Vice President Harris holds a 7-point edge over former President Trump nationally in a new poll, marking the latest gain for the Democratic presidential candidate as the general election approaches.
A survey from Fairleigh Dickinson University, released last Friday, found Harris leading Trump with 50 percent support to 43 percent nationally, while 7 percent of respondents said they will vote for someone else. Trump and Harris fare equally well with voters from their party, each having 95 percent support from their partisans, pollsters found.
Pollsters noted race or gender played a large role in pushing Harris’s lead. When voters are asked to think about race or gender, Harris’s lead grows significantly, while support for her and Trump are virtually tied when they are not made to think about it, they said.
With independents who do not lean toward either party, Harris still leads Trump, but by a smaller margin, 38 to 33 percent, the poll found. Harris holds a large lead among self-identified liberals, 87 to 10 percent, along with progressives, 93 to 5 percent, and moderates, 62 to 30 percent.
The former president, meanwhile, leads among conservatives 76 to 19 percent, and MAGA voters, 95 to 4 percent.
Trump saw his strongest support among men “who hold traditionally masculine identities,” while women and other men who reject these identities favor Harris, according to pollsters.
“Trump has built his political career around a very specific performance of whiteness and masculinity,” Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson and the executive director of the poll, said in a release. “In the past, that’s been seen as a strength, but it’s no longer clear that it’s working.”
“Race matters in elections, but it’s not inevitable that voters are thinking about it,” he added. “Trump does reasonably well among nonwhite voters so long as they’re not thinking about race: Once they are, we see a huge shift to Harris.”
Since replacing President Biden atop the Democratic presidential ticket last month, Harris has quickly gained momentum, posing a threat to the healthy lead Trump held over the president, both nationally and in swing states.
This is the latest poll suggesting good news for Harris, though some political strategists have suggested it is too early to make conclusions about the November election.
According to a polling index by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill, Harris has a 3.6 percentage point lead over Trump.
When asked last Thursday by Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum about Harris’s increasing support in the polls, Trump said, “No, she’s not having success. I’m having success. I’m doing great with the Hispanic voters. I’m doing great with Black men. I’m doing great with women, because women want safety.”
The survey was conducted Aug. 17-20 using a voter list of 801 registered voters nationwide. It was carried out by Braun Research and has a simple sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence interval.
Republicans Are Right: One Party Is ‘Anti-Family and Anti-Kid’
By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist – August 24, 2024
Credit…Jamie Lee Taete for The New York Times
In attacking Democrats and Kamala Harris, Republicans have been making a legitimate point: One of our major political parties has worked to undermine America’s families.
The problem? While neither party has done enough to support families and children, the one that is failing most egregiously is — not surprisingly — the one led by the thrice-married tycoon who tangled with a porn star, boasted about grabbing women by the genitals and was found by a jury to have committed sexual assault.
You’d think that would make it awkward for the Republican Party to preach family values. But with the same chutzpah with which Donald Trump reportedly marched into a dressing room where teenage girls were half-naked, the G.O.P. claims that it’s the Democrats who betray family values.
“The rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and most evil thing that the left has done in this country,” JD Vance said in 2021. Pressed on those remarks last month, he went further in a conversation with Megyn Kelly, saying that Democrats “have become anti-family and anti-kid.”
This is gibberish. Children are more likely to be poor, to die young and to drop out of high school in red states than in blue states. The states with the highest divorce rates are mostly Republican, and with some exceptions like Utah, it’s in red states that babies are more likely to be born to unmarried mothers (partly because of lack of access to reliable contraception).
One of President Biden’s greatest achievements was to cut the child poverty rate by almost half, largely with the refundable child tax credit. Then Republicans killed the program, sending child poverty soaring again.
It’s because of the G.O.P. that the United States is one of only a few countries in the world without guaranteed paid maternity leave. Republicans fought universal health care and resisted the expansion of Medicaid; that’s one reason a child in the United States is three times as likely to die by the age of 5 as a child in, say, Slovenia or Estonia.
Think of it this way: We’d be saving the life of one American child between the ages of 1 and 5 every three hours if we had the same child mortality level as Norway or Finland.
Project 2025, a blueprint for a Trump administration that Trump is frantically trying to disavow, would make things worse. It would end Head Start, a lifeline for low-income children, and would dismantle the Department of Education.
“My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” Trump posted on Friday. But even putting aside abortion rights, Republican extremism has led to obstacles to in vitro fertilization, especially after an Alabama court ruled that a frozen embryo must be considered a child. The Southern Baptist Convention, a bastion of support for Trump, this summer criticized I.V.F.
Vance has supported a watered-down bill that he says protects I.V.F., but Republican senators blocked stronger legislation to defend I.V.F. fertility treatments and expand access. They are leaving hanging so many of the one in seven women who have trouble conceiving or sustaining a pregnancy.
Can anything be more anti-family?
Look, I’ve repeatedly argued that growing up in a two-parent household is the one privilege that liberals ignore, that the left wrongly demonized Daniel Patrick Moynihan for his emphasis on family structure and that Democrats can do more to remove marriage penalties and bolster opportunities for children.
I’m troubled by the collapse of marriage in America’s working class — more than 70 percent of Americans without a high school diploma are unmarried. If we care about child poverty, we must face the reality that households headed by single moms are five times as likely to live in poverty as those with married couples. So concerns about family and children are legitimate, and Democrats should do better.
But for Republicans to blame Democrats is ludicrous, for the G.O.P. has seemingly gone out of its way to undermine families and children.
Union membership among men raises their marriage rates, for example, apparently because they then earn more money and become more stable and appealing as partners. But Republicans have worked for decades to undermine unions.
Republicans like the House speaker, Mike Johnson, object to no-fault divorce laws, which make it straightforward for couples to obtain divorces. They claim this is a pro-family stance. (Trump, understandably, appears more sympathetic to divorce.) But the evidence is overwhelming that before easy access to divorce, large numbers of women were trapped in violent marriages that terrorized them and their children.
One careful study by the economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found that the introduction of no-fault divorce in America was associated with about a 20 percent reduction in female suicides, at least a 25 percent reduction in wife-beating and an apparent decline in husbands murdering wives.
Is it really pro-family to increase the number of moms who are beaten and murdered?
I’m glad Republicans are squawking about the challenges facing families and children. But if Trump, Vance and other Republicans want to blame those most responsible for the plight of families and children in America today, they should look in the mirror and hang their heads in shame.
A stark social divide: Adults without a college degree more likely to have no close friends, survey finds
Aria Bendix – August 25, 2024
For those without a college degree, there may be fewer opportunities to engage in social activities.
The Summary
In a survey, nearly a quarter of U.S. adults without a college degree said they had no close friends.
People without a college degree also reported less participation in social activities like going to parks or restaurants than college-educated adults.
The findings come amid a documented rise in loneliness and social isolation.
Nearly all U.S. adults used to have close friends.
In 1990, the share of the population that said they didn’t was low and roughly the same no matter one’s education level: just 2% for people with college degrees and 3% for those without.
But a recent survey suggests that share has risen overall, particularly among those who did not graduate college — creating a kind of class divide in people’s level of social engagement and connection. Nearly a quarter of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or lower education level said they had no close friends. The number was even higher for Black adults in that group: 35%.
Just 10% of those with a college degree said the same.
The findings come from a survey of around 6,600 adults conducted by the Survey Center on American Life, a nonprofit that researches how people’s lives are shaped by culture, politics and technology.
“Our social fabric seems to have two layers now,” said Daniel Cox, the center’s director and a co-author of a report published this week summarizing the findings. “It has one for college-educated folks that seems to be relatively intact, and then one for those without college degrees, which seems to be in tatters.”
The findings come amid a documented rise in social isolation nationwide. Around 30% of adults say they’ve felt lonely at least once per week over the past year, and 10% say they’re lonely every day, according to a January poll from the American Psychiatric Association.
The U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic last year, citing its links to heart disease, stroke, dementia and premature death. San Mateo County, California, which includes part of Silicon Valley, subsequently declared a public health emergency over high rates of loneliness among residents.
“There’s been considerable decline and atrophy in American social connection,” said Cox, who is also a senior fellow of polling and public opinion at the conservative Washington think tank American Enterprise Institute, adding that although the pandemic helped bring the issue to light, “this decline had gone on for decades before.”
He offered a few ideas that might explain the trend. One is that being alone is less boring now, thanks to video games and streaming services, so people may be less likely to join social groups or spend time with friends or family. Another is that for those without a college degree, there are fewer opportunities to engage in social activities, perhaps because their access to free public spaces is more limited or they lack the time or money to frequent venues like bars and restaurants.
Cox’s survey found that college-educated adults were more likely to go to restaurants or coffee shops and to strike up conversations with neighbors, compared to people without a college degree. They were also more likely to be members of a neighborhood association, sports league or hobby group (like a book club or regular poker game).
“We put so much of the onus of creating and maintaining friends on individuals instead of institutions,” Cox said. “We’ve shifted all the work, all the effort, onto individuals who now have to coordinate, organize, schedule their social engagements, as opposed to having them occur organically out of the things that they’re already doing.”
People with a college degree were also more likely to be part of a labor union or to regularly attend church, the survey found — two venues that have historically given people with less formal education opportunities to socialize.
The survey even found an educational divide when it comes to free public venues like libraries and parks. Nearly 4 in 10 college-educated adults said they had visited a park or community garden at least once a month in the past year, compared to less than a quarter of those without a college education. And nearly half of college graduates said they had visited a library at least a few times in the past year, compared with a quarter of adults with a high school diploma or less.
“The places that are legitimately free — community centers and libraries — their hours of operation aren’t regular enough for a lot of folks,” Cox said. “Many of those places are closed in the evenings, and then there’s just not enough of them to meet the need.”
Part of the issue may have to do with geography: A 2022 study found that neighborhoods with higher poverty rates have fewer public gathering spaces. And many communities don’t have the money to invest in their public spaces, Cox said.
Limited free time and poor access to transportation likely play a role, as well, said Adam Roth, an assistant professor of sociology at Oklahoma State University, who wasn’t involved in the survey.
“If you live out in the suburbs and you have to change buses or trains or get in your car and do that however-long commute, that is going to be a prohibitive factor,” Roth said.
The story isn’t entirely bleak, though. A collection of surveys from 2022 and 2023 found that even though people in the U.S. desired to be closer to their friends, less than 3% reported having no friends at all. The surveys looked at both close friendships and casual acquaintances.
“Our data didn’t really spell doom and gloom,” said Amanda Holmstrom, a communication professor at Michigan State University who conducted that research. “People have friends — they feel like they don’t necessarily have the time to nurture those friends.”
“The bottom line is, all types of social interactions and relationships matter, particularly for health and well-being,” Roth said. “But the probability of actually experiencing certain types of social interactions is at least partially dependent on the communities we live in.”
Fed’s Powell says ‘time has come’ for interest rate cuts
Myles Udland and Jennifer Schonberger – August 23, 2024
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sent a straightforward message to markets in a key speech on Friday, saying “the time has come” for the central bank to begin lowering interest rates.
Speaking at the Kansas City Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., Powell said: “The time has come for policy to adjust.”
“The direction of travel is clear,” Powell added, “and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks.”
Powell’s speech comes just over three weeks out from the Fed’s Sept. 17-18 meeting, which should see the central bank announce its first interest rate cut since 2020.
Powell acknowledged recent softness in the labor market in his speech and said the Fed does not “seek or welcome further cooling in labor market conditions.”
The July jobs report rattled markets earlier this month, revealing that there were just 114,000 jobs added to the economy last month while the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021. Data earlier this week also showed that 818,000 fewer people were employed in the US economy as of March, suggesting reports have been overstating the strength of the job market over the last year.
“It seems unlikely that the labor market will be a source of elevated inflationary pressures anytime soon,” Powell said.
Ahead of Powell’s speech, investors had priced in nearly 100% odds the Fed would lower rates next month, with odds on a cut of 0.25% vs. 0.50% standing at roughly two to one.
“Four and a half years after COVID-19’s arrival, the worst of the pandemic-related economic distortions are fading,” Powell said.
“Inflation has declined significantly … Our objective has been to restore price stability while maintaining a strong labor market, avoiding the sharp increases in unemployment that characterized earlier disinflationary episodes when inflation expectations were less well anchored. While the task is not complete, we have made a good deal of progress toward that outcome.”
Powell’s remarks on Friday were reminiscent of those he delivered at Jackson Hole in 2022, in which the Fed chair offered a direct assessment of the economic outlook and, at the time, the need for additional rate increases.
Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, walks in Teton National Park, where financial leaders from around the world gathered for the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium on Aug. 26, 2022. (REUTERS/Jim Urquhart) (Reuters / Reuters)
“At this podium two years ago, I discussed the possibility that addressing inflation could bring some pain in the form of higher unemployment and slower growth,” Powell said.
“Some argued that getting inflation under control would require a recession and a lengthy period of high unemployment. I expressed our unconditional commitment to fully restoring price stability and to keeping at it until the job is done.”
Friday’s speech more or less suggests that the job is indeed done.
“All told, the healing from pandemic distortions, our efforts to moderate aggregate demand, and the anchoring of expectations have worked together to put inflation on what increasingly appears to be a sustainable path to our 2% objective,” Powell said.
Wet Winter Whirlwind; What Farmers’ Almanac Predicts for the 2024-2025 Winter
Joshua Hallenbeck – August 23, 2024
(WJET/WFXP) — Farmers’ Almanac has released its 2024-25 Winter Outlook, describing this winter as a “Wet, Winter, Whirlwind.”
Overall, this description perfectly fits the general trend predicted in the outlook, no region is expected to see higher-than-normal snowfall. This, however, is just a general prediction broken down by regions. A more area-specific list will be released alongside the release of the 2025 edition of the Farmers’ Almanac on August 27th.
It is important to look at the accuracy, or inaccuracy, of these predictions. A study conducted by John E. Walsh and David Allen, published in the 1981 edition of Weatherwise, showed that only 50.7 percent of the monthly temperature forecasts and 51.9 percent of the precipitation forecasts were verified with the correct sign. This is essentially the same as flipping a coin for each day.
This year’s winter outlook is largely affected by a major climate pattern known as La Niña which can cause a major shift in winter weather. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), La Niña is characterized by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific, compared to El Niño, which is characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.
La Niña [Click to Expand] || Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)El Niño [Click to Expand] || Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
During a La Niña year, winter temperatures are warmer in the Southeast and cooler in the Northwest. La Niña brings cooler waters off the West Coast, which brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface. These cold waters push the Polar Jet Stream northward, increasing the chance of drought in the Southern U.S., and heavy rain and flooding in the Pacific Northwest and Canada. According to the National Weather Service, El Niño and La Niña are typically strongest during the period from December to April because the equatorial Pacific sea-surface temperatures are normally warmest at this time of the year
A La Niña year is also associated with a more severe hurricane season, which is a concern this hurricane season. NOAA previously predicted an 85% chance for an above-normal hurricane season. However, some of the strongest recorded hurricanes occurred during a period known as the neutral phase. Neutral indicates that conditions are near their long-term average.
Despite the atmospheric cooling this pattern presents, the Earth’s average temperatures continue to rise with 2024 on track to be one of the warmest years ever recorded.
Crime has declined since Donald Trump was president. He insists on lying about that.
Chris Brennan, USA TODAY – August 22, 2024
Former President Donald Trump, in his weeklong attempt to counterprogram the Democratic National Convention, visited Michigan on Tuesday to accuse Vice President Kamala Harris of being soft on crime.
Here’s why: Trump has a sliver of statistics to offer and a national sentiment that tends to see crime as a much larger issue than it really is. So first, let’s get a few simple truths out here in the conversation:
Crime rates have been steadily falling in America since the early 1990s but did see a significant increase, especially in murder, in 2020 during Trump’s last year as president as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the country. The decline in crime rates resumed after he left office.
That’s great for America, but not so great for Trump’s nonstop melodramatic claims that the country is some dystopian hellscape and only by returning him to power can we live in peace and prosperity again.
That’s bunk. Here’s why.
Trump and his campaign pick pieces out of a larger crime puzzle
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump arrives to deliver remarks on crime and safety at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, Mich., on Aug. 20, 2024.
Trump on Tuesday claimed that Harris, as vice president, “presided over a 43% increase in violent crime.”
His campaign later told me that he referred to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report that showed a 42% increase in nonfatal violent crime in 2022. That September report, which is now nearly a year old, also noted that the particular rate of crime had just reached “a 30-year low” during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.
No surprise that Trump left that part out of his speech.
Trump really grabbed hold of the second method this week. Why? Because the first method, conducted by the FBI, debunks his lies about America being caught in some terrible, prolonged crime wave.
Of course, Trump then attacks the FBI for reporting factually about crime
If you’re Trump and a federal agency’s data disproves your claim, what do you do? You attack the agency, of course.
Trump has repeatedly derided the FBI data as “fake numbers” because of a change the agency made in 2021 in how those reports are compiled. That change was long in the planning but happened in the middle of a pandemic, and some law enforcement agencies didn’t immediately switch to the new way of reporting to the FBI.
Ames Grawert, senior counsel at the Brennan Center For Justice, told me the FBI faced “a data hiccup in 2021” and addressed the problem by collecting information through its previous system and the new system for 2022 and 2023.
Grawert noted that the murder rate is a reliable data point in this discussion because, unlike other crimes, “murder is pretty much always reported.” And “murder is one of the offenses that’s falling fastest nationwide,” he said.
“We have very, very good reason to believe that violent crime is falling in 2023 and 2024 very fast, offsetting much, if not all, of the increase in violence we saw in 2020,” Grawert told me. “And nothing President Trump said (in Michigan Tuesday) really undermines that.”
Truth is crime reporting happens at a slower pace than political rhetoric
Trump won’t let facts get in the way of a horrible story. He suggested on Tuesday that the average American out shopping for a loaf of bread faces a threat of being robbed or shot or raped.
Do you have a loaf of bread in your house right now? If so, did you face an arduous and dangerous journey to obtain it?
Trump is leaning hard on a standard American perception that has been true since long before he entered politics. We tend to believe that the national crime rate is worse than the data shows, even when we don’t see crime as a major threat closer to home.
John Gramlich, an associate director at Pew Research Center, told me that long-standing sentiment was typically stronger in Republicans but has recently become more bipartisan, even as the data shows crime rates are falling.
“Republicans are almost always more likely than Democrats to be concerned about crime or to prioritize the crime issue,” Gramlich said. “But what’s interesting is that people in both parties have become more concerned about it since the beginning of the Biden administration.”
One factor might be helping to prompt that: Crime data takes time to compile. Politics is happening around us every day. Gramlich said a temporary “vacuum” of data can allow “misperceptions to fill the void.”
“An election is a very fluid discussion about what’s happening right now,” he told me, and the lag for the data to catch up “can sometimes be filled with misinformation or fear or any number of other things.”
Are you safe buying groceries?
That’s why Trump was in Michigan this week claiming that Harris “will deliver crime, chaos, destruction and death” if she is elected president.
He held what looked like a healthy lead in the race until last month, when Biden dropped his bid for a second term and endorsed Harris.
Trump was president when the crime rates spiked in 2020. That doesn’t mean he’s to blame for that. He certainly wouldn’t accept responsibility for it (or anything else).
Now he’s trying to hang one sliver of statistics on Harris as she pulls ahead of him in the presidential race. Think about that and then ask yourself this: Do you feel safe shopping for a loaf of bread right now in your community? If you do, consider the possibility that people all across America probably feel that way, too.
Scientists warn grocery shelves may soon be missing pantry-staple food because of poor crop conditions: ‘Emphasizing the importance of sustainable farming’
Susan Elizabeth Turek – August 22, 2024
Strawberries are synonymous with the start of longer days and warmer weather, served up on tables as part of popular summer desserts. But scientists are warning this popular staple may be harder to come by soon because of warming global temperatures.
What’s happening?
A study from the University of Waterloo predicts that strawberry yields could see a dramatic reduction of 40% if temperatures rise by just 3 degrees Fahrenheit. This potentially threatens an industry that brought in more than $3 billion to the United States economy in 2022, according to a media release from the university.
Farmers in California could be hit particularly hard by changes in the industry. The analysis notes that the Golden State grows more than 80% of the country’s fresh strawberries.
According to the release, the data model provided “the most accurate findings to date” after linking air temperature anomalies to strawberry yields.
Why is this important?
While it isn’t too late to lower average temperatures, the Earth has been warming at an accelerated rate since the preindustrial era. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the 10 hottest years on record all occurred in the past decade.
It isn’t uncommon for extreme weather events to occur from time to time — and natural weather patterns such as El Niño and La Niña make them more likely to occur in certain regions. However, scientists overwhelmingly agree that supercharged weather events are one of the effects of warming temperatures primarily linked to the burning of dirty fuels such as coal, oil, and gas.
“This research shows how climate change can directly impact the foods we love, emphasizing the importance of sustainable farming practices to maintain a stable food supply for everyone,” Department of Systems Design Engineering postdoctoral fellow Dr. Poornima Unnikrishnan said in the University of Waterloo’s media release.
Other popular products that have become more scarce or expensive amid challenging weather conditions include chocolate, olive oil, and tomato-based items such as ketchup.
What can be done about reduced food yields?
The University of Waterloo researchers advocated for the continued adoption of sustainable farming practices to ensure there are no severe disruptions in the global food supply, and they believe their analysis can help.
“We hope the better understanding of the influence of rising temperatures on crop yield will help in the development of sustainable agriculture responses from the government and farmers,” Dr. Kumaraswamy Ponnambalam said in the media release. “There is an urgent need for farmers to adopt new strategies to cope with global warming.”
The Waterloo team also listed existing strategies that have been successful in varying climates, including drip irrigation (which more effectively delivers water to plants’ roots) and shading structures to protect crops from extreme heat.
Agrivoltaics is one such solution to the latter recommendation. Not only do the solar panels provide clean, low-cost energy to farmers, but they also aid crop productivity.
Average auto loan interest rates by credit score 2024
AJ Dellinger – August 19, 2024
Key takeaways
The average auto loan interest rate for new cars in early 2024 was 6.73 percent, while used cars had an average rate of 11.91 percent.
Your credit score plays a significant role in determining your interest rate, but other factors such as the lender, amount borrowed, length of the loan and economic conditions also play a role.
The best way to secure a competitive interest rate on your auto loan is to shop around and work to improve your credit score.
If you’re in the market for a car and plan to finance with a car loan, remember to consider car loan interest rates in your budget. According to Experian’s State of the Automotive Finance Market report, the average auto loan interest rate for new cars in 2024’s first quarter was 6.73 percent, and 11.91 percent for used cars.
Generally, the lower your credit score, the higher your annual percentage rate (APR) will be. However, you don’t need a perfect credit score to get a reasonable rate. To find the best auto loan rate, shop around and work to improve your credit score if it isn’t in the best shape.
Average auto loan interest rates by credit score
Lenders base interest rates primarily on your credit score, but you can still get a decent rate without top-tier credit.
To see how much of a difference a higher credit score can make for your rates, check out the average car loan interest rates by credit score.
Your hometown also impacts the rate you receive. Discover your state’s average auto loan rates.
Factors that affect auto loan interest rates
While your credit score plays a large part in determining your interest rate, there are other factors to consider.
Credit score
The two most common scores used when underwriting car loans are FICO and VantageScore. Both account for several measures of financial wellness, including payment history, credit utilization, credit mix and average age of accounts.
There are differences in the number of metrics used and how they’re weighted. But both scores fall between 300 and 850. Competitive rates go to buyers with scores in the mid-600s and higher.
Lenders may instead use an auto industry-specific scoring system, such as the FICO Auto Score, which ranges from 250 to 900. These scores consider the same factors but give more weight to risk factors associated with your likelihood of repaying an auto loan.
Lender
Different lenders have different credit underwriting criteria. All will consider your credit score, income and debt-to-income ratio, but lenders differ in what they find acceptable. Some may also consider your education or professional experience.
Plus, some lenders simply offer lower rates than others.
Amount borrowed
Buyers typically borrow the price of the car minus the down payment. If you’re unwilling to put more than the required amount down, the lender may see an increased risk, so they might raise the interest rate to compensate.
Length of the loan
Typically, the longer your loan term, the more interest you’ll pay as interest accumulates. Additionally, lenders may charge higher interest rates for longer loans.
This is because there is more perceived risk for the lender. The longer the loan, the higher the likelihood it won’t get paid back in full.
Economic and market conditions
Broader market factors also play a role in setting the industry’s minimum rates. When the federal funds rate is high, as dictated by the Federal Reserve, it costs lenders more to borrow money. In turn, you are likely to face higher interest rates.
The current Federal Reserve target interest rate is 5.25 to 5.5 percent. It’s at its highest in 22 years. But the Fed hasn’t increased the benchmark rate since July of 2023. Experts forecast that auto loan rates will drop slightly for those with strong credit this year.
Those with poor credit are less likely to see relief in 2024. If that’s you, focus on comparing bad credit auto loan rates.
How to get a better auto loan interest rate
There are a few ways to improve your chances of getting a reasonable interest rate, regardless of your credit score.
Shop around: Shop around with multiple lenders, including banks and credit unions, and compare auto loan interest rates. Not all lenders report to credit bureaus, so if you’re trying to build your credit, make sure to pick one that does.
Apply for preapproval: Apply with at least three lenders before choosing one. You must provide personal and employment information. Preapproval requires a hard credit pull, temporarily dropping your score by a few points. So, it’s best to keep your application window to 14 days so you only take one ding.
Make a larger down payment: A down payment decreases the amount you need to borrow. That means the lender takes on less risk, which translates to lower interest rates. Experts recommend aiming for at least 20 percent of the car’s purchase price.
Get a co-signer: If you have a lower credit score, consider asking a family member or trusted friend with an excellent credit score to co-sign your auto loan. Your co-signer will assume the debt if you can’t pay it back, which means the lender has less risk. Remember that it may strain your relationship if you cannot pay.
The bottom line
The lowest car loan rates are typically reserved for borrowers with near-perfect credit scores. While you’re not guaranteed to get the figure corresponding to your credit bracket, keep it in mind while shopping around for a good deal.
Officials offer critical warning after US state confirms cases of rare but serious infection spread by animals: ‘It is transmitted by various rodents’
Doric Sam – August 19, 2024
Health officials in Arizona have grown concerned after seeing an increase in a rare virus spread by rodents that can cause serious health issues.
What’s happening?
As explained by Physician’s Weekly, the Arizona Department of Health Services announced in an alert that the state has seen an uptick in hantavirus infections, with seven confirmed cases and three deaths over the past six months.
“Hantavirus is a rare but important cause of serious, even fatal respiratory infection,” Dr. Aaron Glatt, chief of infectious diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital in New York, told NBC News, per Physician’s Weekly. “It is transmitted by various rodents, especially the deer mouse, and can cause mild disease, but it does cause fatal illness in a significant percentage of people who acquire this illness.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most cases of hantavirus in the U.S. are reported in western and southwestern states, but Arizona is among the leaders in reported infections in the country. Health officials reported that there have been 11 hantavirus cases in Arizona between 2016 and 2022, per Physician’s Weekly.
Why is this important?
Hantavirus is spread when particles containing the virus get into the air from urine, saliva, or feces from deer mice. An infection can lead to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS).
Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Without treatment, the infection can spread to the lungs and cause shortness of breath, chest tightness and cough, according to the American Lung Association and summarized by Physician’s Weekly. Around 38% of those who experience lung symptoms may die from the infection.
Though it is a rare disease in the U.S., with the CDC reporting 850 cases between 1993 and 2021 (about 30 per year), the increase in hantavirus cases is an indication of a deeper problem.
According to Physician’s Weekly, experts theorized that “climate change, such as the extreme heat waves that have been sweeping across the county this summer, may also be partly to blame” for the rising number of infections.
Trish Lees, public information officer at Coconino County Health and Human Services in Arizona, told NBC News that cases are seen more frequently in the summer because of increased rodent activity and people coming into contact with rodents more often.
Dr. Camilo Mora, a professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, explained that rising temperatures cause rodents to seek shelter in similar ways that humans do.
“Many carrying-disease species get on the move with climate change — so while for any specific case it is difficult to conclude the role of climate change, climate change has all the attributes to cause outbreaks of vector-borne diseases,” Mora said, per Physician’s Weekly.
What’s being done about this?
Officials warned that the best way to protect yourself against hantavirus is to wear N95 masks, gloves, and protective clothing when entering an area that is dirty or riddled with rodents. Anyone who experiences symptoms should seek immediate medical attention.
“The best way to prevent infection with this illness is by carefully disinfecting and cleaning up any waste products from the rodents and by not coming into contact with them,” Glatt told NBC News.
$15 million Ohio State study takes aim at molecule at the heart of Long COVID
Samantha Hendrickson, Columbus Dispatch – August 14, 2024
COVID-19 is here to stay, and for some, that means symptoms last months, even years after developing the little-understood Long COVID — but a team at the Ohio State University has received millions to find out more.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded $15 million over the next five years to fund the university’s efforts, including developing new ways to treat COVID-19 and to further understanding of why Long COVID happens and how to fend it off.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that millions of adults and children have suffered — and continue to — suffer from Long COVID.
Dr. Amal Amer, center with glasses, stands with fellow Ohio State University researchers, who have been granted $15 million over five years to study Long COVID. The research is personal for Amer, who suffered from Long COVID herself.
The disease can be present for as short as three months, but can also last years after someone is first infected. It’s defined as a chronic condition that occurs after a COVID-19 infection with a wide range of debilitating symptoms such as severe fatigue, brain fog, heart and lung problems, bodily pain or exacerbating already existing health issues, all of which can impact someone’s daily life.
“It’s just unacceptable, you can’t just let that happen,” said Dr. Amal Amer, a professor of microbial infection and immunity at OSU and a principal investigator in the project, “We have to understand it, and if somebody, not just us, anybody, happens to have a clue or the beginning of the story, we have to follow it.”
Tiny creatures lead to big discoveries
This massive undertaking started with simple mice and a single molecule.
An OSU study published in 2022 found that mice infected with COVID-19 reacted differently to the disease depending on if they had a certain enzyme-producing molecule known as caspase 11.
Research showed that blocking this molecule in the infected mice resulted in lower inflammation, tissue injury and fewer blood clots in the animals’ lungs.
Humans have their own version of this molecule, or caspase 4, Amer said, and researchers discovered high levels of the enzyme in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 in intensive care units — a direct link to severe disease.
“It starts getting high because it has useful functions, but any molecule, when it gets too high, then these useful functions start becoming harmful,” Amer said.
The new work funded by the NIH will go beyond the study of the lungs and into how this molecule may impact the brain and the rest of the body, interfering with immune responses and possibly resulting in more blood clots in pathways leading to the brain and other vital organs – an entertained explanation for why Long COVID impacts people differently from case to case.
Currently, there are over 200 serious symptoms associated with Long COVID, according to the CDC.
Understanding how Long COVID comes to be is the first step in creating a treatment, Amer said. “Once you know the mechanism, then you can design what to target, where to target it and how to target it in order to reduce the damage being done.”
No one left behind
For Dr. Amer, finding that mechanism is an incredible research opportunity, but it’s also personal.
She herself contracted Long COVID during the pandemic. For three months, the leader in cutting edge research in her field suffered from terrible brain fog and other neurological symptoms after her second, thought seemingly mild, COVID-19 infection.
Amer has traveled all over the world, and confessed she’s gotten sick in many countries, including contracting the often deadly malaria. But nothing compared to Long COVID.
Amer would receive emails from her students, and read one sentence, but not remember what it said after reading it. She started having trouble typing on a keyboard. She couldn’t recall things people had just said to her moments before.
“I started thinking, ‘what’s gonna happen to my life?’ My job is a brain job. I lose my job, then what’s gonna happen to me?” Amer recalled. Now, she’ll head the brain-focused part of the project.
This continued for three months, before she gradually started to recover. Around six months, Amer said she began to feel normal again. Though she can’t be certain that she’s back to where she was before Long COVID, she acknowledges some people aren’t as lucky as she is.
“I have to find out, and I have to understand it, and I’m not going to let anybody be left behind,” she said.
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![El Niño [Click to Expand] || Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/CuhxHTD6XJI04u6yDOqFYw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU2MjtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/wjet_erie_articles_149/6211cfba8712aea274d55a1f342559ca)
