Politics

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — President Joe Biden is launching another effort to forgive at least some federal student loan debt after the Supreme Court last week struck down his initial proposal to wipe away as much as $20,000 for borrowers.

The White House’s new approach is based on the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965, which provides government-backed student loans and grants the U.S. Education Department the ability to “compromise, waive or release loans.”

Further details will be revealed during a rulemaking process: Implementing any changes will take multiple steps over months, the National Economic Council’s deputy director, Bharat Ramamurti, told reporters on Friday.

It’s unclear if any debt cancellation offered through HEA would be of a similar scope and scale as Biden’s first program, which the White House said covered 43 million borrowers — with 20 million expected to see their student loans entirely erased.

Conservatives had sharply criticized that loan forgiveness as a misuse of tax dollars and an excessive and unconstitutional “scam,” with some saying it didn’t address underlying cost problems in education.

Ramamurti said on Friday that “even a typical rulemaking process can take some amount of time. You have to do a proposal, it has to receive comments, it has to be finalized and so on.”

A negotiated rulemaking process is “even more complicated,” Ramamurti said, and will involve public hearings. The Education Department will hold one virtually on July 18.

“One of the things about the rulemaking process is that we can’t actually prejudge its outcome. Part of how we do this process is how we initiate it, we put a proposal on the table, we work with stakeholders to get their input. That ends up shaping the scope of the proposal. … You’ll hear more about that as we get to each state to the process going forward,” Ramamurti said.

The initial debt cancellation plan the Supreme Court rejected 6-3 as presidential overreach was based on the post-9/11 Higher Education Relief Opportunities For Students (HEROES) Act, which enabled the education secretary to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” and was later altered to include people affected by “a war or other military operation or national emergency.” The White House argued the COVID-19 pandemic qualified as such an emergency.

However, progressive Democratic lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York repeatedly called on the Biden administration to use the HEA rather than the HEROES Act in pursuing debt forgiveness.

Regardless of how much student loan debt Biden intends to cancel under his backup plan and whether there is an income cap for those whose debts get wiped away, his proposal is likely to face legal challenges, too — sparking questions over how big the White House will go and whether a Supreme Court that already overturned his first plan would be more amenable to an alternate strategy.

“My view is that the HEA’s settlement authorities are potentially quite broad, and so using them to forgive a lot of student debt is entirely legally defensible,” said Luke Herrine, an assistant law professor at the University of Alabama. “This would be their broadest use ever — many experts think it’s entirely justified, but the viability question is more a question of whether the administration can either convince a hostile court or avoid that court.”

“I expect the administration is likely seeing the previously enacted plan as a ceiling, so the most they’d do is just try to do the same thing again,” said Herrine, who also was a legal director of The Debt Collective, a debtors’ union. “But that’s not because of built-in limits to the statutory authority in question — it’s a combination of what they think is fair, politically viable and relatively likely to win in a skeptical court.”

Activists hope that Biden will go broader the second time around, noting that the HEA is not tied to a national emergency the way the HEROES Act was, suggesting the scope of the debt forgiven can now be larger.

“I think that the administration liked the idea that they were tying relief to the pandemic, they were saying very clearly to the public, ‘This is a onetime thing. Don’t worry, we’re not getting too out of hand with this debt relief stuff.’ But you know, both are totally legal, legitimate authorities. And in fact, the HEROES Act was sort of tailor-made for what we were in, which is a national emergency,” said Debt Collective co-founder Astra Taylor.

“So, I understand in a sense why they used it. But the Higher Education Act is broader, and the Debt Collective’s position has always been that it should be used to cancel all student debt,” she added. “Legally, they can wipe out every penny.”

Taylor also urged the administration to move swiftly, given that the White House has made a commitment to wiping out some debt.

“It would show that the Biden administration is serious. Sixteen million people got notifications from the federal government saying their applications were approved, 25-odd million people applied. People changed the course of their financial lives thinking, ‘Hey, the government has communicated with me this is something I can plan around.’ So, I think speed is really important on a practical level to honor that commitment,” she said.

Others, however, expressed caution at such a broad proposal, insisting that using the HEA could pass muster with the Supreme Court but with limits.

“Will this new Plan B, will it really be about the administration just waiving as much student loan debt as possible? Or will it be about it really looking at individual files or individual schools that have engaged in fraud or whatever it may be and setting income thresholds and debt relief thresholds that really are achieving the goals of the statute? If so, I think that survives,” said Derek Black, a professor at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law.

“I think the cost of higher education is astronomical, and I think a lot of people are making a lot of money off loans. But is it the case that all people making less than $120,000 are struggling to pay their student loans? That’s a tough case to make,” Black said. “The more nuanced it gets, the more survivable it is, whereas the prior iteration was not that case-specific. It wasn’t that nuanced to individual circumstances.”

Still, despite confidence from experts and activists that some debt forgiveness is legal under the HEA, it’s unclear how the court would rule on the issue a second time around.

“This court is deeply skeptical of broad interpretations of administrative authorities, of actions that improve the prospects of their political opponents and of legal interpretations that involve fiscal decisions that make working class folks’ lives better — let alone all three combined,” Herrine said. “So that’s a steep hill to climb.”

ABC News’ Anne Flaherty, Justin Gomez and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — It’s a conservative Supreme Court that has acted with confidence and conviction, but one that seems increasingly aware of its image problem.

Since the addition of the three justices nominated by President Donald Trump, the court’s six-justice conservative supermajority has set into motion the most significant changes in American law and society in a generation — overruling Roe v. Wade; expanding concealed carry gun rights; bolstering free speech and advancing religious liberty.

The biggest and most controversial decisions of this year effectively ended 45 years of affirmative action in higher education; struck down President Biden’s $400 billion student debt forgiveness plan; and, carved out an exception to anti-discrimination laws for opponents of same-sex marriage.

The major rulings were predictably praised by Republicans and condemned by Democrats. A majority of Americans say they believe the justices have ruled mainly on the basis of politics, not the law, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.

But while the headline-grabbing decisions and ideological divisions may define it, the nation’s highest court was significantly less divided in 2023 than it has been in recent years. In several cases where conservatives could have made big gains, the court showed surprising restraint.

Of the 58 opinions the court issued since October 2022, more than half were unanimous or near-unanimous, either 9-0 or 8-1. More than 9 out of 10 cases had one of the court’s liberal justices in the majority.

The justices forcefully rejected the independent state legislature theory for election law, embraced by Trump and his allies; rebuffed Texas’ challenge to the Biden administration’s immigration and deportation plan; upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, preserving protection against race discrimination in redistricting; and upheld the landmark Indian Child Welfare Act, celebrated by Native American tribes.

Perhaps most remarkable, only five cases were decided by a 6-3 ideological split — conservatives versus liberals. That’s down from 14 last term and the lowest number of straight ideological split decisions in the past six years, according to Adam Feldman at Empirical SCOTUS.

Many of these outcomes appear to reflect the extraordinary influence and strategy of Chief Justice John Roberts, who was pushed aside as a central power broker during the Trump years, but still wields significant power.

One year ago, Justice Clarence Thomas appeared to be emerging as the dominant influence on the court, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch in a project to push ahead on a maximalist approach to the law.

But this term, the tables appeared to turn, many veteran court watchers say.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh were the most common alignments of any pairing of justices in the decisions this term, according to Feldman. Kavanaugh was in the majority 96% of the time, Roberts 95% of the time.

Both Roberts and Kavanaugh have signaled publicly and in their writings a desire for a more incremental approach to the law – one that has an eye on bolstering legitimacy of the court as an institution in the public eye.

Near-record low public approval, compounded by growing concern over ethics and impartiality, has fed bipartisan debate about the state of the court and what steps may need to be taken from the outside to improve its credibility.

While the justices frequently insist that they do not decide cases based on public opinion, they are also not blind to it.

And through it all, the nine justices have shown surprising cohesion. In the midst of a partisan firestorm over alleged ethics lapses by two conservative justices — Thomas and Alito — the entire court released a signed public statement attesting to its ethical practices and unanimously rebuffing Democrat-led efforts to legislate “reform.”

One potential wild card at the center of it all was the court’s newest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The nation’s first black woman justice publicly showed outsized engagement and impact from the start: She spoke during oral arguments more than any other new justice in history — and more than any justice sitting during this period, according to Feldman. Her influence behind the scenes will take years to come into focus.

Where does it all go from here?

The justices will take the summer to cool off — and hope the public disaffection with them does as well. Meantime, they have filled their docket with another list of blockbuster cases for the fall: on gun rights, social media censorship, government regulation and voting rights that will give them plenty to chew on heading into an election year.

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(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Secret Service spokesman on Wednesday confirmed that testing shows it was cocaine found in the White House West Wing Sunday evening.

The investigation into how it got there is ongoing.

The white powder was found during a routine search, a source said.

Some visitors are able to tour parts of the West Wing, and tours typically take place on the weekends.

When asked if there were tours this past weekend, the Secret Service would not confirm that, saying: “These are details that are pertinent to our investigation and not something we can get into.”

President Joe Biden and family members were at Camp David at the time.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The Secret Service on Tuesday said it was investigating an “unknown item” found inside the White House complex on Sunday and sources said it was described in radio traffic as a cocaine-like substance.

“On Sunday evening, the White House complex went into a precautionary closure as officers from the Secret Service uniformed division investigated an unknown item found inside a work area,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.

“The DC fire department was called to evaluate and quickly determined the item to be non-hazardous. The item was sent for further evaluation and an investigation into the cause and manner of how it entered the White House is pending,” he said.

Sources told ABC News radio traffic from D.C. Fire and EMS described a powdery, cocaine-like substance found on the White House grounds.

“We have a result on the [inaudible]” a voice on the traffic can be heard saying. “We have a yellow bar stating cocaine hydrochloride.”

Cocaine hydrochloride can be used as an anesthetic or to control bleeding, but it is also considered to have effects similar to crack cocaine, according to the study National Library of Medicine National Center for Biotechnology Information.

“The physiological and psychoactive effects of cocaine are similar regardless of whether it is in the form of cocaine hydrochloride or crack cocaine (cocaine base),” the study says.

The “item” was sent to a Secret Service lab for further testing, the sources said.

The White House on Tuesday referred reporter questions about the matter to the Secret Service.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Quinn Owen contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Secret Service investigating suspected cocaine found inside White House complex

The U.S. Secret Service on Tuesday said it was investigating an “unknown item” found inside the White House complex on Sunday that sources said was described in radio traffic as a cocaine-like substance.

“On Sunday evening, the White House complex went into a precautionary closure as officers from the Secret Service uniformed division investigated an unknown item found inside a work area,” Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.

“The DC fire department was called to evaluate and quickly determined the item to be non-hazardous. The item was sent for further evaluation and an investigation into the cause and manner of how it entered the White House is pending,” he said.

Sources told ABC News radio traffic from D.C. Fire and EMS described a powdery, cocaine-like substance being found on the White House grounds and the preliminary results from an initial field test.

“We have a result on the [inaudible]” a voice on the traffic can be heard saying. “We have a yellow bar stating cocaine hydrochloride.”

The powder was found in the West Wing area of the White House, multiple law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Some visitors are able to tour parts of the West Wing, and tours typically take place on the weekends.

When asked if there were tours last weekend, the Secret Service would not confirm that, saying: “These are details that are pertinent to our investigation and not something we can get into.”

Cocaine hydrochloride can be used as an anesthetic or to control bleeding, but it is also considered to have effects similar to crack cocaine, according to the study National Library of Medicine National Center for Biotechnology Information.

“The physiological and psychoactive effects of cocaine are similar regardless of whether it is in the form of cocaine hydrochloride or crack cocaine (cocaine base),” the study says.

The “item” was sent to a Secret Service lab for further testing, the sources said.

President Joe Biden was at Camp David at the time.

The White House on Tuesday referred reporter questions about the matter to the Secret Service.

ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Quinn Owen contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday lamented recent shootings and called for stricter gun reforms in a statement marking one year after the holiday parade mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.

In the July 4 statement, Biden noted shootings in past days in Philadelphia, Fort Worth, Texas, Baltimore, Maryland, Lansing, Michigan, and Chicago, saying, “we pray for the day when our communities will be free from gun violence.”

“Today also marks one year since a shooter armed with an AR-15-style weapon fired upon a crowd of Americans gathered for an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois. In mere moments, this day of patriotic pride became a scene of pain and tragedy,” Biden said.

The 2022 shooting left seven people killed and nearly 50 wounded. There have been 345 mass shootings this year alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive, including recent high-profile ones in Philadelphia and Baltimore that killed five people and two people, respectively.

The president noted that Illinois passed legislation banning assault rifles and high-capacity magazines — the kind of reforms Biden is seeking on the national level.

“Their achievement will save lives. But it will not erase their grief. It will not bring back the seven Americans killed in Highland Park or heal the injuries and trauma that scores of others will continue to carry. And as we have seen over the last few days, much more must be done in Illinois and across America to address the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our communities apart,” he said, seemingly referencing recent shootings in Chicago.

“It is within our power to once again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, to require safe storage of guns, to end gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and to enact universal background checks. I urge other states to follow Illinois’ lead, and continue to call upon Republican lawmakers in Congress to come to the table on meaningful, commonsense reforms that the American people support.”

Gun reform has been an elusive goal for Biden, who often touts his support for the 1994 assault weapons ban that lasted 10 years.

He’s pushed for similar legislation to make it to his desk since entering the Oval Office in 2021, but Democrats have not been able to get enough Republicans to go along.

Congress last year did pass a bipartisan legislation that, among other things, included $750 million to help states implement “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others and beefed up background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21. Still, it stopped short of what Democrats were seeking.

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(WASHINGTON) — In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Friday ruling striking down the Biden administration’s student loan debt cancellation plan, Republicans are moving forward with their own proposed solution.

Conservative lawmakers from both chambers, vocally opposed to the president’s landmark program, which they said was an overreach, celebrated the court’s decision.

Even with the 6-3 ruling against him, President Joe Biden on Friday laid out alternative options to his original call for sweeping debt forgiveness, though some specific details remain unclear.

“I’m announcing today a new path consistent with today’s ruling to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible,” he said. “We will ground this new approach in a different law than my original plan, the so-called Higher Education Act, that will allow [Education] Secretary [Miguel] Cardona … to compromise, waive or release loans under certain circumstances.”

An on-ramp to repayment will begin later this fall, according to Biden. It will include a 12-month grace period after the pause unfreezes in September.

Federal student loan borrowers should expect interest on their debts to kick back in on Sept. 1 and payments to resume starting in October, the government has said. Repayments had been paused for more than three years amid disruptions from COVID-19.

Below is a look at how GOP legislators would address the same issue:

Meeting with the secretary?

Recently, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the ranking member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee, and House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina requested to meet with Cardona on or before July 20 to discuss federal student aid servicer roadblocks as well as internal memos and documents about the department’s strategy for the return to repayment.

“The success of this return to repayment hinges on Secretary Cardona stepping up to the plate and giving borrowers and servicers clear guidance,” Foxx told ABC News in a statement. “Because the Secretary has yet to do that, we are demanding a briefing from him to explain the Department’s plans.”

Cassidy and Senate Republicans previously sent a letter to the secretary seeking to halt Biden’s student debt relief plan in early June, calling it an “affront to the millions of Americans that do not have student loans.”

After passing the Republican-controlled House, the Senate also voted to end the federal pause on repayments and dismantle the plan under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The GOP received bipartisan support from Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, both Democrats, and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, an independent formerly of the Democratic Party.

As expected, the bill was vetoed by Biden.

In February, led by Foxx and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., more than 170 lawmakers filed two separate amicus briefs with the Supreme Court in opposition to the president’s debt cancellation plan.

An Education Department spokesperson did not say whether Cardona would meet with the lawmakers, but the spokesperson reiterated the administration’s continued focus on student loan debt.

The department remains in constant contact with loan servicers and will be in direct contact with borrowers once repayment resumes, the spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to helping borrowers successfully navigate the return to repayment with the pandemic now behind us.”

GOP alternative

Members of Foxx’s committee have introduced a bill called the Federal Assistance to Initiate Repayment (FAIR) Act, which would allow student loan borrowers to access affordable and burden-free repayment options, according to the text.

Among other changes, it would require the education secretary to make “at least 12 notifications” to borrowers before repayment begins — including options for repayment, the deadline and more.

The legislation would also create an income-driven repayment plan, set at 10% of borrowers’ discretionary income, and would automatically have borrowers repaying based on their income.

Interest would be paused and half of a borrower’s payment would go toward the principal for those with adjusted gross income that is less than 300% of the federal poverty line — or $45,675 for people under 65.

The FAIR Act would also offer various deferment and forbearance options, such as medical residency and active-duty military and National Guard duty.

In a joint statement, Reps. Burgess Owens, Lisa McClain and Foxx called their proposed legislation, H.R. 4144, a “fiscally responsible, targeted response.”

“This Republican solution takes important steps to fix the broken student loan system, provide borrowers with clear guidance on repayment, and protect taxpayers from the economic fallout caused by the administration’s … agenda,” the joint statement reads.

Student debt relief advocates rebuked the proposed House bill.

“The FAIR ACT is anything but fair,” student loan borrowers group We The 45 Million Executive Director Melissa Byrne told ABC News. “It’s disappointing that the House Republicans once again refuse to engage with student loan borrowers and advocates to work on solving the crisis of higher education costs.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign last week went after Republican rival Donald Trump for the former president’s past support of the LGBTQ community — though the viral video drew viral backlash as well.

The DeSantis campaign on Friday shared a video, now seen more than 18 million times, that labels Trump as “the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate” Pride month and criticizes him for saying at the 2016 Republican National Convention that he would do everything he could “to protect our LGBTQ citizens.” (Those remarks were made soon after the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Florida, where 49 people were killed by a gunman.)

The campaign video was originally created by another account and has a sarcastic and dramatic tone, mixing news footage, headlines and clips from pop culture. It cuts together other Trump statements, such as him once saying he was fine with Caitlyn Jenner using any bathroom she chose and him saying transgender women could compete in his beauty pageant, along with a photo of him holding the rainbow LGBTQ flag and a past tweet celebrating Pride.

DeSantis’ campaign contrasts Trump’s record with his own. The video they shared touts the governor’s support for controversial restrictions on LGBTQ people, particularly those who are transgender, including banning gender-affirming medical care for trans youth.

As president, Trump supported major trans restrictions as well, such as forbidding openly trans people from enlisting in the military.

The DeSantis video approvingly quotes his record being described as “draconian” and “threaten[ing] trans existence.”

While the laws have been cheered by conservatives in Florida, they have also been heavily criticized.

Amid outcry from advocates, the governor has often argued such moves are a response to what he calls inappropriate LGBTQ issues becoming increasingly mainstream. “As the world goes mad, Florida represents a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy,” he said earlier this year.

The new DeSantis video quickly drew bipartisan criticism from the LGBTQ community.

Former Trump adviser and ambassador Richard Grenell, who is gay, wrote on Twitter that the video was “undeniably homophobic.”

Log Cabin Republicans, a group for LGBTQ conservatives, called the video “divisive” and “desperate.”

“Conservatives understand that we need to protect our kids, preserve women’s sports, safeguard women’s spaces and strengthen parental rights, but Ron DeSantis’ extreme rhetoric goes has just ventured into homophobic territory,” the group wrote on Twitter. “DeSantis’ rhetoric will lose hard-fought gains in critical races across the nation. This old playbook has been tried in the past and has failed – repeatedly.”

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who is also gay, was asked on CNN to respond to the video.

“I’m going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary, so I can’t talk about campaigns,” Buttigieg said. “And I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders and just get to a bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space, which is, again, who are you trying to help?”

“What public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve? … I just don’t understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he’s going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America,” Buttigieg said.

The headline-grabbing post underscores DeSantis’ push to challenge Trump on areas where he may be vulnerable with GOP primary voters. Early polls continue to show Trump with a major lead over DeSantis among Republicans.

Others defended the attack on Trump, with Jon Schweppe, who works with the conservative think tank American Principles Project, calling it “objectively funny” in a tweet: “It’s a campaign, people. Man up.”

A spokesperson for DeSantis’ campaign, Christina Pushaw, responded to Grennell’s criticism on Twitter, writing on Friday: “Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t ‘homophobic.’ We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either… It’s unnecessary, divisive, pandering. In a country as vast and diverse as the USA, identity politics is poison.”

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(WASHINGTON) — A majority of Americans approve of the Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, though the country is more divided on other high-profile rulings and increasingly viewing the court as driven more by politics than the law, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court set new limits on affirmative action programs in cases involving whether public and private colleges and universities can continue to use race as one factor among many in student admissions.

A little more than half of Americans — 52% — approve of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, while 32% disapprove and 16% saying they don’t know.

A majority of Republicans (75%) and independents (58%) approve of the ruling, while a distinct minority of Democrats approve (26%).

And there are deep divisions between racial groups. Most white people (60%) and Asian people (58%) approve of the Supreme Court’s decision to limit the use of race in college admissions, while only 25% of Black people support the decision. Hispanic people are split, with 40% approving and 40% disapproving.

Still, despite most Americans supporting the decision to end affirmative action in universities, Americans are less likely to think Black and Hispanic students have a fair chance of getting into the college of their choice compared to their white and Asian student counterparts. About two-thirds of Americans say that white and Asian students have a fair chance compared to only 47% who say this about Black students and 50% for Hispanic students.

As the Supreme Court has ended its term and is on break for the summer, a majority of Americans — 53% — believe that the nation’s highest court rules mainly on the basis of their partisan political view rather than on the basis of the law (33%), while 14% say they don’t know.

A majority of Democrats (76%) and independents (51%) believe that the Supreme Court rules mainly on the basis of their partisan political view, a significant difference from the 36% of Republicans who believe that the court makes rulings based on their political views.

These margins have shifted from a January 2022 ABC News/Ipsos poll, where 38% of Americans believed that the justices rule mainly on the basis of law, versus 43% who believed that the court rules on the basis of their political views.

The same week the Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, the high court also struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which would have aimed to forgive student loan debt for more than 43 million American borrowers.

In the new ABC News/Ipsos poll, 45% of Americans support the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, while 40% disapprove of the decision.

Broken down by party – only 17% of Democrats supported the Supreme Court decision compared to 71% of Republicans and 49% of independents.

Views on this decision also vary by age with older Americans more likely to approve. Sixty-one percent of those 65 and older approve of the decision compared to 50% of 50–64-year-olds, 40% of 30-49-year-olds and 31% of those under 30.

“I know there are millions of Americans, millions of Americans in this country who feel disappointed and discouraged, or even a little bit angry about the Court’s decision today on student debt. And I must admit, I do, too,” Biden said on Friday following the decision.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling against Biden’s debt forgiveness plan, the president told the American people on Friday that he is not giving up on providing relief to borrowers, pursuing debt forgiveness through the Higher Education Act.

According to the White House, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has initiated the rulemaking process on this new attempt at debt relief — but it’s unclear who would get relief or how much, as well as whether it’ll withstand any legal challenges.

Another landmark decision was handed down this week by the Supreme Court, which ruled for an evangelical Christian website designer in a case involving whether creative businesses can refuse to serve LGBTQ+ customers, citing free speech under the First Amendment.

In the new ABC/Ipsos poll, there was a near-even split on this decision, with 43% of Americans approving the decision and 42% disapproving and another 14% saying they don’t know.

Again, depending on how they identified politically, there was a large gap between how people viewed the opinion.

Only 15% of Democrats approve of the decision compared to 68% of Republicans and 49% of independents. In addition, those under 50, Black people and women were less likely to approve of this decision.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted using Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® June 30-July 1, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 937 U.S. adults with oversamples of Black, Hispanic and Asian respondents weighted to their correct proportions in the general population. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.6 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 26-25-41 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s topline results and details on the methodology here.

ABC News’ Dan Merkle contributed to this report

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(WASHINGTON) — California Rep. Ro Khanna on Sunday praised President Joe Biden’s continued efforts to cancel federal student loan debt after the Supreme Court struck down his initial plan to forgive up to $20,000 for some borrowers.

Biden said Friday that he will now rely on the 1965 Higher Education Act to try to enact debt forgiveness, rather than the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003, on which his initial plan was based.

“I am pleased that the White House is invoking the Higher Education Act,” Khanna, a progressive Democrat, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “I do hope that the White House will make sure that the interest doesn’t accrue starting in September. I know the president has said he isn’t going to refer students to the credit agency. I also believe under the Higher Education Act he can stop the interest accrual.”

While Khanna said he was supportive of Biden’s new path forward — and would like there to be a broader payment pause while the administration pursues more ways to legalize loan forgiveness — he sharply criticized the Supreme Court.

He argued the justices overstepped their bounds and “usurped the authority of Congress” by limiting how the HEROES Act can be used, rather than deferring to legislators, “just because they think Congress gave too much power to the president.”

The post-9/11 era HEROES law enabled the U.S. education secretary to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” regarding student loans to initially protect borrowers impacted by terror attacks. That law was later altered to include people affected by “a war or other military operation or national emergency” — with Biden maintaining that the COVID-19 pandemic qualified.

Karl noted on “This Week” that the Supreme Court’s analysis rejected the White House’s arguments, even citing a comment made by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2021 that Biden “can postpone [student loan debt]. He can delay. But he does not have that power [to cancel it]. That has to be an act of Congress.”

The high court’s conservative majority on Thursday ruled 6-3 that Biden did not have the authority under the HEROES Act to issue sweeping federal student loan cancellation, which the White House had hoped to do for more than 40 million borrowers.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the opinion knocking down Biden’s plan, found that precedent “requires that Congress speak clearly before a Department Secretary can unilaterally alter large sections of the American economy.”

Khanna, on “This Week,” took another view.

“We can have an argument that the HEROES Act passed in 2003 shortly after 9/11 was way too broad in giving that kind of authority to the president and the secretary. I don’t believe it was the case. That’s a legitimate argument. The place to make that argument is in the United States Congress,” he said.

“It’s not for unelected justices to override what Congress has passed. And that’s what this court is doing. It’s very dangerous,” he continued. “They are basically reinterpreting congressional statute to fit their ideological preconceptions.”

While the White House had long resisted discussing what other avenues they might pursue if the student loan cancellation program was rejected, the president on Friday said he will invoke the Higher Education Act to allow Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to “compromise, waive or release loans under certain circumstances.”

But it’s currently unclear how much forgiveness would be enacted under this strategy.

The White House will also implement a 12-month “on-ramp repayment program” during which the government will not refer borrowers who miss payments to credit agencies.

“This new path is legally sound,” Biden said in remarks after the Supreme Court ruling. “It’s going to take longer. And in my view, it’s the best path that remains to student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.”

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