(WASHINGTON) — Joe and Jill Biden are set to attend the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday evening in Washington to celebrate five individuals and groups for their artistic accomplishments.
The president and the first lady first went to the annual event in their current offices in 2021, donning masks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Donald and Melania Trump, the Bidens’ predecessors, skipped the celebration, which is customarily attended by the president.)
This year, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will honor actor and human rights activist George Clooney, singer Amy Grant, performer Gladys Knight, composer and conductor Tania León and Irish band U2.
“Growing up in a small town in Kentucky I could never have imagined that someday I’d be the one sitting in the balcony at the Kennedy Center Honors. To be mentioned in the same breath with the rest of these incredible artists is an honor. This is a genuinely exciting surprise for the whole Clooney family,” Clooney said in a statement on the Kennedy Center’s website.
Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff are also slated to attend Sunday night’s event.
The Bidens’ appearance will come after the couple welcomed French President Emmanuel Macron for a state visit last week. The president also traveled to Boston to greet Prince William at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The center each year honors artists for their impact on American culture. Honorees celebrated in 2021 included “Saturday Night Live” showrunner Lorne Michaels, singer and actress Bette Midler and singer Joni Mitchell.
The celebration often serves as a magnet for Washington politicos and Hollywood mainstays, drawing them to the Kennedy Center, situated on the Potomac River in the nation’s capital.
The recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors were announced in July.
Besides recognizing honorees’ artistic talents and contributions, the ceremony is also intended to raise money for the Kennedy Center, which puts on an array of shows throughout the year.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Ohio Rep. Dave Joyce said Sunday that he didn’t want to be drawn into commenting on Donald Trump’s recent call to suspend the Constitution over baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.
Joyce, the chair of the Republican Governance Group, a centrist group in the House, was asked by ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos to respond to Trump’s post on Saturday on his Truth Social platform. The former president wrongly asserted that the “massive fraud” — which did not occur — “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Joyce initially declined to respond, saying he didn’t know what Trump said on social media and that the public wasn’t “interested in looking backwards.” But Stephanopoulos pressed further, and Joyce ultimately said that Trump’s comment should be taken “in context” but that it wouldn’t prevent him from supporting Trump if he ends up winning the nomination.
“It’s early. I think there’s going to be a lot of people in the primary … [but] I will support whoever the Republican nominee is,” Joyce said while noting he didn’t think Trump would manage to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination because there are “a lot of other good quality candidates out there.”
“That’s a remarkable statement,” Stephanopoulos said. “You just said you’d support a candidate who’s come out for suspending the Constitution.”
“Well, you know, he says a lot of things,” Joyce said, adding, “I can’t be really chasing every one of these crazy statements that come from any of these candidates.”
“You can’t come out against someone who’s for suspending the Constitution?” Stephanopoulos pushed back once again.
“He says a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen. So you got to [separate] fact from fantasy — and fantasy is that we’re going to suspend the Constitution and go backwards. We’re moving forward,” Joyce said.
Elsewhere in the interview, he told Stephanopoulos that with a newly-won Republican majority in the House, the group that he leads will focus on kitchen-table issues.
In July, Joyce was unanimously elected chair of the Republican Governance Group, which he has said is “hellbent on breaking through Washington’s dysfunction.”
“Our group is basically focused on making government work,” Joyce told Stephanopoulos when asked about how much leverage his group holds and how they plan to use it in a divided government. “We’re not the people who you see on TV every week talking about issues that aren’t germane to what the people are feeling at home.”
Joyce cited the education system, gas prices and how inflation was driving up the cost of living — all similar to what incoming House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries mentioned in his own appearance on “This Week” on Sunday.
“What are the specific pieces of legislation you can work on together?” Stephanopoulos asked Joyce.
“We have to set a budget … and then we have to do the appropriations process,” he said. “You all talk about different things but at the end of the day, we’re going to do our job and put 12 appropriations bills out there.”
Joyce sits on a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee responsible for funding the federal government. He said the spending bills in a Republican House will be “lower than what’s happened in the last four years.”
Shifting to Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker, Stephanopoulos noted that he may not have the necessary support next month with five Republicans in the 222-seat majority having said publicly they won’t back him.
“Does he have the votes? How will he get there?” Stephanopoulos asked.
Joyce, like other leading Republicans, said McCarthy proved he “deserves the opportunity” and “has done the hard work that was necessary to bring together the majority.”
“You can’t beat somebody with nobody. And right now, you hear that we’re just not going to vote for Kevin. Well, then who?” he said.
He said compromise would have to prevail among centrists and hardliners in order to accomplish things.
“What these people got to get used to is that if a majority of our conference agree to something, then that’s how you move the ball forward. And just because five or six people don’t like it doesn’t mean that we should hold up the whole thing,” Joyce said.
Echoing Jeffries, he played down the possibility that some Democrats would join Republicans in backing an alternative to McCarthy.
“I think the Democrats are going to vote for Democrats, Republicans will vote for Republicans,” Joyce said. “And I think, at the end of the day, Kevin will be the next speaker of the House.”
(WASHINGTON) — Incoming House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York on Sunday played down the chances of his caucus working with Republicans to elect the chamber’s next speaker as the GOP has wrestled with unifying around their leader, Kevin McCarthy of California.
When pressed by ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on whether he would entertain an agreement with Republican centrists should McCarthy fail to clinch the speakership, given how narrow McCarthy’s majority will be in the next Congress, Jeffries demurred.
“Well, we have to organize on our side and be prepared to hit the ground running on Jan. 3,” Jeffries said, referencing the date that the next speaker will be elected. “They have to organize on their side, and we’ll see what happens.”
“I wouldn’t say that it’s a possibility. Right now, Democrats are preparing to get ourselves ready as we transition temporarily from the majority into the minority,” Jeffries added when Stephanopoulos asked if a speaker who was “willing to compromise” could advance Democrats’ goals. “I think the question right now is what other Republicans are going to do. From our standpoint, we know what our mission is.”
McCarthy, who served as House minority leader for the past four years, is still working to corral the necessary support for his bid to be speaker. A closed-door vote last month saw him clinch the support necessary to be the GOP nominee, but a notable minority of his conference’s members voted against him.
Of the 222 Republicans who will be in the majority next year, five have said they won’t vote for McCarthy to lead them.
“He seems to be having a difficult time at this moment getting to 218. But we’ll see what happens on Jan. 3,” Jeffries said on “This Week” of the number of votes McCarthy would need to win the speakership if the entire House was present.
House Democrats will oppose ‘rabbit hole’ of GOP investigations
Jeffries also lambasted what he said was extremism within the GOP, noting that Democrats had been able to find some bipartisan compromises with Republicans during the Trump administration but that similar agreements could be difficult if hardline voices are elevated in the next House majority.
“The question on the other side of the aisle is: What will Republicans do? Are they gonna double and triple down on the extremism that we’ve seen from people like Marjorie Taylor Greene? That would be unfortunate,” he said.
Still, Jeffries said, there were some areas of potential common cause — though he drew a bright line between those opportunities and Republican probes of the White House, which conservatives have said is needed oversight.
“Our mission is to find ways to work with Republicans whenever possible to get things done for the American people, to work on issues related to the economy and inflation and lowing costs, fighting for better paying jobs and safer communities,” Jeffries said. “But we will also oppose them when we must,” he added, “particularly as it relates to any effort to go down this rabbit hole of unnecessary, unconscionable, unacceptable investigations of the administration.”
Jeffries says he’s not a ‘past election denier’
Stephanopoulos asked Jeffries if he had a response to criticism from Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said Jeffries was a “past election denier” for attacking Trump’s legitimacy as president.
“My view of the situation has been pretty clear: I supported the certification of Donald Trump’s election. I attended his inauguration … At the same time, I will never hesitate in criticizing the former president,” he said.
Jeffries went on to denounce Trump for suggesting on his social media platform this weekend that the Constitution should be overturned because of Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election he lost.
“The Republicans are gonna have to work out their issues with the former president and decide whether they’re gonna break from him and return to some semblance of reasonableness or continue to lean into the extremism, not just of Trump, but of Trumpism,” Jeffries said. “Suspending the Constitution is an extraordinary step, but we’re used to extraordinary statements being made by the former president.”
(WASINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday denounced antisemitism and urged other political leaders to do the same.
“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened,” Biden tweeted. “Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides.”
“Silence is complicity,” the president added.
Biden’s post, while not specifically naming any people, follows recent antisemitic comments made by rapper Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — praising Adolph Hitler, and after former President Donald Trump hosted a dinner with Ye and white nationalist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, when asked who Biden was referring to in his Twitter post, said, “I don’t think it matters who in particular.”
“I think what the president is trying to say is being silent is complicit, and when we see this type of hatred, when we see this type of antisemitism, we need to call it out,” Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday. “We need to be — we need to be very, very clear and condemn that, and that’s what you’re going to continue to hear from this president.”
Trump faced pushback from some Republicans after the dinner, with Rep. Kevin McCarthy — in line to become the next speaker of the House — telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce that he didn’t think anyone should be spending any time with Fuentes.
Sen. Mitch McConnell went a step further, telling the press that anyone advocating with white supremacists or antisemites is “highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”
Ye had his Twitter account suspended on Friday after his account appeared to show a swastika inside a Star of David.
Earlier, Ye praised Adolph Hitler and went on an antisemitic rant during an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Elon Musk, Twitter’s new CEO, said the post violated the company’s rules on incitement to violence.
One study from Montclair State University found hate speech increased on Twitter immediately following Musk’s takeover of the platform. Musk has said he wants to embrace free speech on Twitter, saying the platform was unfairly infringing on free speech.
Jean-Pierre on Friday said Biden is “standing with the Jewish community” and highlighted his past condemnations of bigotry.
“The president, for years, including after the hateful march in Charlottesville that drove him to run — his father had said, ‘Silence is complicity,'” she said. “And as president of the United States, he feels that it’s important for him to be very clear.”
(NEW YORK) — Georgians swarmed to the polls on the last day of early voting before next week’s Senate runoff, setting a new record for single-day early in-person turnout.
At least 352,953 people voted in person on Friday, bringing the total number of votes, either in person or absentee, to over 1.8 million. That number represents 26.4% of active voters.
It’s a strong start for turnout for the Dec. 6 contest between Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker.
Neither candidate clinched the 50% needed to win the general election in November, though Warnock led Walker 49% to 48%.
It’s the second runoff Warnock is facing after he defeated former Sen. Kelly Loeffler in January 2021 in a special election. Warnock’s win, along with that of Democrat Jon Ossoff, handed Democrats majority control of the Senate.
Democrats kept their narrow control of the Senate this midterm cycle, capturing the 50 seats necessary when Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada won her reelection bid.
But Republicans are hoping to keep the chamber at its current 50-50 split, while a 51-seat majority would make governing for Democrats a bit easier.
“We have to win this election,” President Joe Biden said Friday at a Democratic fundraiser for Warnock in Boston. “It will give us 51 votes. And that changes the dynamic of anybody being able to say they want to change what we’re going to do.”
The runoff between Warnock and Walker’s broken early voting records several times since polls opened statewide on Nov. 28.
On Tuesday, the previous record, over 304,700 Georgians voted. Monday also set a record for one day when over 303,000 Georgians went to the polls on the first day of statewide early in-person voting. Before the runoff, the previous single-day turnout record was 233,252, set on the last day of early voting in 2018.
With just 3 days left until Election Day, Warnock is holding a slate of events on Saturday.
Warnock held a “Super Labor Saturday Rally and Canvass” with Georgia AFL-CIO, and later will hold a GOTV rally in Augusta before rallying with Ossoff and members of the AAPI community including: Emmy-winning TV host Jeannie Mai Jenkins, author Min Jin Lee, actor Daniel Dae Kim, and singer Ari Afsar.
Walker, on the other hand, did not advise the press on any public campaign events for Saturday. However, ABC News has learned Walker will be tailgating at the Mercedes-Benz Stadium ahead of the SEC Championship football game.
(WASHINGTON) — Two top Trump White House lawyers testified Friday before a federal grand jury investigating the events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Pat Philbin were spotted at D.C. District Court on Friday.
Their appearances come as a result of a secret court battle between former President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice, sources said. Trump’s lawyers had argued that testimony by his former top White House aides was protected by privilege but the judge ruled against Trump’s team and ordered the two men to appear.
Both Cipollone and Philbin appeared before the grand jury in September but declined to answer some questions until the privilege matter was resolved, sources told ABC News at the time.
A representative for Cipollone and Philbin did not respond to a request for comment.
The move to originally subpoena the two men had signaled a dramatic escalation in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack. The recent appearances also show that newly appointed Special Counsel Jack Smith has not slowed any investigative efforts into both the events surrounding Jan. 6 and Trump’s handling of government documents, some of which were marked as classified.
ABC News has previously reported that Cipollone and Philbin have also sat for interviews with the FBI related to the documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
This week, three aides to Trump including his former social media director Dan Scavino, former deputy director of presidential advance William Russell and Beau Harrison appeared before a grand jury investigating Trump’s handling of classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according to sources familiar with their appearances.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday signed legislation aimed at averting a nationwide rail strike while acknowledging that workers didn’t get everything they wanted.
Biden, speaking from the Roosevelt Room, said the bill “ends a difficult rail dispute and helps our nation avoid what coming out of that would have been an economic catastrophe in a very bad time in the calendar.”
The legislation, passed under pressure of a looming Dec. 9 deadline by the House and Senate this week, forces workers to accept a tentative agreement Biden himself helped broker between unions and rail companies back in September that offered union members a raise and increased health care benefits.
That agreement was later rejected by some worker unions because it didn’t include days of paid sick leave.
But on Thursday, the Senate voted 80-to-15 to impose the agreement while subsequently voting down a bill passed by the House that would have provided workers with seven days of paid sick leave.
Six Republicans voted to add sick leave but the measure ultimately fell short of the 60 votes needed to pass. Some of those lawmakers joined five Democratic caucus members, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, in voting against the bill forcing workers to accept the agreement.
“Look, I know this bill doesn’t have paid sick leave these rail workers, and frankly every worker in America, deserves,” Biden, criticized for not doing more for workers despite calling himself a pro-union president, said Friday. “But that fight isn’t over. I didn’t commit we were going to stop this because we couldn’t get in this bill that we were going to stop fighting for it. I supported paid sick leave for a long time. I’m going to continue that fight to we succeed.”
Sanders, who led the effort to get sick leave passed, slammed railroad companies for not giving their workers these days despite bringing in massive profits. Unions asked for 15 sick days but the railroads settled on one personal day.
“At a time of record-breaking profits for the rail industry, it is disgraceful that railroad workers do not have a single day of paid sick leave,” he said in a statement after Thursday’s vote.
Rail companies celebrated the legislation’s passage, with Association of American Railroads President and CEO Ian Jefferies saying the Senate “acted with leadership and urgency with today’s vote to avert an economically devastating rail work stoppage.”
A strike would’ve cost $2 billion a day in lost economic output, according to the Association of American Railroads. Such a loss would’ve likely forced Americans to pay more out of pocket for goods, experts previously told ABC News.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also praised the “swift bipartisan action in Congress to prevent a devastating rail shutdown.”
“This deal will see well-deserved and long-overdue pay increases for rail workers,” Buttigieg said. “Meanwhile, we will continue to push for paid leave for all American workers.”
Biden was the one to ask Congress to step in to avoid the strike. He said he was hesitant to override workers but that larger economic concerns required the deal to be adopted.
“This was tough for me but it was the right thing to do at the moment to save jobs,” Biden said.
But workers weren’t pleased with the congressional action, with some accusing Biden of going against his pro-union statements.
The Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division, after Biden’s call for Congress to act, said the president was ignoring workers’ concerns.
SMART-TD, the second-largest rail union representing about 28,000 conductors, said in a statement after the Senate vote that it was “extremely disappointing” that so many voted against sick leave.
“The ask for sick leave was not out of preference, but rather out of necessity. No American worker should ever have to face the decision of going to work sick, fatigued or mentally unwell versus getting disciplined or being fired by their employer, yet that is exactly what is happening every single day on this nation’s largest freight railroads,” the union said.
Alec Tabak for New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Former Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll asked the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals Thursday evening to find that former President Donald Trump “acted outside the scope of his federal employment” when he allegedly defamed her in 2019.
Trump has sought to have the United States substitute as the defendant in Carroll’s defamation lawsuit, but for that to happen, the D.C. Court of Appeals, which retains jurisdiction over the conduct of federal employees, must determine Trump was acting in his official capacity as president when he allegedly implied Carroll was too ugly to rape and had invented her story to sell a book.
“Trump and the Department of Justice, for their part, have responded to that development by asking this Court to announce a categorical rule that elected officials always and automatically act within their employment whenever they address the public. This Court should reject that position and hold that Trump acted outside the scope of his federal employment when he repeatedly defamed Carroll in June 2019,” Carroll’s latest filing said.
Carroll’s lawsuit is set for trial in April 2023. The substitution of the United States for Trump would, however, end the case, since the federal government cannot be sued for defamation.
“Trump’s defamatory statements targeting Carroll after she revealed that he had raped her were outside the scope of his employment as President: he acted with private motives, and not in furtherance of any official federal purpose or function, in seeking to punish and humiliate Carroll for revealing his decades-old crime,” the filing said.
Carroll last week filed a new lawsuit alleging Trump defamed her more recently in a series of posts on his social medial platform Truth Social.
Carroll previously sued Trump for defamation over statements he made in 2019 when he denied her claim that he raped her in the dressing room of Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s. Her new lawsuit alleged a second claim of defamation over statements Trump made last month. It also alleged battery as she seeks to hold him accountable for the sexual assault that he has long denied.
In the new lawsuit, she alleges defamation and battery under a new law in New York that allows adult sex assault victims to file claims that would otherwise be barred by the passage of time.
New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which took effect on Thanksgiving, opens a one-year window for adult victims to file claims.
Carroll’s first lawsuit is pending the outcome of a January proceeding in the D.C. Court of Appeals.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden plans to meet Prince William and Kate on Friday during their first visit to the U.S. in eight years.
“The president intends to greet the Prince and Princess of Wales when he is in Boston,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday.
The Prince of Wales’ media team also confirmed that a meeting would take place, which Biden’s schedule later said would be at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
Jean-Pierre said the administration was “still finalizing and working through the details” and declined to share any more specifics on what the greeting would entail. The White House previously announced that Biden would be in Boston on Friday for a Democratic fundraiser.
The British royals are stateside for the Earthshot Prize Ceremony, which awards $1 million prizes to winners of projects focused on resolving climate issues by 2030.
“Like President Kennedy, Catherine and I firmly believe that we all have it in ourselves to achieve great things and that human beings have the ability to lead, innovate and problem solve,” Prince William said during their first stop outside Boston City Hall.
The trip also included a Celtics basketball game on Wednesday, where the royal couple was seated next to Massachusetts Gov.-elect Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. On Friday, William will tour the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library with Caroline Kennedy, the late president’s daughter.
It’s the royal duo’s first overseas visit since the passing of Queen Elizabeth II in September, and the first since taking on the royal titles of Prince and Princess of Wales.
An agent in charge of the Diplomatic Security Service’s Boston field office, the agency that makes up the royals’ protective detail, told ABC News preparations started in September, and have involved 11 law enforcement agencies.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to London for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral. They commemorated Queen Elizabeth’s “history-making reign” after her death, stating she was a “stateswoman of unmatched dignity and constancy who deepened the bedrock Alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States.”
The Bidens paid tribute to the queen as her coffin lay in Westminster Hall, and attended King Charles III’s reception at Buckingham Palace.
Prior to that, Jill Biden and Kate met during the Group of Seven, or G-7, summit in Cornwall, England. The two women visited a school that works with students who have experienced trauma in their lives.
“Early childhood education is so important to lay the foundation for all of our students,” Jill Biden said during the visit, and thanked Kate for inviting her. The princess said it was a “huge honor” to have the U.S. first lady in the United Kingdom.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Janice McDonald contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday said it will review the legality of President Joe Biden’s federal student loan debt relief plan, putting borrowers on track to get clarity on the fate of the program by next summer.
The program, which would grant up to either $10,000 or $20,000 in federal debt relief to student borrowers who make under a certain income, depending on the kind of loan they used, has been blocked by lower courts since November. The administration initially planned to start rolling out cancellations by the end of this month.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear oral arguments in February, allowing the case an expedited schedule, and is expected to make a decision by the end of June, when the term ends. February’s arguments are also likely to give insight into how the justices view the program.
But the program will remain on hold until the final decision comes down, despite requests from the Biden administration to allow it to proceed while the case plays out in court.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement later Thursday that “we welcome the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case.” The program is “legal, supported by careful analysis from administration lawyers,” she said.
Twenty-six million people applied before the program was paused, according to the Department of Education, and 16 million peoples’ applications were reviewed and authorized for relief — though no loan cancellations were dispatched before court orders blocked the program.
The current legal limbo poses a major threat to Biden’s pledge to cancel student loan debt for up to 43 million Americans. He first made such a promise during his 2020 presidential campaign and reiterated it during the 2022 midterm elections, when he repeatedly told crowds of supporters he believed he was on solid legal ground and would win out over Republican attacks on the plan.
Conservatives and other critics said loan debt forgiveness was beyond the power of a president and that it would unfairly penalize people who either didn’t take out loans or who had paid them off.
“As soon as I announced my administration’s plan on student debt, they started attacking it, saying all kinds of things. Their outrage is wrong and it’s hypocritical,” Biden said in late October at a rally at Delaware State University. “We’re not letting them get away with it.”
“I’m completely confident my plan is legal,” Biden reiterated in a video on Twitter in late November.
But while early court cases against the program were thrown out for lack of standing — that is, for lack of someone or some entity showing they were harmed by it — subsequent challenges were more successful. An appeals court in Missouri and a district court in Texas, in two separate cases, ruled that the program was unlawful and an overreach of the Biden administration’s powers.
Those decisions left the program in a precarious position just as student loan payments were set to restart for the first time in nearly two years, after a lengthy COVID-19 pandemic pause — eventually leading Biden to once again extend a moratorium on loan payments that began under President Donald Trump.
Payments will not begin again until the fate of the program is decided, Biden announced in November, instead of Jan. 1, as originally planned.
Student loan payments will resume either 60 days after the Supreme Court issues a decision on the relief program, the administration said, or 60 days after June 30 — whichever comes first.
“Callous efforts to block student debt relief in the courts have caused tremendous financial uncertainty for millions of borrowers who cannot set their family budgets or even plan for the holidays without a clear picture of their student debt obligations, and it’s just plain wrong,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a November statement announcing the extension on the moratorium.
“We’re extending the payment pause because it would be deeply unfair to ask borrowers to pay a debt that they wouldn’t have to pay, were it not for the baseless lawsuits brought by Republican officials and special interests,” he said then.
Conservative groups have brought lawsuits arguing that Biden’s plan exceeds his administration’s authority, that the program unfairly excludes Americans who won’t receive debt relief and that certain loan servicers will lose revenue.
The most significant suit, the one coming before the Supreme Court, was brought by six conservative states: Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina.
But the Biden administration argued that the debt cancellation was squarely within the authority of the Education Department, which oversees federal loans, because the department is supposed to look out for borrowers during national emergencies, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Indeed, the entire purpose of the HEROES Act is to authorize the Secretary to grant student-loan-related relief to at-risk borrowers because of a national emergency — precisely what the Secretary did here,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a Supreme Court filing.
It is the secretary’s job “to ensure that borrowers affected by a national emergency are not worse off in relation to their student loans,” Prelogar argued, and if the Department of Education didn’t act to cancel debts, there could be a “spike” in loan defaults when the pause on student loan payments lifts.
Overall, the program is expected to cost around $400 billion, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
