(WASHINGTON) — The number of job openings hit a record high of 10.9 million on the last day of July, the Department of Labor said Wednesday, as businesses struggle to lure back workers in the wake of COVID-19’s shock to the economy.
The latest figure on job openings beats the record high of 10.1 million that was just set the previous month in June, but may not yet reflect the impact of the delta variant’s spread on the labor market. Still, the fresh data paints a complicated picture of economic recovery as job openings soar despite unemployment levels remaining elevated.
Job openings increased across the economy, with major increases in health care and social assistance, finance and insurance, as well as accommodation and food services, the DOL said.
In addition to job openings reaching a high, the number of people leaving their jobs is also at record high levels. The quits rate in July was 2.7%, the BLS said Wednesday, tying with June and April of 2021 for the highest on record.
Economists have attributed the recent labor crunch to lingering health concerns over the virus that may have some workers not wanting to return to the workplace, a child care crisis that has disproportionately impacted working women, as well as harder-to-quantify factors as many Americans reassess what they want from a job after living through a once-in-a-century pandemic that has left more than 600,000 Americans dead.
The unemployment rate in August was 5.2%, a reflection of major improvements in the labor market compared to before the vaccine rollout, but still above the pre-pandemic 3.5% seen in February 2020. Broken down further, employment has risen by some 17 million jobs since April 2020, but the economy is still down some 5.3 million jobs compared to February 2020.
Despite the unemployment rate remaining elevated, many firms have reported struggles hiring staff — which has resulted in average wages rising, especially among service industries or jobs requiring face-to-face contact. The average hourly earnings for workers in August was some $30.73.
The latest data from the DOL also comes as enhanced pandemic-era unemployment benefits expired this week for millions of Americans. Despite the rhetoric from many Republican lawmakers, however, data indicates that yanking pandemic unemployment benefits — as a handful of states have already done — did not contribute to job growth. Researchers at JPMorgan found “zero correlation” between job growth and state decisions to drop the federal unemployment aid, the Associated Press reported.
(AFGHANISTAN) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called on the Taliban to allow chartered aircraft to depart Afghanistan with Americans and Afghans ready to board, but said there were “limits” to what the U.S. can do to ensure they fly out.
For over a week now, the Taliban have not permitted at least six chartered flights to leave, saying some evacuees do not have the proper documents to depart. The standoff is turning dire for some passengers, with one aid group organizing a group of Afghan women and girls telling ABC News the situation is “uncontrolled” and “uncomfortable.”
The militant group, which has publicly said it will allow safe passage to foreigners trying to leave the country, unveiled an “interim” government on Tuesday that includes several top leaders already under U.S. and United Nations sanctions.
Blinken said the new Taliban cabinet “certainly does not meet the test of inclusivity,” but would only say its top members had “very challenging track records.”
The Biden administration has struggled to evacuate U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghan partners in the eight days since U.S. military and diplomatic personnel withdrew from the country, ending America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
That includes for at least 19 U.S. citizens and hundreds of Afghans in the northern city Mazar-e-Sharif, where chartered aircraft have been waiting at the airport for over a week now, according to aid groups involved in organizing them.
“Those flights need to be able to leave and the United States government, the State Department – we are doing everything we can to help make that happen,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he met some of the thousands of Afghan refugees evacuated by the U.S.-led operation that ended on Aug. 30.
Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Sunday that the flights were being held “hostage” as the Taliban demanded concessions from the U.S., while some advocates blamed the U.S. for not clearing the flights. Blinken said Wednesday there was “a fair amount of confusion” about the situation — with State Department officials saying the U.S. is not involved in approving landing or overflight rights and doing what it can to help the chartered flights get approvals.
“While there are limits to what we can do without personnel on the ground, without an airport with normal security procedures in place, we are doing everything in our power to support those flights and to get them off the ground. That’s what we’ve done, that’s what we’ll continue to do,” Blinken said alongside German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
State Department officials said U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been sending urgent messages to the Taliban’s leadership to demand that they abide by their commitments on safe passage, and that the U.S. has so far no security concerns based on the manifests provided by advocacy groups.
But Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of Ascend, a U.S.-based nonprofit seeking to empower Afghan women and girls through mountain climbing, blamed the State Department for standing in the way at times.
“We’ve given you all the details of these people and you cleared them and call them to come, and now you’re saying, ‘You have to have travel documents and don’t worry if you do, you get to go’? That’s a complete abdication of responsibility, and it’s just – it’s morally repugnant,” LeGree told ABC News Wednesday.
In total, there are more than 1,000 people now seeking a seat on these chartered flights, she added, complicating efforts to ensure Americans and vulnerable Afghans can safely evacuate first and degrading conditions at the airport itself where many have been waiting for days.
One hundred and ninety miles to the southeast, some conditions in Kabul are deteriorating as well. A top U.N. official said Wednesday her office is receiving daily reports of women’s rights being rolled back, including barring them from leaving home without a man or going to work.
“With the announcement yesterday, the Taliban have missed a critical opportunity to show the world that is truly committed to building an inclusive and prosperous society,” said Alison Davidian, the deputy representative in Afghanistan for U.N. Women, the global agency’s entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
That announcement is the formation of an “interim” government, led by Taliban commanders that played prominent roles in its previous government that ruled much of Afghanistan in the late 1990’s.
Instead of naming a woman to any position, the Taliban also dissolved the previous U.S.-backed government’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs and reinstated its Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which acted as a religious enforcement force.
Blinken said the U.S. was still “assessing the announcement,” but expressed concern that the list of ministers “consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban and their close associates and no women” and that some have ties to other terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network.
“It certainly does not meet the test of inclusivity,” he added, noting some individuals have “very challenging track records.”
Challenging is an understatement. Sirajuddin Haqqani, for example, has been put in charge of domestic affairs as acting Interior Minister. The leader of the sanctioned Haqqani Network, which is responsible for ruthless terror attacks across Afghanistan, he has a $10 million bounty on his head by the FBI.
Asked whether the U.S. government is still pursuing his capture, Blinken didn’t directly address the question – instead saying the U.S. will engage the Taliban “for purposes of advancing the national interests” of the U.S. and its allies and “in ways that are fully consistent with our laws,” including U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and Haqqani himself and others.
As he and other U.S. officials have said repeatedly, Blinken reiterated that the U.S. will judge the new government “by its action.”
But he was pressed by an Afghan journalist Tuesday on that. After Taliban fighters have beaten female protesters and journalists covering demonstrations against them, shut down media outlets and raided homes, and more, TOLO News’s Lotfullah Najafizada asked Blinken, “What else do you want to see?”
“We will see by its actions whether it corrects course on any of these incidents of abusive conduct,” Blinken said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court is returning to its iconic courtroom in October to hear in-person oral arguments for the first time since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the justices to conduct business over the phone.
Oral arguments scheduled for the October, November and December sessions will be in the courtroom with access limited to essential court personnel, counsel and journalists, the court announced Wednesday.
The justices began meeting in person in April for private meetings to discuss cases, and all nine justices are fully vaccinated. But with the continuing coronavirus pandemic and a surge in cases due to the delta variant, the court will remain closed to the public.
While oral arguments have been held over the phone for the last year and a half, real-time oral arguments have been available to the media for broadcasting to the public. The court anticipates that won’t change with a return to in-person operations, according to the announcement.
That marks a major shift in the court’s transparency because prior to the pandemic, only those sitting in the courtroom had real-time access to the proceedings. Audio recordings of oral arguments were made available to the public at the end of each week, and transcripts of arguments were made available the same day.
The court that is returning to the bench in October is not the same as the one that left in March 2020. Before Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September of last year, the court’s conservatives held a narrow 5-4 majority.
Now conservatives have a powerful 6-3 majority after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by former President Donald Trump, about a week before the 2020 presidential election — causing an uproar among Democrats over the last-minute appointment. Coney Barret has yet to hear in-person arguments since joining the court.
The court will return from its summer recess to hear arguments Oct. 4 in the cases of Mississippi v. Tennessee, which will determine if Mississippi has sole control of the state’s groundwater, and Wooden v. United States, which will determine whether crimes committed in a sequential spree are considered separate occasions, according to SCOTUSblog.
Oreo just announced the release of a limited-edition Pokémon cookie pack.
The Pokémon x Oreo cookie pack pays tribute to some of your favorite Pokémon, including Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle.
There are 16 designs and each Oreo will be embossed with a different character.
Some cookies will be harder to find than others, just like in the Pokémon world.
“The rarity of the designs embossed on the cookies range from easy to find to hard to find, and the hardest to find (Mew) is featured on an extremely limited amount of the total cookies produced,” Oreo said in a press release.
Along with the collaboration, there will be an art installation with more than 8,000 3-D replicas of the cookies on the Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles until Oct. 3.
The Pokémon x OREO cookie pack will be available at retailers nationwide starting Sept 13.
(VIRGINIA) — Like many educators this fall, Jill Biden headed back to the classroom at Northern Virginia Community College Tuesday as the first presidential spouse to hold a full-time job while also serving her duties as first lady.
She was also the first second lady to continue with her full time career while her husband was serving as vice president.
Biden is teaching two sections of an introductory academic writing course this semester, with one section fully in-person and the other being a hybrid model of in-person and online learning, according to the college’s course catalogue.
Throughout the pandemic Biden has advocated for the importance of returning to in-person instruction, writing for ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “I know that classrooms are so much more than places where our children learn math and reading.”
Elizabeth Natalle is a founding and board member of the First Ladies Association for Research and Education, an organization that promotes and publicizes the contributions of first ladies.
She said Biden’s dual career as a first lady and a professor is not only historic but it more accurately reflects the reality of American women which is a reality that embodies both being a working professional and having families.
“I think Jill Biden is very purposefully being quite vocal about her title, about her professionalism, about her work as a way to inspire and be a role model for American women and for girls growing up,” she said.
Having been an educator for over 30 years and continuing to teach during her husband’s two terms as vice president, Biden had already established some precedent that she could do both, according to Anita McBride, the director of the First Ladies Initiative at American University, which studies the influence of first ladies on politics, policy and public diplomacy.
“It’s something that she made clear that ‘It’s not just what I do, it’s who I am,’ and she prepared the country for the fact that she would continue to do so,” McBride said.
Over the past few presidencies, the country has been inching towards having a first lady who also has a job to balance with presidential spousal duties, McBride said. And Biden is not unlike other first ladies in her efforts to move America forward on its views about working women.
“You can point to almost any first lady in our history and show where they have risen to the occasion and tried to move the country forward and just push the envelope a little bit further on various issues,” she said.
Biden, who goes by “Dr. Biden” in class, has her doctorate of education in educational leadership from the University of Delaware. Last December, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that garnered explosive reactions called on Biden to drop the title.
The op-ed’s author, Joseph Epstein, wrote that the use of doctor by Biden “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”
In a tweet, Biden responded by saying “Together, we will build a world where the accomplishments of our daughters will be celebrated, rather than diminished.”
Natalle said that first ladies are embroiled in a paradox of public criticism for either being too involved in political matters and not focusing on other duties or not being involved enough — and Biden is no exception.
“First ladies, no matter what they do, find themselves between a rock and a hard place,” she said.
While Biden has been vocal about continuing to teach and the importance of returning to in-person learning, she keeps a low profile about her second job as first lady.
The two courses she is teaching are listed on the semester’s course schedule as being taught by “Tracy, J.” — which is her middle name.
According to her Rate My Professor profile, which is a website that allows students to review college professors, one student wrote that “I mean, who — in her position — would continue here with all that’s going on in her family’s very public life? But in the classroom she’s simply Dr. Biden.”
She is also classified as a “tough grader” but also a “wonderful teacher” by student reviews.
Natalle hopes that Biden’s commitment to continue in her profession will create a lasting impact.
“I hope that she sets a precedent for future first spouses, whether that’s a man or a woman, to be a working person who’s respected for that,” she said.
(NEW YORK) –There was mid-flight chaos on one American Airlines flight over the Labor Day holiday after a passenger began growling and berating the flight attendants on board.
“What? What? What? What are you going to kick me off this flight?” the 61-year-old man taunted the flight crew.
At one point, a flight attendant had to block him from gaining access to the galley.
“Now!” the flight attendant shouted. “Sit Down Now!”
Once the plane landed in Salt Lake City, authorities boarded the aircraft and took the passenger, who they said was intoxicated, into custody.
“Really? Really? Really?” the man says as he is taken off the plane.
“His behavior was so bizarre,” Dennis Busch, a fellow passenger, told ABC News. “Not particularly threatening towards us other passengers but it was very surreal.”
The man was later cited for disorderly conduct and public intoxication.
Monday’s incident is just the latest in a surge of aggressive behavior on planes.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it has received nearly 4,200 reports of unruly passengers since the start of the year. More than 3,000 of them are people who refuse to wear a mask.
The subsequent fines for unruly behavior during flights have soared in 2021, with the FAA reporting last month that it has proposed more than $1 million in penalties this year alone.
Airline crews have reported incidents in which visibly drunk passengers verbally abused them, shoved them, kicked seats, threw trash at them, defiled the restrooms and in some cases even punched them in the face.
The FAA had hoped its zero-tolerance policy for in-flight disruptions, which could lead to fines as high as $52,500 and up to 20 years in prison, would be enough to deter potential offenders, but they’ve still seen hundreds of incidents per month.
In-flight tensions are unlikely to wane as the mask requirement for planes was extended from September into January.
FAA Administrator Steve Dickson has urged airport police to arrest more people who are unruly or violent on flights.
“While the FAA has levied civil fines against unruly passengers, it has no authority to prosecute criminal cases,” Dickson told airport executives.
He said they see many passengers — some who physically assaulted flight attendants — interviewed by local police and then released “without criminal charges of any kind.”
The agency has looked into more than 682 potential violations of federal law so far this year — the highest number since the agency began keeping records in 1995. But it is unclear how many people have actually paid the FAA’s proposed fines.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Gio Benitez, and Amanda Maile contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Reproductive rights are taking center stage in California’s recall election, in a bid to nationalize the stakes of next week’s special election.
Last week, Texas passed the strictest anti-abortion legislation in the nation, effectively nulling Roe v. Wade. The law blocks abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. It also empowers whistleblowers to report and sue anyone aiding an abortion, including doctors and Uber drivers who may have no knowledge of the situation.
Much of the discourse from candidates over the course of this campaign cycle has focused on COVID-19, homelessness and climate change. Though Republican challengers have offered dramatically different approaches to handling these crises, their responses haven’t energized voters as much as Democrats had hoped.
Now, following Texas’ abortion ban, Democrats are turning their focus to the issue, sending a stark warning to voters: California could be next if Gov. Gavin Newsom loses.
“The fight that’s going on nationally, has come to California,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Zohreen Shah during a campaign stop with Newsom. “That’s why this is the moment to vote no on the recall.”
Newsom added, “Imagine the judges a Republican governor will appoint. Imagine the ability to use the line item veto to cut expansions of reproductive rights and health care for women. Imagine a governor from the state of California joining Republican governors on amicus brief supporting overturning Roe v. Wade or using the bully pulpit nationally to advance that cause I think it could be profoundly consequential.”
A reality check on California politics might prove otherwise, though. California has some of the strongest abortion protections in the nation, so if Newsom were to be recalled, his successor would face a variety of obstacles trying to enact a major consequential anti-abortion legislation. Notably, the legislation would have to go up against a heavy Democratic majority in the state legislature and the governor would only have until the end of the term in 2022 to do it.
However, that has not stopped some Republican candidates from taking stances about stripping funding from health services that provide abortions and trying to overturn Roe v. Wade.
During an appearance on CNN’s New Day this week, former Olympian and TV personality Caitlyn Jenner said she supports Texas’ decision because she believes states should have the ability to make their own laws — but she still thinks women should have the right to choose whether or not to give birth.
As it relates to California, Jenner said, “I don’t see any changes in our laws in California in the future.”
Others, aware of California’s political landscape, are calling out Newsom’s alleged strategy of using the issue of abortion to vilify his Republican opponents.
“It’s not that big of an issue in California because California, you know, has constitutional protection,” businessman John Cox told ABC News. “So the politicians are using it. Mr. Newsom is using it to scare people right now.”
Some Republicans, like former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, have complicated Newsom’s alleged efforts to try to paint his Republican challengers as anti-abortion. Faulconer told ABC News, “I’ve been pro-choice … I’ve always been and I will continue to be that way.”
While the effectiveness of Newsom’s strategy will play out at the ballot box on Sept. 14, one thing is for certain: The fight for access to reproductive rights is far from over. Each party appears determined to use the controversial issue to energize their base as the 2022 midterms quickly approach.
(NEW YORK) — Just 49% of Americans see the United States as safer from terrorism than it was before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, down from 64% a decade ago, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll.
Forty-one percent instead say the United States has become less safe since 9/11, reflecting both renewed partisan divisions and the tumultuous withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.
A vast 86% in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, also say the events of Sept. 11 had a lasting effect on the United States. But underscoring the public’s sour mood on this issue, 46%, a new high, say it’s been a change for the worse. That easily exceeds the 33% who see a change for the better, half as many as said so in spring 2002.
See PDF for full results, charts, and tables.
Shifts
Views of the country’s security from terrorism have shifted sharply across the years, given both international developments and partisan U.S. politics. Confidence peaked in 2003 and 2004, fell steeply in 2005 after the London transit bombings, held especially high among Republicans during the Bush administration, plummeted among Republicans two years later under the Obama administration, then rose sharply across groups after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Ten years later, the latest decline may reflect multiple factors, including pessimism after the fall of Afghanistan and Republican-led dissatisfaction with the Biden administration.
Specifically, compared with 2011, the sense that the country is safer from terrorism now than it was before 9/11 is down 28 percentage points among Republicans, to 41%, compared with a slight 9-point decrease among Democrats, to 57%. It’s down 12 points among independents, to 52%.
The see-saws have been dramatic:
These patterns are mirrored in terms of political ideology, with 59% of moderates and 55% of liberals currently seeing improved safety, versus just 39% of conservatives.
Just 16% of Americans overall say the country is “much” safer from terrorism, again near all-time lows. An additional 33% of Americans call it safer, but just somewhat so. Those who see the country as less safe divide evenly, 21% somewhat less safe, 20% much less. There’s another partisan split here, with 36% of Republicans saying the country is much less safe from terrorism than before 9/11, versus 15% of independents and 11% of Democrats.
Another result shows that 9/11 isn’t unique in its perceived impact. About as many Americans, 82%, say the coronavirus pandemic will change the country in a lasting way as say this about 9/11. And, also similar to current views on 9/11, 50% call it a change for the worse.
Partisan differences narrow when considering the lasting effects of the 9/11 attacks. Thirty-one to 36% of Republicans, Democrats and independents alike say the country has changed for the better, while 43% to 49% say it’s changed for the worse.
But these gaps widen by ideology, with liberals most likely to say the country has changed for the worse, 59%, versus 44% of moderates and 45% of conservatives.
Beyond partisan and ideological differences, 57% of older Americans say the country is less safe from terrorism post 9/11, versus 37% of those younger than 65. Men are more likely than women to say the country has changed for the worse, 53% versus 40%, as are college graduates compared with those without a degree, 55% to 41%.
Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 30-24-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Maryland. See details on the survey’s methodology here.
(NEW YORK) — When plus-sized supermodel Tess Holliday opened up this spring about her struggle with anorexia, she also spoke about the backlash she received, saying, “I understand that people look at me and I don’t fit what we have seen presented as the diagnosis for anorexia.”
“I’ve had a lot of messages from folks that are anorexic that are livid and angry because they feel like I’m lying,” Holliday also said.
The negative comments slung Holliday’s way hit close to home for Susie Sebastian, 30, who says she too does not fit the typical stereotype of anorexia.
“The reactions kind of proved my biggest fear in advocating for myself and for the eating disorder community,” Sebastian, of Parkville, Maryland, told Good Morning America. “A big fear I have is that if I speak out about [my eating disorder], people will think this is not real.”
Sebastian’s reaction was also one that rang true for Aja Pryor, 29, of Florence, New Jersey.
“I’ve had the same experience every single time where I was just kind of looked at like there’s really nothing wrong with you because you don’t fit the type for having an eating disorder,” said Pryor. “Because I’m not skinny I’m deemed as atypical, and that’s actually made it harder to recover.”
“It’s made it actually extremely hard to recover, and my story is not uncommon,” she said.
Many of them are medically overweight, or fat as society would call them, yet their weight loss is encouraged, even as it’s caused by the eating disorder.
While less than 6% of people with eating disorders are medically diagnosed as “underweight,” those people are twice as likely to be diagnosed with an eating disorder than people in larger bodies, according to NADA.
Pryor said she started showing signs of an eating disorder at age 12, but did not receive treatment for it for years because of her size.
When she did finally enter an inpatient treatment center, after losing weight and suffering medically because of it, Pryor said she was congratulated on her weight loss.
“Before you go into residential treatment, you have to get medical work done, and the doctor that I saw congratulated me on my weight loss,” she said, adding that at other points in her life when she also lost weight and suffered symptoms like hair loss and low blood pressure, people, including doctors, would tell her, “You’ve lost so much weight. I’m so proud of you.”
Pryor said the cultural stereotypes around eating disorders have even affected the way she thought about herself and her own recovery.
Describing her reaction when she was told she would need residential treatment, Pryor said, “I was shocked because in my mind, I was still over a certain number of pounds. I thought I’m still in a larger body, I’m not skinny by any means, so it just was weird to me.”
Pryor and Sebastian both said they are speaking out now at a time when they know many more people are struggling with eating disorders, the most common of which are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought on a mental health crisis in the U.S., of which eating disorders are a major part.
Throughout the pandemic, the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) has seen a spike of more than 70% in the number of calls and online chat inquiries to its hotline compared to the same time period last year.
The Emily Program, a national network of eating disorder treatment centers, has seen inquiries both online and by phone “fly off the charts” during the pandemic, Jillian Lampert, Ph.D., Emily Program’s chief strategy officer, told GMA earlier this year.
Throughout the pandemic, eating disorders have remained second only to opioid overdose as the deadliest mental illness, with eating disorders responsible for one death every 52 minutes in the U.S., according to data shared by the NADA.
Sebastian said she has had to work hard to overcome the stigma of being overweight and not being able to focus on losing weight because she has an eating disorder.
“Still to this day, I have to remind myself, ‘You were diagnosed with an eating disorder,'” she said. “I know for me mentally that intentional weight loss is not a healthy goal for me, so it is definitely a hard balance to strike.”
Research shows that not only do people who are in larger bodies have eating disorders at high rates, they also suffer similar medical consequences as people who are considered underweight.
Their study also found that patients with atypical anorexia nervosa may carry a heavier psychological burden than those who are underweight, with researchers attributed to “heightened preoccupations with food avoidance and more negative feelings about body shape and weight.”
Anorexia nervosa’s seriousness as a mental disorder shatters another common misconception about eating disorders that they are a lifestyle choice. The misconception is one that is particularly damaging to people who are in larger bodies.
“Society teaches us that if you’re not skinny, you’re bad and you need to lose weight,” said Pryor. “I go through periods still where I don’t think I qualify for an eating disorder just because of the way that I look.”
People who are struggling should be looked at through the lens of their symptoms, and not their body size, according to Samantha DeCaro, PsyD, director of clinical outreach and education at The Renfrew Center, an organization of residential and outpatient eating disorder treatment programs across the country.
“We do a lot of work trying to educate the public but also providers that you cannot look at someone and know what kind of eating disorder they have and you cannot look at someone and know the severity of the eating disorder,” she said. “For people in larger bodies, the eating disorder can get minimized and it can get missed entirely.”
Behaviors to look for in people with eating disorders include isolating, feeling depressed and anxious, eating alone, avoiding events where there is food, avoiding entire food groups, talking excessively about food, calories and weight, exercising even when tired or injured, using the bathroom after every meal or spending excessive time in the bathroom and weighing multiple times a day, according to DeCaro.
In addition to weight loss, physical symptoms for eating disorders can include thinning hair and swollen glands in the face, explained DeCaro.
“There are so many people who have the ability to catch an eating disorder — school counselors, teachers, parents, caregivers, doctors, nurses, dentists, therapists and dietitians,” she said. “We need to focus on the signs and symptoms of eating disorders outside of size and appearance.”
The misdiagnoses and stigma that can accompany people with eating disorders can lead them to not seek medical help, which can delay critical treatment, according to DeCaro.
“People can recover at any stage of an eating disorder and any age, but the longer an eating disorder goes on, the more difficult it can be to treat,” she said. “There are many folks in larger bodies who are just avoiding seeking out medical and mental health treatment because of the fear they will continue to be prescribed that treatment plan.”
If you or someone you know is battling an eating disorder, contact the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) at 1-800-931-2237 or NationalEatingDisorders.org.
(RICHMOND, Va.) — A giant statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed in Richmond, Virginia, Wednesday, more than a year after the order from Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam.
The 12-ton, six-story monument on Monument Avenue, erected in the state capital in 1890, was deconstructed nearly one week after the Supreme Court of Virginia cleared the way for the removal following several legal battles.
Northam ordered the removal of the state-owned statue in June 2020, amid nationwide protests against symbols of racism and oppression that erupted following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody.
“This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a Commonwealth,” Northam said in a statement.
Last week, the Supreme Court of Virginia denied or dissolved injunctive relief sought in two lawsuits challenging the statue’s removal — one filed by a descendant of the former owners of the land where the monument stands, the other by several owners and a trustee of property in the area’s historic district — allowing the state to move forward with its plans.
The removal is “extremely complex,” the state’s Department of General Services said, requiring “coordination with multiple entities to ensure the safety of everyone involved.” The removal process began Tuesday evening with crews installing protective fencing on the streets near the monument.
On Thursday, crews will remove plaques from the base of the monument. The 40-foot granite pedestal will remain for now, with its future still to be determined, the state said.
The statue itself will be held “in secure storage at a state-owned facility until a decision is made as to its disposition,” the state said.
This is the sixth and final Confederate statue to be removed from Monument Avenue.
“We are taking an important step this week to embrace the righteous cause and put the ‘Lost Cause’ behind us,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney said in a statement. “Richmond is no longer the capital of the Confederacy. We are a diverse, open and welcoming city, and our symbols need to reflect this reality.”
Last year, the busts of Lee and eight other Confederate leaders were removed from the Old House Chamber in the Virginia State Capitol building in Richmond. The Fairfax County School Board has also changed the name of the Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield to the John R. Lewis High School, in honor of the late Georgia congressman and civil rights leader.
A great-great-great-nephew of Lee has previously said that taking down Confederate symbols in public spaces is a “no brainer.”
“I see them as idolatries,” Rev. Robert Lee IV told ABC News last year. “They have been created into idols of white supremacy and racism.”
Over 160 Confederate symbols were renamed or removed from public spaces in 2020, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
