Supreme court justices appear skeptical about Biden’s student debt relief plan – as it happened

Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt may soon be struck down by conservative supreme court justices, who sounded skeptical of the government’s argument that the program was permitted under federal law. Elsewhere, Florida governor Ron DeSantis still has not said if he will run for president, but plans to travel to the states that vote first in the Republican nomination process. It seems a formal announcement is just a matter of time.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• The House foreign affairs committee is holding a hearing about China’s global influence, ahead of this evening’s primetime session of a special panel to examine Beijing’s competition with the United States.

• GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy will make about 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6 available to the public, after sparking furor by releasing the video to Tucker Carlson.

• The House Republican “weaponization” committee plans to scrutinize the Twitter files.

• A Florida Republican lawmaker wants to formally terminate the state’s Democratic party.

• The Biden White House may soon get its first Asian-American cabinet secretary.

In a House armed services committee hearing today on America’s military aid to Ukraine, Matt Gaetz, a rightwing lawmaker who is opposed to arming Kyiv, thought he had backed a top defense department official into a corner.

In questioning Colin Kahl, the defense department’s undersecretary for policy, Gaetz cited a report that indicated the Azov battalion had received American weapons for years. Founded in 2014, the unit is controversial because some of its early members held far-right views, though commanders say it has since moved away from that ideology.

The problem? The report Gaetz cited was published in the Global Times, an English-language publication of the Chinese Communist party.

In the polite fashion of a congressional witness, Kahl called out Gaetz for falling for what he said was “Beijing’s propaganda”. You can watch the exchange in the clip below, around the three-minute mark:

Tucker Carlson’s staff was allowed to view the 40,000-plus hours of surveillance footage Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over, but needed permission to copy any video, CBS News reports.

Carlson’s employees “may request any particular clips they may need, then we’ll make sure there’s nothing sensitive, nothing classified, including escape routes,” according to Barry Loudermilk, the Republican chair of a subcommittee under the House committee on administration. “We don’t want al Qaeda to know certain things.”

McCarthy’s decision to provide the footage to Carlson – a popular Fox News commentator who has downplayed the attack by Donald Trump’s supporters on the Capitol – sparked fury among Democrats, who argued the footage could compromise Congress’s security arrangements.

McCarthy has said he will soon make the footage public, but today told reporters he wanted to first give Carlson exclusive access:

The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is calling for the testimony of Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw, after one of the freight rail company’s trains derailed in East Palestine, Ohio earlier this month and spilled toxic chemicals:

The supreme court’s conservative majority seemed sympathetic today to arguments that Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel some student debt under a two-decade old federal law was an unconstitutional expansion of power, Bloomberg News reports.

The court today heard two cases challenging the program Biden announced last year, one filed by a group of Republican-led states, and the other by two people who sued because they were left out of the program. According to Bloomberg, several of the court’s six conservatives judges expressed skepticism to the government’s argument that the Covid-19 pandemic constituted the sort of emergency that would allow debt cancellation under a 2003 law.

Here’s more from the report:

.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As the court heard two cases Tuesday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested he is wary of expanding presidential powers during national emergencies. The Biden administration argues that the student loan forgiveness program is a response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Some of the biggest mistakes in the court’s history were deferring to assertions of executive or emergency power,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of the finest moments in the court’s history were pushing back against presidential assertions of emergency powers.”

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested Congress didn’t authorize the president to unilaterally take a step with such enormous financial implications for millions of Americans.

“We’re talking about half a trillion dollars and 43 million Americans. How does that fit under the normal understanding of modifying?” Roberts said, referring to a key word in the 2003 law at the center of the case.

The law, known as the Heroes Act, says the secretary can “waive or modify” provisions to ensure that debtors “are not placed in a worse position financially” because of a national emergency.

Roberts likened the case to the court’s 5-4 decision that blocked the Trump administration from ending a program shielding hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants from deportation. Roberts joined the court’s liberal wing in the majority in that 2020 case.

Biden administration officials faced tough questioning from both Republicans and Democrats on the House foreign affairs committee during today’s hearing on US-Chinese relations.

Congressman Brad Sherman, a Democrat of California, criticized China for failing to cooperate with investigators seeking to determine the origins of Covid-19, and he pressed Daniel Kritenbrink, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, on why the state department had not done more to condemn China’s “obfuscation”.

“They failed to cooperate. They failed to come clean,” Sherman said. “The state department has done almost nothing to tell the world how China is responsible, not maybe for the virus, but certainly for their obfuscation and failure to cooperate afterwards.”

Kritenbrink replied, “We have long stated that China needs to do a better job of being transparent.”

Shortly after that tense exchange, congresswoman Sara Jacobs, a Democrat of California, asked Kritenbrink how the state department defines competition with China and how US officials can ensure that such competition does not devolve into conflict.

“We’re competing for and fighting for the kind of region that we want to live in,” Kritenbrink said. “We talk about a free and open region where countries can freely pursue their interests and where people in those countries can enjoy freedom.”

Jacobs replied, “I just think it’s really important that we stay focused on those end goals because China’s not going anywhere. We don’t want to feed into the [Chinese Communist Party’s] talking points around us just being out to weaken China for the sake of weakening them indefinitely.”

Julie Su has received Joe Biden’s nomination to become the next labor secretary, the White House announced.

If Su wins the Senate’s required approval, she would be the Biden administration’s first cabinet-level secretary of Asian-American descent. She would succeed labor secretary Marty Walsh, who is now leading the National Hockey League players’ union after becoming the first cabinet secretary to depart Biden’s White House.

The White House’s announcement Tuesday contained a statement from Biden, which referred to Su, who once served as California’s labor secretary, as a longtime “champion for workers” and “a critical partner” to Walsh.

“She helped avert a national rail shutdown, improved access to good jobs free from discrimination through my Good Jobs Initiative, and is ensuring that the jobs we create in critical sectors like semiconductor manufacturing, broadband and healthcare are good-paying, stable and accessible jobs for all,” Biden said.

In 2021, the Senate appointed Su as Biden’s deputy labor secretary in a vote along party lines. After last fall’s midterms, Biden’s Democratic party controls the Senate by a 51-49 margin.

The Democratic Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman is out of work for a few weeks at least while the staff of Walter Reed medical center in Washington DC treats him for depression. But Biden’s vice-president Kamala Harris can serve as a tie breaker for any votes that require it.

Biden’s cabinet was the first in 20 years without a secretary with Asian American or Pacific Island heritage. Asian-American legislators and advocate had pushed for Biden to nominate Su to the labor secretary’s role after he defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election, and again pushed for her to be put up for the position after Walsh’s departure.

Testifying before the House foreign affairs committee this morning, Daniel Kritenbrink, US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said that China represents “our most consequential geopolitical challenge”.

“It is the only competitor with both the intent and increasingly the economic, diplomatic, military and technological capability to reshape the international order,” Kritenbrink said.

“The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the [People’s Republic of China] as it becomes more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad will test American diplomacy like few issues we have seen.”

Kritenbrink noted that the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with his Chinese counterpart on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this month. In that discussion, Blinken condemned China’s “unacceptable and irresponsible violation of US sovereignty” with its use of a surveillance balloon shot down by American fighter jets on 4 February off the coast of South Carolina, Kritenbrink said. Blinken also warned China about the potential consequences of providing material support to Russia in its war against Ukraine.

“At the same time, the secretary reiterated our commitment to maintaining open lines of communication at all times, so as to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could lead to conflict,” Kritenbrink said.

“In coordination with US government departments and agencies, this committee and colleagues across Capitol Hill, we’re confident we can sustain the resources and policies needed to prevail in our competition with the PRC.”

It seems the figurative wipeout of the Florida Democratic party in the midterm elections was not enough for the state’s Republicans, who on Tuesday introduced legislation to have it formally terminated.

Unashamedly billed “The Ultimate Cancel Act” by its sponsor, vociferous conservative state senator Blaise Ingoglia, the bill requires Florida’s division of elections to decertify any political party that has “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”

In a press release accompanying Senate Bill 1248, Ingoglia, who tweets using the handle GovGoneWild and is a devotee of Florida’s far-right governor Ron DeSantis, insists that because the Democratic party adopted “pro-slavery positions” in at least five conventions during the 19th century, it has no place in politics in 2023 or beyond.

Additionally, the bill would automatically transfer the registrations of Florida’s 4.9m registered Democratic voters to no-party affiliates.

“For years now, leftist activists have been trying to ‘cancel’ people and companies for things they have said and done in the past,” Ingoglia claims in the release, which also cites the removal of controversial Civil War-era statues and memorials.

The release, tweeted by Politico’s Florida bureau chief Matt Dixon, goes on to say: “Using this standard, it would be hypocritical not to cancel the Democratic party itself for the same reason.”

It remains to be seen if Ingoglia’s bill gains any traction. But with a supermajority in both houses of Florida’s legislature, Republicans certainly have the numbers to pass it.

Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some student loan debt is having its day at the supreme court, where conservative groups are arguing to do away with the proposal. However, there are signs at least one conservative justice may believe the individuals and states trying to undo the Biden administration’s signature program for debt-burdened Americans don’t have standing to sue. Elsewhere, Florida governor Ron DeSantis still hasn’t said if he will run for president, but plans to travel to the states that vote first in the Republican nomination process. It seems a formal announcement is just a matter of time.

Here’s what else has happened today so far:

• The House foreign affairs committee is holding a hearing about China’s global influence, ahead of this evening’s primetime session of a special panel to examine Beijing’s competition with the United States.

• GOP House speaker Kevin McCarthy will make about 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6 available to the public, after sparking furor by releasing the video to Tucker Carlson.

• The House Republican “weaponization” committee will scrutinize the Twitter files.

As they heard two cases intended to stop Joe Biden’s student debt cancelation program this morning, some of the supreme court’s nine justices questioned whether conservatives suing over the program had the ability to do so.

The court is currently dominated by conservatives, who hold a six-member majority that could upend the Biden administration’s plan to help Americans saddled with student loans. The questions justices pose to attorneys appearing before them in their hearings are no guarantees of how they will ultimately vote, but there are indications at least some conservatives are skeptical of the challengers, particularly Amy Coney Barrett.

Here are what a few supreme court watchers saw in this morning’s arguments: