New York City Mayor Eric Adams told CBS News, “Everything is on the table” as the city struggles to house migrants seeking asylum. A new facility on Randall’s Island is expected to house up to 3,000 migrants and Adams is also considering using a closed federal prison. Jericka Duncan has the latest.
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This week, more than 800,000 student loan borrowers with billions of dollars in debt will start to have their loans discharged.
The one-time account adjustment comes after the Biden administration last month announced it would forgive student loans for 804,000 borrowers with a combined $39 billion in federal student loan debt. These borrowers have been in income-driven repayment (IDR) plans for more than 20 years and “never got the credit they earned” under IDR plans, the White House said in a statement Monday.
“Hundreds of thousands of borrowers weren’t accurately getting credit for student loan payments that should have delivered them forgiveness under income-driven repayment plans,” President Joe Biden said in the statement. They “will start to see their student debt canceled” this week.
Look for an email from your loan servicing company, which began alerting people about the debt forgiveness on Monday, according to ABC News.
The Biden administration has targeted borrowers enrolled in IDR plans for forgiveness because of “historical failures” of the system.
IDR plans work by calculating monthly repayment sums based on the borrower’s income. That payment can be as low as $0 a month, for borrowers who don’t earn an income.
Student loan borrowers enrolled in an IDR plan should technically be eligible for forgiveness after making either 240 or 300 monthly payments on an IDR plan or a standard repayment plan, according to Department of Education regulations. That includes borrowers with monthly payments as low as $0.
However, reviews by the Education Department of IDR payment-tracking procedures “revealed significant flaws” in the system that suggested borrowers were “missing out on progress toward IDR forgiveness,” according to a statement from the DOE last year. In addition, the department’s review of Federal Student Aid suggested that struggling borrowers were placed into forbearance by loan servicers, in violation of DOE rules.
On July 14, the Department of Education informed borrowers enrolled in income-driven repayment plans who have accumulated the equivalent of either 20 or 25 years of qualifying monthly payments that they would soon receive notices confirming their debt was canceled.
“For far too long, borrowers fell through the cracks of a broken system that failed to keep accurate track of their progress towards forgiveness,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement at the time.
The federal relief will completely wipe out student loan debt for more than 614,000 people, according to the White House statement Monday.
The Education Department did not immediately reply to CBS MoneyWatch’s request for comment.
Who qualifies for the new student loan forgiveness?
While some borrowers in IDR plans are heaving a sigh of relief this week, millions of Americans will soon need to make payments on their student loans for the first time in more than three years.
For those facing repayments that they’re thinking of skipping, options exist.
One is the new Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, an income-driven repayment program, which opened in July. The SAVE program was developed as an alternative for borrowers to avoid the pitfalls of traditional IDRs, such as interest that can snowball.
The program could cut monthly payments in half or even to $0 for borrowers. Many will save up to $1,000 a year on repayments, according to the Biden administration.
Explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Friday as Ukrainian air defenses responded to morning Russian air strikes.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a Telegram post that no one had been injured but fragments of a missile had fallen onto the grounds of a children’s hospital.
The Ukrainian air force reported that Russia had launched hypersonic Kinzhal missiles over the Kyiv region, while Ukrainian officials said the capital’s air defenses were at work, the Reuters news agency reported.
Ukrainian air defense system intercepts a rocket launched by Russian forces at Kyiv, Ukraine on Dec. 29, 2022.
Mustafa Ciftci / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Ukrainian authorities had issued a nationwide air alert before the attack..
Western allies have supplied sophisticated air defense systems to Ukraine to protect the country from regular Russian missile and drone strikes. The Biden administration on Thursday asked Congress to provide an additional $13 billion in emergency defense aid to Ukraine as the war rages on.
Russia has attacked Ukrainian cities far from the front lines throughout its war, often hitting civilian targets, assaults that Kyiv says are deliberate. Moscow denies intentionally targeting civilians.
On Friday, Russia said it had destroyed a Ukrainian drone over the western outskirts of Moscow, the latest in a growing number of aerial attacks on the capital.
“This afternoon, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack using an unmanned aerial vehicle on a facility in Moscow was thwarted,” the defense ministry said, adding there was no damage or casualties as a result of the incident.
Friday’s attack was the latest in a series of Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow in the past week. Largely spared in the early part of the conflict, the capital has seen a surge in attacks in recent months.
“The drone was electronically disabled and crashed in a forest in the west of Moscow,” the defense ministry said.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said debris fell in the Karamyshevskaya embankment, where emergency services were at work.
The international airport of Vnukovo temporarily introduced restrictions but they were lifted within an hour, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.
On Thursday, Russia said it downed two drones headed for Moscow, a day after two others were destroyed on approach.
At the start of this month, an office block in the capital’s main business district was struck twice within days by debris from a downed drone strike.
The five boroughs of New York City are currently hosting approximately 57,000 asylum seekers and the number continues to rise. Mayor Eric Adams sits down with “CBS Mornings” for a closer look at the humanitarian crisis growing there and what he hopes the Biden Administration will do to fix it.
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The Biden Administration will try to slow Beijing’s development of next-generation technologies that could have military applications — like advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence and quantum computing — by limiting the ability of U.S. corporations to invest in those sectors in China.
In an executive order expected to be released Wednesday, American companies will be subject to unprecedented new federal oversight that will scrutinize – and potentially prevent – some of their investments in China’s tech industry. The goal is to ensure that U.S. cash does not support China’s military modernization and potentially threaten the United States.
The rules would not take effect for at least a year, and there will be a public comment period so businesses and other groups can weigh in on the new rules before they are finalized.
Representatives from the White House, Treasury and Commerce Departments were not immediately available for comment.
The administration’s initial plans to limit US investment were more sweeping. But, after months of engagement with the private sector, the focus of the new regulations narrowed.
Some American executives expressed concern that a clampdown of the flow of U.S. capital to China could be harmful to U.S. businesses and have a negative impact on the domestic economy. The Chinese economy – the world’s second largest with more than 1 billion consumers – is a vital market for many American companies.
Earlier this summer, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen took separate trips to Beijing to help ease tensions between the U.S. and China. In Yellen’s meetings with her Chinese counterparts, she tried to reassure them that the executive order would be “highly targeted.”
“I want to allay their fears that we would do something that would have broad based impacts on the Chinese economy,” Yellen said at a July press conference in Beijing. “That’s not the case. That’s not the intention.”
Still, Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the United States, has warned that Beijing will respond.
“The Chinese government cannot simply sit idly by,” Xie said at the Aspen Security Forum in July. “There’s a Chinese saying: ‘We will not make provocations, but we will not flinch from provocations.’ So China definitely will make our response.”
The measures come as China and the United States are increasingly locked in a technological arms race. Last October, the Commerce Department announced new restrictions on sales to China of advanced technology needed to build high-end semiconductors. The move was aimed at crippling China’s ability to develop its own domestic manufacturing capabilities and slow the development of supercomputers and some weapons, such as hypersonic missiles.
In June, Blinken said in an interview with “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan that the administration sought to build a”very high fence around a very small piece of land.” He added, “That small piece of land has very sensitive technology that could be used against us. We’re not going to let that happen.”
Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S. government’s top credit rating on Tuesday. The White House in a statement said they disagreed with the decision and blamed Republicans, who they say were “cheerleading default.” CBS News senior White House correspondent Weijia Jiang reports.
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President Biden has toured the U.S. touting his administration’s economic policies, but do Americans approve of how he has handled the economy? CBS News’ executive director of elections and surveys Anthony Salvanto joined “America Decides” to examine the results of new CBS polling on the topic.
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President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he is forgiving $130 million in student debt for 7,400 borrowers who attended CollegeAmerica in Colorado, a defunct for-profit college that shut down in 2020 after misleading students about their career prospects and loans.
The debt will be forgiven automatically for students who were enrolled in the Colorado-based locations of CollegeAmerica between January 1, 2006 and July 1, 2020, the Education Department said in Tuesday statement. The college’s Colorado locations stopped enrolling new students in 2019 and closed by September 2020.
CollegeAmerica billed itself as helping working adults earn their degrees, but it drew criticism and censure from education experts and state officials. In 2018, the institution was put on probation by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC) because the program was “designed and implemented in a manner that is not designed for student success,” the ACCSC said.
On Tuesday, the Education Department said it found that CollegeAmerica’s parent company, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, had misrepresented the salaries and employment rates of its graduates, as well as private loan terms. It based its findings on evidence provided by Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser, who in 2020 alleged the college had lured students into expensive but inferior programs by promising unattainable salaries and jobs.
CollegeAmerica borrowers “were lied to, ripped off and saddled with mountains of debt,” President Joe Biden said in a Tuesday statement.
The debt relief comes weeks after the Supreme Court invalidated the Biden administration’s plan for broad-based student loan forgiveness, which would have assisted 40 million borrowers each erase up to $20,000 in debt. Loan payments are slated to resume in October after a three-year pause.
With Tuesday’s announcement, the White House has approved $14.7 billion in debt relief for 1.1 million student loan borrowers “whose colleges took advantage of them or closed abruptly,” such as those who attended CollegeAmerica, Biden said in the statement.
Sanvi Bangalore is a business reporting intern for CBS MoneyWatch. She attends American University in Washington, D.C., and is studying business administration and journalism.
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President Biden invited CIA Director William Burns to join his cabinet on Friday, citing Burns’ expertise and leadership in confronting a range of national security challenges, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing U.S. tension with China.
“Bill has always given me clear, straightforward analysis that prioritizes the safety and security of the American people, reflecting the integral role the CIA plays in our national security decision-making at this critical time,” Biden said in a statement. “He leads with dignity and represents the very best of America, and I look forward to continuing to work with him in the years ahead.”
Burns will join Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, who has been a cabinet member since the start of the Biden administration.
CIA Director William Burns arrives for an official State Dinner in honor of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House in Washington, D.C., on June 22, 2023.
STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Both have been leading voices in the administration’s decision to widely share and occasionally declassify U.S. intelligence in the run-up to the war in Ukraine, which officials have said shored up Western alliances, a move which caught Russian President Vladimir Putin off guard.
In a statement Friday, Haines said Burns’ nomination reflected the president’s “reliance and confidence in Bill for his unique insights and advice.”
Burns’ addition to the cabinet is largely symbolic and not without precedent. His predecessor, Gina Haspel, was part of former President Donald Trump’s cabinet, though in previous years only the national intelligence director was included.
A veteran diplomat who previously served as ambassador to Russia and Jordan, Burns has often been tasked by the president with managing delicate situations overseas. He was dispatched to Moscow in November 2021 to warn Putin against invading Ukraine. Before that, he met with Taliban leaders just before the fall of Kabul in August of 2021.
He has traveled frequently to Kyiv since the war erupted, and in May became the senior-most U.S. official to visit Beijing after a protracted freeze in relations. He has since suggested that communicating through discreet intelligence channels with China could help prevent “unnecessary misunderstandings and inadvertent collisions.”
Burns has spoken of the need to steer the agency clear of politics and leave his former role in policy-making behind.
“They’re two very distinct professions, and I’m very well aware of that,” he said in public remarks in April. “My job now is to support policymakers, it’s not to become a policymaker as well.”
In a statement on Friday, he praised the CIA’s workforce.
“The president’s announcement today recognizes the essential contribution to national security the Central Intelligence Agency makes every day, and reflects his confidence in our work,” Burns said. “I am honored to serve in this role, representing the tremendous work of our intelligence officers.”
Washington — A federal appeals court on Friday temporarily paused a lower court order that limited communications between top Biden administration officials and social media companies about content posted to their platforms.
The three-judge panel for the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Justice Department’s request to put on hold the July 4 preliminary injunction from U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty while legal proceedings continue. It also agreed to expedite the administration’s appeal.
The temporary administrative stay will remain in place “until further orders of the court,” according to the brief order.
The Justice Department turned to the 5th Circuit for relief after it asked Doughy last week to halt his own order while it pursued an appeal. Doughty, appointed by former President Donald Trump, declined to do so, and in a 13-page ruling rejected the government’s assertions that his injunction swept too broadly and threatened to chill lawful conduct.
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears,” Doughty wrote. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do — contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
The judge reiterated that he believes Missouri and Louisiana, who sued the government last year over federal officials’ communications with social media companies during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 election cycle, are likely to succeed on the merits of their case.
The states “are likely to prove that all of the enjoined defendants coerced, significantly encouraged, and/or jointly participated [with] social-media companies to suppress social-media posts by American citizens that expressed opinions that were anti-COVID-19 vaccines, anti-COVID-19 lockdowns, posts that delegitimized or questioned the results of the 2020 election, and other content not subject to any exception to the First Amendment,” he wrote. “These items are protected free speech and were seemingly censored because of the viewpoints they expressed.”
The judge’s July 4 injunction blocks top Biden administration officials from communicating with social-media companies “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted” on their platforms.
Among those covered by the injunction are Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, as well as several federal agencies.
The order contains several carve-outs, including allowing the Biden administration to inform social media companies of posts involving criminal activity, threats to national security and public safety, and illegal efforts to suppress voting or of foreign attempts to influence elections.
In its request that the injunction be halted, the Justice Department warned that it swept too broadly and is unclear as to what conduct is allowed and who is covered.
The injunction, administration lawyers said, “may be read to prevent the Government from engaging in a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct — including speaking on matters of public concern and working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
The lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, as well as several individuals, alleges that senior government officials colluded with social-media companies to suppress viewpoints and content on social media platforms, violating the First Amendment.
Their suit accused platforms like Twitter and Facebook of censoring a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, Mr. Biden’s son, posts about the origins of COVID-19 and various mitigation measures implemented during the pandemic and speech about the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.
The Biden administration allegedly failed to correctly reappoint more than a dozen top-ranking National Institutes of Health leaders, House Republicans say, raising questions about the legality of billions in federal grants doled out by those officials over the last year.
Their claim, detailed Friday in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, obtained by CBS News, follows a monthslong probe led by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the Republican chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, into vacancies at the agency.
“The failure to reappoint the above NIH IC Directors jeopardizes the legal validity of more than $25 billion in federal biomedical research grants made in 2022 alone,” the committee wrote.
The Biden administration rebutted the GOP-led committee’s accusations that it ran afoul of the law. An HHS official familiar with the matter, who responded on the condition of anonymity, said the committee was misrepresenting the requirements.
The committee’s letter stems from the 21st Century Cures Act passed in 2016, which says that directors atop the institutes and centers within the NIH have five-year term limits before they must be reappointed.
When the term limits of 14 of these officials came due at the end of 2021, the Biden administration says the NIH director correctly reappointed them. The law says that they must be “appointed by the Secretary, acting through the Director of the National Institutes of Health.”
“Specifically, it requires the Secretary of HHS to reappoint NIH IC Directors, including those who were serving at the time of the law’s enactment when their five-year terms expired on December 12, 2021,” the letter stated.
After the committee’s probe was launched, Becerra signed affidavits the department says retroactively ratified and adopted the appointments.
While the Biden administration thinks its grants remain on sound footing, the HHS official said Becerra’s affidavits were intended to bolster defenses against challenges that might upend them in the courts.
The committee questioned the legality of that move. Among the issues it flagged were the retirements of Dr. Anthony Fauci, formerly head of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Roger Glass, who had headed the Fogarty International Center. Both stepped down months before Becerra signed the affidavits in June.
“HHS and the NIH should have known within days of receiving the Committee’s March 14, 2022, letter that the reappointments as legally required had not occurred. Rather than addressing the problem in consultation with the Committee, HHS and the NIH repeatedly misled the Committee,” the committee wrote of its monthslong back-and-forth with the department.
The HHS official insisted that the department had cooperated with the committee’s questions in good faith, voluntarily producing documents and responses to the inquiry.
National Institutes of Health James Shannon building on the campus of NIH in Bethesda, Maryland.
AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Thousands of researchers compete every year for NIH funding, which support a variety of projects ranging from fundamental laboratory research to human clinical trials.
Asked how those programs might be affected, a committee aide told CBS News, “It is unclear what the impact will be, but it creates unnecessary uncertainty and opens the door to legal challenges, While we are unaware of any other Cabinet Secretaries committing such egregious process violations, a similar case involving SEC Administrative Law Judges required the decisions made by improperly appointed officials be relitigated in front of a legally appointed judge.”
The committee says its probe into the issue is continuing and prompted a renewed round of questions to the department, as well as the possibility of demanding interviews from HHS and NIH officials.
Its letter to Becerra warned that “intentional misstatements or omissions” may constitute “federal criminal violations under 18 USC 1001,” adding that it serves as a formal request to preserve “all existing and future records.”
“Institute directors with discretion to award billions or even hundreds of millions in research funding are, by definition, exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States. As such, institute directors are the quintessential ‘inferior officers,’” a former senior HHS official told CBS News.
“The Secretary cannot delegate his or her constitutional authority to appoint inferior officers. It is my understanding that prior administrations of both parties zealously guarded the appointments process and took care to ensure that inferior officers were properly appointed,” said the former senior official, who previously served in the Bush, Reagan and Trump administrations.
From left: Dr. Anthony Fauci, then director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Agingl and Dr. Francis Collins, then director of the National Institutes of Health, testify at a Senate committee hearing on Aug. 23, 2018.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
The Republican-led committee’s letter comes as the Biden administration has yet to fill key vacancies in the NIH leadership.
In May, President Biden announced he planned to nominate Dr. Monica Bertagnolli — currently head of the NIH’s National Cancer Institute — to fill the role.
So far, Bertagnolli’s nomination is awaiting Senate confirmation.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, chair of the panel charged with signing off on HHS nominees, has vowed not to move forward with the nomination without new pledges from the Biden administration on drug prices.
“I will oppose all nominations until we have a very clear strategy on the part of the government … as to how we’re going to lower the outrageously high cost of prescription drugs,” Sanders told The Washington Post last month.
A judge on Tuesday prohibited several federal agencies and officials of the Biden administration from working with social media companies about “protected speech,” a decision called “a blow to censorship” by one of the Republican officials whose lawsuit prompted the ruling.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana granted the injunction in response to a 2022 lawsuit brought by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri. Their lawsuit alleged that the federal government overstepped in its efforts to convince social media companies to address postings that could result in vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or affect elections.
Doughty cited “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He wrote that the “evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, who was the Missouri attorney general when the lawsuit was filed, said on Twitter that the ruling was “a huge win for the First Amendment and a blow to censorship.”
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said the injunction prevents the administration “from censoring the core political speech of ordinary Americans” on social media.
“The evidence in our case is shocking and offensive with senior federal officials deciding that they could dictate what Americans can and cannot say on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms about COVID-19, elections, criticism of the government, and more,” Landry said in a statement.
The Justice Department is reviewing the injunction “and will evaluate its options in this case,” said a White House official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“This administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” the official said. “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”
The ruling listed several government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, that are prohibited by the injunction from discussions with social media companies aimed at “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
The order mentions by name several officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and others.
Doughty allowed several exceptions, such as informing social media companies of postings involving criminal activity and conspiracies; as well as notifying social media firms of national security threats and other threats posted on platforms.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit also included individuals, including conservative website owner Jim Hoft. The lawsuit accused the administration of using the possibility of favorable or unfavorable regulatory action to coerce social media platforms to squelch what it considered misinformation on masks and vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also touched on other topics, including claims about election integrity and news stories about material on a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
Administration lawyers said the government left it up to social media companies to decide what constituted misinformation and how to combat it. In one brief, they likened the lawsuit to an attempt to put a legal gag order on the federal government and “suppress the speech of federal government officials under the guise of protecting the speech rights of others.”
“Plaintiffs’ proposed injunction would significantly hinder the Federal Government’s ability to combat foreign malign influence campaigns, prosecute crimes, protect the national security, and provide accurate information to the public on matters of grave public concern such as health care and election integrity,” the administration says in a May 3 court filing.
The Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. What’s next? ; Here’s what it takes to drive Oscar Mayer’s iconic “Frankmobile.”
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After the Supreme Court reversed President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness plan, critics of the decision are pointing to other recent examples of the government forgiving debt —many with far larger amounts of money than at stake than in the student loan plan.
In particular, the Paycheck Protection Program has so far forgiven $757 billion in loans to private businesses, according to government databases — nearly double what the Biden administration’s student-loan forgiveness would have cost.
Mr. Biden made that comparison in a press conference on Friday afternoon, pointing out that many members of Congress received PPP loans that were forgiven.
“I was trying to provide students with $10,000 to $20,000 in relief,” Biden said. “The average amount forgiven in the PPP program was $70,000.”
He added, “The hypocrisy is stunning.”
How much in PPP loans was forgiven?
The government, through the Small Business Administration, gave out nearly $790 billion in PPP loans between March 2020 and May 2021, when the program ended, public records show. Of that amount, $757 billion has been forgiven.
The recipients include two dozen members of Congress who received between $79,000 and $3.4 million apiece for businesses, according to reporting at the time.
While the PPP did preserve up to 3 million jobs for one year, according to one study from economists at MIT and the Federal Reserve, the major beneficiaries of that money were business owners and shareholders —not workers.
Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the PPP’s benefits “did not go to paychecks, however, but instead accrued to business owners and shareholders,” the study found, estimating that “about three-quarters of PPP benefits accrued to the top quintile of household income.”
How much did the government spend on pandemic relief?
The government also spent nearly $700 billion on enhanced unemployment benefits and $860 billion on direct payments in the form of stimulus checks, according to public data tracked by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
How much would student loan forgiveness have cost?
The Department of Education relied on the 2003 HEROES Act as its legal justification for wiping out roughly $430 billion in debt, while the Biden student-debt relief plan would have cost as much as $519 billion over 10 years, according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan group that examines the economic impact of public policies.
About two-thirds of the benefit would have gone to households earning less than $88,000 a year, the group estimated.
Why was the PPP loan forgiveness program legal?
The PPP program as well as the student loan forgiveness plan “were both programs that were established to address the impact of the national emergency,” said Abby Shafroth, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center. “Both programs recognized that the pandemic was enormously economically disruptive.”
However, the two programs rely on different laws.
PPP was authorized as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed in March 2020. From the start, the loan program was designed to be fully or partially forgiven, as long as the businesses used the money for eligible expenses such as payroll.
“Embedded within the PPP was this idea that it could be forgiven from the very beginning,” noted Chavis Jones, associate counsel in the educational opportunities project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
The PPP loans never faced the same scrutiny — or legal challenges — as student debt relief, experts said.
But, Shafroth noted, “As soon as the student loan program was announced, critics and opponents backed by billionaire organizations attacked the program and filed briefs in court challenging it,” she said.
Why was the student loan program struck down?
Student loan forgiveness, the Biden administration argued, was authorized under the HEROES Act, which Congress passed in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks and later expanded.
Since 2003, the act held that the Secretary of Education could “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” in the case of a national emergency. The Trump administration used this authority to pause student-interest loan repayments in 2020.
A lawsuit from six Republican-led states asked the Supreme Court to consider whether the Secretary of Education had the authority to forgive student loan debt under the HEROES Act. On Friday, the high court ruled that the law does not grant the secretary that authority.
Both the PPP and student debt relief “were created to remedy the economic harms during the pandemic,” Jones said. “What we do know is the PPP loans disproportionately impact people of greater means, and we know the student debt relief program impacts those who are more economically vulnerable.”
He added, “Once again, people with lesser means and those who are economically vulnerable have taken a gut punch of sorts.”
The Supreme Court decided 6-3 that the Biden administration does not have the authority to wipe out nearly half-a-trillion dollars in student debt.
The decision denies relief to about 40 million Americans who stood to have up to $20,000 in student debt erased by the plan using the HEROES Act.
There were actually two student loan forgiveness decisions made on Friday: The first was about whether two private citizens had the right to challenge the plan. The court unanimously said that the pair did not have standing, and their challenge was thrown out.
However, in the case where the decision to strike down the forgiveness plan was made, the court said that Missouri — one of six states that challenged the plan — did have legal standing. This allowed the court to consider whether the secretary of education could use the HEROES Act to forgive student loan debt.
Here’s how the court voted on that case.
Supreme Court justices who voted against student loan forgiveness
Chief Justice John Roberts voted against the student loan forgiveness plan and delivered the majority opinion, saying that U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has the authority to “waive or modify” the HEROES Act, but not “rewrite that statute from the ground up.”
“The Secretary’s comprehensive debt cancellation plan cannot fairly be called a waiver—it not only nullifies existing provisions, but augments and expands them dramatically. It cannot be mere modification, because it constitutes ‘effectively the introduction of a whole new regime,’” Roberts wrote.
Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted with Roberts.
Barrett filed a concurring opinion, writing that the court “can uphold the Secretary of Education’s loan cancellation program only if he points to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for it.”
Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold student loan forgiveness
The court’s three liberal voices — Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — all opposed the decision. Kagan filed a dissent where she called the decision to take up the case, let alone vote on it, an “overreach.”
“The plaintiffs in this case are six States that have no personal stake in the Secretary’s loan forgiveness plan,” Kagan wrote. “They are classic ideological plaintiffs: They think the plan a very bad idea, but they are no worse off because the Secretary differs. In giving those States a forum — in adjudicating their complaint — the Court forgets its proper role. The Court acts as though it is an arbiter of political and policy disputes, rather than of cases and controversies.”
In the dissent, Kagan wrote that Cardona acted within the “broad authority” provided by the HEROES Act, saying that the decision to alter usual rules “fits comfortably within” the parameters set by the statute.
President Biden and congressional leaders are keeping close tabs on the ongoing situation in Russia after Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and his mercenary forces began to march on Moscow, before a truce was negotiated Saturday. Christina Ruffini reports from Washington.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to travel to China this weekend. This makes him the highest-ranking official from the Biden administration to visit the country. The goal of the trip is to improve relations with Chinese leaders. CBS News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and host of Face the Nation Margaret Brennan has more.
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken is heading to Beijing on Saturday amid rising tension between the U.S. and China. Blinken’s trip was originally scheduled for February, but it was canceled after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon flying over the country. CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan reports.
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The Biden administration confirmed Saturday that China has been operating a spy base in Cuba — just one hundred miles from the shores of Florida. This comes after the Wall Street Journal reported that China tentatively agreed to pay Cuba billions of dollars to set up an electronic eavesdropping facility. Gordon Lubold, White House and national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal, joins CBS News to discuss what we know about the base.
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