(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge is expected to rule Wednesday on the Biden administration’s lawsuit against a near-total ban on abortions in Idaho.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state over the ban, which goes into effect on Thursday, arguing that it violates a federal law guaranteeing access to emergency medical care.
The Idaho abortion law would make it a felony to perform an abortion in all but extremely narrow circumstances. There are exceptions for cases of rape or incest that have been reported. To avoid criminal liability, a doctor must prove that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman, though there is no defense for an abortion to protect the woman’s health, according to the DOJ.
In its complaint, filed on Aug. 2, the Justice Department claimed that the Idaho law violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which states that hospitals that receive Medicare funds are required to provide necessary treatment to women who arrive at their emergency departments while experiencing a medical emergency. That medical care could include providing an abortion, according to the DOJ.
The Justice Department is seeking a declaratory judgment that the Idaho law is preempted by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act in emergency situations, as well as an order permanently barring the law to the extent that it conflicts with the federal act.
U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Boise said he plans to issue a decision in the case on Wednesday.
The lawsuit marked the Biden administration’s first legal challenge to a state abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in June, ending the constitutional right to an abortion.
Prosecutors argued that the Idaho law would prevent doctors from performing medically necessary abortions, as required by federal law.
Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden called the lawsuit “politically motivated” and charged that the DOJ did not attempt to “engage Idaho in a meaningful dialogue on the issue” prior to filing its complaint.
A case involving the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act as it pertains to abortion care is also ongoing in Texas.
Last month, the state of Texas sued the Biden administration on its guidance to hospitals that doctors should perform an abortion if doing so would protect a woman’s health. The complaint was filed days after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra instructed hospitals to follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act when determining whether to provide an abortion in emergency cases “regardless of the restrictions in the state where you practice.”
On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the federal government from enforcing the guidance, saying the federal law is “silent as to abortion.”
Attorneys for the state of Idaho drew attention to that case in a court filing on Wednesday, stating that the state “has not yet had a full opportunity to consider how the Texas court’s decision should be persuasive in aspects of this current lawsuit, or in the pending preliminary injunction motion.”
Idaho’s so-called trigger law would be even more restrictive than an abortion ban that went into effect in the state earlier this month. That law, modeled after a similar “heartbeat law” in Texas, bans abortion at about six weeks and also allows civil lawsuits against medical providers who perform the procedure.
Amid legal challenges from abortion providers, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld both abortion laws in a ruling issued on Aug. 12, allowing them to go into effect.
Another trigger law that would make it a felony for doctors to perform an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy went into effect on Aug. 19 in the state. That law, which has exceptions for rape, incest and medical emergencies, is also currently being challenged by abortion providers.
ABC News’ Alexander Mallin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — First lady Jill Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday in a “rebound” case, her office said.
The first lady — who first tested positive on Aug. 16 — received her second negative test on Sunday and joined the president in Delaware, coming out of her isolation period spent in South Carolina. She again tested negative on Tuesday, her deputy communications director Kelsey Donohue said.
The president tested negative for COVID-19 on Wednesday, according to the White House.
“The First Lady has experienced no reemergence of symptoms, and will remain in Delaware where she has reinitiated isolation procedures,” Donohue said in a statement on Wednesday. “The White House Medical Unit has conducted contact tracing and close contacts have been notified.”
The president returned to the White House from Delaware on Wednesday morning. The first lady was supposed to accompany her husband to a Democratic National Committee event in Maryland on Thursday but will now remain isolated in Delaware.
The president “will mask for 10 days when indoors and in close proximity to others,” a White House official said. “We will also keep the President’s testing cadence increased and continue to report those results.”
Jill Biden, who is double vaccinated and twice boosted, was prescribed the antiviral treatment Paxlovid, which President Biden also took after testing positive last month. Like his wife, the president also suffered a rebound COVID-19 case.
Paxlovid is authorized under emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration for Americans ages 12 and older who are at high-risk for severe illness from COVID-19. Preliminary estimates suggested that the drug provided an 89% reduction in virus-related hospitalizations and deaths.
However, in recent months, as use of the drug ramped up, there was an increasing number of anecdotal reports of rebound cases, where individuals test positive for COVID-19, after testing negative, following completion of the treatment course. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a COVID-19 rebound has been reported to occur between two and eight days after initial recovery.
Although experts say preliminary estimates of Paxlovid rebounds are likely undercounted, White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha suggested after President Biden’s Paxlovid rebound that the phenomenon may happen in 5% to 8% of patients.
Federal officials report that a rebound infection can also occur in patients receiving no treatment or in patients receiving other COVID-19 therapeutics.
ABC’s Karen Travers reports:
ABC News’ Molly Nagle, Arielle Mitropoulos and Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Come January, 25-year-old Maxwell Frost will likely be the first member of Generation Z elected to Congress.
Frost is projected to win Florida’s 10th Congressional District Democratic primary, held Tuesday, ABC News reports. Frost defeated Randolph Bracy, whom much of the party establishment backed.
Following his projected win, Frost thanked his community for supporting his campaign.
“I love this community and my decade-long fight for everything and everyone in it is just getting started,” he said in a press release.
Frost, who just turned 25 this year, was a national organizer for the ACLU and then became the national organizing director of March for Our Lives, a youth-led organization dedicated to ending gun violence.
If he wins in November — when he’ll face military veteran Calvin Wimbish — he will fill the reliably blue seat of Rep. Val Demings, who on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination for Florida’s Senate race.
Frost has the backing of leading progressives like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey and Bernie Sanders.
He spoke with ABC News in March about his run for Congress, saying then that he believes it’s time to elect younger leaders who better represent the values and ideas that the younger voters care about and want to see.
Some of the major issues Frost ran on include gun control, “Medicare for All” and addressing climate change.
The 2022 election cycle marks the first-time members of Generation Z — those born after 1996 — are eligible to run for seats in the House of Representatives, where legislators must be 25 years old by the time they’re sworn in.
Another Gen-Zer may join Frost in Congress in the new year: Karoline Leavitt, a former congressional and Trump White House aide who is running in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District Republican primary, will be on the ballot in September, when she will learn if she continues to the general election in November.
(NEW YORK) — Democrats are projected to win a special House election in New York on Tuesday in a race seen as a potential bellwether for this year’s midterms, ABC News reports.
The contest between Democrat Pat Ryan and Republican Marc Molinaro in New York’s 19th Congressional District was sparked when Democratic Rep. Antonio Delgado was appointed lieutenant governor.
Ryan and Molinaro, both of whom are local county executives, were running in the 19th as it existed prior to redistricting. But the seat being decided in Tuesday’s special election will cease to exist in January — and both candidates ran in primaries for separate seats on Tuesday as well.
The 19th has been among the swingiest in the country, with President Joe Biden carrying it by fewer than 2 points in 2020 and former President Donald Trump winning it by about 7 points in 2016.
With 99% of the expected vote being reported on Tuesday, Ryan was leading Molinaro 51-49.
The special election was seen as potentially indicative because of the messages tested by the two candidates — each trying to motivate their base and sway independents.
Molinaro focused on inflation, which remains at decades-long highs. Ryan, meanwhile, campaigned heavily on abortion access, saying it was a “freedom” issue after the Supreme Court this summer reversed Roe v. Wade.
Republicans continue to point to polls showing that the economy is among voters’ top concerns and that Biden gets poor approval ratings.
However, Democrats say that voters will be motivated by the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion and argue that the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, among other major legislative priorities, could blunt the electoral impact from headwinds like inflation.
(NEW YORK) — New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler is projected to defeat Rep. Carolyn Maloney, ABC News reports, after a bitter incumbent-on-incumbent primary on Tuesday that forced Manhattan Democratic voters to pick between two senior House lawmakers.
With about 81% of the expected vote reported, Nadler won with 56% over Maloney, who trailed with 25%. Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old attorney and former Obama staffer who ran on a generational argument against the two septuagenarians, came in third place with 18% of the vote so far.
Nadler will be the heavy favorite in the general election in the deep-blue district.
He and Maloney, erstwhile legislative allies both elected in 1992, helm the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, respectively. They were forced into the same district after a heavily gerrymandered map drawn by Democrats during redistricting was thrown out in court, leading an outside third-party mapmaker to redo the decennial lines.
Nadler played a prominent role in former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment and touted the need for New York City to have at least one Jewish lawmaker in its House delegation. Maloney, meanwhile, boasted that Democrats should prioritize keeping a woman in Congress,
The primary became increasingly nasty as Election Day neared.
Nadler highlighted Maloney’s votes on high-profile issues, including her past support for the Iraq War and Bush-era Patriot Act and opposition to the Iran nuclear deal during the Obama administration.
Maloney, meanwhile, appeared to knock Nadler over his stamina, even though he, at 75 years old, is just one year her junior.
She seemingly seized on his age after he sat at a primary debate while Maloney and Patel stood. She also expressed worries about “if for some reason someone will not serve their term,” citing “tons of rumors out there.” She later reportedly said she thinks Nadler would finish another term.
Patel, who came within 4% of unseating Maloney in a 2020 primary, sought to cast himself as a fresh face against the two longtime lawmakers, boasting in a press conference on Monday that “this is not 1992 anymore.”
(NEW YORK) — Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney is projected to win his Democratic primary on Tuesday, ABC News reports, after he moved seats in New York’s redistricting shuffle and faced progressive backlash in the process.
As the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Maloney is entrusted with protecting the party’s House majority in November. On Tuesday, though, he had to fight for his own spot in Congress.
He went up against New York state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi. With more than 82% percent of the expected vote reported, Maloney was leading Biaggi 66-33. Their race, one of the last notable Democratic House primaries of the midterm season, highlighted party splinters ahead of what’s expected to be a tight November fight to retain control of Congress.
Five-term incumbent Maloney — New York’s first openly gay House member — saw his own political career come under attack by some other Democrats early in the cycle, when he upended progressive hopes for the 17th District by choosing to run there instead of his previous seat.
His decision to run where he lives, rather than staying in New York’s 18th where most of his current constituents are, pushed freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones — the progressive who currently represents most of the new district — to vie for New York’s 10th, which was possible because Rep. Jerrold Nadler left the 10th for the 12th (completing the redistricting shuffle).
Maloney apologized for the scuffle, acknowledging he could have handled the process better.
He has largely campaigned on what he’s encouraged other frontline candidates to focus on this election cycle: a slate of Democratic legislative victories despite other political headwinds — like President Joe Biden’s unpopularity — ahead of what is expected to be a difficult midterm. He’s also come after Biaggi for attempting to campaign on the liberal wins, claiming her progressive streak of “tearing down our President and other Democrats” had “nothing to do” with their success.
“Look, you’re seeing us come back in the polls. Our frontliners are battle tested and strong. They have a huge advantage, by the way, over their Republican opponents in terms of their campaigns, their cash on hand. They’re getting their votes right. They have historic deliverables that they’ve brought home to their districts,” Maloney said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, days before his own primary.
Biaggi, a leader in the state legislature’s progressive movement who rose to prominence when she defeated a notable incumbent in 2018, was long seen as something of an underdog to Maloney, who also handily outraised her, $4 million to $807,000.
Still, the race attracted a cast of high-profile Democrats backing both candidates. Maloney had the endorsements of former President Bill Clinton — for whom he served as senior adviser while Clinton was in the White House — as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and The New York Times’ editorial board.
Biaggi, meanwhile, had the support of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Working Families Party. (Hillary Clinton, who was involved in Biaggi’s wedding ceremony, stayed out of the race.)
In a related dynamic, Maloney’s decision-making as head of the DCCC drew fire from some in his party after news that the organization spent almost half a million dollars on a primary advertisement that spotlighted Donald Trump-endorsed John Gibbs over incumbent Michigan Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, one of the few pro-impeachment Republicans in the House. (Meijer later lost his race, though observers noted the DCCC’s involvement was relatively marginal.)
On Meet the Press, Maloney defended Democrats’ decision to boost pro-Trump candidates over more moderate Republicans.
“Absolutely not did we put party over country,” Maloney said. “The moral imperative right now … is to keep the dangerous MAGA Republicans who voted to overturn our election out of power.”
He added, “This danger didn’t start with Mr. Gibbs. By every measure, he’s the weaker candidate. Don’t take my word for it: The Cook Political Report says it’s far more likely the Democrats are going to win that seat now. That’s doing our job.”
In November, Maloney will face Republican state Assemblyman Mike Lawler in a district that has a slight Democratic lean, making it more of a tossup.
(WASHINGTON) — Ahead of another deadline on the restart of payments for America’s $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced a plan to cancel debt for a subset of Americans and continue to keep a pandemic-era pause on the repayments — a sweeping move he has openly weighed in some form or another since his time as a candidate.
“In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” Biden wrote in a Twitter post.
Pell Grant recipients can qualify for up to $20,000 in debt forgiveness as part of Wednesday’s broader announcement on student loan forgiveness. Other student loan borrowers who don’t have Pell Grants will still have loans forgiven up to $10,000, as has been previously reported.
Both forgiveness options are for people who earn less than $125,000 per year, or $250,000 as a household.
According to the White House, Biden will give remarks Wednesday at 2:15 p.m. in the Roosevelt Room.
Biden’s social media post also announced an extension of the pause on student loan payments through Dec. 31, 2022 — the final extension — a move that’s intended to give time for the transition back to repayment. Multiple people familiar with White House policy discussions previously told ABC News that the loan pause, first put in place under President Donald Trump during the disruptions of COVID-19’s onset, was expected to be extended. Millions of borrowers were due to restart payments on Sept. 1.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told ABC News that the much-anticipated decision on loan forgiveness would come “soon” but was vague on details.
“We recognize it’s an important issue for many families. And we want to make sure that they get the information directly from the president,” Cardona said.
One-third of federal loan borrowers have less than $10,000, meaning they could see their debts completely wiped out should this policy come to fruition. Another 20% of borrowers, around nine million people, would have their debt at least slashed in half.
Including a broader debt forgiveness plan for Pell Grant recipients would wipe out the debt for up to 20 million borrowers, the White House estimated, and reach 43 million people in total.
Such a major cancelation may seem like a big step for Biden to take without Congress, but legal and policy experts say it’s clearer: The move would be well within the president’s authority — it just hasn’t been wielded before because of the political implications.
“The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act,” said John Brooks, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on federal fiscal policy.
“A lot depends on the size of the cancellation. The smaller the amount of cancellation, the easier the question is,” Brooks said. “Wiping out all student debt with a single stroke might be tougher, but the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”
Still, Biden could get taken to court — possibly by loan servicing agencies who would lose revenue or by members of Congress who may believe Biden is spending money in a way that hasn’t been appropriated by legislators.
Outside experts also wonder how long the processes would take to cancel student loans once a policy is announced — and how complicated it would be for borrowers to work their way through it, which are details that have yet to be released.
Some fear that people might fall through the cracks if applications to cancel debt become too labor-intensive because of the prospective income cap.
“The White House is about to ask the Education Department to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and that is going to have the effect of denying debt relief to low-income folks, economically vulnerable folks, who have the hardest time navigating these complicated paperwork processes,” Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a think-tank that advocates for universal debt cancellation, told ABC News in an interview.
Pierce and other supporters for more progressive debt cancellation, including the NAACP, said the smoothest path would include full and universal cancellation for everyone.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem. And tragically, we’ve experienced this so many times before,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to the details of the potential policy announcement.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people – especially Black women – behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020,” Johnson said.
But for many borrowers and advocates for canceling student debt — particularly the nearly half of people with federal student loans who would see their debt extinguished or cut significantly — Biden’s policy would still be cause for major celebration and be seen as a start to reforming the college and university system, where rising costs have become a major area of focus.
For Michigan teacher Nick Fuller, a possible Biden announcement on student loans could come just before the financial crunch of winter, when his heating bills skyrocket.
Though Fuller worked hard his first few years out of school to pay down his school debt, and then had his loan frozen for much of the pandemic, he’s concerned that restarting payments on top of monthly living costs could put him over the edge.
“I think things will get really tight in the winter because my utility bills are higher,” Fuller told ABC News. “I mean for January and February — the highs are zero and the lows are -20 [degrees] for almost two months.”
The frozen temperatures might sting a little bit less if Biden forgives $10,000 of Fuller’s remaining student loan bills, he said.
“It’s about two-thirds of the debt that I have left,” he said.
That would make payments “a lot more affordable and a lot more manageable in my situation,” he said.
Easing the student debt crisis — which is also how Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the issue in 2018 — could also aid a crippling teacher shortage that has caused thousands of staff vacancies at the start of the latest school year, something Fuller has seen himself.
Pinched salaries and rising inflation have had many teachers on edge with the loan forgiveness deadline approaching.
And because Black students are among the fastest growing group of people taking on debt, advocates argue that canceling some student loans could also begin to address racial inequities.
Shareefah Mason, the dean of Educator Certification at Dallas College, feels this impact firsthand as a Black woman with student debt. She leads the apprenticeship component of a program that pairs students with residency partners to ensure they earn while they learn, effectively reducing education debt for aspiring teachers.
“I bear the weight of $70,000 in student loans,” Mason told ABC News. “The data shows that student loan debt exponentially impacts and disproportionately impacts Black women.”
The average amount of student debt accrued by Black women is more than any other group at $38,800, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on education reform.
But Mason’s program, the very first full-time paid teacher apprenticeship in the state of Texas, allows students to earn one of the cheapest bachelor’s degrees in the state, Mason said.
The goal, she said, is to aid future educators in breaking the generational barriers that she has faced as a Black woman.
Mason said “they will not have to worry about student loan debt,” which could open more doors for minority communities that have historically lacked the means to access higher education.
“My students will be able to earn, as a first year teacher in the city of Dallas, upwards of $60,000,” Mason said.
For the nation’s most impacted borrowers, Mason said, “there needs to be a space created for them to make enough money to pay their student loans without having to sacrifice their ability to create generational wealth for their families.”
(NEW YORK) — After officials in Nye County, Nevada, accepted a pitch from a Republican nominee for secretary of state to stop using voting machines for the general election and move to hand counting instead, long-time county clerk Sam Merlino decided to walk away from the job she loved.
For Merlino, a Republican, the move was the last straw as her county continued to be consumed by unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
“It was just so disheartening after everyone had put in so much hard work, and then to have everybody question what we’ve been doing for years,” Merlino, who resigned two weeks ago, told ABC News. “I loved working with the voters, I was always at a polling place on Election Day. I loved the process.”
Since the 2020 election, states across the country have seen a slow exodus of election officials prompted by an unprecedented level of misinformation, harassment and threats, according to election experts and officials.
And now, with only three months until Election Day, election offices in at least nine states including Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Texas and New Jersey have seen a new wave of departures and early retirements, ABC News has learned.
Elizabeth Howard, senior counsel for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks election rules, told ABC News that the loss of so many local election officials is a “significant concern” because “there’s a huge amount of institutional knowledge that we are losing across the country.”
“Election administration has grown increasingly complex over the past few decades, and election officials are perpetually trying to balance technology with accuracy and reliability, and have an accurate voter registration list and make it as easy as possible for eligible voters to cast a ballot that’s accurately counted,” Howard said.
‘We can’t get our real work done’
In Gillespie County, Texas, the county’s entire three-person election department resigned last week due to threats and misinformation, a staffer told the Fredericksburg Standard.
“It is concerning that it’s happening this close to an election and that now the county officials are scrambling to put together a team that is going to be qualified and trained to run the election in November,” said Sam Taylor, spokesperson for Texas Secretary of State John Scott.
Taylor told ABC News that Texas has seen a 30% turnover rate among county officials over the past two years, with several officials across the state resigning due to threats of violence.
In a report released this month by the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee, election administrators expressed concerns about staffing ahead of the midterms.
“[T]he job of an Election Official has changed dramatically over the years and it’s not a position that just anyone can learn in a few short months,” Arizona election officials said in the report. “It takes years to become an industry expert. The fact so many of us are leaving the field should concern every person across the country.”
The report detailed how false claims of election fraud in the 2020 election have led election administrators to face a combination of threats, lawsuits and misinformation that one election official said were “distracting us to the point where we can’t get our real work done.”
‘Disrespect and disdain’
Efforts to discredit and overturn election results have been fueled and supported on a national scale by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who pushed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election after Donald Trump lost his reelection bid. This past weekend, Lindell hosted the “Moment of Truth Summit,” where hundreds of people gathered in Springfield, Missouri, to hear him and other election deniers rail against voting machines and discuss their ongoing efforts to contest the 2020 vote by, among other things, petitioning election officials for voting machine information and election data.
Among those who appeared at the event virtually was Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, who became a leading figure in the election denier movement last year when she was accused of and then indicted on election tampering charges after authorities say the election software she used for her county wound up in the hands of a consultant, and screenshots of the software appeared on right-wing websites. Peters pleaded not guilty in early August.
Peters, who in June lost the Republican primary in her bid to become Colorado secretary of state, detailed for summit attendees how she had paid for a recount in that race, and urged them to be “courageous” in confronting election results.
“Tina Peters lost, started talking about fraud and how election officials are in on it,” Matt Crane, the director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, told ABC News. “She lost by 15 points and yet she still requested a recount that’s taken time away from clerks who would have otherwise been working to prepare for the general election. All of that continues to put pressure on clerks.”
Like many other states, Crane said that Colorado has seen election officials resign or retire early, ahead of the November election.
In Florida, Supervisor of Elections Mark Early told ABC News that election officials in the state have “felt the hate” from 2020 election deniers.
“It’s the disrespect and the disdain that your neighbor might have for you nowadays,” Early said. “Now the threats are out there and people are looking at you out of the corner of their eye and just kind of shaking their head or just very blatantly coming up to you and saying negative things, even if it’s not a death threat.”
“All of this is taking a toll on our ability to conduct elections,” explained Early, who said there have been numerous resignations and early retirements. “We’re losing staff members.”
A former Georgia election worker testified at the House Jan. 6 hearings in late June that after former President Trump and his lawyers spread lies about her actions counting Georgia 2020 ballots, violent threats toward her and her family forced her out of her job.
“It’s turned my life upside down. I no longer give out my business card … I don’t want anyone knowing my name,” Wandrea Moss testified.
As more and more election administration posts are left empty, Howard said a recent Brennan Center survey showed that officials are concerned about who’s going to take the place of those leaving.
“Some of the election officials are concerned that the people that are going to replace the outgoing election officials believe the lies that have been told about how our elections run and are not going to understand how the system actually works,” Howard said. “Certainly, if you have somebody that is an election denier that’s responsible for running the election, that’s a concern.”
Even more concerning, Howard said, is that she expects another exodus of election workers after the 2022 election cycle — potentially leaving even more vacancies ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle.
‘It’s just too much’
Nevada, too, has seen a wave of resignations in at least half a dozen counties over the last few months as election deniers continue to challenge the 2020 results.
While numerous departing officials cite non-work-related issues as the reason for their departure, many point to how difficult their jobs have become over the last two years as they’ve faced increased scrutiny and mounting hostility from skeptics.
Last month, Washoe County Registrar of Voters Deanna Spikula resigned after 15 years with the registrar’s office. She told the Nevada Independent in January that she had received death threats and was concerned for the safety of her front-line election workers who face voters in person.
At the time, Spikula said she had already lost one staff member to another county department, but that she loved her job and was remaining in her position. But six months later — two weeks after Nevada held its state primary — she submitted her resignation.
“It’s just too much,” Washoe County Communications Manager Bethany Drysdale said of the harassment that local election workers have faced over the past few months, including being followed to their cars and being called “traitors.”
“It’s really difficult to pull the really long hours and face the animosity from the public,” Drysdale said. “Our interim registrar of voters is really focused on keeping hours down and making sure that nobody is too overwhelmed or too overworked leading up to the election, so they can really be here and give it their all during the election.”
In Pennsylvania, Berks County Elections Director Paige Riegner submitted her resignation this month following May’s state primary, after the Pennsylvania Department of State sued Berks and two other counties for excluding mail-in ballots that didn’t have the date handwritten on the security envelope.
And in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County, election director Michael Susek resigned last month after only eight months on the job, to go work for an organization “committed to advancing election integrity and the profession as a whole on a national level,” according to local reports. His departure made him the state’s fourth county election director to step down since 2019.
‘Just overwhelming’
Robin Major, the Board of Elections administrator in Monmouth County, New Jersey, said that for small local election offices, losing just one or two staffers can put a significant strain on the department.
Major told ABC News that in recent months her office has lost two out of its eight staff members, with one of them retiring and another going to work in a different department.
“I think we’re seeing it across the state,” Major said. “We have seen a number of colleagues in our professional association who have decided to retire because the amount of work is just overwhelming and we’re not properly compensated” — a situation Major said has been exacerbated by a new statewide mandate requiring counties to conduct an election audit after every general election.
Major also said that “people questioning things” has put an extra burden on her office.
We’re getting an increased number of requests on a daily basis that are just impossible to fulfill,” she said. “So that puts on a lot of pressure, also, while you’re trying to run an election.”
Sylvia Albert, the director of voting and elections at the liberal watchdog group Common Cause, said that the increased retirements and resignations mean that the country must invest in “the infrastructure to train the next generation of election workers.”
“We’re going to run an election and we’re going to make sure people can vote — we’re just going to have to use all hands on deck,” she said of the upcoming midterms. “But we should be looking towards a long-term solution of proper investment in the election system.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Pennsylvania Senate race took a heated — and personal — turn on Tuesday as an aide to Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee and former cardiothoracic surgeon who for years offered medical advice as a popular TV host, was quoted derisively blaming Democratic opponent John Fetterman for his own stroke.
“If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly,” Oz communications adviser Rachel Tripp said in a statement, first reported by Insider, responding to Fetterman’s attacks on Oz as elitist and out of touch.
The Oz campaign comment drew immediate reaction on social media, including from Fetterman, who tweeted, “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”
“I had a stroke. I survived it. I’m truly so grateful to still be here today,” he added.
Fetterman — who told a local outlet in 2018, when he was mayor of a small Pittsburgh suburb, that he had lost nearly 150 pounds by adopting a diet that included more vegetables — acknowledged in the days after the stroke in May that he “should have taken my health more seriously.”
But the tone of Tripp’s statement was deemed inappropriate by a group of pro-Fetterman physicians who earlier spoke out against Oz at an event organized by Fetterman’s campaign.
“No real doctor, or any decent human being, to be honest, would ever mock a stroke victim who is recovering from that stroke in the way that Dr. Oz is mocking John Fetterman,” Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, the Democratic chair of the board of commissioners in Montgomery County, said in a statement provided on Tuesday by a Fetterman spokeswoman.
The Oz campaign doubled down, however, telling ABC News in a statement late Tuesday: “Nice try. Dr. Oz has been urging people to eat more veggies for years. That’s not ridicule. It’s good health advice. We’re only trying to help.”
The latest salvo — in a race in a battleground state that could tip control of Congress — represents a departure from Oz’s other lines of attack since Fetterman’s stroke, which have involved largely dancing around it by jeering at Fetterman for his absence from the trail without referencing what sidelined him.
Oz had struck an even more sympathetic tone immediately after Fetterman announced his stroke. He tweeted then: “I am thankful that you received care so quickly. My whole family is praying for your speedy recovery.”
“I think he just had it,” Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer and a co-chair of Oz’s campaign, told ABC News on Tuesday night. “I think he just got tired. He’s probably tired of hearing about veggies,” she said, referring to the Fetterman team’s repeated swipes over a video showing Oz shopping for vegetables to make crudités and criticizing Democrats for grocery prices.
The volley of statements threatened to overshadow Fetterman’s separate appearance on Tuesday afternoon in Pittsburgh to tout a key labor endorsement — only his second public campaign stop since his stroke. With many eyes still on his health, he spoke for roughly four-and-a-half minutes and exhibited patterns similar to those he showed at a rally in Erie earlier this month, speaking often in choppy sentences. (He told a newspaper last month that he was working with a speech therapist as he recovered.)
Amid now-routine jokes about the “crudités” video and Oz’s residential history outside of Pennsylvania, Fetterman also pledged to “stand with the union way of life” before exiting the venue without answering a group of reporters who flanked him as he walked.
Among those ignored questions was whether Fetterman would agree to debate Oz this fall, an issue Oz has hammered in recent days as Fetterman has remained largely mum about his plans to share a stage with his opponent.
“We’ve said we’re open to debating Oz,” Joe Calvello, a spokesman, said in response to a question that a reporter posed to Fetterman.
Oz’s campaign says he has agreed to five debates, including one on Sep. 6. Fetterman’s campaign says it refuses to set a schedule on Oz’s terms.
But according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, the campaign has yet to respond to an invitation emailed nearly a month ago to both campaigns by a politics editor at KDKA, a TV station in Pittsburgh planning the Sep. 6 debate.
Oz has accepted the invitation, the station’s news director told the Post-Gazette.
Asked by ABC News to respond to that report, a Fetterman spokesperson sent a statement from Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to the campaign, who called Oz’s focus on debates “an obvious attempt to change the subject during yet another bad week for Dr. Oz.”
(WASHINGTON) — As another deadline nears on the restart of payments for America’s $1.7 trillion in federal student loans, President Joe Biden is poised to decide whether to cancel debt for a subset of Americans and continue to keep a pandemic-era pause on the repayments — a sweeping move he has openly weighed in some form or another since his time as a candidate.
Without action, numerous Americans will — for the first time in two years — have to start paying their student loans on Sept. 1.
But multiple people familiar with White House policy discussions told ABC News that the loan pause, first put in place under President Donald Trump during the disruptions of COVID-19’s onset, is expected to be extended. Talks about debt cancellation, which were still underway Tuesday, have so far coalesced around forgiving approximately $10,000 for people who make less than $125,000 a year — though details are still being worked out.
An announcement on the federal student loans could come as early as Wednesday, sources familiar with the plan said.
In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona told ABC News that the much-anticipated decision on loan forgiveness would come “soon” but was vague on details.
“We recognize it’s an important issue for many families. And we want to make sure that they get the information directly from the president,” Cardona said.
The White House did not confirm any further details, saying only that the president would have more to say on this before Aug. 31.
“As a reminder, no one with a federally-held loan has had to pay a single dime in student loans since President Biden took office, and this Administration has already canceled about $32 billion in debt for more than 1.6 million Americans — more than any Administration in history,” White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan said, referring to debt relief for people who went to fraudulent universities and a restructured program to forgive debt for people who work in public service for 10 years.
But more specific details on how much money will be forgiven and for who are in high demand for the more than 45 million Americans who still have federal student loan debt.
One-third of federal loan borrowers have less than $10,000, meaning they could see their debts completely wiped out should this policy come to fruition. Another 20% of borrowers, around nine million people, would have their debt at least slashed in half.
Such a major cancelation may seem like a big step for Biden to take without Congress, but legal and policy experts say it’s clearer: The move would be well within the president’s authority — it just hasn’t been wielded before because of the political implications.
“The president has some pretty broad authority under the Higher Education Act,” said John Brooks, a law professor at Fordham University who focuses on federal fiscal policy.
“A lot depends on the size of the cancellation. The smaller the amount of cancellation, the easier the question is,” Brooks said. “Wiping out all student debt with a single stroke might be tougher, but the president through the secretary of education does have the power to adjust the amount of loan principle that any borrower has.”
Still, Biden could get taken to court — possibly by loan servicing agencies who would lose revenue or by members of Congress who may believe Biden is spending money in a way that hasn’t been appropriated by legislators.
Outside experts also wonder how long the processes would take to cancel student loans once a policy is announced — and how complicated it would be for borrowers to work their way through it, which are details that have yet to be released.
Some fear that people might fall through the cracks if applications to cancel debt become too labor-intensive because of the prospective income cap.
“The White House is about to ask the Education Department to do something that is extraordinarily difficult, and that is going to have the effect of denying debt relief to low-income folks, economically vulnerable folks, who have the hardest time navigating these complicated paperwork processes,” Mike Pierce, executive director and co-founder of the Student Borrower Protection Center, a think-tank that advocates for universal debt cancellation, told ABC News in an interview.
Pierce and other supporters for more progressive debt cancellation, including the NAACP, said the smoothest path would include full and universal cancellation for everyone.
“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem. And tragically, we’ve experienced this so many times before,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement Tuesday, reacting to the details of the potential policy announcement.
“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people – especially Black women – behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020,” Johnson said.
But for many borrowers and advocates for canceling student debt — particularly the nearly half of people with federal student loans who would see their debt extinguished or cut significantly — Biden’s policy would still be cause for major celebration and be seen as a start to reforming the college and university system, where rising costs have become a major area of focus.
For Michigan teacher Nick Fuller, a possible Biden announcement on student loans could come just before the financial crunch of winter, when his heating bills skyrocket.
Though Fuller worked hard his first few years out of school to pay down his school debt, and then had his loan frozen for much of the pandemic, he’s concerned that restarting payments on top of monthly living costs could put him over the edge.
“I think things will get really tight in the winter because my utility bills are higher,” Fuller told ABC News. “I mean for January and February — the highs are zero and the lows are -20 [degrees] for almost two months.”
The frozen temperatures might sting a little bit less if Biden forgives $10,000 of Fuller’s remaining student loan bills, he said.
“It’s about two-thirds of the debt that I have left,” he said.
That would make payments “a lot more affordable and a lot more manageable in my situation,” he said.
Easing the student debt crisis — which is also how Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos described the issue in 2018 — could also aid a crippling teacher shortage that has caused thousands of staff vacancies at the start of the latest school year, something Fuller has seen himself.
Pinched salaries and rising inflation have had many teachers on edge with the loan forgiveness deadline approaching.
And because Black students are among the fastest growing group of people taking on debt, advocates argue that canceling some student loans could also begin to address racial inequities.
Shareefah Mason, the dean of Educator Certification at Dallas College, feels this impact firsthand as a Black woman with student debt. She leads the apprenticeship component of a program that pairs students with residency partners to ensure they earn while they learn, effectively reducing education debt for aspiring teachers.
“I bear the weight of $70,000 in student loans,” Mason told ABC News. “The data shows that student loan debt exponentially impacts and disproportionately impacts Black women.”
The average amount of student debt accrued by Black women is more than any other group at $38,800, according to Education Trust, a nonprofit focused on education reform.
But Mason’s program, the very first full-time paid teacher apprenticeship in the state of Texas, allows students to earn one of the cheapest bachelor’s degrees in the state, Mason said.
The goal, she said, is to aid future educators in breaking the generational barriers that she has faced as a Black woman.
Mason said “they will not have to worry about student loan debt,” which could open more doors for minority communities that have historically lacked the means to access higher education.
“My students will be able to earn, as a first year teacher in the city of Dallas, upwards of $60,000,” Mason said.
For the nation’s most impacted borrowers, Mason said, “there needs to be a space created for them to make enough money to pay their student loans without having to sacrifice their ability to create generational wealth for their families.”
