US Politics

ExplainerStudent loan forgiveness: what you need to know about Biden’s planWho qualifies and how to apply for the forgiveness plan, and will the student loan payment freeze be extended? President Joe Biden said Wednesday that many Americans can have up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt forgiven. That amount increases to $20,000 if they qualified for Pell grants. Here’s what we know so far and what it means for people with outstanding student loans:Who qualifies for student loan forgiveness? You qualify to have up to $10,000 forgiven if your loan is held by the Department of Education and you make less than $125,000 individually or $250,000 for a family. If you received Pell grants, which are reserved for undergraduates with the most significant financial need, you can have up to $20,000 forgiven. If you are a current borrower and a dependent student, you will be eligible for relief based on your parents’ income, rather than your own.Will the student loan payment freeze be extended?The payment freeze will be extended one last time, until 31 December. The freeze started in 2020 as a way to help people struggling financially during the Covid-19 pandemic and it’s been extended several times since. It was set to expire on 31 August.Interest rates will remain at 0% until repayments start. Under an earlier extension announced in April, people who were behind on payments before the pandemic will automatically be put in good standing.How do I apply for student loan forgiveness?Details of that have not been announced, but keep an eye on the federal student aid website for more details in coming days.What’s a Pell grant and how do I know if I have one?Roughly 27 million borrowers who qualified for Pell grants will be eligible to receive up to $20,000 in forgiveness under the Biden plan.Pell grants are special government scholarships for lower-income Americans, who currently can receive up to $6,895 annually for roughly six years.Pell grants themselves don’t generally have to be paid back, but recipients typically take out additional student loans.“This additional relief for Pell borrowers is also an important piece of racial equity in cancellation,” said Kat Welbeck, Civil Rights Counsel for the Student Borrower Protection Center. “Because student debt exacerbates existing inequities, the racial wealth gap means that students of color, especially those that are Black and Latino, are more likely to come from low-wealth households, have student debt, and borrow in higher quantities.”To find out if you have a Pell grant, check any emails you’ve received that describe your FAFSA award.How many people will this help? About 43 million Americans have federal student debt, with an average balance of $37,667, according to federal data. A third of those owe less than $10,000. Half owe less than $20,000. The total amount of federal student debt is more than $1.6tn.What if I’ve already paid off my student loans – will I see relief? The debt forgiveness is expected to apply only to those currently holding student debt. But if you’ve voluntarily made payments since March 2020, when payments were paused, you can request a refund for those payments, according to the Federal Office of Student Aid. Contact your loan servicer to request a refund.Will student loan forgiveness definitely happen?The White House is expected to face lawsuits over the plan, because Congress has never given the president the explicit authority to cancel debt. We don’t know yet how that might impact the timetable for student loan forgiveness.What repayment plan is the Department of Education proposing? The Department of Education has proposed a repayment plan that would cap monthly payments at no more than 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from 10% now. Borrowers will need to apply for the repayment plan if it’s approved, which could take a year or more.For example, under the proposal, a single borrower making $38,000 a year would pay $31 a month, according a government press release.The amount considered non-discretionary will also be increased, through the department has not said how much.Discretionary income usually refers to what you have left after covering necessities like food and rent, but for student loan repayment purposes it’s calculated using a formula that takes into account the difference between a borrower’s annual income and the federal poverty line, along with family size and geographic location.What if I can’t afford to pay even with loan forgiveness? Once payments resume, borrowers who can’t pay risk delinquency and eventually default. That can hurt your credit rating and mean you’re not eligible for additional aid.If you’re struggling to pay, check if you qualify for an income-driven repayment plan. You can find out more here.The plan Biden announced on Wednesday also includes a proposal that would allow people with undergraduate loans to cap repayment at 5% of their monthly income. Proposals like this one can take a year or more to be implemented, and it’s not clear what the fine print will be.If you have worked for a government agency or a non-profit organization, you could also be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which you can read more about here.TopicsUS student debtUS personal financeUS student financeUS politicsUS income inequalityexplainersReuse this content More

Trump officials tried to ‘bully’ FDA over Covid treatments, House panel saysCongressional investigation finds new evidence of efforts to override health decisions early in pandemic Officials in the Trump White House tried to pressure health experts to reauthorize a discredited Covid treatment, according to a congressional investigation.A report published on Wednesday by the Democratic-led House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis contained new evidence of efforts to override Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decisions early in the pandemic.Biden unveils plan to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for millionsRead moreThe report also shed new light on the role TV personalities played in bringing hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, to the attention of top White House officials.The FDA authorized the use of hydroxychloroquine in late March 2020, based on small studies suggesting it could have some effectiveness against the coronavirus.At that time, many researchers hoped existing antiviral drugs could be used. But by June 2020 FDA officials had concluded the drug was likely ineffective and could cause potentially dangerous heart complications. Authorization for emergency use was revoked.The report by the House subcommittee focused on pressure on the FDA, which serves as gatekeeper for drugs, vaccines and other counter-measures against Covid.The subcommittee chairman, James Clyburn of South Carolina, said: “As today’s report makes clear, senior Trump administration officials undermined public health experts because they believed doing so would benefit the former president politically.”He also said officials had been “plotting covertly with known conspiracy theorists to dangerously push a disproven coronavirus treatment, bullying FDA to change its vaccine guidance, and advocating for federal investigations into those who stood in their way”.Much of the subcommittee’s information came from an interview with Stephen Hahn, who Trump picked as FDA commissioner in late 2019. Frustrated by the pace of FDA reviews, Trump repeatedly accused Hahn – without evidence – of delaying decisions on Covid drugs and vaccines for political reasons.Although FDA commissioners are politically appointed, agency scientists are expected to conduct reviews free from outside influence. Hahn told investigators he felt pressure due to the “persistence” of the Trump aide Peter Navarro to reauthorize hydroxychloroquine after the decision to pull its emergency use.“We took a different stance at the FDA,” Hahn told investigators. “So that disagreement, which of course ultimately became somewhat public, was a source of pressure.”Much of the report focuses on actions taken by Navarro and Steven Hatfill, a virologist and outside adviser described by the subcommittee as a “full-time volunteer” on Covid for the White House.“Dr Hatfill and Mr Navarro devised multiple pressure schemes targeting FDA and federal officials who they contended were wrongly impeding widespread access to hydroxychloroquine,” the report said.The report found that Hatfill and Navarro attempted to gain outside support for hydroxychloroquine by engaging “known extremists and prolific conspiracists like former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, Jerome Corsi, and the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons” (AAPS).The report found that Hatfill, under Navarro’s supervision, coordinated with the AAPS executive director, Jane Orient, and Bannon to gather support for a petition to “keep pressure on the FDA and the new emergency use authorization request”.According to the report, Hatfill also “courted researchers to pursue a study to show the purported benefits of hydroxychloroquine by dangling millions of taxpayer dollars in promised funding – doing so after the drug was shown to be ineffective and potentially dangerous for certain patients”.Responding, Hatfill said: “We never wrongly pressured anyone. We simply followed the science and the overwhelming evidence as detailed in several studies available at the time.”Navarro said the subcommittee was “wrongly” claiming hydroxychloroquine to be “somehow dangerous”.There is no evidence White House efforts changed FDA decisions on hydroxychloroquine or any other therapies.In fall 2020, the focus of FDA and White House officials turned to the authorization of the first Covid vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna.As previously reported, the White House objected to an FDA requirement that vaccine makers gather two months of safety data before filing applications, contending it would delay launch of the shots. Trump repeatedly said shots would be authorized before election day, despite government scientists signaling that was unlikely.The House report suggested that FDA guidance for vaccine manufacturers was delayed more than three weeks from mid-September until early October, due to White House concerns.Hahn told investigators the agency faced “pushback about the issue” from officials including Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who told Hahn on 23 September 2020 that the White House would not sign off on the two-month requirement.On 6 October, the FDA published its vaccine guidelines as part of a larger set of documents for drugmakers. After the materials posted online, Hahn said Meadows called him to indicate that the guidelines were approved. The online publication drew fury from Trump on Twitter.“New FDA rules make it more difficult for them to speed up vaccines for approval before election day,” Trump tweeted at Hahn. “Just another political hit job!”TopicsCoronavirusDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Biden unveils plan to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for millionsPresident delivers on campaign promise and outlines debt relief measures for those on lower incomes in White House speech01:15Millions of Americans received welcome news on Wednesday when Joe Biden delivered on a campaign promise to provide $10,000 in student debt forgiveness.Borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year will be eligible for loan forgiveness, with those whose low incomes qualified them for federal Pell Grants receiving up to $20,000 in relief. About a third of US undergraduate students receive Pell Grants.Biden also extended a pause on federal student loan payments through the end of the year. The White House said it would be the last pause, and borrowers should expect to resume payments in January.If it survives probable legal challenges, Biden’s plan could offer a windfall to many Americans in the run-up to midterm elections in November. More than 45 million owe a combined $1.7tn in federal student debt. Almost a third owe less than $10,000, according to federal data.Biden also proposed a new income-driven repayment plan that would cap loans for low-income future borrowers and introduce fixes to the loan forgiveness program for non-profit and government workers.“Twelve years of universal education is not enough,” Biden said, announcing the plan at the White House. “How do we remain the most competitive nation in the world with the strongest economy in the world with the greatest opportunities?“That’s what today’s announcement is about. It’s about opportunity. It’s about giving people a fair shot. It’s about the one word America can be defined by: ‘possibilities’. It’s about providing possibilities.Biden noted that the federal government gave loans to small businesses during the Covid pandemic.“Now, it’s time to address the burden of student debt the same way.”Biden added that “an entire generation is now saddled with unsustainable debt.“The burden is so heavy that even if you graduate, you may not have access to the middle-class life that the college degree once provided. The burden is especially heavy on Black and Hispanic borrowers who, on average, have less family wealth to pay for it.”Biden said more information on the plan would soon be released and borrowers who qualify for forgiveness could expect a “short and simple form to apply for this relief”, sent by the Department of Education.The US has a long history of student debt, the vast majority owed to the federal government, which has been offering loans for college since 1958. US student debt has more than tripled over the last 16 years.Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill cheered Biden’s announcement. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, a longtime advocate of the policy, issued a joint statement.They said: “With the flick of a pen, President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by cancelling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers.“The positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities, and is the single most effective action that the president can take on his own to help working families and the economy.”The senators added that Democrats would continue with efforts “to help close the racial wealth gap for borrowers and keep our economy growing”.Biden has faced pressure from liberals to provide broader relief. The cancellation falls short of the $50,000 many activist groups wanted. Some groups have called for full student debt cancellation.“If we can cancel $10k, we can cancel it all,” the Debt Collective, a union of debtors, tweeted on Wednesday.Administration officials claimed the plan could reduce inflation. The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell, argued that it would worsen the problem.McConnell said: “Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our armed forces in order to avoid taking on debt. This policy is astonishingly unfair.”Biden’s continuation of the pandemic loan payment freeze came just days before millions were set to find out when their next student loan bills were due. The end of the payment freeze extension was set for 31 August.During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden was initially skeptical of student debt cancellation as he faced progressive candidates including Warren and Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont.On Wednesday, Sanders hailed “a great step forward” but said: “We have got to do more.”New York special election victory gives Democrats hope for midterms – liveRead moreAs he tried to shore up support among younger voters, Biden unveiled a proposal for debt cancellation of $10,000 per borrower, with no mention of an income cap. That campaign promise was narrowed in recent months by embracing the income limit.Democrats pushed the administration to go as broad as possible, seeing debt relief as a galvanizing issue, particularly for Black and young voters.‘There’s been a dramatic shift in how Americans think about the role of government in helping people out for college,” said Brian Powell, professor of sociology at Indiana University Bloomington who co-authored a book on the student loan crisis.Powell noted that support for debt cancellation and college affordability has grown. Those who go to college make on average $30,000 more a year than those with just a high school degree.TopicsUS student debtJoe BidenUS politicsUS educationUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

Fetterman hits back at Oz for ‘vegetable’ remark: ‘Politics can be nasty’Aide to TV doctor and Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz said Fetterman could have avoided stroke by eating vegetables The Democratic candidate for US Senate in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman, has fired back at Mehmet Oz, after a senior aide to the Republican said Fetterman might have avoided a serious stroke in May had he only eaten more vegetables.Dr Oz campaign draws ire over unsavory remarks on Democratic rival’s strokeRead more“I had a stroke. I survived it,” Fetterman said. “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could never imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”The Democrat, currently Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, was responding to a statement to Insider on Tuesday by Rachel Tripp, senior communications adviser to Oz.Responding to Fetterman’s mockery of a video in which Oz complained about the price of crudités, Tripp said: “If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”Fetterman, 53, had a serious stroke in May. He returned to the campaign trail this month and has discussed the challenges of doing so.Oz, 62, is a former heart surgeon who became a popular if controversial voice on daytime TV. In Senate testimony in 2014, for example, he admitted promoting diet pills that did not work.Pennsylvania is a swing state, its Senate race seen as key to determining control of the chamber. But fivethirtyeight.com puts Fetterman more than 10 points ahead and Senate Republican leaders are widely reported to be moving spending elsewhere.Donald Trump endorsed Oz but according to Rolling Stone now thinks his candidate is set to “fucking lose” – a remark Trump denied.On Wednesday, Fetterman also released a letter signed by more than 100 Pennsylvania doctors who expressed “serious concern” about Oz’s candidacy.The doctors said: “As physicians, we strongly believe in evidence-based medicine and sharing honest health information with the public.“As a former daytime TV host, Dr Oz exploited the hopes and fears of his viewers by promoting unproven, ill-advised and at times potentially dangerous treatments. He has made clear that he will put enriching himself above all else, even in instances where people’s health is endangered.”“Dr Oz’s record of spreading misinformation and sharing factually incorrect medical advice on The Dr Oz Show and otherwise is thoroughly researched and well documented.”The letter cited British Medical Journal research and accused Oz of spreading misinformation about Covid-19.It also raised the issue of abortion rights, under threat since the US supreme court overturned a key ruling but a threat successfully seized upon by Democrats in campaigns across the country.Democrats’ hopes rise for midterms amid backlash over abortion accessRead moreThe doctors said: “Dr Oz would … be another vote to criminalise abortion and he has refused to condemn efforts to ban abortion in Pennsylvania, endangering the lives of women and people who can become pregnant. He has even said that he opposes abortions in cases of rape or incest.”The letter concluded with a statement of support for Fetterman.In a tweet on Wednesday, Oz said: “As a doctor, I saved the lives of thousands of patients. As your senator, I plan to bring the power of change to Washington that Pennsylvania desperately needs.”TopicsPennsylvaniaUS midterm elections 2022US politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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.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:REPORTER: Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans?BIDEN: Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multi-billion-dollar businesses if they see one of these guys getting all the tax breaks? Is that fair? What do you think? pic.twitter.com/HA9LzLBMSC— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) August 24, 2022
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.A notably supportive statement from the NAACP, which had been extremely critical of Biden on student debt in recent months: pic.twitter.com/LlrF21Xj3N— Andrew Restuccia (@AndrewRestuccia) August 24, 2022
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:.@POTUS breaks down our student debt relief announcement pic.twitter.com/D1yrpii2Hu— Herbie Ziskend (@HerbieZiskend46) August 24, 2022
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.Texas judge blocks Biden order requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortionsRead more More

ExplainerStudent loan forgiveness: what does it mean for the US debt crisis? The $1.7tn debt has become a hot political issues as midterm elections approachAmerica’s students have a debt problem. A big one. More than 45 million Americans – more than the population of California – now owe a collective $1.7tn in student debt.The vast majority of the money is owed to the federal government, which has been backing or directly offering student loans for higher education since 1958. While student loans are not new in the United States, the amount of student debt has more than tripled over the last 16 years.For the first time in history, the federal government will cancel a large swath of student debt to address the crisis. On Wednesday, Joe Biden announced borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year will see $10,000 shaved off their debt. Most borrowers will qualify for some cancellation. For at least 15 million, that means complete erasure of their debt.Student debt will remain a hot political issue. Understanding the impact of such a dramatic policy requires unpacking the student debt crisis, beginning with its origins.How the student debt crisis startedIn 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launching the first earth-orbiting satellite, Sputnik. With the cold war raging the federal government feared the US education system was failing to produce enough scientists and engineers to compete with the Soviets and, in 1958, started handing out student loans through the National Defense Education Act.Nearly a decade later, the Higher Education Act of 1965 allowed more people to take out loans as the federal government promised to pay back banks for any loans that were not repaid.“It all started from this choice, which I think was a terrible choice, to decide that as a policy matter we should support higher education … by giving [students] an opportunity to get a loan,” said Dalié Jimenez, professor of law and director of the Student Loan Law Initiative at the University of California at Irvine. “It was just a terrible mistake.”Starting in 2010, the federal government started directly lending money to student borrowers. In the wake of the Great Recession, the amount of student debt began to increase rapidly. Colleges were seeing increased enrollment as people left the workforce to go back to school. States slashed their higher education budgets, leading to higher tuition. More students were turning to for-profit colleges, which tend to be more expensive than public colleges.Over the last few years, the amount of grant aid, which does not need to be paid back, has risen. Yet despite this appearance of more financial support for students to attend college, the cost of attendance has remained the same.Two line charts comparing the gap between the listed price and what it actually costs to attend public and non-profit private institutions.The cost of attending public college has actually increased at a higher rate than the cost to attend a private college. The net cost of attendance for four-year public colleges, which takes into account any grants students receive, went from $17,500 in 2006 to $20,210 in 2016, according to data from College Board.Line chart of the costs of public and private non-profit increasing and then slightly decreasing from 2006-07 to 2020-21 school years.“That era 10 years ago was a really formative moment for producing a lot of debt that’s still out there,” said Kevin Miller, associate director for higher education at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Economic Policy Project. “The cost of college attendance has gone up a lot while household incomes in the United States haven’t … there’s a real sense that if grant, state or institutional aid isn’t filling the gap, that just leaves debt as the only option.”What student debt looks like todayFor the 2021-2022 school year, the average cost of tuition and fees for a four-year public college is $10,740. The cost is nearly quadrupled for private institutions, at an average of $38,070. Even with grant aid, the cost of attendance is an average of $19,230 for public institutions and $32,720 at private schools.Estimates put the average debt of those in the class of 2019 who took out student loans at $28,950. The number is close to the maximum $31,000 that students who are dependents of parents or guardians can borrow from the federal government to fund undergraduate education.Area chart of student debt increasing from Q1 2006 to Q1 2022.Continuing racial wealth disparities are reflected in who has to take out loans to fund college. About half of Black college students take out student loans, compared with 40% of white students. Black Americans owe an average of $25,000 more in debt than their white counterparts and are more likely to be behind on their payments.Despite the amount of debt many students need to take on to attend college, nearly 20 million Americans still enroll in college every year. While earnings can depend on a person’s industry, those with a bachelor’s degrees earn 75% more in their lifetime than those with just a high school diploma.“The message is you have to get a college degree. It’s not just a rhetorical message, it’s an actual truth that if you don’t have a college degree, particularly if you are Black or brown … you will not be able to get a job that is better than your parents’,” Jimenez said.Those with graduate and professional degrees earn even more, but the price for an advanced degree is even higher. A good chunk of student debt – about 40% – is held by those who took out loans to pay for graduate school.What the government has done to address student debtAfter over a year of deliberation, the White House announced on Wednesday the largest student debt cancellation in US history. Federal borrowers making under $125,000 will see $10,000 of their debt forgiven. The policy represents a fulfillment of a promise Biden made on the campaign trail to cancel $10,000 of student debt.Until Wednesday, the most substantial policy addressing student debt was first implemented by the Trump administration, which paused student loan payments and interest accrual at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Both Trump and Biden extended the pause over the last two years, and it is now set to expire on 31 August.Since the beginning of this year, Biden has announced a slate of additional policies alongside the pause extension. Those who have defaulted or are delinquent on their federal student loans will be returned to good standing. Biden forgave $415m in student debt for borrowers who attended predatory for-profit schools.His administration also announced changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which forgives the student loans of borrowers who are non-profit and government employees after 10 years of debt or after 120 payments are made. Over 113,000 borrowers with a cumulative $6.8bn in debt are now eligible for forgiveness. Over the years, the program has been under much criticism, as relief through the program was rare and borrowers were often deemed not qualified for logistical reasons.The debate over debt forgivenessRepublicans have been using student debt as a talking point against Biden as the midterm elections approach.Senator Mitt Romney suggested that Democrats canceling student loans is a way of bribing voters. “Other bribe suggestions: Forgive auto loans? Forgive credit card debt? Forgive mortgages?” he wrote on Twitter. JD Vance (who went to Yale Law School) told the Washington Post that “Biden essentially wants blue-collar workers like truck drivers – who didn’t have the luxury of going to college to get drunk for four years – to bail out a bunch of upper-middle-class kids.”The reality is that the student loans of those in the highest income quartile – people making more than $97,000 – do make up a third of all outstanding student debt. But many low-income Americans also have student debt, though the amount of debt they have is smaller. Those making below $27,000 a year make up 17% of all borrowers, but their loans comprise 12% of all the outstanding debt.An income threshold could be a way for the government to target forgiveness to those who need it most. But some have pointed out that an income ceiling does not take into consideration a person’s wealth.“You’re looking at a snapshot of what your income was this year or last year, that tells you very little,” Jimenez said. “If your family has no wealth, you’re very differently situated from someone who has family wealth or personal wealth from previous careers.”Those who have been advocating for student debt cancellation say that $10,000 in forgiveness will not be enough to address the breadth of the crisis. Democratic lawmakers, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called on Biden to cancel up to $50,000.“I don’t believe in a cutoff, especially for so many of the frontline workers who are drowning in debt and would likely be excluded from relief,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Washington Post. “Canceling $50,000 in debt is where you really make a dent in inequality and the racial gap. $10,000 isn’t.”Ending the student debt crisis for goodEven though millions will now see debt cancellation, future college students will continue to take out loans – and at higher interest rates. Tackling the price tag of college will come with its own complications, but advocates say it will be necessary to ensure student debt does not get worse.While Biden’s plan for free community college was killed along with the rest of the social and climate spending bill that was making its way through Congress, some efforts for better college funding are happening at the local level.In March, the governor of New Mexico signed a bill that would use $75m in state funds to cover tuition and fees for undergraduate students at two- and four-year colleges. Drives for similar government support have been seen in Pennsylvania, California and Maine.“The cost of college is too high for a lot of students to manage without debt. Making it so that students can go without debt or take less debt in the first place is the thing that we really need to be focusing on,” Miller said. “What about the next generation or the one after that?”
This article was amended. An earlier version stated that student debt had doubled over 16 years. In fact, it has more than tripled.
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Trump appears to concede he illegally retained official documentsCourt motion submitted by ex-president’s lawyers argues some materials seized by FBI could be subject to executive privilege Donald Trump appeared to concede in his court filing over the seizure of materials from his Florida resort that he unlawfully retained official government documents, as the former president argued that some of the documents collected by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege.The motion submitted on Monday by the former president’s lawyers argued that a court should appoint a so-called special master to separate out and determine what materials the justice department can review as evidence due to privilege issues.“The documents seized at Mar-a-Lago … were created during his term as President. Accordingly, the documents are presumptively privileged until proven otherwise,” the filing said. “Only an evaluation by a neutral reviewer, a Special Master, can secure the sanctity of these privileged materials.”But the argument from Trump that the documents are subject to executive privilege protections suggests those documents are official records – which he is not authorized to keep and should have turned over to the National Archives at the end of the administration.‘Donald kept our secret’: Mar-a-Lago stay saved Giuliani from drink and depression, book saysRead moreThe motion, in that regard, appeared to concede that Trump violated one of the criminal statutes listed on the warrant used by the FBI to search the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort – 18 USC 2071 – concerning the unlawful removal of government records.“If he’s acknowledging that he’s in possession of documents that would have any colorable claim of executive privilege, those are by definition presidential records and belong at the National Archives,” said Asha Rangappa, a former FBI agent and former associate dean at Yale Law School.“And so it’s not clear that executive privilege would even be relevant to the particular crime he’s being investigated for and yet in this filing, he basically admits that he is in possession of them, which is what the government is trying to establish,” Rangappa said.Trump remains able to make the case that a special master should be appointed to review the seized documents, seek a more detailed receipt for what the FBI retrieved from Mar-a-Lago and restrain the justice department from further reviewing the materials until the process is complete.The reasoning, former US attorneys say, is that there could be communications seized by the FBI that are privileged, but not used in furtherance of a crime, and even if the justice department wanted to use them in its investigation, it should be precluded from doing so.Still, if Trump successfully argues the materials are protected by executive privilege, then he also successfully argues that he was in unlawful possession of official records. If he is unsuccessful, then executive privilege would not be a valid basis to seek a special master.A person directly involved in Trump’s legal defense noted – repeating parts in the filing – that the Presidential Records Act had no enforcement mechanism, even as they conceded that the justice department might pursue the privilege argument as a tacit admission.But Trump’s motion could throw up additional challenges for the former president, with additional passages in the filing laying out a months-long battle by the justice department to recover certain records in a pattern of interactions that could be construed as obstruction of justice.The search warrant for Mar-a-Lago listed obstruction for the statutes potentially violated, though it was not clear whether that was obstruction of the investigation into the very retrieval of government documents from Mar-a-Lago or for another, separate investigation.Yet the section in Trump’s motion titled “President Donald J Trump’s Voluntary Assistance” detailed the multiple steps the justice department took to initially retrieve 15 boxes in January, additional materials in June, and then 26 boxes when the FBI conducted its search.The filing discussed how Trump returned the 15 boxes to the National Archives, and then – one day after the National Archives told Trump’s lawyers that those boxes contained classified documents – “accepted service of a grand jury subpoena” for additional documents with classification markings.But despite taking custody of documents responsive to the subpoena, the justice department learned there may have been additional documents marked as classified, and issued a subpoena on 22 June demanding security camera footage of the hallway outside where the materials were being stored.That subpoena for security tapes, as well as a subsequent subpoena for CCTV footage of that area from just before the FBI search on 8 August, suggests the justice department did not think Trump was being entirely truthful or forthcoming in his interactions with the investigation.Those suspicions were well-founded: when the government retrieved materials from Mar-a-Lago on that second collection in June, Trump’s custodian of records attested they had given back documents responsive to the subpoena – only for the FBI to retrieve more boxes of classified materials.Separately, apart from late filing of the motion two weeks after the FBI search took place, the brief itself appears to be procedurally problematic.The motion was not filed in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the warrant was approved. Instead, it was filed in Fort Pierce, where the judge has no knowledge of the underlying affidavit – and could rule in such a way to reveal to Trump if he or his lawyers are suspects for obstruction.TopicsDonald TrumpMar-a-LagoFBILaw (US)US politicsnewsReuse this content More

Republicans thought they had midterms in the bag. Voters just rejected them againLloyd GreenTuesday’s special election in New York state was more evidence that voters are furious about Republican attacks on abortion rights – and going to the polls to boost Democrats Abortion and Donald Trump will both appear on November’s ballot. On Tuesday, Pat Ryan, a Democrat and a decorated Iraq war veteran, upset Republican Marc Molinaro in a special congressional election in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley. Ryan won 52-48 after pre-election polls had painted him as the clear underdog.“This is a huge victory for Dems in a bellwether, Biden +1.5 district,” according to Dave Wasserman, the doyen of congressional-race watchers, with the key words being “huge” and “bellwether”. Said differently, Republican efforts to convert the contest into a referendum on the Democrats and inflation failed.On the campaign trail Ryan made abortion a central issue. “Choice is [on] the ballot, but we won’t go back,” he posted to Facebook hours before the polls opened. “Freedom is under attack, but it’s ours to defend.”Usually, midterms spell disaster for the “in” party that controls the White House. From the looks of things, 2022 may be different.There is a clear backlash against the US supreme court’s evisceration of the rights to privacy and personal autonomy. At the same time, nonstop reports of Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents, and possible obstruction of justice charges against the 45th president, cloud his party’s future.The end of Roe v Wade is not the blessing Republicans had assumed it would be. Looking back, the defeat of Kansas’s anti-abortion referendum was not a one-off event.For the court’s majority, it appears that being “right” was more important than being smart. Ginni Thomas’s husband and four of his colleagues could have upheld Mississippi’s abortion law without demolishing a half-century of precedent.Chief Justice Robert’s concurrence made that reality crystal clear. Yet around the country, Republican candidates still appear hellbent on doubling-down.Tudor Dixon, Michigan’s Republican candidate for governor, spoke of the upside of a 14-year-old rape victim carrying the child to term. “The bond that those two people made and the fact that out of that tragedy there was healing through that baby, it’s something that we don’t think about,” Dixon told an interviewer.Meanwhile, in Florida, an appellate court affirmed a lower court’s order that barred a parentless 16-year-old from ending her pregnancy. The unnamed mother-to-be had failed to demonstrate that she was “sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy”.On the other hand, the learned judges and the Republican state legislature believed her to be sufficiently adult to deliver and raise a child.And then there is Texas. Later this week, physicians who perform abortions stand to face life in prison and fines of at least $100,000. Under Texas’s current law, abortions are banned after six weeks, and the state’s statute contains no exceptions for rape or incest.Heading into the fall, Democrats will also be bolstered by Joe Biden’s slowly rising approval numbers, tamer inflation figures, and the emergence of democracy’s precarity as a campaign issue. According to a recent NBC poll, the threat to US democracy has overtaken the cost of living as the No 1 issue for voters.Or, in the words of Congressman-elect Ryan, “Our democracy is fragile, but we will fight for it.”Adding to Republican woes is the poor performance of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates in pre-election trial heats. In Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia, they all lag.By the numbers, forecasters give the Democrats better than a three-in-five chance of continuing to control the upper chamber and leaving their imprimatur on Biden judicial nominations. These days, even Senator Mitch McConnell concedes that the odds of him again becoming majority leader are iffy: “Flipping the Senate … It’s a 50/50 proposition … I think the outcome is likely to be very, very close either way.”He also reminded Republicans that running for Senate is not the same thing as running for a House seat albeit with a louder and larger microphone. “Senate races are statewide,” McConnell observed. “They’re just different in nature from individual congressional districts.”Apparently, Senator Rick Scott, the chairman of the Republican National Senatorial Committee, has not yet noticed. First, he burned-through a pile of campaign cash. Now, he has been spotted vacationing on a luxury yacht off the coast of Italy while Americans struggle.On Monday, Scott tweeted: “Another week of President Biden vacationing in Delaware vs. working at the White House.” Cluelessness is not just the province of Justices Alito, Thomas and Kavanaugh.
Lloyd Green served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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