US Politics

Cost of living, poor air quality and environmental concerns are no match for Americans’ willingness to spend a record amount on fireworks, according to reports ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, US consumer fireworks retailers have reported that sales of rockets, missiles, roman candles, aerial spinners, parachutes, sparklers, poppers, fountains, jumping jacks and firecrackers should increase by about $100m this year over 2022.“Fireworks use is expected to hit an all-time high this year, especially with July 4th falling on a Tuesday,” the director of the APA, Julie Heckman, said ahead of the holiday commemorating the US’s independence from the UK. “We predict revenues could exceed $2.3bn for the 2023 fireworks season.”The figures suggest Americans are spending three times more than they did in 2012, when consumer sales stood at $645m, and sales could top $3.3bn by 2028.Previous studies have show that firework sales are skewed toward young people, with 18- to 24-year-olds spending double the national average. According to a 2013 Visa study, the demographic’s members spend $70 each on fireworks, with that figure dropping to $13 for people who are 65 and older.Firework pyromaniacs were also more likely to be in the US south and midwest, where people spend twice as much on average as those in the north-east and west. Men typically planned to spend twice as much as women, Visa found.A national firework boom leaves Massachusetts residents out. Their state remains the lone one in the US that bans consumer fireworks entirely while Vermont and Illinois only allow wire or wood-stick sparklers.Lacking any federal guarantee, the legality or illegality of fireworks in different states is often perplexing. Minnesota is one of a handful of states that does not permit aerial consumer-grade fireworks but has legalized marijuana.The ongoing restrictions on fireworks “seem priggish”, wrote columnist Evan Ramstad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune this week. “Only Massachusetts keeps a tighter clamp on fireworks use, and it also permits marijuana.”Yet, Ramstad noted: “Fireworks advocacy doesn’t fit neatly on the lists of political values that drive the two parties.”The smoke from Canadian forest fires that have blanketed parts of the north-east over the past month may also have depressed firework sales.The boom comes as fireworks have been found to contribute massive environmental destruction. In 2021, a California couple were criminally charged for their role using a gender reveal smoke bomb to ignite the El Dorado wildfire in San Bernardino county that torched close to 23,000 acres, destroyed buildings and killed a firefighter.Across the US’s northern border, bad air quality from forest fires – and fears of sparking more – has led to the cancellation of some Canada Day firework displays in Montreal. No American cities have announced similar cancellations.According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), fireworks started 12,264 known fires in the US in 2021, including 2,082 structure fires, 316 vehicle blazes and 9,866 others. The NFPA estimates that fireworks could start some 19,000 fires annually in the US. More

The US is set to rejoin Unesco this month after a four-year absence from the global cultural and educational body that the country abandoned during the Donald Trump presidency over what his administration called “anti-Israeli bias”.The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s reunion with the US came after a two-day special session held at the body’s headquarters in Paris.Of Unesco’s 193 member states, 142 participated in Friday’s vote. Ten states voted against the US rejoining, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Nicaragua. China, which had become the organisation’s biggest financial backer in the absence of the US, also voted against readmittance.US efforts to rejoin Unesco have been building since last year when the Joe Biden White House said within a $1.7tn spending bill that the administration would seek to rejoin the organisation in order to “counter Chinese influence”.“I am encouraged and grateful that Unesco members have accepted the US proposal that will allow us to continue steps toward rejoining the organisation,” the American secretary of state Antony Blinken said in a statement.The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, described the decision as “very good news”.“If we are not engaged in international institutions, then we leave a void and lose an opportunity to advance American values and interests on the global stage,” she added.Meanwhile, the UN’s director for the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan, told CBS News on Tuesday: “The Biden administration has always made it clear that it is suspicious of China’s rising influence in the UN.“Biden’s team believes that Trump ceded a lot of ground to China with its anti-UN attitude. The decision to rejoin Unesco is just the latest example of the US deciding it can do more to counter China by actively engaging in UN institutions than sitting on the sidelines.”As a condition of readmission, the US will repay around $619m in unpaid dues, meet 22% of Unesco’s annual budget, and make contributions to programs supporting education access initiatives in Africa, Holocaust remembrance and journalists’ safety.Beyond stepping up actions for Africa, Unesco said it would be able to increase its efforts toward gender equality, a strategic priority.“With this return, Unesco will be in an even stronger position to carry out its mandate,” said Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director general.“Unesco’s mandate – education, science, culture, freedom of information – is absolutely central to meeting the challenges of the 21st century. It is this centrality, as well as the easing of political tensions within the organisation and the initiatives launched in recent years, that have led the United States to initiate this return.”Last month, the US acknowledged in a letter to Unesco that it noted the organisation’s “efforts to implement key management and administrative reforms, as well as its focus on decreasing politicized debate, especially on Middle East issues”.The organisation in 2011 had voted to admit Palestine, which is not formally recognized by the US or Israel as a UN member state. The Barack Obama White House cut Unesco contributions, sending the US into owing millions in arrears to the organization.Five years later, in 2016, the Unesco World Heritage Committee adopted a decision ruling that Israeli actions related to archaeology, tourism and freedom of movement in the Old City of Jerusalem contravened cultural heritage laws and practices.US and Israeli officials complained that not including the full Jewish history in any decision about Jerusalem was equivalent to a denial of Jewish history.In 2017, a year into the Trump presidency, the US cited “mounting arrears at Unesco, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at Unesco” as reasons for the decision.The decision by Unesco to readmit the US, which has 24 properties inscribed on the world heritage list, is the second time it has left and rejoined since the organisation was founded in 1945.In 1983, Ronald Reagan’s administration pulled the US out over what it saw as anti-Western bias. Unesco, it complained, “has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with”.“It has exhibited hostility toward a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and it has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion,” the Reagan White House added.But beneath that expressed rationale was frustration that Unesco, with an increasing number of members, no longer acted in consort with US foreign policy objectives.“The countries which have the votes don’t pay the bill, and those who pay the bill don’t have the votes,” the US ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick said at the time.But in 2002, George W Bush’s administration negotiated readmittance as part of an effort to foster international goodwill to counter deep misgivings over the US “war on terror” in the Middle East.Reuters contributed reporting. More

The US supreme court rulings which struck down the White House’s student debt relief plan, affirmative action in college admission and a Colorado law that protected LGBTQ+ rights portend “a national movement to attack hard-won and hard-fought freedoms”, Vice-President Kamala Harris has said.In an interview with National Public Radio’s Michel Martin, Harris declared that “this is a serious moment” for people “who believe in the promise of our country [but] understand we have some work yet to do to fully achieve that promise”.“Fundamental issues are at stake,” Harris said, as she called on Americans to vote – including in the 2024 presidential race – for political candidates who would work to shield rights rather than rescind them.Harris’s remarks came after the supreme court’s conservative supermajority on Thursday ended race-conscious admissions at universities across the US, defying decades of legal precedent to the detriment of greater student diversity on the nation’s campuses. The court on Friday also ruled that both a Colorado law which compelled businesses and organizations to treat same-sex couples equally as well as Joe Biden’s landmark student debt forgiveness plan were both unconstitutional.The decision on the Colorado law came on the last day of Pride month, which annually celebrates LGBTQ+ achievements and commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, a key moment in the community’s civil rights movement.That decision and the two others all were handed down a year after the supreme court eliminated the federal abortion rights which had been established by the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling.Harris said she and other members of Joe Biden’s administration have a role in mounting a counteraction to the supreme court rulings, which she characterized as “moments of great consequence and … crises”.In the early stages of his 2024 re-election run, as some Republicans call for national abortion restrictions, the president has pledged to work to enshrine abortion rights, among other reproductive health care protections.Biden also outlined a new student debt relief plan within hours of the supreme court’s striking down his previous one.But Harris told Martin that voters can also help plot the way forward. Besides voting all the way down ballots during local, state and national elections, they can organize against the political forces which planted the seeds for this week’s volley of supreme court rulings, the vice-president said while appearing at the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday, according to Nola.com.The supreme court’s shift to the hard right became possible after the Donald Trump presidency succeeded in appointing the ultra-conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.Harris predicted the week’s supreme court decisions would “have generational impact” and described herself “deeply concerned about the implications of this … to the future of our country”, Nola.com added.In her remarks at the Essence Festival, one of the US’s top annual showcases for Black culture, Harris said: “I feel very strongly that the promise of America will only be achieved if we’re willing to fight for it.” More

As Joe Biden launches his 2024 re-election campaign, the White House is hoping to revamp the messaging on the president’s economic performance with a series of speeches, memos and the term “Bidenomics”.On Wednesday, Biden delivered what was billed as a major speech focused on the economy as he told an audience in Chicago that the Republican policy of “trickle-down economics” had “failed America”. In its place, Biden vowed to create policies that would prioritize growing the middle class, touted post-pandemic economic recovery and announced “Bidenomics is working” – one of 15 times he used the word over the course of his speech.Earlier in the week, a White House memo from two of Biden’s top advisers was sent to reporters and laid out a range of talking points. It touted the president’s various accomplishments on post-Covid economic recovery and job creation, while reiterating the theme that “Bidenomics is working.”“In the weeks and months ahead, the president, members of his cabinet, and senior administration officials will continue fanning out across the country to take the case for Bidenomics and the President’s Investing in America agenda directly to the American people,” the memo announced.The administration’s campaign appears to take aim at one of the president’s key vulnerabilities for the election, with polling showing voters have a dim assessment of how he has handled the economy. A Pew Research Center survey from this month found that inflation is the top concern among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, while support for Democratic economic policies lags 12 points behind support for GOP policies. An AP/NORC poll from last month showed that only 33% of Americans supported Biden’s handling of the economy.The perceptions of Biden’s handling of the economy are at odds with a range of positive economic indicators that the White House is eager to highlight. Inflation has gone down to the lowest levels since 2021, while the administration has repeatedly touted months of consistent job growth and low unemployment. The US economy has generally outperformed economic experts’ forecasts, and for now has staved off a recession that seemed inevitable.But these gains have not appeared to resonate with voters, who have repeatedly given Biden poor marks on the economy as workers have struggled with rising prices that often outpaced growth in wages. Republicans have meanwhile been eager to capitalize on issues of inflation, labeling the spike “Bidenflation” and making it a frequent point of attack.Biden’s team attempted to defend the president’s economic achievements in the past, including dedicating a significant portion of his State of the Union address in February to highlight his record on job growth and unemployment. The White House even passed out small “palm cards” to Democratic lawmakers with a list of talking points about the economy. But as the presidential election begins to take shape it appears these efforts are intensifying, attempting to go on the offensive with a positive message about the administration’s economic agenda.Some Democratic politicians have embraced the talking points, earning them favorable positions as surrogates for the president. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, reportedly won praise from administration officials this month after an appearance on the Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show, in which Newsom forcefully challenged assertions that Biden’s economic plans were struggling and touted the president’s job creation.The “Bidenomics” memo sent to reporters earlier this week was the work of two longtime Biden advisers, Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon. Dunn is Biden’s most senior communications adviser and played a key role in turning around his 2020 presidential election bid. Donilon has worked with Biden for decades, and as his chief strategist during the 2020 election was key in shaping the campaign’s messaging.Biden initially joked about the “Bidenomics” term at a rally on 17 June hosted by union members in Philadelphia, where he said it was “time to end the trickle-down economics theory” that was commonly associated with former President Ronald Reagan’s plan of ‘Reaganomics’.“We decided to replace this theory with what the press has now called ‘Bidenomics’,” the president said. “I don’t know what the hell that is. But it’s working.” More

From 2h agoJoe Biden said he will announce a “new path” on student loan relief that will rely on a different law than the one that the supreme court today his administration could not use to relieve some $430bn in federal student debt.“I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible. We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act. That will allow (education secretary Miguel Cardona) … to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances,” the president said.Speaking from the White House briefing room, secretary of education Miguel Cardona said he “strongly disagreed” with the supreme court’s decision and vowed to “open up an alternative path to debt relief for as many borrowers as possible, as quickly as possible”.In ruling against the Biden administration’s landmark student debt forgiveness plan, the court had “ruled against more than 40 million working families”, Cardona said.
We’re not talking about the millionaires who benefited from the billions in tax giveaway a few years ago. We’re talking about low and middle income families recovering from the worst pandemic in a century.
He said it was “outrageous” that Republican members of Congress had “fought so hard against the program that would have helped millions of their own constituents”.Cardona added:
Today, I want to assure our students, our borrowers and families across America – our fight is not over.
Vice-president Kamala Harris has spoken out against the supreme court’s ruling today striking down a Colorado civil rights law which compels businesses and organizations to treat same-sex couples equally.The court’s decision “departs from decades of jurisprudence by creating an exception to protections against discrimination in public accommodations”, a statement from Harris reads.
On the last day of Pride Month, the Supreme Court has paved the way for businesses across our nation to discriminate in the name of “free expression”—against the LGBTQI+ community, racial and religious minorities, the disability community, and women.
At a time when we celebrate hard-won advancements in LGBTQI+ rights, this decision threatens future progress.
She added that she and President Joe Biden would “continue to rigorously enforce federal anti-discrimination protections and fight for the right of all people to participate equally in our society”.We have a clip from Joe Biden’s speech where he announced a “new path” on student loan relief that will rely on a different law than the one that the supreme court today said his administration could not use to relieve some $430bn in federal student debt.Once a person loses their right to vote in Mississippi it is essentially impossible to get it back.To do so, a disenfranchised person must get the legislature to approve an individualized bill on their behalf by a supermajority in both chambers and then have the governor approve the bill. There are no online instructions or applications and lawmakers can reject or deny an application for any reason.Hardly anyone successfully makes it through the process. Between 1997 and 2022, an average of seven people successfully made it through the process each year, according to Blake Feldman, a criminal justice researcher in Mississippi.The supreme court did not say on Friday why it was rejecting the case (it takes four votes on the court to grant review) and Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor were the only two justices who noted their dissent from the denial. Jackson wrote an opinion saying the fifth circuit had committed “two egregious analytical errors that ought to be corrected”.First, she wrote, even though Mississippi voters removed a crime in 1950 and added two more in 1968, the substance of many of the original crimes from 1890 remained intact. That means that the list is still discriminatory, she wrote in a dissent that was joined by Sotomayor.“The “remaining crimes” from [the list of crimes] pernicious origin still work the very harm the 1890 Convention intended – denying Black Mississippians the vote,” she wrote.The US supreme court turned away a case on Friday challenging Mississippi’s rules around voting rights for people with felony convictions, leaving intact a policy implemented more than a century ago with the explicit goal of preventing Black people from voting.Those convicted of any one of 23 specific felonies in Mississippi permanently lose the right to vote. The list is rooted in the state’s 1890 constitutional convention, where delegates chose disenfranchising crimes that they believed Black people were more likely to commit.“We came here to exclude the negro. Nothing short of this will answer,” the president of the convention said at the time. The crimes, which include bribery, theft, carjacking, bigamy and timber larceny, have remained largely the same since then; Mississippi voters amended it remove burglary in 1950 and added murder and rape in 1968.It continued to have a staggering effect in Mississippi. Sixteen percent of the Black voting-age population remains blocked from casting a ballot, as well as 10% of the overall voting age population, according to an estimate by The Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit. The state is about 38% Black, but Black people make up more than half of Mississippi’s disenfranchised population.Read the full story by my colleague Sam Levine here.In his speech at the White House, Joe Biden repeated his criticism of the Republicans who led the successful effort to block his plan to cancel some federal student loan debt.Biden called out those Republican members who received “hundreds of thousands for themselves” in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans that were later forgiven, but who had strongly opposed his student debt plan.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
The new student debt relief plan will be implemented under the federal government’s rulemaking process, the White House said, and it seems like it will take months to get the program up and running.The education department today issued a notice announcing the plan, will hold a virtual public hearing on 18 July and “finalize the issues to be addressed through rulemaking and begin the negotiated rulemaking sessions this fall. The Department will complete this rulemaking as quickly as possible,” according to the White House.In addition, the White House said the education department will institute “a 12-month ‘on-ramp’ to repayment, running from 1 October 2023 to 30 September 2024, so that financially vulnerable borrowers who miss monthly payments during this period are not considered delinquent, reported to credit bureaus, placed in default, or referred to debt collection agencies.”Federal student loan payments have been paused since Covid-19 broke out in March 2020, and were set to restart this October. The Biden administration said the “on-ramp” is intended to provide relief to financially struggling borrowers who can’t afford to start making payments again right away.The Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fong is taking the blog over now to keep you posted on this developing story.Joe Biden directed blame for the apparent demise of his student debt relief program both at the Republicans who sued over the plan, and at the supreme court justices who ruled against it.“I think the court misinterpreted the constitution,” Biden said. Asked whether he gave Americans “false hope” by promising $430bn in total debt relief only for it to be blocked in court, he replied, “I didn’t give any false hope. The question was whether or not I would do even more than was requested. What I did I felt was appropriate and was able to be done and would get done.”“But the Republican snatched away the hope that they were given,” Biden said.“This new path is legally sound,” Biden said in announcing his new attempt at student loan relief.“It’s going to take longer, but in my view it’s the best path that remains to providing for as many borrowers as possible. I’m directing my team to move as quickly as possible on law,” the president said.Joe Biden said he will announce a “new path” on student loan relief that will rely on a different law than the one that the supreme court today his administration could not use to relieve some $430bn in federal student debt.“I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible. We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act. That will allow (education secretary Miguel Cardona) … to compromise, waive, or release loans under certain circumstances,” the president said.Joe Biden has started his speech by criticizing the Republicans who successfully sued to block his student loan forgiveness program.“The money was literally about to go out the door, and then Republican elected officials and special interests stepped in. They said no, no, literally snatching from the hands of millions of Americans thousands of dollars of student debt relief that was about to change their lives,” the president said.“You know, these Republican officials just couldn’t bear the thought of providing relief for working-class, middle-class Americans. Republican state officials sued my administration, attempting to block relief, including to millions of their own constituents.” More

Fox News mainstay Geraldo Rivera has parted ways with the network as staffing shake-ups at the conservative institution continue.Rivera first shared word of his departure from the channel on Thursday, posting a video on Twitter showing him on a boat off the coast of Long Island while saying that he had been dismissed from a panel show which Fox airs weekdays at 5pm ET.“I’ve been fired from The Five, and as a result of that I quit Fox,” Rivera said in the video.When asked for comment on Rivera’s remarks, a Fox spokesperson provided a statement which said that the network had “reached an amicable conclusion with Geraldo over the past few weeks”. The statement, written on Thursday, added that Rivera’s appearance on the Friday morning edition of the Fox & Friends show would be his last appearance on the channel. Rivera notably joined the show a few months after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.Rivera, 79, was magnanimous when he appeared on Fox & Friends for his farewell segment on Friday, saying: “I’m deeply touched – I’m honored.“I love Fox, I love the people at Fox, I always will,” Rivera said. “I’ll never let anyone separate us, but I am beyond grateful for this. This is so deeply affecting. I love you for it – thank you.”Fox has not said that Rivera’s departure was at all related to the $787.5m settlement that the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel reached with Dominion Voting Systems in April to end a defamation suit over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud when he lost his 2020 presidential re-election campaign. But it is among a handful of changes at the network since the settlement was announced.The most notable of those was the firing of host Tucker Carlson within days of the settlement. Fox has maintained that Carlson’s dismissal was unrelated to the settlement, and it has replaced him with Jesse Watters. The network’s ex-star has not commented.Meanwhile, Carlson’s former managing editor Alexander McCaskill resigned in mid-June after a banner headline which he was thought to be behind described Joe Biden as a “wannabe dictator” during a broadcast.The banner – or chyron – also said that the president had “his political rival arrested”, referring to a federal indictment filed against Trump which charged him with improperly storing government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.McCaskill had also been accused of having “habitually belittled female employees” – among other things – in a lawsuit brought by the ex-Fox talent booker Abby Grossberg which accused the channel, its owners, and its workers, including Carlson, of fostering an abusive workplace environment.Rivera embarked on his career in broadcast journalism in 1970. He hosted a daytime talkshow for 11 years beginning in 1987. And, among other gigs, he was a CNBC news host from 1994 to 2001 before joining Fox, where he worked as a war correspondent, weekend anchor and host of the Cops: All Access series.Generally known to have a flair for controversy and self-promotion, Rivera stood out in recent years for his outspoken criticism of Israel over its attacks on Gaza and other Palestinian targets. With his participation, The Five would often outperform Fox’s other prime-time shows in terms of ratings.In some quarters, one of the most memorable episodes of Rivera’s run at Fox saw the US military boot him out of Iraq in 2003 for broadcasting details about American troop movements there.Two years before that, in an on-air flub he blamed on “the fog of war”, he claimed to have been at the scene when three American military members had been slain by friendly fire in Afghanistan before the Baltimore Sun later established that he had been more than 300 miles away. More

The Indiana supreme court ruled on Friday that the state’s abortion ban does not violate the state constitution, removing a major hurdle to enforcing the ban Republicans approved last summer.The court’s decision overturns a county judge’s ruling that the ban probably violates the state constitution’s privacy protections, which she said are stronger than those found in the US constitution. That judge’s order has allowed abortions to continue in Indiana since September, despite the ban.An opinion from three of the court’s five justices said that while Indiana’s constitution provides some protection of abortion rights, the “General Assembly otherwise retains broad legislative discretion for determining whether and the extent to which to prohibit abortions”.All five Indiana supreme court justices were appointed by Republican governors.The Republican state attorney general, Todd Rokita, issued a statement praising the decision: “We celebrate this day – one long in coming, but morally justified. Thank you to all the warriors who have fought for this day that upholds LIFE.”Although the court’s decision strikes down the injunction blocking the ban, it was not immediately clear how soon the ban would take effect. The justices returned the case to the county judge for further action, and left open the possibility of a narrower challenge to the ban.Indiana’s abortion ban also faces a separate court challenge over claims it violates the state’s 2015 religious freedom law signed by GOP the then governor, Mike Pence.Indiana became the first state to enact tighter abortion restrictions, acting in August, after the US supreme court’s eliminated federal protections by overturning Roe v Wade in June 2022.Most Republican-controlled states have enacted tighter abortion restrictions since the US supreme court’s ruling last summer. All the restrictions have been challenged in court.In the past year, judges in Arizona, Iowa and South Carolina have ruled that the bans are not permissible under the state constitutions.Besides Indiana, enforcement of restrictions are on hold as courts decide the cases in Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah and Wyoming. In North Dakota, lawmakers hav since adopted a different ban to replace the one that was blocked. In South Carolina, another ban has been put into place and put on hold by a court. And in North Carolina, a federal judge weighed whether to temporarily block parts of new abortion restrictions set to take effect on Saturday.Democratic-led states, such as Indiana’s neighbors of Illinois and Michigan, have mostly taken steps to protect abortion access.The Indiana ban would eliminate the licenses for all seven abortion clinics in the state and ban the vast majority of abortions even in the earliest stages of a pregnancy. It includes exceptions allowing abortions at hospitals in cases of rape or incest before 10 weeks post-fertilization; to protect the life and physical health of the mother; and if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly.The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which represented Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinic operators, argued before the supreme court in January that the state constitution’s liberty protections provide a right to privacy and to make decisions on whether to have children.The state attorney general’s office countered that Indiana had laws against abortion when its current constitution was drafted in 1851 and that the county judge’s ruling would wrongly create an abortion right.The Indiana supreme court’s decision said the state constitution “protects a woman’s right to an abortion that is necessary to protect her life or to protect her from a serious health risk”.The majority opinion, however, also found that the constitution “generally permits the General Assembly to prohibit abortions which are unnecessary to protect a woman’s life or health, so long as the legislation complies with the constitutional limits that apply to all legislation, such as those limiting legislation to a proper exercise of the police power and providing privileges and immunities equally”.A separate court challenge to the ban is ongoing as another county judge in December sided with residents who claim it violates the state’s religious freedom law, which Republican legislators pushed through in 2015 and sparked a widespread national backlash as critics argued it allowed discrimination against gay people.The state supreme court in January turned down a request from the attorney general’s office that it immediately take up the religious freedom lawsuit. The state’s intermediate court of appeals is scheduled to hear arguments over that lawsuit on 12 September.The Marion county judge Heather Welch in December agreed with five residents who hold Jewish, Muslim and spiritual faiths and who argued that the ban would violate their religious rights on when they believe abortion is acceptable. For now it only directly affects those plaintiffs – legal experts say anyone else claiming religious protections of their abortion rights would need their own court order. More

Last August, President Biden did something no president has done before. He announced a plan to mass cancel student debt, offering $10,000 to $20,000 of relief for borrowers who earn under $125,000 annually.The triumph of this policy was more than the sliver of debt that it potentially sliced off the second-largest type of household debt in the US. More fundamentally, Biden’s policy proposal put an ideological dent in the American doctrinal belief that a creditor’s right to repayment is the first-order business of any economy.On Friday, in a 6-3 vote on ideological lines, the US supreme court undid all that. The court ruled against Biden’s student-loan forgiveness policy and put millions of Americans’ financial futures in peril.Debt intensifies existing inequalities in society: those who have the least rely on debt the most, for everything from housing to healthcare to higher education. Debtors end up paying higher costs for the same goods than those who can pay cash upfront. Black people and women bear the highest student debt burdens; over time, they pay a higher sticker price for the same degrees as white people and men. For these reasons, Biden’s proposed plan was also a major attempt to chip away at the racial wealth gap.It was no wonder, then, that within weeks of Biden’s policy announcement, half a dozen rightwing lawsuits sued to stop the president’s program. Although most of the suits were thrown out, two stuck, and temporarily halted the program. Late last fall, Biden requested that the US supreme court intervene. Although there has been much handwringing about the student debt case in front of the court – its role as a bargaining chip in debt-ceiling negotiations, its prospects to drive voters to polls in 2024 – most of the discussion misses the point.That’s because the supreme court case in question was not actually about whether the president can cancel debt. It was about whether the plaintiffs in the case – six Republican attorneys general – could reasonably prove that cancelling millions of people’s student debt harms their state, and whether judges would believe their lies.The state of Missouri contended that it will be harmed because a quasi-public loan servicing company there, Mohela, may lose revenue from cancellation, making it more difficult for Mohela to repay an old debt owed to the state of Missouri. But that violates a basic legal principle: you can’t sue on behalf of somebody else. My roommate can’t sue my employer for laying me off and making it harder for me to pay my half of the rent, yet this case would set such a precedent.In fact, internal emails between Mohela employees revealed utter confusion about the case. One employee bluntly pointed out that Missouri has no standing; another worried: “Are we the bad guys?” Even conservative legal experts ideologically opposed to the concept of student debt cancellation acknowledged that the plaintiffs weren’t bringing a legitimate claim.But putting aside the fact that Missouri has no standing to sue, the state’s claim that Mohela’s revenue loss from cancellation would endanger its ability to repay a $105m debt owed from 2008 is patently wrong, as research I recently co-authored reveals. Even with Biden’s pledged cancellation, Mohela is poised to have a gangbuster year, raking in more revenue than at any other point in its history.Yet Trump-appointed judges in the eighth circuit, yielding to dubious conservative claims, issued a nationwide injunction on Biden’s relief policy. Within weeks, the case was whisked to the highest court in the land, skirting over basic fact-finding and discovery processes. In oral arguments, the plaintiffs offered little more than the phrase “it stands to reason” to justify their claim that Mohela would lose money.The plaintiffs rigged up such a convoluted suit in an attempt to avoid a legal reality: the president and the Department of Education have full authority to cancel debt under a provision, the Heroes Act, to cancel debt in national emergencies such as a pandemic. This is just one of many legal authorities that Biden has at his disposal to cancel student loans.Now that the court has struck down Biden’s first policy stab, Biden can, and must, swiftly exercise other legal authorities to automatically cancel debt. The court’s ruling is not the death of debt cancellation – it’s merely a blockade on one channel to get there.But the fact that we have found ourselves in this position – with a couple of frivolous lawsuits delaying relief for millions of struggling Americans – should not be misread as merely yet another failure of our increasingly conservative and out-of-touch court.Debt relief is on the precipice in part because Biden failed in his execution. Despite warnings and pleas from experts and advocates, Biden insisted on routing cancellation through an application, rather than automatically and universally discharging debt. This choice was costly, in more ways than one. It took the Biden administration 52 days between announcing the policy to ready the application program. Rightwing groups seized the opportunity and sued to block the whole program.When Biden takes another crack at his generation-defining policy, he should have a strategy that reflects the ambition of the goal, rather than wavers and offers half measures. The fate of the 2024 elections doesn’t just rest on the bold policies Biden announces, but the boldness of his strategy to actually get them done.
Eleni Schirmer, a writer and postdoctoral fellow at the Concordia University Social Justice Centre in Montreal, is part of the Debt Collective More