors , it calls for broad changes to federal , state , and local laws as well as policy changes and cultural shifts inside schools and corporations .
Among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comprehensive sex ed , guaranteed mental health care coverage , and boosts in pay and protections for workers vulnerable to sexual harassment .
And it endorses more than 20 federal bills covering everything from access to contraception to rent relief for struggling families .
Just as notable as what the Survivors ’ Agenda calls for is what it doesn ’ t .
Its outline for systemic change has little to do with the exposure and prosecution of powerful abusers that has dominated the national conversation about # MeToo .
In a break with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and prosecution of sex crimes , the agenda calls for limits on the power and reach of cops and courts .
It does not discuss making it easier for survivors to report to police or demand longer sentences for perpetrators .
Instead , it recommends replacing school police with counselors , decriminalizing consensual adult sex work , and rerouting some police funding earmarked for addressing sexual assault to holding more officers accountable for their sexual misconduct .
“ Too many of our current strategies that purport to protect the safety of survivors are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the agenda states .
Since the antirape movement started in the 1970s , its focus has been , in large part , a law-and-order one .
In the movement ’ s first two decades , women outraged at the legal system ’ s failure to respond to sexual violence lobbied to expand the definition of rape , pass rape shield laws , and eliminate corroboration requirements for survivors ’ testimony .
Related campaigns against child sexual abuse and domestic violence led to the establishment of sex offender registries and mandatory-arrest policies for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not just because of the moving testimony of survivors , but because the idea of cracking down on these crimes made a “ feminist ” agenda palatable even to conservative lawmakers , says Smith College sociologist Nancy Whittier who studies women ’ s movements .
As activists set up organizations to help survivors and sought government funding , the anti-rape movement “ transformed from a radical grassroots social movement to an institutionalized set of social services that relies heavily on the remedies offered by the legislative process and the criminal legal system , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the criminology , law , and justice department at the University of Illinois at Chicago , in her book Arrested Justice : Black Women , Violence , and America ’ s Prison Nation .
The culmination of the trend was the Violence Against Women Act , authored by then-Sen. Joe Biden as part of the 1994 crime bill , which paired big bucks for police and prisons with crucial funding for prevention programs and services for survivors .
This approach has always had its critics .
Many of them were women of color @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who drew parallels between the ugly history of rape and race in the US with the ways the criminal legal system disproportionately punished Black men while discounting the experiences of Black women .
The new Survivors ’ Agenda , spearheaded by four women of color , builds on those critiques by offering an expansive vision of what preventing and responding to sexual violence entails .
“ We started with things like , what does it look like to ensure survivors have safe and stable housing ?
What does it look like to ensure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their needs ?
” Goss Graves says .
“ Survivors have a thing to say about what it looks like to have spaces and communities are safe .
Otherwise , there ’ s a real risk that they ’ re misused by folks who have agendas that are not about their safety.
” Many survivors ’ visions of safety do not include cops .
Speaking about the undocumented women she has worked with , Ramírez says , “ For many of them , going to the police for help is not really an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they will be deported , or they ’ re afraid that their family members will get in trouble.
” Condencia Brade , the executive director of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault and a member of the agenda ’ s steering committee , points out that most survivors don ’ t engage with the police , though she believes they should have the option to do so .
“ When we have the vast majority of our resources focused on response that ’ s grounded in the criminal justice system , then that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vast majority of survivors in general—and definitely women of color , ” she says .
The Survivors ’ Agenda demands investments in restorative justice programs as well as non-police “ crisis teams ” that could respond to domestic or sexual violence .
It also calls for funding for community organizations to develop programs for holding perpetrators accountable without involving the police or government .
“ A lot of what we talk about currently is focused not on the healing of the survivor , and really on the punitive measures , how do we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Ramírez said in a “ National Call to Action ” livestream about the agenda in June .
“ We have to create the space for thinking about justice from the survivor ’ s perspective.
” George Floyd had been killed a month earlier , sparking a national uprising against racism and police violence and intensifying arguments about the need for alternatives to police .
“ It is definitely a conversation that showed up in the agenda in a very powerful way , ” Ramírez told me .
The renewed call for racial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of services to survivors .
In June , 47 state coalitions against sexual assault and domestic violence signed a letter acknowledging that they and their largely white leadership had failed to listen what Black women in the movement had been saying for a long time : that the emphasis on policing , prosecution , and imprisonment had promoted “ false solutions ” to sexual violence while endangering survivors of color .
Despite the Survivors ’ Agenda ’ s ambivalence toward the criminal legal system , it does not call for abolishing police or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conversation amongst survivors , ” says M Adams , a leader in the Movement for Black Lives , which has publicly supported the agenda .
As a community organizer working with survivors of color in Madison , Wisconsin , Adams has been part of campaigns to free Black survivors of sexual or domestic violence who were locked up for defending themselves .
She acknowledges that some survivors do feel like they ’ ve been helped by police intervention .
Others “ don ’ t know another way.
” The new agenda , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to say , ‘ Can we together imagine something different ? '
” Even with the recent sea change in public opinion about the police , many of the Survivors ’ Agenda ’ s goals are far beyond what seems feasible in the current political climate .
Parts of the agenda could be accomplished relatively quickly if Biden wins the presidency , such as rolling back the campus sexual assault regulations enacted by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos , which Goss Graves says reduce schools ’ obligations to respond to harassment .
( The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to trial against DeVos over the regulations next month . )
Ramírez expects to brief members of Congress and other politicians on the agenda to pressure them to take action ; the organizers already have an ally in Rep. Ayanna Pressley ( D-Mass . )
, who revealed her own experience as a survivor earlier this year and spoke at the September summit .
Still , the agenda ’ s call for alternatives to policing sexual violence is likely to be a non-starter on Capitol Hill .
“ The use of extreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extreme cultural disapproval of sexual violence is just so entrenched , ” Whittier says .
“ It ’ s hard for an elected official , even a relatively liberal one , to support anything other than prosecution and imprisonment.
” To make change , the agenda ’ s organizers emphasize , survivors must be respected as political and cultural leaders , not just victims called upon to tell their stories .
In June , during the “ National Call to Action , ” Tarana Burke compared the uprising against systemic racism to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What we ’ re seeing in the streets , what we ’ re seeing nightly on the news , what we ’ re seeing in our communities , ” she said , “ are people who are most directly impacted by the injustices they are fighting against rising up to say , ‘ We have answers.
” Survivors , Burke added , needed to do the same : “ Inherent in survival is power .
We ’ re just here to exercise it .
”

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
Not long after Brett Kavanaugh landed a lifetime gig on the Supreme Court, Mónica Ramírez started thinking about what it would take to make survivors of sexual violence into a political force to be reckoned with. The founder and president of Justice for Migrant Women, Ramírez had worked with survivors for much of her career; after the #MeToo hashtag went viral she’d penned an open letter to Hollywood actresses on behalf of female farmworkers, helping spark the Time’s Up movement against workplace discrimination and harassment.
But looking back in the spring of 2019, Ramírez felt that not enough had changed after #MeToo became a phenomenon. Survivors had told their stories and shared their pain, but politicians responded with little more than platitudes. “We heard all of this talk,” Ramírez says. “What we didn’t see was the passage of laws to make things better for survivors.”
She started having conversations with a group of prominent advocates she calls her “sisters in the work”: Fatima Goss Graves, the president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center; Ai-jen Poo, the cofounder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; and Tarana Burke, the racial and gender justice activist who founded the original “me too.” Movement in 2006 to organize survivors, especially women and girls of color. “What would it look like if we really figured out how to position survivors as a voting bloc?” Ramírez recalls asking them.
That fall, the four women launched the hashtag #MeTooVoter in an effort to get Democratic presidential candidates talking about what they would do for survivors. It may have worked: In November, NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked former Vice President Joe Biden about it at a debate in Atlanta. “We have to just change the culture, period, and keep punching at it and punching at it and punching at it,” Biden said. “It’s a gigantic issue.”
In a break with decades of efforts to expand the policing and prosecution of sex crimes, the agenda calls for limits on the power and reach of cops and courts.
But the organizers had much bigger ambitions than making #MeToo a debate talking point. “We’ve already driven so much change in our culture on these issues,” Burke said during a virtual summit for survivors last month. “Now it’s time to drive change in our policies and politics.” At that event, they released the “Survivors’ Agenda,” a sweeping vision for the political future of the movement against sexual violence. Crafted with input from dozens of organizations and a survey of more than 1,100 survivors, it calls for broad changes to federal, state, and local laws as well as policy changes and cultural shifts inside schools and corporations. Among its demands are a nationwide mandate for comprehensive sex ed, guaranteed mental health care coverage, and boosts in pay and protections for workers vulnerable to sexual harassment. And it endorses more than 20 federal bills covering everything from access to contraception to rent relief for struggling families.
Just as notable as what the Survivors’ Agenda calls for is what it doesn’t. Its outline for systemic change has little to do with the exposure and prosecution of powerful abusers that has dominated the national conversation about #MeToo. In a break with decades of efforts to expand the policing and prosecution of sex crimes, the agenda calls for limits on the power and reach of cops and courts. It does not discuss making it easier for survivors to report to police or demand longer sentences for perpetrators. Instead, it recommends replacing school police with counselors, decriminalizing consensual adult sex work, and rerouting some police funding earmarked for addressing sexual assault to holding more officers accountable for their sexual misconduct. “Too many of our current strategies that purport to protect the safety of survivors are rooted in the criminal legal system,” the agenda states.
Since the antirape movement started in the 1970s, its focus has been, in large part, a law-and-order one. In the movement’s first two decades, women outraged at the legal system’s failure to respond to sexual violence lobbied to expand the definition of rape, pass rape shield laws, and eliminate corroboration requirements for survivors’ testimony. Related campaigns against child sexual abuse and domestic violence led to the establishment of sex offender registries and mandatory-arrest policies for suspected abusers.
These efforts were successful not just because of the moving testimony of survivors, but because the idea of cracking down on these crimes made a “feminist” agenda palatable even to conservative lawmakers, says Smith College sociologist Nancy Whittier who studies women’s movements. As activists set up organizations to help survivors and sought government funding, the anti-rape movement “transformed from a radical grassroots social movement to an institutionalized set of social services that relies heavily on the remedies offered by the legislative process and the criminal legal system,” writes Beth Richie, director of the criminology, law, and justice department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in her book Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. The culmination of the trend was the Violence Against Women Act, authored by then-Sen. Joe Biden as part of the 1994 crime bill, which paired big bucks for police and prisons with crucial funding for prevention programs and services for survivors.
This approach has always had its critics. Many of them were women of color like Angela Davis and Mari Matsuda, who drew parallels between the ugly history of rape and race in the US with the ways the criminal legal system disproportionately punished Black men while discounting the experiences of Black women.
The new Survivors’ Agenda, spearheaded by four women of color, builds on those critiques by offering an expansive vision of what preventing and responding to sexual violence entails. “We started with things like, what does it look like to ensure survivors have safe and stable housing? What does it look like to ensure they have comprehensive health care that meets their needs?” Goss Graves says. “Survivors have a thing to say about what it looks like to have spaces and communities are safe. Otherwise, there’s a real risk that they’re misused by folks who have agendas that are not about their safety.”
Many survivors’ visions of safety do not include cops. Speaking about the undocumented women she has worked with, Ramírez says, “For many of them, going to the police for help is not really an option because they’re afraid that they will be deported, or they’re afraid that their family members will get in trouble.” Condencia Brade, the executive director of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault and a member of the agenda’s steering committee, points out that most survivors don’t engage with the police, though she believes they should have the option to do so. “When we have the vast majority of our resources focused on response that’s grounded in the criminal justice system, then that’s not going to help the vast majority of survivors in general—and definitely women of color,” she says.
“When we have the vast majority of our resources focused on response that’s grounded in the criminal justice system, then that’s not going to help the vast majority of survivors in general—and definitely women of color.”
The Survivors’ Agenda demands investments in restorative justice programs as well as non-police “crisis teams” that could respond to domestic or sexual violence. It also calls for funding for community organizations to develop programs for holding perpetrators accountable without involving the police or government. “A lot of what we talk about currently is focused not on the healing of the survivor, and really on the punitive measures, how do we ensure that perpetrators are held accountable,” Ramírez said in a “National Call to Action” livestream about the agenda in June. “We have to create the space for thinking about justice from the survivor’s perspective.”
George Floyd had been killed a month earlier, sparking a national uprising against racism and police violence and intensifying arguments about the need for alternatives to police. “It is definitely a conversation that showed up in the agenda in a very powerful way,” Ramírez told me. The renewed call for racial justice has also shaken up mainstream providers of services to survivors. In June, 47 state coalitions against sexual assault and domestic violence signed a letter acknowledging that they and their largely white leadership had failed to listen what Black women in the movement had been saying for a long time: that the emphasis on policing, prosecution, and imprisonment had promoted “false solutions” to sexual violence while endangering survivors of color.
Despite the Survivors’ Agenda’s ambivalence toward the criminal legal system, it does not call for abolishing police or prisons. Abolition “is a contentious conversation amongst survivors,” says M Adams, a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, which has publicly supported the agenda. As a community organizer working with survivors of color in Madison, Wisconsin, Adams has been part of campaigns to free Black survivors of sexual or domestic violence who were locked up for defending themselves. She acknowledges that some survivors do feel like they’ve been helped by police intervention. Others “don’t know another way.” The new agenda, she says, “is speaking to survivors to say, ‘Can we together imagine something different?'”
Even with the recent sea change in public opinion about the police, many of the Survivors’ Agenda’s goals are far beyond what seems feasible in the current political climate. Parts of the agenda could be accomplished relatively quickly if Biden wins the presidency, such as rolling back the campus sexual assault regulations enacted by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, which Goss Graves says reduce schools’ obligations to respond to harassment. (The National Women’s Law Center is going to trial against DeVos over the regulations next month.) Ramírez expects to brief members of Congress and other politicians on the agenda to pressure them to take action; the organizers already have an ally in Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who revealed her own experience as a survivor earlier this year and spoke at the September summit. Still, the agenda’s call for alternatives to policing sexual violence is likely to be a non-starter on Capitol Hill. “The use of extreme criminal penalties as a way of indicating extreme cultural disapproval of sexual violence is just so entrenched,” Whittier says. “It’s hard for an elected official, even a relatively liberal one, to support anything other than prosecution and imprisonment.”
“It’s hard for an elected official, even a relatively liberal one, to support anything other than prosecution and imprisonment.”
To make change, the agenda’s organizers emphasize, survivors must be respected as political and cultural leaders, not just victims called upon to tell their stories. In June, during the “National Call to Action,” Tarana Burke compared the uprising against systemic racism to the fight to end sexual violence. “What we’re seeing in the streets, what we’re seeing nightly on the news, what we’re seeing in our communities,” she said, “are people who are most directly impacted by the injustices they are fighting against rising up to say, ‘We have answers.”
Survivors, Burke added, needed to do the same: “Inherent in survival is power. We’re just here to exercise it.”
This story has been updated.


motherjones--2020-10-26--America’s Immigration System Was Already Broken. Trump Made a Weapon Out of Its Shards.

During Thursday night ’ s presidential debate , somewhere between lying about his administration ’ s response to the coronavirus and lying about Joe Biden ’ s houses , Donald Trump said a sort of true thing about immigration .
Moderator Kristen Welker had asked about Trump ’ s family separation policy , which led to some 5,500 children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border between 2017 and 2018 , including 545 kids who still haven ’ t been reunited with their families .
Trump seized on the opportunity to deflect and blame Biden and the Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you : They built cages .
They used to say I built the cages , and then they had a picture in a certain newspaper , and it was the picture of these horrible cages and they said , ‘ Look at these cages .
President Trump built them.
’ And then it was determined they were built in 2014 .
That was him .
They built cages.
” Never one to miss an opportunity for infuriating repetition , Trump went on to ask Biden , “ Who built the cages ?
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
While Trump was lying about his role in family separation , he was right that there was cruelty and inhumanity in the immigration system before he became president .
In 2014 , families and unaccompanied children came to the US-Mexico border in unprecedented numbers .
Thousands of minors , mostly from Central America , were shoved into crowded Border Patrol holding cells and kept in stomach-churning conditions .
When photos from those Texas facilities surfaced , Obama called it a humanitarian crisis and directed the Department of Homeland Security to come up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sending thousands to massive warehouses .
Kids in chain-linked corrals—cages—wound up sleeping on the floor under mylar blankets .
Some sobbed ; others sat in eerily quiet shock .
Obama did not systematically rip kids from their parents ’ arms at the border to stop more families from coming .
But all the shards and exposed nails of the broken infrastructure he oversaw were easily fashioned into weapons by his successor .
Trump and white nationalist senior adviser Stephen Miller did not have to conjure out of whole cloth a system that inflicts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , visa holders , and immigrant detainees .
They took the system they inherited and stripped it of anything that acknowledged the humanity of those trapped within it .
They formalized the informal brutality of the Obama administration ’ s immigration regime .
The cruelty , as Adam Serwer put it , was now the point .
A week before Americans decide whether to reelect a president who banned Muslims , sealed the border to asylum seekers , separated children , gutted the legal immigration system , and race-baited , fearmongered , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his candidacy in 2015 , Mother Jones is publishing several stories that highlight how the Trump administration has taken a system that was already bad and turned it into a machine of unchecked cruelty .
The first story shows how Trump and Miller targeted and destroyed the asylum system that Americans once bragged about to the rest of the world .
On Tuesday , the series reveals how Americans have spent a century debating family separation and other horrors of immigration enforcement .
Later this week you ’ ll hear directly from people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration , whether that be a family of PhDs in Southern California or a family of asylum seekers trapped a hundred miles south in Tijuana .
Finally , we ’ ll explain why another four years of Trump would be even more devastating for immigrants than the first four .

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
During Thursday night’s presidential debate, somewhere between lying about his administration’s response to the coronavirus and lying about Joe Biden’s houses, Donald Trump said a sort of true thing about immigration.
Moderator Kristen Welker had asked about Trump’s family separation policy, which led to thousands of children being separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border between 2017 and 2018, including 545 kids who still haven’t been reunited with their families. Trump seized on the opportunity to deflect and blame Biden and the Obama administration: “Let me just tell you: They built cages. They used to say I built the cages, and then they had a picture in a certain newspaper, and it was the picture of these horrible cages and they said, ‘Look at these cages. President Trump built them.’ And then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him. They built cages.” Never one to miss an opportunity for infuriating repetition, Trump went on to ask Biden, “Who built the cages?” four times over the next several minutes.
While Trump was lying about his role in family separation, he was right that there was cruelty and inhumanity in the immigration system before he became president. In 2014, families and unaccompanied children came to the US-Mexico border in unprecedented numbers. Thousands of minors, mostly from Central America, were shoved into crowded Border Patrol holding cells and kept in stomach-churning conditions.
When photos from those Texas facilities surfaced, Obama called it a humanitarian crisis and directed the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a solution. Border Patrol started sending thousands to massive warehouses. Kids in chain-linked corrals—cages—wound up sleeping on the floor under mylar blankets. Some sobbed; others sat in eerily quiet shock.
Obama did not systematically rip kids from their parents’ arms at the border to stop more families from coming. But all the shards and exposed nails of the broken infrastructure he oversaw were easily fashioned into weapons by his successor. Trump and white nationalist senior adviser Stephen Miller did not have to conjure out of whole cloth a system that inflicts maximum pain on asylum seekers and refugees, visa holders, and immigrant detainees. They took the system they inherited and stripped it of anything that acknowledged the humanity of those trapped within it. They formalized the informal brutality of the Obama administration’s immigration regime. The cruelty, as Adam Serwer put it, was now the point.
A week before Americans decide whether to reelect a president who banned Muslims, sealed the border to asylum seekers, separated children, gutted the legal immigration system, and race-baited, fearmongered, and demagogued immigrants from the moment he announced his candidacy in 2015, Mother Jones is publishing several stories that highlight how the Trump administration has taken a system that was already bad and turned it into a machine of unchecked cruelty.
The first story shows how Trump and Miller targeted and destroyed the asylum system that Americans once bragged about to the rest of the world. On Tuesday, the series reveals how Americans have spent a century debating family separation and other horrors of immigration enforcement. Later this week you’ll hear directly from people whose lives have been upended by this administration, whether that be a family of PhDs in Southern California or a family of asylum seekers trapped a hundred miles south in Tijuana. Finally, we’ll explain why another four years of Trump would be even more devastating for immigrants than the first four.
Top image credits: Patrick Semansky/AP; Yuri Gripas/Sipa/AP


motherjones--2020-10-27--It’s Official. The Senate Just Confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to Replace Ruth Ginsburg on the Supreme C

It’s Official. The Senate Just Confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to Replace Ruth Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

The Senate just voted to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett ’ s appointment to the Supreme Court , marking President Trump ’ s third addition to the court and locking in a 6–3 conservative majority that could derail Democratic legislation for decades to come .
The 52–48 vote followed a Democratic effort to delay Barrett ’ s confirmation through a filibuster .
While Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted with Democrats to maintain the filibuster Sunday , Collins was ultimately the only Republican to vote against confirming Barrett .
Senate Republicans ’ push to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ before the presidential election has garnered controversy , given their refusal to consider Barack Obama ’ s Supreme Court appointee Merrick Garland for 11 months in 2016 on the grounds that it was an election year .
Polls show that most Americans would prefer the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be filled after the election .
“ My most fervent wish , ” Ginsburg told her granddaughter days before her death , “ is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.
” As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the least-experienced Supreme Court nominee in 30 years , having never worked as a judge until President Trump nominated her to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017 .
Stephanie writes : A graduate of Notre Dame law school , Barrett has almost no experience practicing law whatsoever—a hole in her resume so glaring that during her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing in 2017 , Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were dismayed that she couldn ’ t recall more than three cases she ’ d worked on during her brief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are asked to provide details on 10 .
Barrett has never tried a case to verdict or argued an appeal in any court , nor has she ever performed any notable pro bono work , even during law school…In response to the Senate Judiciary Committee ’ s questions about her pro bono work , Barrett said she probably helped with such cases during her two years in private practice , but she couldn ’ t recall any details .
Barett ’ s inexperience isn ’ t just judicial—her privileged perspectives and upbringing have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that afflict most people , Stephanie reports .
“ During the hearings , she seemed at times to strain to acknowledge that there are real human beings experiencing the consequences of her decisions , ” she writes .
“ Her testimony inadvertently reinforced the fact that she ’ s spent her entire adult life in a conservative bubble , not a place known for its forgiving human spirit.
” This post was brought to you by the Mother Jones Daily newsletter , which hits inboxes every weekday and is written by Ben Dreyfuss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guest contributions by our much smarter colleagues .
Sign up for it here .

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
The Senate just voted to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court, marking President Trump’s third addition to the court and locking in a 6–3 conservative majority that could derail Democratic legislation for decades to come.
The 52–48 vote followed a Democratic effort to delay Barrett’s confirmation through a filibuster. While Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted with Democrats to maintain the filibuster Sunday, Collins was ultimately the only Republican to vote against confirming Barrett.
Senate Republicans’ push to rush Barrett’s confirmation eight days before the presidential election has garnered controversy, given their refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court appointee Merrick Garland for 11 months in 2016 on the grounds that it was an election year. Polls show that most Americans would prefer the Supreme Court vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be filled after the election. “My most fervent wish,” Ginsburg told her granddaughter days before her death, “is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer reported, Barrett is the least-experienced Supreme Court nominee in 30 years, having never worked as a judge until President Trump nominated her to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. Stephanie writes:
A graduate of Notre Dame law school, Barrett has almost no experience practicing law whatsoever—a hole in her resume so glaring that during her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing in 2017, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were dismayed that she couldn’t recall more than three cases she’d worked on during her brief two years in private practice. Nominees are asked to provide details on 10. Barrett has never tried a case to verdict or argued an appeal in any court, nor has she ever performed any notable pro bono work, even during law school…In response to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s questions about her pro bono work, Barrett said she probably helped with such cases during her two years in private practice, but she couldn’t recall any details.
Barett’s inexperience isn’t just judicial—her privileged perspectives and upbringing have also kept her from understanding the hardships that afflict most people, Stephanie reports. “During the hearings, she seemed at times to strain to acknowledge that there are real human beings experiencing the consequences of her decisions,” she writes. “Her testimony inadvertently reinforced the fact that she’s spent her entire adult life in a conservative bubble, not a place known for its forgiving human spirit.”
This post was brought to you by the Mother Jones Daily newsletter, which hits inboxes every weekday and is written by Ben Dreyfuss and Abigail Weinberg, and regularly features guest contributions by our much smarter colleagues. Sign up for it here.


motherjones--2020-10-26--Payday Lenders Gave Trump Millions. Then He Helped Them Cash In on the Working Poor.

This story was reported in partnership with Type Investigations , with support from the Puffin Foundation .
Mike Hodges was still a small fry among payday lenders when Donald Trump visited Hodges ’ hometown of Nashville in 2018 .
Hodges and his wife , Tina , owned somewhere around 100 stores scattered across the state , giving out small-dollar loans for fees that work out to annual interest rates as high as 450 percent .
Their firm , Advance Financial , was puny compared to the chains of 1,000 or more that rose from the industry ’ s pioneers in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distinguished themselves as major donors to Trump , shelling out more than a million dollars to his campaign and main super-PAC .
In January 2018 , Hodges told a reporter for USA Today that he was among those granted a private audience with Trump when the president showed up in Nashville to give a speech at the Gaylord Opryland .
The following October , the couple co-sponsored a Nashville appearance by Vice President Mike Pence , where ticket prices ranged between $ 1,000 and $ 100,000 .
By then , Mike Hodges had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person with the Trump White House—access he openly boasted about purchasing .
“ Every dollar amount , no matter how small or large it is ” is important , Hodges said two weeks ahead of the Pence fundraiser , according to an audio recording from an industry webinar obtained by the Washington Post .
Hodges mentioned the chair of the Republican National Committee : “ For example , I ’ ve gone to Ronna McDaniel and said , ‘ Ronna , I need help on something.
’ She ’ s been able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say , ‘ Hey , we have one of our large givers .
They need an audience.
’ ” America ’ s payday lenders and others selling exploitative financial products to the working poor have enjoyed a string of victories since Trump took over as president .
Enforcement actions against the industry by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have fallen dramatically , and the country ’ s top banking regulators appear to be readying a loophole that would let payday lenders operate even in jurisdictions where local governments have banned their product .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ August 2019 that his bosses had ordered staff economists to rig a study so that it downplayed harm to consumers who repeatedly take out payday loans .
The biggest losers in this arrangement have been America ’ s working poor—above all , Black and Latino workers , who are trapped disproportionately by payday lenders ’ exorbitant fees ( typically $ 15 per $ 100 for a loan due back usually in two weeks ) .
The industry foremost sees green , and also operates in white low- and moderate-income communities .
But a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lending showed that communities predominantly of people of color in Colorado were seven times more likely to have a payday lending store than predominantly white communities .
A 2012 study by Pew Charitable Trusts found that Black people were three times as likely as white people to have taken out a payday loan .
Hodges and his industry colleagues have gone all-in on a president who claims to “ love the Hispanics ” and be the greatest for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln , and who has paid essentially no federal income tax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the tax system , quite possibly fraudulently .
Even after the coronavirus pandemic hit , the payday moguls could count on Trump .
Initially , these storefront lenders were barred from participating in the Paycheck Protection Program designed to bail out small businesses .
Yet after an intense lobbying campaign , the administration apparently shifted course : Records of PPP recipients released in July revealed that dozens of payday lenders and similar businesses received at least $ 9 billion from the program .
( Hodges ’ company , with more than 500 employees @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not eligible for the program . )
Presumably , none of these companies will pay triple-digit interest rates on any money they might have to pay back under the PPP rules .
The industry ’ s biggest win came in July , when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that payday lenders will not have to verify a borrower ’ s ability to repay a loan before lending them money .
The ability-to-repay requirement was hatched ( but not quite finalized ) during the Obama administration .
Under that policy , payday lenders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ necessary underwriting to determine a borrower ’ s ability to pay back a debt , or limit them to no more than six loans per year .
The Trump administration killed the rule before it could take effect , adding to the vulnerability of those hardest hit by the pandemic economy .
“ There is never a good time to enable predatory loans carrying 400 percent interest rates , ” says Michael Calhoun , president of the Center for Responsible Lending .
“ But this is the worst possible time.
” I first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a book about how the financial crisis was generating boom times for the country ’ s payday lenders , check cashers , and other businesses as part of what might be called Poverty , Inc .
In Las Vegas , he and his wife were attending the 20th annual gathering of the what used to be called the National Check Cashers Association , a group that later expanded to include pawnbrokers , auto title lenders ( who charge sky-high rates from borrowers using their cars as loan collateral ) , and others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down-market clientele .
The organization rebranded itself the Financial Service Centers of America , at once more respectable-sounding and opaque .
Hodges and his wife stuck out when I spotted them sitting alone at a big round lunch table at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the first day of the FiSCA conference .
Like most every other attendee , they were white , but also far younger and more fit than their typical counterparts .
In a sea of polyester and ill-fitting sport coats , they were dressed in polos and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attending a stockbroker ’ s convention .
Hodges welcomed the chance to share his views on the industry he was breaking his way into .
While the bigger players then were focused on further national expansion , he wanted to convince the wider public that payday lenders were legitimate , not parasitic .
“ They ’ ve put much more effort into lobbying and not enough into public relations , ” he said of the industry ’ s old guard .
So tainted was the term “ payday loan , ” he added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cash advance , ” both at his stores and on television ads for Advance Financial .
“ The term ‘ payday ’ has become the black skull and cross bones of our industry , ” he said .
Still , business was good , not despite the deep recession that had overtaken much of the world in 2008 , but because of it : “ We ’ re at record loan volumes , ” he boasted then .
Today , as the Hodges operate storefronts across Tennessee and provide online payday loans in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their political patronage .
Hodges contributed more than $ 150,000 to the Trump campaign in 2016 , according to the Federal Election Commission .
In 2018 , Mike and Tina Hodges gave $ 125,000 each to America First Action , Trump ’ s main super-PAC , and Hodges himself chipped in another $ 250,000 in 2019 .
Whereas the Hodges and their employees contributed under $ 10,000 during the 2014 election cycle , the Hodges and others at Advance Financial gave at least $ 410,000 in the 2016 cycle and at least another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 midterm elections , according to the FEC .
The vast majority of that money went into Republican campaign coffers , including the campaigns of individual House and Senate Republicans and various Republican campaign committees .
( Hodges himself donated $ 125,000 to the RNC in 2019 , according to the FEC , and another $ 60,000 to the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees . )
The Hodges and their employees had already contributed another $ 800,000-plus by the time the recording of Hodges boasting of his connections to the Trump White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard for me to say this number because if you told me this five years ago , I would have thought you were crazy , ” Hodges told the Post .
“ But we ’ ve donated about $ 1.25 million to [ Trump ’ s ] campaign so far .
So Tina and I have become , I would say , one of the larger donors to the campaign over the last couple of years.
” Since then , the Hodges and employees of Advance Financial have made at least another $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of it to Republicans .
Hodges declined to be interviewed for this story , opting instead to send a quote from Hunter S. Thompson : “ In a democracy , you have to be a PLAYER.
” By the time Trump was elected , the country ’ s payday lenders were used to being under regulatory siege .
A sweeping set of financial reforms President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010 created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , which payday lenders saw as a potentially existential threat to their business .
Phil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as president of the pro-payday Michigan Financial Service Centers Association , recalled “ constant ” emails from FiSCA warning about a new federal watchdog with the power to crack down on “ unfair , deceptive , or abusive acts or practices.
” Six months after its inception , the CFPB announced its intention to investigate the payday lending industry “ People were petrified of the CFPB , ” Locke said at the time .
The CFPB spent five years considering a new rule to govern what it dubbed “ small-denomination loans.
” Obama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in a speech in 2015 , he said , “ As Americans , we don ’ t mind seeing folks make a profit…But if you ’ re making that profit by trapping hardworking Americans into a vicious cycle of debt , you got to find a new business model.
” Researchers working for the CFPB discovered that three in every four payday loans go to borrowers who take out more than 10 loans a year .
Three out of every five were made to borrowers who , by the time they had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more in fees than the amount borrowed .
A person who borrowed a typical sum of $ 400 needed to scrounge up $ 460 in two weeks to repay the loan .
Yet more than half of payday customers , their researchers found , were refinancing their loans so many times in a row that they paid at least $ 400 on the original $ 400 loan .
These were people living on the economic margins—and , once again , they were disproportionately people of color .
The average payday borrower earns about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a 2016 Pew study , and 58 percent were already having trouble meeting their monthly expenses without the additional burden of repaying a high-fee , short-term loan .
The CFPB did not have the authority to cap the interest rates a company could charge , so instead it created the ability-to-repay policy .
If implemented , CFPB researchers said , the policy would save consumers $ 7 billion a year .
With that highly profitable cycle of debt under threat since the Obama administration , the donations to Trump began to flow .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of payday lender Check Into Cash , and other executives at his management company contributed more than $ 65,000 to the 2016 Trump campaign , according to the FEC , and his company gave $ 25,000 to the president ’ s inaugural committee .
Advance America , the country ’ s largest payday chain ( 1,500 stores ) , contributed at least $ 250,000 to Trump ’ s 2017 inauguration .
Rod Aycox , an early champion of auto title loans , gave $ 1 million to the inaugural committee .
In 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Association of America , a payday trade group , held its annual meeting at the Trump National Doral hotel outside Miami , pouring roughly $ 1 million into the Trump Organization coffers , according to estimates by ProPublica .
Payday lenders were also spending more than $ 1 million a year on the services of dozens of Washington lobbyists .
Hodges seemed to outdo everyone when in 2017 he hired lobbyist Al Simpson , who had until that year served as Mick Mulvaney ’ s chief of staff in Congress .
As a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ joke…in a sick , sad kind of way.
” He had since gone to the White House as Trump ’ s director of the Office of Management and Budget—and soon took on a second role as the CFPB ’ s interim director .
Simpson met repeatedly with Mulvaney according to the Washington Post , while Mulvaney was doing that double duty .
( Next , Mulvaney would become Trump ’ s third chief of staff . )
As of October , Advance Financial ’ s parent company spent $ 450,000 on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Center for Responsive Politics .
( Simpson and Mulvaney did not respond to requests for comment . )
One of Mulvaney ’ s first public acts as the CFPB ’ s acting chief was to suspend the new ability-to-repay standard that the bureau had crafted after a five-year process , announcing the bureau ’ s intention to reconsider it .
One month later , Mulvaney requested a budget of zero dollars .
“ I ’ ve been assured , ” he wrote in the request , that there was enough money already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to carry out its statutory mandates.
” The CFPB froze new investigations and announced it had dropped a lawsuit against four companies it had charged with running illegal payday lending operations using interest rates of up to 950 percent on an annual basis .
Scores of other cases would also likely fade under this new regime , according to a New York Times investigation .
An analysis by the Consumer Federation of America showed that under the previous ( and first ) CFPB director , Richard Cordray , consumers received $ 43 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but that the amount had fallen to under $ 500,000 a week under Mulvaney .
When Mulvaney was named Trump ’ s acting chief of staff in December 2018 , his deputy at the Office of Management and Budget , Kathy Kraninger , took over the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau .
Her background was in homeland security .
She had no experience working in the world of financial services .
Yet by a vote of 50–49 , the Senate approved Kraninger as the CFPB ’ s permanent director .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a five-year term that would stretch through the end of 2023 , until the Supreme Court ruled in June that a president could fire the bureau ’ s chief without cause ( meaning a new president could replace whoever was running the agency ) .
In February 2019 , Kraninger announced her intention to gut the ability-to-repay rule before it went into effect , claiming there was “ insufficient evidence and legal support ” to justify it .
Federal regulatory agencies didn ’ t typically just toss a new rule born of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and rationales offered .
But the Trump administration apparently had a solution for that process : rig it .
In April , the New York Times revealed that CFPB economist Jonathan Lanning , on his last day on the job , had written a memo that accused Trump appointees of pressuring career employees to manipulate the research .
That included the use of “ statistical gimmicks to downplay the harm consumers would suffer if the payday restrictions were repealed.
” Matt Leas , a spokesperson for the CFPB , said at the time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , transparent and thorough ” process for making rules .
By June of last year , the bureau bought itself more time to bury the ability-to-repay policy by issuing a 15-month delay of compliance .
These moves were “ a slap in the face to consumers—especially people of color—who have been victims of predatory business practices and abusive lenders , ” said civil rights advocate Vanita Gupta .
Since the pandemic began in March 2020 , says Center for Responsive Lending analyst Graciela Aponte-Diaz , “ we ’ ve seen an administration taking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the coronavirus to pass all these rules that make it easier for corporations to harm consumers.
” Indeed , the CFPB in July officially killed the ability-to-repay rule .
The Trump administration seems to have at least one more gift in mind for the industry .
In recent months , regulators at both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have been laying the groundwork for a policy known as “ rent-a-bank , ” which would allow payday lenders to arrange loans through out-of-state banks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imposing interest rate caps .
That latest “ scheme , ” as Aponte-Diaz called it , is perhaps the next payoff for a big investment in the current occupant of the White House .
“ You ’ ve got people suffering , but this is another example of the Trump administration helping the payday lenders .
”

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.
This story was reported in partnership with Type Investigations, with support from the Puffin Foundation.
Mike Hodges was still a small fry among payday lenders when Donald Trump visited Hodges’ hometown of Nashville in 2018. Hodges and his wife, Tina, owned somewhere around 100 stores scattered across the state, giving out small-dollar loans for fees that work out to annual interest rates as high as 450 percent. Their firm, Advance Financial, was puny compared to the chains of 1,000 or more that rose from the industry’s pioneers in the 1990s. But the Hodges quickly distinguished themselves as major donors to Trump, shelling out more than a million dollars to his campaign and main super-PAC. In January 2018, Hodges told a reporter for USA Today that he was among those granted a private audience with Trump when the president showed up in Nashville to give a speech at the Gaylord Opryland. The following October, the couple co-sponsored a Nashville appearance by Vice President Mike Pence, where ticket prices ranged between $1,000 and $100,000.
By then, Mike Hodges had emerged as the industry’s point person with the Trump White House—access he openly boasted about purchasing.
“Every dollar amount, no matter how small or large it is” is important, Hodges said two weeks ahead of the Pence fundraiser, according to an audio recording from an industry webinar obtained by the Washington Post. Hodges mentioned the chair of the Republican National Committee: “For example, I’ve gone to Ronna McDaniel and said, ‘Ronna, I need help on something.’ She’s been able to call over to the White House and say, ‘Hey, we have one of our large givers. They need an audience.’”
America’s payday lenders and others selling exploitative financial products to the working poor have enjoyed a string of victories since Trump took over as president. Enforcement actions against the industry by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have fallen dramatically, and the country’s top banking regulators appear to be readying a loophole that would let payday lenders operate even in jurisdictions where local governments have banned their product. A whistleblower inside the CFPB charged in August 2019 that his bosses had ordered staff economists to rig a study so that it downplayed harm to consumers who repeatedly take out payday loans.
The biggest losers in this arrangement have been America’s working poor—above all, Black and Latino workers, who are trapped disproportionately by payday lenders’ exorbitant fees (typically $15 per $100 for a loan due back usually in two weeks). The industry foremost sees green, and also operates in white low- and moderate-income communities. But a 2017 study by the Center for Responsible Lending showed that communities predominantly of people of color in Colorado were seven times more likely to have a payday lending store than predominantly white communities. A 2012 study by Pew Charitable Trusts found that Black people were three times as likely as white people to have taken out a payday loan.
Hodges and his industry colleagues have gone all-in on a president who claims to “love the Hispanics” and be the greatest for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln, and who has paid essentially no federal income tax for years by manipulating bank loans and the tax system, quite possibly fraudulently. Even after the coronavirus pandemic hit, the payday moguls could count on Trump. Initially, these storefront lenders were barred from participating in the Paycheck Protection Program designed to bail out small businesses. Yet after an intense lobbying campaign, the administration apparently shifted course: Records of PPP recipients released in July revealed that dozens of payday lenders and similar businesses received at least $9 billion from the program. (Hodges’ company, with more than 500 employees, the threshold for PPP, was not eligible for the program.) Presumably, none of these companies will pay triple-digit interest rates on any money they might have to pay back under the PPP rules.
The industry’s biggest win came in July, when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that payday lenders will not have to verify a borrower’s ability to repay a loan before lending them money. The ability-to-repay requirement was hatched (but not quite finalized) during the Obama administration. Under that policy, payday lenders would have a choice: Do the necessary underwriting to determine a borrower’s ability to pay back a debt, or limit them to no more than six loans per year.
The Trump administration killed the rule before it could take effect, adding to the vulnerability of those hardest hit by the pandemic economy. “There is never a good time to enable predatory loans carrying 400 percent interest rates,” says Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending. “But this is the worst possible time.”
I first encountered Mike Hodges in 2008 while working on a book about how the financial crisis was generating boom times for the country’s payday lenders, check cashers, and other businesses as part of what might be called Poverty, Inc. In Las Vegas, he and his wife were attending the 20th annual gathering of the what used to be called the National Check Cashers Association, a group that later expanded to include pawnbrokers, auto title lenders (who charge sky-high rates from borrowers using their cars as loan collateral), and others peddling high-priced services to a struggling, down-market clientele. The organization rebranded itself the Financial Service Centers of America, at once more respectable-sounding and opaque.
Hodges and his wife stuck out when I spotted them sitting alone at a big round lunch table at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the first day of the FiSCA conference. Like most every other attendee, they were white, but also far younger and more fit than their typical counterparts. In a sea of polyester and ill-fitting sport coats, they were dressed in polos and khakis, looking as if they were attending a stockbroker’s convention. Hodges welcomed the chance to share his views on the industry he was breaking his way into. While the bigger players then were focused on further national expansion, he wanted to convince the wider public that payday lenders were legitimate, not parasitic. “They’ve put much more effort into lobbying and not enough into public relations,” he said of the industry’s old guard. So tainted was the term “payday loan,” he added, that he called the transaction “cash advance,” both at his stores and on television ads for Advance Financial. “The term ‘payday’ has become the black skull and cross bones of our industry,” he said. Still, business was good, not despite the deep recession that had overtaken much of the world in 2008, but because of it: “We’re at record loan volumes,” he boasted then.
Before Trump, payday moguls “were petrified” about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said one industry representative.
Today, as the Hodges operate storefronts across Tennessee and provide online payday loans in another dozen states, they have expanded their political patronage. Hodges contributed more than $150,000 to the Trump campaign in 2016, according to the Federal Election Commission. In 2018, Mike and Tina Hodges gave $125,000 each to America First Action, Trump’s main super-PAC, and Hodges himself chipped in another $250,000 in 2019. Whereas the Hodges and their employees contributed under $10,000 during the 2014 election cycle, the Hodges and others at Advance Financial gave at least $410,000 in the 2016 cycle and at least another $1,045,000 in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, according to the FEC. The vast majority of that money went into Republican campaign coffers, including the campaigns of individual House and Senate Republicans and various Republican campaign committees. (Hodges himself donated $125,000 to the RNC in 2019, according to the FEC, and another $60,000 to the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees.) The Hodges and their employees had already contributed another $800,000-plus by the time the recording of Hodges boasting of his connections to the Trump White House emerged.
“It’s hard for me to say this number because if you told me this five years ago, I would have thought you were crazy,” Hodges told the Post. “But we’ve donated about $1.25 million to [Trump’s] campaign so far. So Tina and I have become, I would say, one of the larger donors to the campaign over the last couple of years.” Since then, the Hodges and employees of Advance Financial have made at least another $528,000 in campaign contributions—again, nearly all of it to Republicans. Hodges declined to be interviewed for this story, opting instead to send a quote from Hunter S. Thompson: “In a democracy, you have to be a PLAYER.”
By the time Trump was elected, the country’s payday lenders were used to being under regulatory siege. A sweeping set of financial reforms President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010 created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which payday lenders saw as a potentially existential threat to their business. Phil Locke, who for five years served as president of the pro-payday Michigan Financial Service Centers Association, recalled “constant” emails from FiSCA warning about a new federal watchdog with the power to crack down on “unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices.” Six months after its inception, the CFPB announced its intention to investigate the payday lending industry . “People were petrified of the CFPB,” Locke said at the time.
The CFPB spent five years considering a new rule to govern what it dubbed “small-denomination loans.” Obama himself weighed in on the topic when, in a speech in 2015, he said, “As Americans, we don’t mind seeing folks make a profit…But if you’re making that profit by trapping hardworking Americans into a vicious cycle of debt, you got to find a new business model.”
Researchers working for the CFPB discovered that three in every four payday loans go to borrowers who take out more than 10 loans a year. Three out of every five were made to borrowers who, by the time they had paid off a loan, had spent more in fees than the amount borrowed. A person who borrowed a typical sum of $400 needed to scrounge up $460 in two weeks to repay the loan. Yet more than half of payday customers, their researchers found, were refinancing their loans so many times in a row that they paid at least $400 on the original $400 loan. These were people living on the economic margins—and, once again, they were disproportionately people of color.
The average payday borrower earns about $30,000 per year, according to a 2016 Pew study, and 58 percent were already having trouble meeting their monthly expenses without the additional burden of repaying a high-fee, short-term loan. The CFPB did not have the authority to cap the interest rates a company could charge, so instead it created the ability-to-repay policy. If implemented, CFPB researchers said, the policy would save consumers $7 billion a year.
In 2018 and 2019, a payday trade group held its annual meeting at the Trump National Doral hotel outside Miami, pouring roughly $1 million into the Trump Organization coffers.
With that highly profitable cycle of debt under threat since the Obama administration, the donations to Trump began to flow. Allan Jones, the founder and CEO of payday lender Check Into Cash, and other executives at his management company contributed more than $65,000 to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to the FEC, and his company gave $25,000 to the president’s inaugural committee. Advance America, the country’s largest payday chain (1,500 stores), contributed at least $250,000 to Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Rod Aycox, an early champion of auto title loans, gave $1 million to the inaugural committee. In 2018 and 2019, the Community Financial Services Association of America, a payday trade group, held its annual meeting at the Trump National Doral hotel outside Miami, pouring roughly $1 million into the Trump Organization coffers, according to estimates by ProPublica.
Payday lenders were also spending more than $1 million a year on the services of dozens of Washington lobbyists. Hodges seemed to outdo everyone when in 2017 he hired lobbyist Al Simpson, who had until that year served as Mick Mulvaney’s chief of staff in Congress. As a lawmaker, Mulvaney had dubbed the CFPB a “joke…in a sick, sad kind of way.” He had since gone to the White House as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget—and soon took on a second role as the CFPB’s interim director. Simpson met repeatedly with Mulvaney , according to the Washington Post, while Mulvaney was doing that double duty. (Next, Mulvaney would become Trump’s third chief of staff.) As of October, Advance Financial’s parent company spent $450,000 on Simpson’s services, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (Simpson and Mulvaney did not respond to requests for comment.)
One of Mulvaney’s first public acts as the CFPB’s acting chief was to suspend the new ability-to-repay standard that the bureau had crafted after a five-year process, announcing the bureau’s intention to reconsider it. One month later, Mulvaney requested a budget of zero dollars. “I’ve been assured,” he wrote in the request, that there was enough money already in hand “sufficient for the bureau to carry out its statutory mandates.” The CFPB froze new investigations and announced it had dropped a lawsuit against four companies it had charged with running illegal payday lending operations using interest rates of up to 950 percent on an annual basis. Scores of other cases would also likely fade under this new regime, according to a New York Times investigation. An analysis by the Consumer Federation of America showed that under the previous (and first) CFPB director, Richard Cordray, consumers received $43 million a week in relief from the CFPB, but that the amount had fallen to under $500,000 a week under Mulvaney.
When Mulvaney was named Trump’s acting chief of staff in December 2018, his deputy at the Office of Management and Budget, Kathy Kraninger, took over the helm of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Her background was in homeland security. She had no experience working in the world of financial services. Yet by a vote of 50–49, the Senate approved Kraninger as the CFPB’s permanent director. She appeared to be a lock for a five-year term that would stretch through the end of 2023, until the Supreme Court ruled in June that a president could fire the bureau’s chief without cause (meaning a new president could replace whoever was running the agency).
In February 2019, Kraninger announced her intention to gut the ability-to-repay rule before it went into effect, claiming there was “insufficient evidence and legal support” to justify it. Federal regulatory agencies didn’t typically just toss a new rule born of a five-year process; studies had be conducted and rationales offered. But the Trump administration apparently had a solution for that process: rig it. In April, the New York Times revealed that CFPB economist Jonathan Lanning, on his last day on the job, had written a memo that accused Trump appointees of pressuring career employees to manipulate the research. That included the use of “statistical gimmicks to downplay the harm consumers would suffer if the payday restrictions were repealed.” Matt Leas, a spokesperson for the CFPB, said at the time that the agency has “a fair, transparent and thorough” process for making rules.
By June of last year, the bureau bought itself more time to bury the ability-to-repay policy by issuing a 15-month delay of compliance.
These moves were “a slap in the face to consumers—especially people of color—who have been victims of predatory business practices and abusive lenders,” said civil rights advocate Vanita Gupta.
Since the pandemic began in March 2020, says Center for Responsible Lending analyst Graciela Aponte-Diaz, “we’ve seen an administration taking advantage while everyone’s attention is on the coronavirus to pass all these rules that make it easier for corporations to harm consumers.” Indeed, the CFPB in July officially killed the ability-to-repay rule.
The Trump administration seems to have at least one more gift in mind for the industry. In recent months, regulators at both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have been laying the groundwork for a policy known as “rent-a-bank,” which would allow payday lenders to arrange loans through out-of-state banks, allowing them to bypass state laws imposing interest rate caps.
That latest “scheme,” as Aponte-Diaz called it, is perhaps the next payoff for a big investment in the current occupant of the White House. “You’ve got people suffering, but this is another example of the Trump administration helping the payday lenders.”
Research assistance by Mary Retta and Maha Ahmed.