James.galbraith

The federal judge in Florida presiding over the classified documents prosecution of former President Donald Trump has canceled the May 20 trial date, postponing it indefinitely.

The order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon had been expected in light of still-unresolved issues in the case and because Trump is currently on trial in a separate case in Manhattan charging him in connection with hush money payments during the 2016 presidential election. The New York case involves several of the same lawyers representing him in the federal case in Florida.

Cannon said in a five-page order Tuesday that it would be “imprudent” to finalize a new trial date now, casting further doubt on federal prosecutors' ability to bring Trump to trial before the November presidential election.

Trump faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of illegally hoarding at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida classified documents that he took with him after he left the White House in 2021, and then obstructing the FBI's efforts to get them back. He has pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing.

Trump faces four criminal cases as he seeks to reclaim the White House, but outside of the New York prosecution, it's not clear that any of the other three will reach trial before the election.

The Supreme Court is weighing Trump’s arguments that he is immune from federal prosecution in a separate case from special counsel Jack Smith charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia have also brought a separate case related to election subversion, though it's not clear when that might reach trial.

Campaign Action

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Disappointed with myself that I haven't don't a creationism joke in years. Six years is like 0.1 percent of the past.

Today's News:

AI is supposed to help militaries make precise strikes. Is that the case in Gaza?

Israel’s war with Hamas, in response to the attacks of October 7, 2023, has led to more fatalities than in any previous Israeli war, with at least 34,000 Palestinians killed as of May 7, 2024. In Israel’s 2014 war in Gaza, just over 1,400 were killed. One factor in that difference is the use of artificial intelligence.

Israel’s incorporation of AI in warfare has been public for years through both defensive and offensive weapons. But in this war, AI is being deployed differently: It’s generating bombing targets. The promise of AI in a military context is to enhance strike precision and accuracy, but over the past few months Israeli outlets +972 magazine and Local Call have revealed that the multiple AI systems that help the IDF select targets in Gaza have contributed to the highest number of Palestinian civilian deaths and injuries ever.

In our video, we interview multiple experts to understand how two specific systems, Gospel and Lavender, operate, and we explore the broader implications of current and future AI use in warfare.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s new defense of her terrifying memoir—the one in which she shot her own puppy and threatened to kill Joe Biden’s German shepherd—seems to be that it was the ghostwriter what did it.

It’s not just these stories of malevolence toward man’s best friend that have gotten Noem in trouble. It turns out she also claims to have made North Korea’s dictator come to heel like a trained dog. Needless to say, Noem never met Kim Jong Un—there’s a reason why they call it the hermit kingdom. So how did this passage make it into her biography?

“It was brought to our attention that the upcoming book ‘No Going Back’ has two small errors. This has been communicated to the ghostwriter and editor,” said a Noem spokesperson somehow named Ian Fury earlier this week.

Now, Noem’s book doesn’t credit a ghostwriter on the cover, which rates her even lower in the honesty department than … Donald Trump, who at least acknowledged his amanuensis on the front of the “Art of the Deal.”

Still, fine, we’ll take her at her word that she didn’t really write her own tome. But is she also claiming she didn’t read it either? How else could her tall tales—which also include an apparently made-up story about canceling a meeting with French President Emanuel Macron, tres désolée—have been “brought to our attention” only now, for the first time?

In fairness, it would be pretty easy to believe that she hadn’t actually read her book, wouldn’t you say? There’s just, as Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas pointed out, one teeny, eensy, very small, micro-problem:

You can even hear Noem say it herself, complete with a little twangy Western theme music, right at the very start:

Hachette Audio presents, “No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” written and read by me, Kristi Noem.

Campaign Action

Shell sold millions of carbon credits tied to CO2 removal that never took place [non-paywalled link] to Canada's largest oil sands companies, raising new doubts about a technology seen as crucial to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. FT: As part of a subsidy scheme to boost the industry, the Alberta provincial government allowed Shell to register and sell carbon credits equivalent to twice the volume of emissions avoided by its Quest carbon capture facility between 2015 and 2021, the province's registry shows. The subsidy was reduced and then ended in 2022. As a result of the scheme, Shell was able to register 5.7mn credits that had no equivalent CO2 reductions, selling these to top oil sands producers and some of its own subsidiaries. Credits are typically equivalent to one tonne of CO2. Some of the largest buyers of the credits were Chevron, Canadian Natural Resources, ConocoPhillips, Imperial Oil and Suncor Energy. Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, criticised these "phantom credits." Stewart added: "Selling emissions credits for reductions that never happened ... literally makes climate change worse." Shell said carbon capture played "an important role in helping to decarbonise industry and sectors where emissions cannot be avoided" and that realising its potential "requires creating market incentives now." Alberta's environment ministry said the crediting support scheme had not resulted in "additional emissions" by industrial polluters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
10 points to anyone who gets a paper published containing the term sack-blast.

Today's News:

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

PlayStation has reversed course on the Helldivers 2 PSN account requirement, walking back the unpopular policy after a weekend long backlash that included tens of thousands of negative reviews, some of which spread to Sony's other Steam games. From a report: "Helldivers fans -- we've heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward," PlayStation wrote on its official account. "We're still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we'll keep you updated on future plans." PlayStation's decision means that Helldivers 2 players on Steam won't have to link a PSN account in order to play. The unpopular policy, which would have seen new players confronted with a mandatory login beginning this week, resulted in Helldivers 2 being delisted in around 177 countries.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read 19 remaining paragraphs | Comments

The justices are quietly quitting their day jobs as judges, even as they become more and more political.

Young John Roberts was a funny guy.

“The generally accepted notion that the court can only hear roughly 150 cases each term,” the future chief justice wrote while he was an early-career lawyer working in the Reagan White House, “gives the same sense of reassurance as the adjournment of the court in July, when we know that the Constitution is safe for the summer.”

Roberts, of course, wrote this at a time when Republicans could not rely on the federal judiciary to advance its policy goals — something that Roberts has done much to change in his current job. The justices are in the middle of an unusually political term, fraught with cases that tweak many of America’s most bitter divides on issues like guns or abortion, and that seek to fundamentally restructure who wields power in the United States.

That includes two cases — one already decided, the other still pending — which seem engineered to shield Donald Trump from any meaningful consequences from his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The coming weeks will see decisions in two cases that are likely to shift an extraordinary amount of policymaking authority away from an elected president and toward an unelected judiciary.

Yet, while the justices seem eager to be the final word on America’s most intractable political divides, they’ve increasingly stopped doing the traditional work of judges — resolving often technical, boring legal disputes that arise between litigants whose names will never be mentioned on cable news.

The Supreme Court used to do this work. But it avoids it more and more now. Indeed, one striking thing about Roberts’s Reagan-era quip about the Court’s docket is that he describes a Court that “can only hear roughly 150 cases each term.” Now, the Court is hearing barely more than 60.

Consider this chart, which was produced by Adam Feldman, a lawyer and political scientist who publishes empirical work on the Supreme Court. Although slightly dated (it ends with the Court’s 2016–17 term), the chart shows the total number of cases that the Court handed down in each of its annual terms on its merits docket — the cases that typically receive full briefing and oral argument before the justices:

Adam Feldman/Empirical SCOTUS

Feldman’s data shows a steady decline in the Supreme Court’s workload since the 1960s. By the mid-2010s, the Court was deciding fewer cases than it had since the Civil War and Reconstruction.

And this trend is continuing. In the Court’s 2013 term, it decided 79 cases on its merits docket. This term, assuming that none of the Court’s pending cases are dismissed, it will only hand down 61 decisions.

Because the size of the Court’s docket has been in steady decline for many decades, there’s been a great deal of scholarship examining why this decline is happening. The striking thing, however, is that the size of the Court’s docket continues to shrink, even after many of the most likely explanations fade into the past.

Many scholars, for example, point to the Supreme Court Case Selections Act of 1988, a federal law that gave the justices more ability to turn away cases they don’t want to hear, as a significant driver of the Court’s reduced caseload. Yet, while a 1988 law can certainly explain why the Court is hearing fewer cases today than it did in the early 1980s, it does little to explain why the Court heard about 23 percent fewer cases in its 2023 term than it did in its 2013 term.

It is unlikely that there’s a single explanation for the Court’s shrinking docket. Scholars and other legal experts have all proposed numerous overlapping explanations for the reduced caseload.

One thing is clear, however. The overall decline in the Court’s docket does not appear to be matched by a decline in the number of political cases heard by the justices. That is, while the justices are hearing fewer total cases than they used to, they are avoiding the kind of technical legal disputes that rarely garner headlines — all while vacuuming up more power to decide the kind of political disputes that divide Democrats from Republicans.

The many explanations for the Court’s diminished docket

Until the late 19th century, the justices had very little control over their docket. Litigants who lost in a lower court typically could bring their case to the Supreme Court whether the justices wanted to hear that case or not. This changed in 1891, when Congress enacted legislation creating mid-level courts that would hear most federal appeals and gave the Court discretion to turn away at least some cases.

Two subsequent laws, enacted in 1925 and 1988, further reduced the Court’s mandatory jurisdiction. The justices now have the freedom to turn away nearly all of the cases that are brought to their attention. Today, in the overwhelming majority of cases, four justices must agree to hear the case or the lower court’s decision stands.

Beyond this 1988 law, an internal change in the Court’s process for deciding which cases to hear may contribute to its reduced caseload.

In a typical year, the Court receives thousands of petitions — known as petitions for a “writ of certiorari” — asking it to hear a particular case. Prior to the 1970s, at least one law clerk in each of the nine justices’ chambers would typically review each of these petitions and advise their justice on whether the petition should be granted. After Justice Lewis Powell joined the Court in 1972, he decided that this process was needlessly inefficient, and urged his colleagues to pool their chambers’ resources.

The result was the “cert pool.” Under this process, petitions asking the Court to hear a case would be randomly assigned to just one clerk among all the justices who participate in the pool. These justices would all rely on a memo drafted by that one law clerk to advise them on whether to hear the case. Initially, five justices joined the pool, though that number has fluctuated, and it now includes every member of the Court except for Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Several court-watchers have blamed this process for the Court’s reduced docket. As Ken Starr, the former federal judge and US solicitor general best known for investigating President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, wrote in a 2006 essay, “this efficiency-driven device has been inadequately studied, but what is commonly understood is that the prevailing culture within the pool is to ‘just say no.’”

That is, law clerks are reluctant to recommend that the Court hear a case because they don’t want to be embarrassed if the case turns out to be a dud. And with so many justices participating in the pool, many justices’ decisions will be influenced by a single timid clerk.

Yet, while policy changes like the 1988 law and the implementation of the cert pool might explain why the Court hears fewer cases now than it did in the 1970s, they cannot explain why the size of the Court’s merits docket continues to decline to this day. These are, by now, well-entrenched, decades-old reforms. Whatever impact they might have had in the past is now baked into the Court’s year-to-year work.

Other scholars point to changes in the Court’s personnel to explain the shrinking docket. In a 2010 essay, David Stras, a former law professor who Trump later put on the federal bench, argued that, in the early 1990s, three justices who voted to hear a relatively large volume of cases were replaced by justices who wanted the Court to hear fewer cases.

The most dramatic shift was the replacement of Justice Byron White, who believed that the Supreme Court had an obligation to resolve disagreements among lower courts very quickly, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. According to Stras, White voted to hear a case an average of 215.6 times per Term between 1986 and 1992. When Ginsburg joined the Court, by contrast, she voted to hear only 63 cases during the 1993–94 term, “or 29.2% as often as her predecessor.”

Yet, again, while these personnel changes might explain why the Court’s docket shrunk in the mid-to-late 1990s, they do not explain why the trend continues nearly four years after Ginsburg’s death.

In a 2012 essay, scholars Ryan Owens and David Simon offer another explanation for the diminished docket. For much of the post-1960s period when the Court’s docket steadily declined, the justices were ideologically divided. As a result, any individual justice would “be less sure of outcomes and will anticipate more dissents and internal strife” if they agree to hear many cases. Owens and Simon argued that “such a Court will decide fewer cases” because justices will be reluctant to hear a particular dispute if they cannot predict how their colleagues will view the case.

This thesis made a lot of sense in 2012, when the Court was divided 5-4 between conservatives and liberals, and when the balance of power had long been held by “swing” justices like Powell or Justices Sandra Day O’Connor or Anthony Kennedy, who were relatively moderate conservatives who frequently made common cause with the Court’s more liberal bloc.

But the Court in 2024 is vastly different from the one that existed a dozen years ago. Now, Republicans enjoy a 6-3 supermajority on the Court, and moderate Republicans like O’Connor and Kennedy are an increasingly distant memory. The Court is far more ideologically cohesive than it was in 2012, and yet its docket continues to shrink.

When I asked Owens and Simon if their views have evolved since they published their 2012 paper, Owens pointed to the Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), an LGBTQ rights victory authored by the Trump-appointed Gorsuch, as evidence that there are still “sufficient differences among the conservatives that nothing is guaranteed.”

But even though real divides do exist among the Court’s Republican appointees, the Court certainly has not become less ideologically coherent than it was a dozen years ago. And yet the size of the merits docket continues to shrink.

So a complete explanation for why Court’s caseload has almost relentlessly declined over the course of the last six decades remains elusive — although, as Owens said to me over email, there is probably a good explanation for why the Court is unlikely to reverse course. “A small docket has become the new norm.” he told me. “It’s been so small for so many years now that going back to > 100 would be really odd.”

Inertia is a powerful force, and increasing the size of the docket today would require a critical mass of new justices to break with a well-established status quo.

The increasingly partisan Supreme Court appointments process may explain the Court’s behavior

One area where Owens and I seem to agree is that, while the overall size of the Court’s docket is in decline, the Court continues to hear at least as many politically contentious cases as it did in previous decades. As Owens put it in his email to me, “the Court has decided to hear fewer cases—but a greater percent of cases with national importance.”

Even if the current term, which has been mired in the giant sucking vortex that is Donald Trump, is an outlier, the last several terms have featured an array of highly partisan cases that have fundamentally reworked some of the most contentious areas of US law. Roe v. Wade is gone. So is affirmative action at nearly all universities. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), gun regulations of all kinds are now in jeopardy. The Court keeps inching us closer to a world where religious conservatives can simply ignore anti-discrimination laws.

The Court’s current majority has flooded the zone with decisions remaking the law in areas that the Republican Party cares deeply about. Just one month after Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation gave Republican appointees a supermajority on the Court, for example, the Court handed down one of its most significant religion cases in three decades — giving religious conservatives a broad new right to ignore state laws they object to on religious grounds.

And this decision was only the first in a wave of cases revolutionizing the Court’s approach to religion. As I wrote in a 2022 article, the Supreme Court heard only seven religious liberty cases during the Obama presidency. By contrast, it decided just as many religious liberty cases before Barrett celebrated the second anniversary of her confirmation to the Court.

One possible explanation for why political disputes dominate so much of the Court’s docket, even as the volume of ordinary legal cases diminish more and more with each passing year, is that the process for selecting justices has become far more political — and far more partisan — than it used to be.

When you consider just how much power is wielded by the Supreme Court, it’s astonishing how little thought many US presidents put into their judicial appointments. President Woodrow Wilson, for example, appointed Justice James Clark McReynolds — a lazy, tyrannical jurist that Time magazine once described as a “savagely sarcastic, incredibly reactionary Puritan anti-Semite” — in large part because the president found the future justice, who previously served as attorney general, to be so obnoxious that Wilson promoted McReynolds to get him out of the Cabinet.

Similarly, President Dwight Eisenhower complained in 1958 that appointing Justice William Brennan, a titan of American liberalism who was extraordinarily effective in moving the law to the left, was one of the two biggest mistakes he made as president (the other was appointing Chief Justice Earl Warren, another highly consequential liberal appointee). But the Eisenhower White House did very little to vet Brennan ideologically, and Eisenhower selected him in large part because Brennan was Catholic and Ike wanted to appeal to Catholic voters.

To this day, many Republican judicial operatives still use the battle cry “No More Souters” to describe their approach to Supreme Court nominees, a reference to Justice David Souter, a George H. W. Bush appointee who turned out to be a moderate liberal after he was appointed to the Court.

Since Souter’s appointment, both political parties have grown far more sophisticated at vetting potential nominees to ensure that they won’t stray from their party’s ideological views after their elevation to the bench. On the Republican side, organizations like the Federalist Society begin to vet potential nominees almost as soon as they enter law school. And it's notable that every Republican justice except for Barrett served as a political appointee in a GOP administration, where high-level Republicans could observe their work and probe their ideological views.

The Democratic vetting operation, meanwhile, is more informal but no less successful. None of President Clinton’s, Obama’s, or Biden’s Supreme Court appointments have broken with the Democratic Party’s general approach to judging in the same way that Souter broke with Republicans.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that justices chosen largely because of their political ideology, rather than because of their records as neutral and impartial jurists, appear to be more interested in deciding political questions than they are in resolving legal disputes.

A version of the story appeared in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.

Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

samleecole writes: Utah set up an online form for people to accuse other citizens and public establishments of violating the state's recently-enacted transphobic "bathroom bill." The submission form is being flooded with memes and troll comments, and the auditor also left the submissions database open to the public -- without a password, authentication, or any other protections that would keep anyone from viewing other people's submissions. After 404 Media contacted the auditor's office for comment, they changed the permissions to require authentication. The form link has been posted to Twitter, and people have repeatedly posted screenshots of themselves uploading memes. In the database, those included photos of Barry Wood, characters from Bee Movie, and Shutterstock images of bull testicles. Twitter users have also found a link to the database that the form is connected to, which is hosted on a public Google cloud console bucket that as of Thursday, required no authentication to view. I tested the form, and found that my submission -- a photo of the yelling table cat meme -- appeared instantly in the Google Console bucket. The submission form offers anonymity with the option for the state auditor to contact submitters for more details. I haven't seen names and contact information shared in the database, but comments and image attachments were easily viewable.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 26 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Windows 11's market share dropped in April 2024, falling below 26% after reaching an all-time high of 28.16% in February. According to Statcounter, Windows 11 lost 0.97 points, while Windows 10 gained 0.96 points, crossing the 70% mark for the first time since September 2023. Neowin adds: Some argue that Windows 11 still offers little to no benefits for upgrading, especially in light of Microsoft killing some of the system's unique features, such as Windows Subsystem for Android. Add to that the ever-increasing number of ads, some of which are quite shameless, and you get an operating system that has a hard time winning hearts and minds, and retaining its customers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares that IPv6rs has debuted a new one-click self hosting system: Everyone seemed like they were talking about self hosting, but we didn't understand why it wasn't more prolific. Thus, we conducted a survey to hear reasons. It turned out the two most common reasons were: 1. Lack of an external IP address 2. Too difficult to setup and maintain Our service already solves the first issue. We set out with a self-hostathon to figure out what the blockers were in setting up and running a self-hosted server. ... writes IPv6rs on their blog. We needed to make things easier, so we created Cloud Seeder, a one click installer that instantly launches a fully encapsulated server appliance that is externally reachable. At the time of launching, the current version of Cloud Seeder supports 20+ different appliances - from Mastodon which federates with Meta's Threads to Nextcloud which provides an enterprise-level, self-hosted alternative to the big-name collaboration suites. It also automatically handles updates/maintenance. We hope this will bring a new era to self hosting and, in turn, will bring the decentralized internet forest back. Is the self hosting era making its return?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The best way to interview Donald Trump is to … not interview him.

Unless you’re a particularly ardent supporter of vicious, kindergarten-level lies—such as “I won the election because I was ahead on election night” or “immigrants ate my health care plan”—there’s really no reason to listen to, much less solicit, any of his so-called opinions. But Time magazine did just that.

Since his latest fibs are just fragrant fish heads in a whopping seafood ‘n’ BS paella, it’s important to at least take a taste if we want a full picture of his depravity. Or a sniff. Or, if possible, a six-month-long nap until this is all over and Joe Biden is reelected.

Ah, but there’s no sleeping on Trump and his march to Putin-style autocracy, so we have to stay awake. And—hoo-boy—did he ever just give an eye-opening interview. 

RELATED STORY: 3 ways Trump dodged a ‘yes or no’ question on abortion

In case your time is short and you don’t have 83-minutes to read the raw transcripts, here’s a summary of the interview from Eric Cortellessa, the Time staff writer who took precious minutes out of his day to probe the mind of the crotch grabbing, four-times indicted coup plotter-cum-business fraudster.

What Cortellessa describes are the “outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.”

To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding. He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense.

In addition, notes Cortellessa, Trump would “gut” the U.S. civil service, send the National Guard to U.S. cities “as he sees fit,” close the White House pandemic-preparedness office (because apparently we were more than adequately prepared last time), and “staff his administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

In other words, he wants to be a dictator on Day One … and day two … and day 365 ... and every day after that until God decides to reincarnate him as a severely undernourished infant forcibly taken from his mother at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ah, but reading is believing. With that in mind, here are nine of the most frightening excerpts from Trump’s Time interview. (And in case you’d prefer to skip ahead to the fact check, that’s here.)

1. 

Asked whether he’d override the Posse Comitatus Act, which makes it illegal to use the U.S. military against civilians in order to deport immigrants, Trump said this:

Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren't legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before. They're coming in by the millions. I believe we have 15 million now. And I think you'll have 20 million by the time this ends. And that's bigger than almost every state.

Of course, if anyone should know what a “civilian” is, it’s Bonnie Prince Bone Spurs. As Time noted in its fact check, “a civilian is commonly defined as anyone who is not an active member of the armed forces. Immigration status does not factor into whether someone is a civilian. Any person in the U.S., regardless of their immigration status, may be entitled to many of the same constitutional rights as U.S. citizens.”

Also, not sure why you’d want to deport the very people who’ve helped make our economy the “envy of the world,” as the far-left Wall Street Journal recently described it.

Then again, Trump appears far more interested in empty xenophobic gestures than actually helping the economy grow.

2. 

Trump wants more tariffs, and to this day no one’s been able to dislodge from his head the (extremely) false notion that the cost of tariffs falls on exporters rather than importers. That said, it’s clear he’s been told that tariffs represent an added cost to consumers, because in this interview he attempts to preemptively debunk that fact:

I also don't believe that the costs will go up that much. And a lot of people say, “Oh, that's gonna be a tax on us.” I don't believe that. I think it's a tax on the country that's doing it.

Well, Trump also believes windmills kill whales and exercise is bad for you. (Neither of those things is true, but if Trump is elected again you can expect the NIH to spend millions of taxpayer dollars studying those theories.)

Of course, listening to Trump is bad for the health of your economy. As Mary Amiti, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, wrote in 2020 for the New York Times, “U.S. tariffs continue to be almost entirely borne by U.S. firms and consumers.”

So if you like the pandemic-related inflation we saw after Trump left a flaming bag of fiscal poo on Joe Biden’s doorstep in 2021, you may be in luck. Trump wants to bring it back—and make it permanent—by deporting millions of willing workers and adding unnecessary costs to thousands of consumer goods.

3. 

Of course, if Americans decide to resist mass deportations and/or the White House’s unilateral decision to make everything more expensive, they can expect an emboldened police force to push back. Because Trump wants to give police a lot more leeway to take matters into their own hands:

Police have been—their authority has been taken away. If something happens with them, even if they're doing a very good job, they take away their house, they take away their pension, they take away their, I mean, essentially, they end up losing their families over it. They take away everything. They prosecute people. And we have to give the police back the power and respect that they deserve. Now, there will be some mistakes, and there are certain bad people and that's a terrible thing. But there are far more problems with what's happened now, where police are standing outside of a department store as it’s being robbed and 500 mostly young people are walking out carrying air conditioners and televisions and everything else. And the police would like to do something about it. But they're told to stand down. They said don't do it. And if you do anything about it, if you stop crime, we're going to go after your pension, your home, your family, your wife or your husband. And you know, police are being prosecuted all the time. And we want to give them immunity from prosecution if they're doing their job.

Yes, clearly the problem with police these days is they’re far too accountable. But you know what they say: You can’t run a police state without police. It’s right there in the name! What ever will we do if every police officer who murders a citizen is simply shipped off to jail? It would be anarchy!

By the way, if police are really standing around watching 500 people cart air conditioners and TVs out of department stores, they should probably be fired. And I’m as liberal as they get.

4.

There’s been some really good news on crime lately. Following a spike in violent crime that began under, erm, Trump, crime has dropped precipitously. But this is bad news for Trump, who wants to pretend crime is worse than ever. His solution? Claim the decline isn’t happening. (You may recall he pulled this same nonsense with respect to official unemployment figures while running in 2016—before suddenly becoming a believer in government data the moment he stepped into the White House.)  

Violent crime is going down throughout the country. There was a 6% drop in—

Trump: I don't believe it.

You don’t believe that?

Trump: Yeah, they’re fake numbers.

You think so?

Trump: Well it came out last night. The FBI gave fake numbers.

I didn't see that, but the FBI said that there was a 13% drop in 2023. [Editor's note: This statistic refers specifically to homicides.]

Trump: I don’t believe it. No, it’s a lie. It’s fake news.

Sir, these numbers are collected by state and local police departments across the country. Most of them support you. Are they wrong?

Trump: Yeah. Last night. Well, maybe, maybe not. The FBI fudged the numbers and other people fudged numbers. There is no way that crime went down over the last year. There's no way because you have migrant crime. Are they adding migrant crime? Or do they consider that a different form of crime?

“Do they consider that a different form of crime?” You were president, dude. You don’t know?

Of course, since migrants commit crimes at significantly lower rates than native-born Americans, welcoming more immigrants into the country would only serve to lower crime rates. As it is, we don’t know exactly why crime rates went down under Biden. We just know they did. Maybe the improved economy has made it easier for people to maintain their $2,000-a-month horse paste habits, and so they no longer need to gather 499 of their friends together to steal shit from Big Lots. Or maybe people are just a lot calmer since that big orange head stopped screaming at them from the TV every day.

5.

Of course, just because violent crime is down doesn’t mean Trump can’t ratchet it up a notch or two. Assuming he loses the election … again. 

Mr. President, in our last conversation you said you weren't worried about political violence in connection with the November election. You said, “I think we're going to win and there won't be violence.” What if you don't win, sir?

Trump: Well, I do think we're gonna win. We're way ahead. I don't think they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don't think we're going to have that. I think we're going to win. And if we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election. 

Got that? There will only be violence if Trump loses. Because if he loses, the results will obviously be fake. Dictators always win, after all. Hasn’t America figured that out by now?

6.

Of course, Trump is such a diligent crime fighter, he’d be fine with states monitoring women’s pregnancies to make sure they don’t get abortions. And he still somehow thinks “everyone” wanted to see Roe v. Wade struck down. 

Do you think states should monitor women's pregnancies so they can know if they've gotten an abortion after the ban?

Trump: I think they might do that. Again, you'll have to speak to the individual states. Look, Roe v. Wade was all about bringing it back to the states. And that was a legal, as well as possibly in the hearts of some, in the minds of some, a moral decision. But it was largely a legal decision. Every legal scholar, Democrat, Republican, and other wanted that issue back at the states. You know, Roe v. Wade was always considered very bad law. Very bad. It was a very bad issue from a legal standpoint. People were amazed it lasted as long as it did.

Sheesh. Every time this dingbat sings, a Democratic attack ad gets its wings.

7.

Meanwhile, Trump is promising another big announcement in just ... two weeks! And because he announced the arrival of his announcement during the first part of this two-part interview—and since the two interviews were conducted two weeks apart—for once we get a timely update!

Do you think women should be able to get the abortion pill mifepristone?

Trump: Well, I have an opinion on that, but I'm not going to explain. I'm not gonna say it yet. But I have pretty strong views on that. And I'll be releasing it probably over the next week.

Well, this is a big question, Mr. President, because your allies have called for enforcement of the Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of drugs used for abortions by mail. The Biden Department of Justice has not enforced it. Would your Department of Justice enforce it?

Trump: I will be making a statement on that over the next 14 days.

Two weeks later …

Last time we spoke, you said you had an announcement coming over the next two weeks regarding your policy on the abortion pill mifepristone. You haven't made an announcement yet. Would you like to do so now?

Trump: No, I haven’t. I’ll be doing it over the next week or two. But I don't think it will be shocking, frankly. But I'll be doing it over the next week or two. We’re for helping women, Eric. I am for helping women.

So his answer to “did you formulate the policy that you promised, two weeks ago, to tell us about in two weeks?” was … “I’ll let you know in two weeks.”

Something tells me his answer will arrive six weeks after the heat death of the universe.

8. 

Of course, while President Biden has been careful not to interfere in DOJ decisions, Trump has no such qualms. In fact, he’s outright promised to go after Biden. In this interview, he kinda, sorta, but not really walked that back:

Okay, so sir, you said that you would appoint a real special prosecutor to go after Biden and his family—

Trump: Well, it depends what happens with the Supreme Court. Look, a president should have immunity. That includes Biden. If they've ruled that they don't have immunity, Biden, probably nothing to do with me, he would be prosecuted for 20 different acts, because he's created such. You take a look at not only his criminal acts of taking a lot of money and being a Manchurian Candidate.

In other words, if Toddler Trump doesn’t get immunity for trying to end America and refusing to return top secret government documents, Biden shouldn’t get immunity for all the crimes Trump wants to pretend he committed. And the charges Trump believes Biden will face over all that nothing will “probably” have nothing to do with him.

Very reassuring. It’s clear how much this guy loves liberal democracy and the rule of law—or would, anyway, if he knew what either of those things were.

9. 

Meanwhile, Trump is certain that all the cases against him were orchestrated by a shrewd and calculating Joe Biden, the senile old man who doesn’t know he’s alive. 

His head of the Justice Department, one of the top few people, was put into the DOJ. Fani, Mr. Wade, Fani’s lover, spent hours in Washington with the DOJ working on my case. The DOJ worked with Leticia James on my case. The DOJ worked with deranged Jack Smith. He's a deranged person on my case. No, no, this is all Biden—

In case you’re wondering why nearly that entire excerpt is hyperlinked, well, it’s because it’s all bullshit. And it directs the reader to this fact check:

In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as Special Counsel overseeing the federal investigations into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and Trump’s handling of classified documents after he left office. The announcement came shortly after Trump announced he was running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Special Counsels are appointed to ensure the independence of prosecutors when there is the potential for a conflict between the attorney general, who is a political appointee, and the subject of the investigation.

AND A BONUS

Of course, no rundown of Trumpian madness would be complete without his threats to destroy the post-World War II order that’s preserved decades of peace in Western Europe. But in this excerpt, Trump unwittingly (does he ever do anything anything wittingly?) makes his opponents’ argument for him. Because not only would other NATO countries come to our help if we were invaded, the only time NATO did act to defend one of its member states was when America was attacked. 

Do you want to maintain 80 years of American leadership in defending the West, especially Europe, or do you want to change the architecture of the post-war world that has kept us out of a World War for the last 80 years?

Trump: I want them to pay their bills. Very simple. NATO is fine. See, the problem I have with NATO is, I don't think that NATO would come to our defense if we had a problem.

You don't?

Trump: No, I don't believe that. I know them all. It's a one-way street, even if they paid. I want them to pay. But I believe if we were attacked, NATO wouldn't be there. Many of the countries in NATO would not be there.

Time’s fact check:

Since its adoption in 1949, Article 5 has only been invoked once: immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. The other 18 member nations of NATO launched a number of operations in response, including the deployment of air forces to secure the skies over the U.S. and naval anti-terrorism efforts. NATO members also participated in the ensuing ground war in Afghanistan.

Gee, maybe we owe them money. Nah, because NATO dues aren’t a thing. You’d think someone who was president might know that, huh? You’d think.

RELATED STORY: Trump says states can decide to monitor pregnant women

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link.

Campaign Action

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

It would be hard to find an organization more corrupt and incompetent than the NRA, though a few individuals on a certain court sure come to mind. In January, chief executive Wayne LaPierre ended three decades of control when he resigned ahead of a trial over tapping organization funds to treat himself to yacht trips, African safaris, and regular use of a private jet. In February, that trial ended with LaPierre being ordered to pay back almost $4.4 million. 

In the wake of LaPierre’s resignation, the organization has reportedly descended into infighting. Finding a new leader has proven so difficult that not even Donald Trump Jr., who spent years talking himself up as the NRA’s next leader, is willing to take the job. Or at least, he says he wouldn’t, though no one has actually asked him to step in.

Leadership aside, the NRA now has only a fraction of the funds they had to sling around in past election seasons. They’ve declined from the $50 million they put into races in 2016 to only $11 million in their PAC and SuperPAC combined as of the last filing. Membership is also down by over a million, to around five million, which is half the goal LaPierre set for 2023 a decade ago. 

And that’s not all that’s declined. So have gun sales. So what does that mean for the gun lobby?

GOP candidates routinely place guns right next to God in their campaign material, and Republican Christmas cards feature every family member clutching a ridiculous weapon.

But it appears that Republican members of Congress aren’t putting enough guns in the hands of their adolescent children. According to the FBI, gun sales in the United States have declined for three straight years. The Trace estimates that Americans bought 665,000 fewer guns in 2023 than in 2022. That trend is continuing. Comparing year-over-year data, sales in March of 2024 were down 5% from the same month in 2023. 

There are reasons other than the declining influence of the NRA for that drop in sales. The truth is only about 6% of Americans hunt, and even for them an expensive assault weapon is rarely, if ever, the right tool. While an AR-15-style weapon may be the perfect tool for war, it’s a poor choice for personal defense. 

Buying guns like the trendy AR-15 can be an expensive hobby, especially for those who don’t use them beyond a temporary enthusiasm for the local gun range. A $650 Yeti cooler may at least contribute to a tailgate party, but a $1,000 assault rifle is just an expensive—and dangerous—decoration for the vast number of those who own them. 

In short, not every gun buyer goes on to be the industry's serial-killing dream customer. Many may not be inclined to buy another copy of a weapon they aren’t using, no matter how many guns Massie or Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert have on their Christmas cards.

With the NRA fading, there are other gun lobby groups working to gain more influence. However, none of them seem to have the level of influence, extensive finances, and highly effective lobbyists that the NRA had a few years ago. Those other organizations haven’t spent decades nurturing relationships with both politicians and deep-pocketed donors. The decline of the NRA seems like a genuine moment of weakness in the pro-gun lobby.

There is certainly no shortage of Republican-dominated state legislatures standing by to pass stupid laws. But hopefully, it doesn't matter how tightly Republicans dig in their cold, dead fingers. America may have passed Peak Gun.

But of course that doesn’t mean it’s time to relax about gun control legislation. It means that it’s time to push harder.

RELATED STORY: Tennessee governor thinks schools need more guns to prevent shootings

Campaign Action

The Arizona GOP has tapped state Sen. Jake Hoffman, a prominent Freedom Caucus member of the legislature, for a position with the Republican National Committee. This comes less than a week after Hoffman’s indictment on multiple felony charges for his part in a “fake elector” scheme connected to the 2020 election. 

An Arizona grand jury indicted Hoffman and 17 others for their part in the massive scheme that sent lists of “alternate electors” from seven states to the National Archives after the 2020 election, according to the Arizona Mirror. The plan was to use those fraudulent documents to shift the states’ Electoral College votes from Joe Biden to Donald Trump.

The Arizona GOP did not respond to a CNN inquiry about why they chose one of two state senators charged in this scheme to represent the party at the national level. Maybe it’s because of Hoffman’s important efforts on behalf of the Arizona Freedom Caucus, like trying to keep Satan off of public property.

Whatever the reason, the winner here is the MAGA faction of election deniers. Along with a relentless campaign to harass Republicans who dared to certify the actual results of the 2020 election, the extremist election deniers have been diligently working to take control of Arizona’s GOP apparatus since 2020. While the state’s voters have continued to reject many of these extremists, the national GOP leaders seem to have resigned themselves to supporting election deniers.

Hoffman and his co conspirators have been under fire since the forged documents appeared. The grand jury indictment targeting Hoffman also included fellow Arizona Freedom Caucus member and state sen. Anthony Kern, as well as former Arizona Republican Party Executive Director Greg Safsten.

Only the best people.

Here's one way to avoid dealing with election results you don't like: just wipe them from the record books. It's not Orwell—it's Arizona, and we're talking all about it on this week's episode of "The Downballot." This fall, voters have the chance to deny new terms to two conservative Supreme Court justices, but a Republican amendment would retroactively declare those elections null and void—and all but eliminate the system Arizona has used to evaluate judges for 50 years. We're going to guess voters won't like this one bit … if it even makes it to the ballot in the first place.

Campaign Action

How corporate greed plays a role in making bird flu outbreaks — and egg prices — worse.

Egg prices are rising again. The culprit, again: bird flu.

At least, that’s the surface-level reason. In the current wave, according to the CDC, the H5N1 bird flu has been found in over 90 million poultry birds across almost every state since 2022, and has even spread to dairy cattle, with over 30 herds in nine states dealing with an outbreak at the time of this writing.

The last time bird flu struck US farms, in early 2022, egg prices more than doubled during the year, reaching a peak of $4.82 for a dozen in January 2023. During the bird flu outbreak in 2014 to 2015, egg prices also briefly soared.

While prices now are still nowhere near the peak they reached in January 2023, they’ve been creeping up again since last August, when a dozen large eggs cost $2.04. As of March, we’re bumping up against the $3 mark, which is a nearly 47 percent increase. It’s also a huge increase from the price we were used to a few years ago: In early 2020, a dozen eggs were just $1.46 on average.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu is highly contagious and obviously poses a big risk to hens. But the fact that bird flu outbreaks keep battering our food system points to a deeper problem: an agriculture industry that has become brittle thanks to intense market concentration.

The egg market is dominated by some major players

The egg industry, like much of the agricultural sector, is commanded by a few heavyweights — the biggest, Cal-Maine Foods, controls 20 percent of the market — that leave little slack in the system to absorb and isolate shocks like disease.

Hundreds of thousands of animals are packed tightly together on a single farm, as my colleague Marina Bolotnikova has explained, where disease can spread like wildfire. According to the government and corporate accountability group Food & Water Watch, three-quarters of the country’s hundreds of millions of egg-laying hens are crammed into just 347 factory farms.

The system also uses genetically similar animals that farms believe will maximize egg production — but that lack of genetic diversity means animal populations are less resistant to disease.

When a hen gets infected, stopping the spread is an ugly, cruel business; since 2022 it has led to the killing of 85 million poultry birds. For the consumer, it often means paying a lot more than usual for a carton of eggs.

Preventing any outbreaks of disease from ever happening isn’t realistic, but the model of modern industrial farming is making outbreaks more disruptive.

And it’s not just these disruptions driving price spikes. Egg producers also appear to be taking advantage of these moments and hiking prices beyond what they’d need to maintain their old profit margins.

“It is absolutely a story of corporate profiteering,” says Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch.

Cal-Maine’s net profit in 2023 was about $758 million — 471 percent higher than the year prior, according to its annual financial report. Most of this fortune was made through hoisting up prices; the number of eggs sold, measured in dozens, rose only 5.9 percent.

Last year, several food conglomerates, including Kraft and General Mills, were awarded almost $18 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that egg producers Cal-Maine and Rose Acre Farms had constrained the supply of eggs in the mid- to late 2000s, artificially bumping prices. A farmer advocacy group last year called on the FTC to look into whether top egg producers were price gouging consumers.

Are we doomed to semi-regular price surges for eggs?

Our food system didn’t become so consolidated — and fragile — by accident. We got here because of three big reasons, Wolf says: by not enforcing environmental laws, by not enforcing antitrust laws, and by giving away “tons of money” to the agriculture industry.

During the New Deal era, the federal government put in place policies that would help manage food supply and protect both farmers and consumers from sharp deviations in what the former earned and the latter paid. Under Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz in the 1970s, though, those policies started getting chipped away; Butz’s famous motto was for farmers to “get big or get out.” The spread of giant factory farms is in part a product of this about-face in managing supply.

Because our food system is so concentrated and intermingled, it also means any single supply chain hiccup — whether due to disease, wars, or any other reason — can have ripple effects on others, affecting prices in a vast number of essential consumer goods and services. “When we have things like E. coli outbreaks, it’s hard to know where the problem lies because the way that we process and manufacture is so hyper-industrialized that you then have a problem with millions of pounds of food,” says Wolf.

Thankfully, the Biden administration has been making some strides in loosening up food industry consolidation, often by shoring up enforcement of long-existing antitrust laws. But there’s still more we could do. There are bills that have been introduced to Congress, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Price Gouging Prevention Act, that would give the FTC the authority to first define what counts as price gouging and then crack down on companies that raise prices excessively.

The cycle of food chain snags and higher prices doesn’t have to keep repeating.

“We are maximizing profit truly over everything else — over the welfare of the animals, over the rights and wages of people who work in the food system, for even consumers who are at the grocery store,” Wolf says. “None of this is inevitable — we shouldn’t have to be here.”

This story appeared originally in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard Donald Trump’s immunity claim in his federal criminal trial for trying to overturn the 2020 election Thursday, and the conservative majority is likely going to give Donald Trump what he wants: a delay of the trial until after the election. If Trump wins again, the conservatives have essentially signaled that they would be open to blanket immunity for him against any future criminal charges. 

 The fact that Supreme Court justices are suggesting that the president is above the law proves why the court must be reformed.

Four of the justices—Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch—even went so far as to suggest that Prosecutor Jack Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional, and they reinforced Trump’s argument that the president is immune.

Kavanaugh even told Michael Dreeben, a lawyer from Smith’s office, that it’s a “serious constitutional question whether a criminal statute can apply to the president’s criminal acts.”

That would be the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card for the chief executive, rubber stamped by the highest court of the land.

It’s worth remembering that Thomas refused to recuse himself from this—and most of the Trump election interference cases—despite the fact that his wife Ginni Thomas was deeply involved in Trump’s coup attempt. When she testified to the Jan. 6 special congressional committee, she maintained that the election was stolen. 

His failure to recuse himself comes after a new ethics code has supposedly been enforced, saying that “a Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.”

So much for that suggestion from Chief Justice John Roberts. His code has no teeth, which is yet another reason why ethics reform—and indeed court reform and expansion—is essential. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted a prescient broadside against the court before arguments began, writing “SCOTUS speeds up trials when it wants—but not in this case.” 

By all accounts, the court’s conservative majority is doing everything in its power to delay this one.

If the Senate retains the majority in 2025, Schumer is going to have to follow up on that: the Supreme Court is going to have to be reformed and expanded. Nothing less than the survival of this democracy demands it.

RELATED STORIES:

Ginni Thomas wanted to overturn the election. About Clarence Thomas' Jan. 6 documents dissent ...

Texts between Ginni Thomas, Meadows reveal an extraordinary effort to destroy democracy

Pressure grows for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from Trump cases

Campaign Action

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Few issues have vexed the Biden administration like student loan forgiveness. Given that more than 40 million Americans owe money on their student loans, for a total of $1.6 trillion, few issues have such a large impact on so many.

Democrats and progressives have long prioritized this matter, and President Joe Biden promised to fight for significant debt relief before taking office. Even though his ambitious proposal to use his executive authority to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt was ultimately blocked by the Supreme Court, this White House has nontheless made significant progress with targeted relief, and has taken another shot at an across-the-board relief proposal. Nevertheless, many middle- and lower-income borrowers in particular continue to suffer under the burden of student debt, ensuring that this issue will remain front of mind for voters come November.

RELATED STORY: Biden administration announces new round of student loan cancellation

First, let’s talk about the actual people who have borrowed this money. Members of every generation of Americans are carrying significant student loan debt, as this graphic indicates.

Female borrowers on average owe about $2,000 more than male borrowers—this gap exists right from the moment people earn their degrees, and only gets worse thanks to the gender-based inequities in pay women face. The racial gap is even starker, with the average Black college graduate carrying approximately $25,000 more debt than their white college grad counterparts. Overall, Black borrowers have to make higher average monthly loan payments.

Furthermore, more Black and Latino borrowers are having trouble making those payments, especially as 25 million borrowers owe more than they originally borrowed, including many who have made years of payments, due to the interest that accrues. Forgiving student loan debt will help Americans of every background—including the many who are still stuck making payments after they reach retirement—while also helping to close the racial wealth gap.

As for the Biden-Harris record on student loan debt, the story starts with Capitol Hill, where progressives proposed legislation in the 117th Congress that did not pass. Democrats had narrow majorities in the House and Senate, but that doesn’t mean those were progressive majorities. The question then became: What action could the White House take to forgive student loans through executive authority?

After a long period of internal debate on that question, on Aug. 24, 2022, the White House announced its wide-reaching plan. Per the Associated Press: This plan aimed to erase “$10,000 in student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 or households with less than $250,000 in income. Pell Grant recipients, who typically demonstrate more financial need, would have had an additional $10,000 in debt forgiven.” 

That would have been a lot of money for a lot of people. Please note that I said “would have.” It didn’t go into effect because 10 months later, the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court voted to strike the Biden plan down as unconstitutional. So, while it’s technically true that Biden failed to deliver on his promise to provide across-the-board relief to middle- and lower-income borrowers, it’s more accurate to say that conservatives in the legislative and judicial branches prevented him from doing so.

Despite this setback, the Biden-Harris administration has, through a number of targeted cancellations of loans, forgiven a total of $153 billion in student debt, providing relief for 4.3 million Americans to the tune of approximately $35,581 per borrower. Not exactly chump change. The president explained the importance of these steps on Feb. 21.

“It’s good for the economy as a whole,” Biden said. “By freeing millions of Americans from the crushing debt of student loan programs, it means they can finally get on with their lives.”

In his in-depth look at student loan debt (which I highly recommend), John Oliver gives the White House its due for what it has accomplished:

More loan forgiveness will roll out throughout this year. This relief has come through a number of targeted measures. Approximately 40% came through changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program—which was so dysfunctional that, at its worst, it denied forgiveness to almost 99% of applicants, prompting the American Federation of Teachers to sue, who else, Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Biden’s changes led to help for almost 800,000 borrowers, who had an average of about $71,500 forgiven per person. 

The rest of the relief is aimed at lower-income borrowers, those who attended “shady colleges that scammed hundreds of thousands of students,” and folks who are on permanent disability. Plus, the administration has just released new executive action that, it hopes, will pass Supreme Court muster this time because it relies on different legislation for its authority than the plan the court kicked to the curb last year. This new proposal, as per the administration, would:

1. Cancel runaway interest for millions of borrowers.

2. Automatically cancel debt for borrowers eligible for loan forgiveness under Saving on A Valuable Education, PSLF, closed school discharge, or other forgiveness programs but not enrolled.

3. Cancel student debt for borrowers who entered repayment over 20 years ago.

4. Cancel student debt for borrowers who enrolled in low-financial-value programs.

5. Cancel student debt for borrowers experiencing hardship paying back their loans.

If allowed to go into effect, the plan would bring the total number of people whose debt was reduced or canceled by this White House to 30 million. This is a record Democrats can run on, especially if they contrast what Biden has done on student loan forgiveness to what DeVos did under Trump, which basically amounted to seeing just how few applications for relief she could grant, regerdless of whether the applicant actually qualified based on existing law. 

Nevertheless, Biden, Harris, and the rest of Team Blue are going to have to make the case to voters who, in some cases at least, haven’t seen the kind of help they expected, and perhaps aren’t aware of the full extent of the debt relief that has been enacted. There appears to be no storyline the supposedly liberal mainstream media loves more than one in which people who are “supposed” to support Biden—such as young progressive voters or voters of color—are considering turning away from him, even if the number who do so turns out to be quite small in the end. 

Along those lines, The New York Times interviewed activist and Debt Collective press secretary Braxton Brewington, who acknowledged the positive but remained critical and demanded more. The measures Biden has taken to cancel some debt were, in his words, “a reminder that despite the Supreme Court ruling, there are powers at the Biden administration’s disposal and they use them—but sparingly.” He added that “At this point, we’re getting closer to saying that they’ve made a dent in the portfolio, but at this scale, and at this rate, we’re still going to have a student debt crisis.” 

In another Times interview a few weeks later, Brewington noted that, on this issue, the current administration had been “better than any other.” However, he’s still not convinced the Biden-Harris campaign will find much traction on student debt relief. “I get they want to talk about the work they’ve done on student debt, and I think they’re trying to have some nuance, but to a degree, it’s just not going to land with so many people. Especially when you’re saying ‘promises kept.’ I mean, good gracious.” 

Another activist, Ashley Pizzuti—who is working with the White House on student debt—described in an interview with The New York Times the hurdles the president will face with some voters.

“There’s a lot of really upset people rightfully because they were told they were going to get this forgiveness and it was taken back,” she said. “And a lot of people blame Biden for that.”

Speaking of blame, ABC News interviewed 30-year-old Liam Gude, who called Biden’s proposals “an insult” and would not commit to voting for the president, even though he’s “much better than Trump.” Somewhat more sympathetic to Biden was Ashley Robinson, age 33, who owes $50,000 in student loans. She thought she’d get aid from his 2022 plan, and expressed disappointment over how it played out.

“In terms of a massive, broken promise? Yeah, I think that definitely negatively impacts how I feel toward him,” Robinson said. Despite these feelings, she said, "I'm not enthusiastic about voting, but voting is something that's important to me. So I continue to participate." 

Going further, Robinson acknowledged the obstacles Biden faced in enacting more sweeping debt relief, adding that she knows it wasn’t “going to be a cakewalk for anyone.” She concluded that the administration is “just simply not as progressive as I've needed it to be. I genuinely believe that this is Biden's best, but I don't believe that Biden's best is sufficient." 

But ABC did find a glimmer of hope. They spoke to Michael Stewart, who was equally well-informed about the issue and how things unfolded in Congress and the Supreme Court. In 2020, he supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries, but then backed Biden in the general election, about whom he now says, “I definitely was more excited for him four years ago but that’s because of the alternative.”

But Stewart doesn’t blame the president, saying, “I really fault him 0%. He did all he could.” 

Similarly positive was the national director of the NAACP Youth and College Division, Wisdom Cole, who told the NYT that students loans were “absolutely still an issue” and shared the NAACP is hoping to recruit 300,000 volunteers to get out the vote in the Black community. 

“Taking out the loans in the first place, is hardship—point blank period—and we have to get young people excited for this election,” Cole said. “And so when we see bold and progressive policies like that, we are able to ensure the turnout that we need to win.”

Student loan debt relief, despite the admirable progress this administration has made (more than any other administration, in fact), continues to be a hardship for many of our fellow Americans. Once the COVID-related pause on interest accruing came to an end last September, borrowers had to start making payments again, something they hadn’t had to do since before Biden won the 2020 election. It’s important to note, however, that the White House mandated a 12-month “on-ramp” during which “financially vulnerable borrowers who miss monthly payments during this period are not considered delinquent, reported to credit bureaus, placed in default, or referred to debt collection agencies.” Despite the administration’s best efforts, this is an issue that could potentially alienate a key segment of voters Team Blue wants to target.

Democrats must acknowledge these folks’ suffering—many of whom, as the data cited above makes clear, bear no resemblance to the right-wing stereotype of bratty, rich young people with fancy degrees supposedly looking for a handout. But members of Team Blue must also emphasize the real progress this White House has made for millions, while reminding voters that the president fought to do much more only to find his efforts blocked by conservatives in Congress and on the court. Had we elected a couple more supporters of debt relief to the Senate in 2020, we’d have gotten legislation through Congress—removing the matter from the Supreme Court’s purview—and we’d have a lot more debt relief now. 

Is it a tricky balancing act to convince those voters who are angry because they believe Biden didn’t keep his promises on student loan forgiveness to back him in 2024? No question. But, as people who know the facts, we have to get out there and try.

And beyond the politics, we all need to keep pushing for changes to how our country funds higher education. People shouldn’t have to go broke—and stay broke—just to get a college diploma. 

RELATED STORY: What to know about the SAVE plan, the income-driven plan to repay student loans

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

Campaign Action