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Scott Walker Thinks Obama’s Climate Plan Will Jack Up Your Electric Bill. He’s Wrong.

by JanaShumway Posted on August 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today President Barack Obama released the final version of his signature climate plan, which sets new limits on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. Each state has a unique target, custom-built for its particular mix of energy sources. Each state also has total freedom to determine how exactly to reach the target. But the rules are clearly designed to expedite the closure of coal-fired power plants, the nation’s number-one source of CO2 emissions.

It took less than a day for the first legal challenges to the plan to emerge from coal interests. The news rules also attracted some pointed criticism from leading Republican presidential contenders, including Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. Here’s what Walker had to say on Twitter:

Neither of those predictions is likely to come true. Cries about job loss and high costs always accompany new environmental regulation. In the case of the Clean Power Plan, as the rules announced today are known, the fear revolves around the image of coal plants around the country going dark. Folks get laid off from the plant, there’s less electricity on the grid, so the price of electricity goes up, so factories can’t afford to pay their workers, so they lay them off…you get the idea.

But as I’ve reported in the past, that view of the plan is misguided for two reasons. The first is that Obama’s new rules, while an important and historic milestone in the annals of climate action, really aren’t much of a departure from the direction that the energy market is already going. As our friend Eric Holthaus at Slate points out, many states are already well on their way to achieving the new carbon targets simply because, for lots of reasons, making tons of inefficient energy from dirty old coal plants just isn’t economically feasible anymore. So you’d be hard-pressed to pin any particular lost job in the coal industry on Obama alone.

The second reason Walker and his ilk are off-base is that they focus too heavily on the coal-killing aspect of the plan, without also considering two equally vital aspects: (a) The building of tons of new energy supplies from renewables, and (b) big improvements in energy efficiency, which will allow us to use less power overall.

It’s true that by the time the plan takes effect, electricity prices will have risen steadily, as they always have for as long as we’ve had electricity. Because electric utilities typically have monopolies over their service area and prize reliability over affordability, power costs don’t naturally fall over time in the way that the costs of other technologies do. But even though electric rates will probably go up, monthly electric bills are likely to go down, thanks to efficiency improvements. The exact calculus will be different in every state, but to take one example, the Southern Environmental Law Center projected that in Virginia, the Clean Power Plan will lead to an 8 percent reduction in electric bills. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, savings like that add up to $37.4 billion for all US homes and businesses by 2020. The NRDC also projects that the plan will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the energy efficiency sector, as homeowners, businesses, factories, etc. invest in upgrades that enable them use less power.

In any case, the solar industry alone already employs more than twice the number of people who work in coal mining. Making the energy system more climate-friendly is as much about juicing the clean energy industry as it is dismantling the coal industry.

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Scott Walker Thinks Obama’s Climate Plan Will Jack Up Your Electric Bill. He’s Wrong.

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Meet the Megadonors Bankrolling Jeb Bush’s Campaign

by pinfamozpa Posted on July 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush knows it doesn’t look good if a candidate appears to get most of his financial support from a small group of wealthy donors. Earlier this spring, he asked donors to try not to give checks of more than $1 million to his super-PAC, and when the group announced its total haul for the first six months of the year, it took pains to emphasize that 9,400 of its more than 9,900 contributors had donated less than $25,000.

But now it’s going to be a lot harder for anyone to think of the Bush super-PAC—which completely dwarfs his campaign in terms of financial resources—as anything but driven by extremely wealthy donors.

This morning, the Right to Rise super-PAC filed its first disclosure reports, confirming that it had indeed raised $103 million in the first six months of the year. That is an unprecedented amount, but what’s really news is the distribution of the donations. It does appear that only about 500 donors gave more than $25,000 to the super-PAC, but donations of less than $25,000 accounted for just $21.7 million of the total. On the other end of the spectrum, 23 people gave more than $1 million to the super-PAC, contributing a total of $27.3 million.

The size of the donations is shocking. Despite the growing public perception that super-PACs are playgrounds for millionaires, the number of people who have ever given $1 million to political causes in their lifetimes is small. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan campaign finance organization (where I used to work), prior to this election cycle, just 475 individuals had ever given $1 million or more cumulatively since 1989, when it began keeping track of the data. Given the seven-figure donations that have already been reported for other super-PACs in the last week, the number is probably well over 500 people now, and the Right to Rise super-PAC is responsible for many of them.

The fact that only about 0.04 percent of Americans gave more than $2,600 last election cycle means that even most of the donors who gave less than $25,000 were already elite in terms of political donations. But with these latest numbers, even the under-$25,000 contributors begins to look like small donors by comparison.

Among Bush’s top donors are people with an interest in some of the top foreign policy debates right now. Miguel Fernandez, a private equity executive who chipped in $3 million, the largest contribution to the super-PAC, was a refugee from Cuba. Bush has slammed President Obama’s rapprochement with the Castro regime. Hushang Ansary was the Iranian ambassador to the US before the Iranian Revolution; he and his wife each donated $1 million. Bush has likewise opposed Obama’s nuclear-containment deal with Iran.

The list of top donors has some expected names, the dependable rainmakers who have long fueled the Bush family. Included among the top donors are big Texas names like oilmen T. Boone Pickens and Ray Hunt, as well as the widow of Harold Simmons, a Dallas chemical magnate who is one of the largest political donors of all time and who was a major source of money for Karl Rove’s various fundraising efforts over the years.

There are also a number of donors who are not people—something that could not have happened before the super-PAC era, or at least not on the same scale. NextEra Energy, Florida’s electric utility, donated $1 million to the super-PAC. That donation itself is unusual, given that publicly traded corporations have tended to avoid giving money to super-PACs, though they may legally do so after the Citizens United court decision in 2010. The US Sugar Corporation Charitable Trust donated $505,000—possibly a first for charities, which are generally excluded from involving themselves in politics.

Not all of the corporate donors are quite as transparent. One $1 million donation came from a shell corporation called Jasper Reserve LLC. On the disclosure forms, the company lists a Charleston, West Virginia address belonging to a law firm that has represented numerous coal companies over the years. The company appears to be registered in Delaware, effectively blocking any information about who founded it or runs it.

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Meet the Megadonors Bankrolling Jeb Bush’s Campaign

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Pope’s climate encyclical divides American opinion

by Aiden1130odf Posted on July 24, 2015

Pope’s climate encyclical divides American opinion

By on 24 Jul 2015commentsShare

A clear-cut majority of swing-state voters agreed in a recent Quinnipiac poll: Pope Francis was right to call on the world to do more to address climate change. There is, however, a deep divide along party lines – Democrats and Republicans split on the topic by a margin of more than 40 percent in every state polled.

Overall, 62 percent of voters polled in Colorado, 65 percent in Iowa, and 64 percent in Virginia said they supported the pope’s encyclical on climate change. It’s likely more than a coincidence that those percentages matched up almost identically with the percentage of voters that Quinnipiac found accept the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.

But broken down by party, the gap was stark. In Colorado, for example, 93 percent of Democrats agreed with the pope’s climate message, but only 38 percent of Republicans.

Other polling by Gallup released this week shows that the pope’s favorability rating among Americans dropped from 76 percent in February 2014 to 59 percent this month. He said a lot of things during that time that could rub conservatives the wrong way, including embracing aspects of evolution. But his strongest campaign yet, which has come to the fore in recent months, is for action on climate change. It got the angrier aspects of the Republican base worked up; Rush Limbaugh labeled the encyclical a “Marxist climate rant.” Francis’ unfavorability rating increased from 9 percent in 2014 to 16 percent this month, according to Gallup.

The pope is not a politician, so he doesn’t really have to worry about polls. But in theory, his encyclical and other pro-climate-action stances by Christian groups have the power to make inroads with conservatives who are more likely to put the opinions of their faith leaders over those of both scientists and politicians. That, at least, is what many climate hawks have hoped — but the party split observed by the Quinnipiac folks raises questions about whether that will work.

The pope is coming to the U.S. in September to speak before Congress and tour the Northeast. That could put some Catholic climate deniers in a tricky spot, especially prominent Republican ones. Don’t bet on that visit mending the gap between Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of his activism.

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The Supreme Court Could Make Abortion One of 2016’s Big Campaign Issues

by AgnesPerin962 Posted on June 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, does not want to talk about abortion. Specifically, he doesn’t want to discuss the draconian law that he signed two years ago, which was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this week and now threatens to shut down two-thirds of the state’s remaining abortion clinics.

During an interview on Fox News Wednesday, Perry pushed aside questions about the recent court decision. “I think the real issue for me is this has been settled in the state of Texas,” Perry told host Megyn Kelly before changing the subject to the economy, the border, and national security—”the big issues that I think the bulk of the American people really want to focus on.”

But the American people may not be able to avoid the issue of abortion as next November nears. This week’s ruling paves the way for the United States Supreme Court to take up the most important abortion case in more than 20 years to determine how far states can go in cutting off access to abortion. If the high court takes the case, the justices’ decision could be announced right smack in the middle of the 2016 campaign, forcing candidates to discuss abortion whether they want to or not. And, as Perry seems to recognize, that could be bad news for Republicans.

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The Supreme Court Could Make Abortion One of 2016’s Big Campaign Issues

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Switching to the Metric System Is Officially a Presidential Campaign Issue

by BrookeHornung5 Posted on June 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Lincoln Chafee kicked off his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday in Virginia by promising to fight climate change, curb extra-judicial assassinations, and switch the United States to the metric system.

Wait, what?

The Rhode Islander, who served in the Senate as a Republican before joining the Democratic party after being elected governor, unveiled his left-leaning, if idiosyncratic, agenda in a wide-ranging address at George Mason University. His continued opposition to the Iraq War, which he voted against authorizing as a senator, could put him in conflict with the party’s front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As a senator, Clinton was an early supporter of the invasion, though she has since called it a mistake.

National defense was just one area in which Chafee advised heeding the wisdom of the international community. (He likewise proposed ending capital punishment entirely, and praised Nebraska for its recent ban.)

But then Chafee went a few feet—er, meters—further:

Earlier I said, let’s be bold. Here’s a bold embrace of internationalism: Let’s join the rest of the world and go metric. I happened to live in Canada as they completed the process. Believe me, it is easy. It doesn’t take long before 34 degrees is hot. Only Myanmar, Liberia, and the United States aren’t metric, and it it’ll help our economy!

Finally, a presidential candidate with a foolproof plan to bring down rising temperatures.

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Switching to the Metric System Is Officially a Presidential Campaign Issue

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This Map Shows the Price Of Weed In Every State

by JestineChristia Posted on May 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Where would you go if you wanted to smoke weed? Well you might start in Colorado or Washington, the two states where it’s legal to smoke it recreationally (although that landscape is always shifting). But what if you didn’t care about the law, and you just wanted to blaze based on financial considerations? Well, you’d probably still head to Colorado or Washington, according to a new map from Forbes:

Map courtesy of Forbes

Forbes used data from priceofweed.com, which gets its data by “crowdsourc(ing) the street value of marijuana from the most accurate source possible: you, the consumer.” One might say stoners aren’t the best source of financial data, but, then again, there isn’t much stoners are more serious about than what they shell out for weed.

So good on you, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, California. And bad on you, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Virginia.

(h/t The Independent)

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This Map Shows the Price Of Weed In Every State

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Which Tech Companies Are the Greenest?

by PercySpangler Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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This article originally appeared in Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“It’s not easy being green” is a tired cliché, but it’s still particularly true if you are a giant technology company. Even Apple, Facebook, and Google—the best of the bunch, according to a new report from Greenpeace—will have to put in serious additional effort to fully shift to clean energy, especially in terms of lobbying at the state and local level. And the industry laggards, which include Amazon and eBay, have that much further to go.

Here’s how Greenpeace categorizes the tech giants:

Greenpeace

Energy efficiency in traditional appliances keeps improving, but our demand for energy is boosted by new technologies. In particular, companies that manufacture mobile devices and provide services like email, social networking, cloud storage, and streaming video have to contend with constantly escalating demand for data storage.

At the same time, being eco-friendly is important to many of those same companies—or at least important to their public image. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft all dropped out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) last year because of bad publicity around the right-wing corporatist group’s opposition to action on climate change. But tech giants will need to do a lot more than quit dirty lobbying groups, Greenpeace argues; they’ll need to actually get involved in the political sphere on behalf of clean energy solutions.

First, the good news is that some tech companies are making respectable efforts to power their operations through clean energy sources. Google has invested heavily in solar energy, and Apple announced just yesterday that it’s expanding its renewable programs to manufacturing facilities in China. But in many cases, the issue is not whether companies have good intentions but whether clean energy is available to them.

Here are a few key quotes from the Greenpeace report:

Apple continues to lead the charge in powering its corner of the internet with renewable energy even as it continues to rapidly expand. All three of its data center expansions announced in the past year will be powered with renewable energy.
Google continues to match Apple in deploying renewable energy with its expansion in some markets, but its march toward 100 percent renewable energy is increasingly under threat by monopoly utilities for several data centers including those in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Singapore and Taiwan.

And here are some challenges the report lays out:

Amazon’s adoption of a 100 percent renewable energy goal, while potentially significant, lacks basic transparency and, unlike similar commitments from Apple, Facebook or Google, does not yet appear to be guiding Amazon’s investment decisions toward renewable energy and away from coal.
The rapid rise of streaming video is driving significant growth in our online footprint, and in power-hungry data centers and network infrastructure needed to deliver it.
Microsoft has slipped further behind Apple and Google in the race to build a green internet, as its cloud footprint continues to undergo massive growth in an attempt to catch up with Amazon, but has not kept pace with Apple and Google in terms of its supply of renewable electricity.

The underlying problem in many cases is that dirty energy-dependent utility monopolies are providing the electricity for massive, and growing, data centers. If these utilities use coal or natural gas, then by extension so do the tech companies with data centers in their service areas. Meeting data-storage demand without burning more fossil fuels will not be easy. Greenpeace writes:

Big data’s massive growth is expected to continue with the emergence of cheap smartphones: nearly 80 percent of the planet’s adult population will be connected to the internet by 2020, and the total number of devices connected to the internet will be roughly twice the global population by 2018. Internet traffic from mobile devices increased 69 percent in 2014 alone with the rapid increase of video streaming to mobile devices, and mobile traffic will exceed what is delivered over wired connections by 2018.

There are different ways to increase renewable energy supply at data centers. The first, of course, is simply to generate clean power on site with solar panels or wind turbines. Apple is already doing this and other companies are following its lead. But data centers require so much energy that they won’t generally be able to cover most of their needs that way. Other free-market approaches include power purchase agreements, in which the tech companies can make a deal with a clean energy supplier, and “green tariffs,” in which they agree to buy 100 percent clean power from the local utility at a price premium.

To get all their energy from renewables, though, will require tech companies to engage in policy debates. Greenpeace writes:

In many markets, companies’ ability to power with renewable energy will remain severely limited without policy changes. Even in more liberalized markets, it behooves companies to advocate for policies that will green the broader grid, narrowing the ground that they need to cover to power with 100 percent renewable energy. Companies can and must become advocates with the regulators and policymakers who ultimately have the power to change markets in ways that will allow companies to achieve their renewable energy goals. State policymakers covet data center investments, offering significant tax incentives to companies to lure them into their borders. Companies could compel a similar race to the top on renewable energy.

There were a few instances last year of tech companies lobbying for clean energy policies—Google submitted comments in favor of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, and several major tech firms signed the “Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles” calling on state regulators and utilities to expand access to renewable energy.

Greenpeace argues that tech companies particularly need to get engaged in state and local politics, forming an effective counterweight to the fossil fuel and right-wing interest group money that has swayed state legislative races and outcomes in recent years. Last year, Facebook and Microsoft submitted comments to the Iowa Utilities Board in favor of distributed electricity generation, but that was a relatively isolated event. That sort of activism needs to become routine.

In North Carolina, for example, Greenpeace notes that it’s illegal to buy renewable energy from a third party instead of buying whatever dirty energy is offered by state monopoly Duke Energy. The same state legislature that is offering tax incentives to attract data centers is considering changing that law. Tech companies should tell North Carolina that doing so is a precondition to getting any data centers located there, Greenpeace argues. Similarly, Virginia has a harsh cap on third-party clean power purchases, and the State Corporation Commission is due to review that rule this year.

You can be sure that the utilities, the Koch brothers, Art Pope, and Americans for Prosperity will be involved in these fights. If clean energy supporters are not, they will be over before they have begun. To really be green, tech companies need to put their muscle into this fight.

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Which Tech Companies Are the Greenest?

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West Virginia Democrats’ Best Hope Might Be This Billionaire Coal Magnate

by SuzetteVGB Posted on May 11, 2015

Mother Jones

Over the last six years, West Virginia Democrats have seen their grip on state politics slip away in no small part due to their alleged collaboration with President Barack Obama’s “War on Coal.” The solution: put a coal kingpin on the ballot.

On Monday, Jim Justice, owner of Southern Coal Corp., announced he would run for governor as a Democrat in 2016, to replace the retiring incumbent Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Justice, the state’s richest citizen with an estimated net worth of $1.6 billion, is a political novice but a state icon. In 2009, he purchased the Greenbrier, a historic mountain resort that had fallen on hard times, and restored it into a first-class resort. During his gubernatorial campaign kickoff event, Justice drew a parallel between his state’s lackluster reputation, and the derelict condition of the White Sulphur Springs retreat. “Times were tough at the Greenbrier, too,” he said.

In Justice, Democrats have found a walking counterpoint to the war-on-coal attacks. (The attacks are also largely unfounded—under Tomblin the state has rolled back mine safety regulations.) In contrast to, say, frequent Greenbrier guest Don Blankenship, who as CEO of Massey Energy famously re-designed his property so he wouldn’t have to use his town’s polluted drinking water and is currently awaiting trial on conspiracy to violate mine-safety laws, Justice has always styled himself as a man of the people. A 2011 Washington Post profile began with a surprise sighting of Justice at an Applebee’s near his hometown. The richest man in the state, it turned out, was grabbing a late snack after coaching his hometown’s high school girls basketball team.

But Southern Coal Corp. isn’t without its issues. An NPR investigation last fall found that the company owed nearly $2 million in delinquent fines for federal mine safety violations. (After the report was published, Justice agreed to work out a payment plan.) And he may not have the Democratic field to himself, either; senate minority leader Jeff Kessler (D) filed his pre-candidacy papers in March. No Republicans have thrown their hats into the ring yet.

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West Virginia Democrats’ Best Hope Might Be This Billionaire Coal Magnate

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The 10 American Cities With the Dirtiest Air

by LashondFairclot Posted on April 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Nearly 44 percent of Americans live in areas with dangerous levels of ozone or particle pollution, according to the American Lung Association’s annual “State of the Air” report, published yesterday.

The good news is that’s actually an improvement over last year’s report, which showed that 47 percent of the population lived in these highly polluted places. Overall, the air has been getting cleaner since Congress enacted stricter regulations in the 1970s, and the American Lung Association report, which looked at data from 2011 through 2013, showed a continuing drop in the air emissions that create the six most widespread pollutants.

But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet. Many cities experienced a record number of days with high levels of particle pollution, a mixture of solid and liquid droplets in the air that have been linked to serious health problems. Short-term particle pollution was especially bad in the West, in part due to the drought and heat, which may have increased the dust, grass fires and wildfires. Six cities—San Francisco; Phoenix; Visalia, California; Reno, Nevada.; Yakima, Washington; and Fairbanks, Alaska—recorded their highest weighted average number of unhealthy particle pollution days since the American Lung Association started covering this metric in 2004.

Los Angeles held its rank as the metropolitan area with the worst ozone pollution, even as it saw its best three-year period since the first report 16 years ago: the city experienced a one-third reduction in its average number of unhealthy ozone days since the late 1990s.

Meanwhile, states on the east coast showed the most headway in cleaning up their air, with major drops in year-round particle pollution. The American Lung Association attributed the improvement to a push for cleaner diesel fleets and cleaner fuels in power plants.

“The progress is exactly what we want to see, but to see some areas having some of their worst episodes was unusual,” said Janice Nolen, an air pollution expert with the association, referring to the record-breaking days of short-term particle pollution.

Data is missing for some of the dirtiest cities in the Midwest, including Chicago and St. Louis, due in part to problems at data labs in Illinois and Tennessee. Similar problems in Georgia also prevented researchers from assessing changes in Atlanta, another city notorious for air pollution.

Outdoor air pollution has been linked to about 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide, by causing or exacerbating lung cancer, chronic obstructive lung disease, acute lower respiratory infections, ischaemic heart disease, and strokes. And unfortunately, it seems people of color and with low incomes are often exposed to the dirtiest air.

Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the American Lung Association ranked cities around the country in terms of their year-round particle pollution, or the annual average level of fine particles in the air. These fine particles can come from many sources, including power plants, wildfires, and vehicle emissions, and breathing them in over such long periods of time have been linked to lung damage, increased hospitalizations for asthma attacks, increased risk for lower birth weight and infant mortality, and increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

Here are the 10 cities with the lowest levels of year-round particle pollution:

1. Prescott, Arizona

2. Farmington, New Mexico

3. Casper, Wyoming

3. Cheyenne, Wyoming

5. Flagstaff, Arizona

6. Duluth, Minnesota-Wisconsin

6. Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Florida

6. Salinas, California

10. Anchorage, Alaska

10. Bismarck, North Dakota

10. Rapid City-Spearfish, South Dakota

And the cities with the most year-round particle pollution:

1. Fresno-Madera, California

2. Bakersfield, California

3. Visalia-Porterville-Hanford, California*

4. Modesto-Merced, California

5. Los Angeles-Long Beach, California

6. El Centro, California

7. San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, California

8. Cincinnati; Wilmington, Kentucky; Maysville, Indiana

9. Pittsburgh; New Castle, Ohio; Weirton, West Virginia

10. Cleveland-Akron-Canton, Ohio

To see city rankings for short-term particle pollution and ozone pollution, check out the report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the state in which Visalia, Porterville, and Hanford are located.

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The 10 American Cities With the Dirtiest Air

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The Feds Are Investigating 106 Colleges for Mishandling Sexual Assault. Is Yours One of Them?

by BrianneJessep Posted on April 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last May, the Department of Education released a list of 55 colleges and universities under investigation for possible Title IX violations for mishandling sexual-assault cases. As of April 1, the number has grown to 106 institutions, according to new data requested by Mother Jones.

The DOE provided the updated list Monday, a day after the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism published its report on the widely discredited Rolling Stone article about sexual assault at the University of Virginia. The controversy around the piece has served as a reminder of the ongoing national debate about how colleges and universities should handle sexual-assault allegations. Recent research shows that 1 in 5 women in undergraduate programs experience sexual assault, even though just 1 percent of assailants are punished.

UVA has been on the federal radar since June 2011, joining five other Virginia area schools under investigation. Meanwhile, several schools have agreed to make changes in how they handle sexual-misconduct complaints following the federal probes:

In 2011, before the DOE made its list of institutions public, the Office for Civil Rights looked into complaints of a sexually hostile environment at Yale, in part due to an October 2010 incident in which fraternity pledges chanted “sexually aggressive comments” outside the campus’ Women’s Center. Yale agreed to alter its policies in June 2012.
Both the Department of Justice and the DOE investigated procedures at the University of Montana-Missoula, once described as the nation’s “rape capital.” (Between January 2008 and May 2012, Missoula police received more than 350 sexual-assault reports.) The university agreed to make changes in May 2013.
Last May, the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights found that at the Virginia Military Institute, “female cadets were exposed to a sexually hostile environment” and that the institute violated Title IX for requiring pregnant and parenting cadets to leave the school.
The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights found that Harvard Law School failed to “appropriately respond” to two sexual-assault complaints, including one complaint that was dismissed more than a year after the university took up the case. The law school agreed to make changes in December 2014 as part of a university-wide overhaul of its policy for handling sexual-assault and harassment cases. A group of Harvard law professors objected to the tougher policy in a Boston Globe op-ed, noting that the procedures for deciding cases were “overwhelmingly stacked against the accused.”

Here’s the most recent list of schools under federal investigation:

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106 Universities, Colleges Title IX Investigation Department of Education (PDF)

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The Feds Are Investigating 106 Colleges for Mishandling Sexual Assault. Is Yours One of Them?

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