WASHINGTON — President Biden said Friday that his administration is forgiving another $5 billion in student loan debt for 74,000 people using existing government programs — continuing his piecemeal approach to write-offs after the Supreme Court last year struck down his sweeping plan to forgive $430 billion in college debt.
The latest action brings Biden’s post-ruling loan forgiveness to about $137 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal tally — as the 81-year-old president tries to demonstrate that’s he’s making good on a campaign pledge as he seeks a second term in this year’s election.
Unlike the plan struck down by the Supreme Court in June, under which each borrower would have had $10,000 or $20,000 removed from their federal balances, the latest actions lean on implementation of laws passed with bipartisan support.
The latest beneficiaries include 44,000 teachers, nurses, firefighters and others who qualify for the reprieve after working for 10 years in careers defined as public service under a 2007 law signed by Republican President George W. Bush.
Another 30,000 people are having their debt forgiven because they were entered for 20 years into income-driven repayment plans that cap expenses as a percentage of earnings, according to the White House.
Income-driven repayment programs have been supported by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams,” the president said in a statement.
Biden’s nixed forgiveness plan was decried by critics as a political stunt because it was announced shortly before the 2022 midterm elections in response to an activist campaign after fellow Democrats, including then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said it wouldn’t be legal for him to wipe away student debt with the stroke of a pen.
Republican critics of Biden’s focus on loan forgiveness have called for action to stem the growth of college expenses as a way to reduce debt burden.
After leaving office as vice president, Biden was paid about $1 million to serve as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2019, despite making just nine known campus visits and not actually leading any classes.
In 2021, Biden picked Penn President Amy Gutmann, who had also provided him with a DC office where misplaced classified documents were later found, to be US ambassador to Germany.
U.S. lawmakers are considering changes to address concerns about a bill that would give the Biden administration new powers to ban Chinese-owned TikTok, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has cosponsored the legislation said on Monday.
Democratic Senator Mark Warner told Reuters that aggressive lobbying by the ByteDance-owned short video app TikTok against the Restrict Act “slowed a bit of our momentum” after it was introduced in March.
Warner said lawmakers have “a proposal on a series of amendments to make it explicitly clear” and address criticisms, including that individual Americans could be impacted or that the bill represents a broad expansion of government power.
“We can take care of those concerns in a fair way,” Warner said.
The legislation endorsed by the White House would grant the Commerce Department new authority to review, block, and address a range of transactions involving foreign information and communications technology that pose national security risks.
“I will grant TikTok this – they spent $100 million (roughly Rs. 820 crore) in lobbying and slowed a bit of our momentum,” Warner said, adding that initially it seemed it would be almost “too easy” to get the bill approved.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Warner’s assessment of its lobbying.
In March, Republican Senator Rand Paul blocked a bid to fast-track a separate bill to ban TikTok introduced by Senator Josh Hawley, who said the Restrict Act “doesn’t ban TikTok. It gives the president a whole bunch of new authority.”
The Biden administration in March demanded TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a U.S. ban. Attempts in 2020 by then President Donald Trump to ban TikTok were blocked by U.S. courts.
Warner said there are a lot of conversations about the bill, adding it could be attached to an annual defense bill or could be part of a China-related bill that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wants.
The need for legislation is clear, he said.
“There have been another three or four apps that have come out that are Chinese controlled so we need a fair rules-based process to deal with this rather than kind of a one-off basis,” Warner said.
TikTok, which is used by more than 150 million Americans, says it has spent more than $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 12,400 crore) on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.
The company is fighting a ban by the state of Montana set to take effect on January 1. A judge has scheduled an October 12 hearing on TikTok’s request.
WASHINGTON — President Biden signed a bill Monday ending the COVID-19 national emergency more than three years after it went into effect.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, issued the proclamation in March 2020 to temporarily expand the executive branch’s power to steer funds to battle the virus.
President Biden signed a bill Monday that put an end to the COVID-19 national emergency.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
It’s unclear what immediate effect Biden’s signature will have on linked US policies, such as immigration policy and his student debt forgiveness plan.
Biden signed the legislation behind closed doors on the eve of his trip Tuesday to Northern Ireland and the White House acknowledged the milestone without fanfare in a brief late-afternoon email that read: “On Monday, April 10, 2023, the President signed into law: H.J.Res. 7, which terminates the national emergency related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The legislation drafted by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) passed the House 229-197 in February, with a handful of Democratic supporters, and then the Senate 68-23 last month with about half of the chamber’s Democrats voting in favor.
Ending the emergency terminates the Title 42 migration policy.David Butow/Redux Biden planned on ending both the national emergency and a separate public health emergency in May, according to the White House.HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP via Getty Images
In January, the White House said that Biden would end both the national emergency and a separate public health emergency on May 11 after more than 1 million Americans died from the respiratory disease that originated in Wuhan, China.
The Justice Department has said that ending the emergency would terminate the Title 42 migration policy that allows for the rapid deportation of people who illegally cross the US-Mexico border.
The Biden administration has eased enforcement of Title 42 by gradually allowing more people into the US to await asylum rulings, but thousands of migrants have still been deported each month under the policy, which would have to be replaced with a new plan to address record-high illegal crossings.
Biden also invoked the national emergency last year when announcing plans just before the midterm elections to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student debt per borrower. Critics say that Biden exceeded his legal authority and the Supreme Court is reviewing that plan.
Damar Hamlin put the NFL on notice, telling President Joe Biden at the White House that he believes he will be able to play again one day.
Hamlin, 25, and his family paid the President a visit while in Washington on Thursday, where Biden commended Hamlin for his courage and resilience after suffering cardiac arrest on Jan. 2 following a tackle on wideout Tee Higgins as the Bills faced the Bengals in Week 18.
Biden asked: “You think you’re going to be able to play?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Hamlin replied.
“Good, I hope so,” said Biden.
“God willing,” Hamlin added.
For someone who asked if the Bills won the called-off game as he returned to consciousness days later, it’s no surprise that Hamlin has expressed his desire to return to the field and with the belief he can do so.
Damar Hamlin and President Biden pose with Hamlin’s gift to Biden at a White House meeting.Twitter
“Eventually. That’s always the goal, like I said, as a competitor, you know, I’m trying to do things to keep advancing my situation,” Hamlin said in February, via ESPN. “But I’m allowing that to be in God’s hands. I’m just thankful he gave me a second chance.”
Earlier this month, the Bills’ general manager Brandon Beane spoke of Hamlin’s eagerness and that things were “trending in the right direction.”
“We’ll get him through all [medical consultations] and then we’ll make sure all of our medical people are hearing all those opinions on each visit and make sure that we’re all on the same page of what it would look like,” Beane told reporters, noting that he believed consultations would end next month but that there could always be more.
Damar Hamlin and his family pose for a photo with President Biden.Twitter
Stemming from Hamlin’s incident, the NFL announced the Smart Heart Sports Coalition earlier this week, according to ESPN.
The program focuses on advocating for policies in all 50 states aimed to prevent sudden or fatal instances of cardiac arrest among high school athletes.
The coalition has already sent letters suggesting additional policies to governors in 43 states.
If Gigi Sohn gets confirmed to join the Federal Communications Commission, the Biden administration may install the ultra-progressive telecom maven as chair of the powerful panel, insiders told On The Money.
In a Tuesday Senate hearing, Sohn claimed that any rumor she wants to be chair is “false.” However, sources say Sohn has privately told friends that the only reason she has weathered her year-and-a-half candidacy is because she has been assured by White House officials that they plan to make her chair.
“It would be incredibly embarrassing to pull her now,” one source noted.
Specifically, people close to Sohn say the administration believes it will be easier to get Senate approval for her nomination as a commissioner and then appoint her as chair to replace Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic Obama appointee. Indeed, Biden officials followed a similar playbook when they installed Lina Khan – a left-leaning, anti-tech trustbuster – as chair of the Federal Trade Commission in 2021.
Sohn did not respond to a request for comment; the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Stay On the Money
Essential weekly read to fuel business lunches.
It’s unclear if Sohn will win the Senate nomination, with Democrat Joe Manchin reportedly still on the fence. If people say Democrats are hopeful she’ll pull it off — and eventually replace current FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel as chair, insiders told On The Money.
Conservatives fret that Sohn — who has previously slammed Fox as “dangerous to our democracy” and encouraged the FCC to examine if conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group is “qualified” to keep its broadcast license — would move as FCC chair to revoke the license of right-leaning talk radio stations and even cable channels.
“If your license gets pulled your program is yanked immediately,” a source added.Most recently, Sohn worked at Locast — a startup that captured and retransmitted broadcast signals online without permission from cable companies.
Locast was slapped with a $32 million lawsuit that ultimately cost just $1 million to settle after it became clear Sohn would be nominated for the FCC, The Post reported.
WASHINGTON — President Biden went a fifth consecutive day Wednesday without discussing his unprecedented decision to order the shootdown of three unidentified objects over North American airspace — one day after his official flack praised him as “the best communicator that we have in the White House.”
Biden, 80, took no reporter questions Wednesday and didn’t mention the incidents while speaking at his only public event of the day, in which he delivered well-worn spin on the economy to Maryland union members.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also didn’t hold a briefing or gaggle Wednesday — after Biden’s avoidance of questions on the shootdowns was the main topic of her briefing Tuesday.
“We are sharing as much information as we can, as — as possible,” Jean-Pierre said at one point. “And — but we do want to make sure that the Americans — American people understand that there’s no need to panic. The President took this action, as I mentioned earlier, because the objects were indeed flying at low — lower elevation and they were in civilian airspace. And we wanted to make sure that we protected that airspace. But, again, you know, we want to also make sure that the Americans are not — do not panic during this time.”
Joe Biden refused to speak about his shootdowns of benign UFOs for the fifth day. AFP via Getty Images
Biden, who declined to sit for a traditional Super Bowl interview with Fox News, hasn’t said anything about scrambling fighter jets to shoot down likely innocuous objects since Friday, when he said the takedown of an object near Alaska’s coast “was a success.”
Biden ordered additional shootdowns of objects Saturday over Canada’s Yukon territory and Sunday over Lake Huron — with an initial $450,000 missile missing the latter target, requiring a second shot.
White House spokespeople didn’t respond Wednesday to The Post’s request for comment on Biden’s silence.
Critics question whether Biden ordered the spate of missions as an overreaction after being stung by criticism of his decision to allow a Chinese spy balloon to hover over sensitive US facilities from Alaska to South Carolina before ordering its downing off the Atlantic coast on Feb. 4.
Authorities in the US and Canada haven’t found any debris from the three other objects.
Biden, whose family has extensive business interests in China, barely mentioned the spy balloon incident at all during his Feb. 7 State of the Union address to Congress — despite blanket coverage of the incident by news outlets. Much of that balloon’s debris has since been recovered by the US military.
Biden took no reporter questions and didn’t mention the incidents at his only public event of the day.AP
Although Biden has not recently addressed the balloon or the UFOs, Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview published Wednesday by Politico that the spy balloon shouldn’t have negative effects on the diplomatic relationship with China. “I don’t think so, no,” Harris said.
Legislators from both parties, including senators who received a classified briefing Tuesday, are calling on Biden to address the public after the bizarre incidents
“I think the public needs and deserves to know more. A lot of what we’ve been told are facts that the American people could know and should know, without any harm to our national security,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said after the briefing. “I’ve urged repeatedly that on this topic and others, the administration could be more forthcoming.”
“My phone is ringing off the wall and we got a president of the United States who is not saying anything,” agreed Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). “Get out there and tell the people we’re in good shape, we know what’s going on and let’s go on with our lives. But for some reason we have no leadership right now.”
Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden had no reason to be embarrassed about the shootdowns. Getty Images
New York Times reporter Michael Shear pointedly asked Jean-Pierre on Tuesday if Biden was “embarrassed” about the likelihood that he ordered the military to down innocuous objects — after the press secretary conceded that “the intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could be tied to commercial or research entities and benign.”
Get Miranda’s latest take
Sign up for Devine Online, the newsletter from Miranda Devine
“The National Weather Service website says that weather balloons are released around the world at 900 locations twice a day every single day of the year, including 92 released by the National Weather Service in the US, that they fly for at least two hours a day, drift as far as 125 miles… and rise up to 100,000 feet above the ground,” Shear noted.
“If it turns out, as it looks like, that the president and [Canadian Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau sent top gun fighters to blow weather balloons out of the sky, does the president regret that and is he embarrassed by that?”
Jean-Pierre attempted to side-step the question, with Shear pressing her: “Is the president embarrassed by that — the idea that he would take hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment —”
“I don’t think the president should be embarrassed, right, by the fact that he took action to make sure that our our airspace — civilian airspace was safe,” Jean-Pierre finally said.
Near the end of the briefing, the press secretary was asked if the White House felt Biden was more or less adept in certain settings, such as set-piece addresses or press conferences.
“I will tell you this,” Jean-Pierre responded. “The president is the best communicator that we have in the White House.”
Former President Donald Trump spent nearly four years in the White House before learning his daily schedule was made public — at which point he ordered a stripped down version of the document, a former aide testified.
The surprising revelation was shared by former White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere in his testimony to the House Jan. 6 committee that was made public on Tuesday.
“Every evening we prepared and released the daily guidance for the following day of the president’s public schedule. Beginning sometime around mid to late December, the president discovered that, for the first time, my understanding, that we released a public schedule of his to the public,” Deere told the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“He wanted to change the way we did that,” the former president’s communications aide added.
Donald Trump spent nearly four years in the White House before learning his daily schedule was made public.EPA
The White House daily schedule notably changed around Jan. 5, 2021, with details of Trump’s daily comings and goings at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave omitted and replaced with “boilerplate” language saying that the president would have “many calls and have many meetings.”
“And so what became the new version of the public schedule was basically a couple of sentences about what his day would consist of, rather than specific times and titles of events and an outline form,” Deere explained.
The guidance drafted by Deere for Jan. 6 and approved by White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany read: “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings. The President will depart for the Ellipse at 10:50am to deliver remarks at the Save America Rally.”
The White House daily schedule notably changed around Jan. 5, 2021.REUTERS
“The first two sentences in this are the standard boilerplate language that we began using every day. And the third sentence is the item that’s specific to the January 5 guidance for January 6,” Deere told the House select committee.
The House panel investigating the storming of the Capitol and the 76-year-old former president’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election released its final report last week and found that Trump engaged in a criminal “multi-part conspiracy” in an attempt to remain commander-in-chief.
The panel referred four criminal charges to the Department of Justice, accusing Trump of insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the US, and obstruction of an act of Congress.
The Biden White House pressured Twitter to both “elevate” and “suppress” purported COVID-19 “misinformation” — but ended up “censoring info that was true but inconvenient” to policy makers, according to the latest edition of the “Twitter files” revealed Monday.
The coercion campaign during the pandemic began with the Trump administration, but was stepped up under Biden, whose administration was focused on the removal of “anti-vaxxer accounts,” according to Free Press reporter David Zweig.
For example, in June 2021, hours after Biden publicly raged that social media companies were “killing people” for allowing purported vaccine misinformation to propagate, former New York Times reporter and noted vaccine doubter Alex Berenson was banned from the site.
Berenson responded by suing Twitter, forcing the release of internal communications that showed the White House had pressured the company to squash his account.
1. THREAD:
THE TWITTER FILES: HOW TWITTER RIGGED THE COVID DEBATE
– By censoring info that was true but inconvenient to U.S. govt. policy – By discrediting doctors and other experts who disagreed – By suppressing ordinary users, including some sharing the CDC’s *own data*
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine,” Berenson had tweeted.
“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS,” he also wrote.
As recently as this month, Lauren Culbertson, Twitter’s Head of US Public Policy released a summary of meetings with the White House detailing its alleged pressure campaign, according to Zweig.
Former New York Times reporter and noted vaccine doubter Alex Berenson was banned from Twitter in June of 2021.
Culbertson said in her notes that the administration was “very angry” that Twitter had not taken more aggressive action in silencing vaccine critics and wanted the company to do more, files showed.
Among those whom Twitter did clamp down on was Dr. Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School
Kulldorff had tweeted in March 2021 that both children and adults who had been previously infected with COVID did not need the vaccine. That was flagged by the site as “misleading” — even though it was in line with the vaccine policies of “numerous other countries,” Zweig wrote.
That incident was just the icing on the cake, according to the journalist, who uncovered “countless instances of tweets labeled as ‘misleading’ or taken down entirely, sometimes triggering account suspensions, simply because they veered from CDC guidance or differed from establishment views.”
The latest revelations came after previous “Twitter Files” found the FBI and CIA had meddled in the company, and prompted it to bow to political pressure, including convincing Twitter to censor The Post’s exposé on how Hunter Biden used his father’s name to secure questionable business arrangements overseas in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress received rave reviews on social media, with several users remarking on the wartime leader’s masterful command of the English language.
“I’ll give him this: He speaks better English than our President. And Our Vice President. And our Speaker of the House,” podcast host Gerry Callahan wrote on Twitter, mocking President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“And [Zelensky] dresses better than the slob Pennsylvanians just sent to the Senate,” Callahan added, taking a cheap shot at Sen.-elect John Fetterman (D-Pa.), one of the New York Times’s “most stylish” people of 2022.
Kyle Poen, a regional coordinator with Students for Life, echoed Callahan in a Twitter post, noting that the non-native English speaker’s oratory skills surpassed that of the 80-year-old president.
“One thing is for certain: Zelensky, with English being far from his primary language, is a better speaker than Biden,” Poen observed.
CBS News Colorado reporter Dillon Thomas called the Ukrainian leader’s speech “incredible” and said he did better in a foreign language than some TV talking heads do in their native language.
The Bidens greet Ukrainian President Zelensky upon his arrival at the White House on December 21. Oliver Contrera/ZUMAPRESS.com
“Incredible to see Volodymyr Zelenskyy give an entire LIVE prime time address to a foreign [country] in a foreign language to him… I know Americans who get paid to speak English on TV every day and still have difficulties,” Thomas tweeted.
CNN global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga noted that Zelensky’s oration, done “masterfully in English,” likely irritated Russian President Vladimir Putin, who rarely is heard speaking English in public.
“No doubt this speech, this venue, this bipartisan applause, all get under Putin’s skin. The chef’s kiss? That Zelensky is delivering it masterfully in English,” Golodryga tweeted.
Zelensky addresses Congress – 10 months after the start of the Ukraine war. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Zelensky thanked Congress on Wednesday for sending US military aid to Ukraine as it fights off Russian invaders.
“Against all odds and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking,” the 44-year-old leader said after receiving a standing ovation from both chambers of Congress as he walked toward the podium.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
