Student loan forgiveness: Biden hails plan for ‘generation saddled with unsustainable debt’ – as it happened

President Joe Biden announced his long-awaited plan to provide student loan relief, which he said would allow tens of millions of Americans to “finally crawl out from under that mountain of debt”. Meanwhile, Democrats are celebrating after their candidate prevailed in a politically finicky House district’s special election last night, a sign that the party may be more popular than expected.

Here’s more about what happened today:

• A Republican lawmaker who had his phone seized as part of the justice department’s probe into 2020 election meddling by Donald Trump’s allies is suing to stop them from accessing its data.

• The White House decried a Texas court ruling that blocked a requirement hospitals carry out abortions in emergencies.

• Trump appeared to concede that he illegally kept official documents at Mar-a-Lago.

• Biden said that he was not told in advance about the FBI’s search of Trump’s resort.

• Florida Democrats in a very conservative district have chosen a former health worker who was a fierce critic of governor Ron DeSantis’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic as their House candidate, but her chances of victory appear slim.

Opponents of Biden’s student debt plan have claimed it is unfair to Americans who already paid off their loans. The president was asked about this as he wrapped up his speech at the White House.

In his response, he draws a comparison to the business-friendly cuts that exist across America’s tax code:

As he spoke at the White House, Biden made special mention of how his plan would give racial minorities some relief from their heavy debt loads.

“About a third of the borrowers have debt but no degree, the worst of both worlds, debt and no degree. The burden is especially heavy on Black and Hispanic borrowers, who on average have less family wealth to pay for it… they don’t own their homes to borrow against to be able to pay for college. And the pandemic only made things worse,” Biden said.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) civil rights group has been vocal in encouraging Biden’s student debt relief efforts. NAACP president Derrick Johnson expressed some support for the White House plan, but added it didn’t go as far as the group hoped.

Biden has concluded his White House address on student loan relief, but as the president was heading out the door, a reporter asked whether he had any advance knowledge of the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“I didn’t have any advance notice,” Biden answered. “None, zero, not one single bit.”

The White House has previously said the president was not told ahead of time of the FBI’s plans to search the south Florida property as part of its investigation into the former president’s alleged retention of government secrets.

Biden has compared his measure relieving some student debt to his administration’s efforts to revive the economy following the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Our approach is why America’s economic recovery … was faster and stronger than any other advanced nation in the world. And now it’s time to address the burden of student debt the same way,” the president said. His administration’s goal is “to provide more breathing room for people so they have less burdened by student debt.”

Biden predicted his plan would provide relief to 43 million people, comprised of two groups: those who received a Pell Grant and will be eligible for $20,000 in relief, and those who received other federal student loans and will be eligible for $10,000 in relief. Both groups will need to make under $125,000 a year to qualify, or $250,000 for families. “All this means people can start finally crawl out from under that mountain of debt,” Biden said, predicting the relief would completely cancel the debts of 20 million people.

Among his measures, Biden extended the pause on student debt repayments to the end of the year, but has made clear he won’t do that again. “I’m extending to December 31, 2022. And it’s going to end at that time,” he said.

Declaring “education is a ticket to a better life”, Biden is outlining his plan to relieve student debt in a speech at the White House.

“Over time, that ticket has become too expensive for too many Americans. All this means is the entire an entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt,” Biden said, speaking alongside education secretary Miguel Cardona. “The burden is so heavy that even if you graduate you may not have access to middle-class life that the college degree was” meant to provide.

Joe Biden is over 15 minutes late to his planned speech on student loan relief, but the White House just released the below video, in which he explains the plan.

Perhaps this is what’s been keeping him:

President Joe Biden will soon make an address from the White House, where he’ll detail his plan to relieve student loan debt.

You can follow along at the live stream at the top of this page. For those just tuning in, here’s a link to the department of education page explaining how the program will work.

Earlier today, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the Texas court decision that blocked hospitals from being required to carry out emergency abortions.

“Today’s decision is a blow to Texans,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “Texas filed this suit to ensure that it can block medical providers from providing life-saving and health-preserving care. Because of this decision, women in Texas may now be denied this vital care – even for conditions like severe hemorrhaging or life-threatening hypertension. It’s wrong, it’s backwards, and women may die as a result. The fight is not over. The President will continue to push to require hospitals to provide life-saving and health-preserving reproductive care.”

The Biden administration’s attempt to preserve abortion access in states with governments hostile to the procedure faced a setback in Texas, as Edwin Rios reports:

A federal judge in Texas has blocked a Biden administration guidance that required hospitals to provide emergency abortions, even in states like Texas, which prohibits the practice following the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade.

The legal effort by the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, a stalwart Republican, represents the latest attempt to stop the federal government from influencing the reproductive access landscape in the aftermath of the supreme court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned longstanding constitutional protections on abortion.

Such preventions on abortion access could have devastating financial and health consequences on women, especially Black, Latino and Indigenous women who already disproportionately suffer from deaths during childbirth.