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Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Survives 2 Legal Challenges

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a Republican-led challenge to President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in student debt, shortly after U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected a request in another case to block it. 

U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey in St. Louis, Missouri, said that while the six Republican-led states had raised “important and significant challenges to the debt relief plan,” they lacked the necessary legal standing to be able to pursue the case. 

Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and South Carolina had alleged Biden’s plan skirted congressional authority and threatened the states’ future tax revenues and money earned by state entities that invest in or service loans. 

Their case is one of a number of challenges that conservative state attorneys general and legal groups have filed seeking to put on hold the debt forgiveness plan for people who had taken out loans to pay for college. Biden announced the plan in August. 

Autrey ruled about an hour after Barrett denied without explanation an emergency request to put the debt relief plan on hold in a challenge brought by the Wisconsin-based Brown County Taxpayers Association.

No personal harm demonstrated 

A lower court had thrown out the Wisconsin group’s lawsuit because it could not show that it would be personally harmed by the loan relief. Barrett is designated by the Supreme Court to act on emergency matters arising from a group of states, including Wisconsin. 

Republican state attorneys general promised to appeal Autrey’s decision. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson in a statement said, “The states continue to believe that they do in fact have standing to raise their important legal challenges.” 

In a policy benefiting millions of Americans, Biden said in August the U.S. government would forgive up to $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for married couples. Those who received Pell Grants, which benefit lower-income college students, will have up to $20,000 of their debt canceled. 

The policy fulfilled a promise that Biden made during the 2020 presidential campaign to help debt-saddled former college students. The Congressional Budget Office in September calculated that the debt forgiveness would cost the government about $400 billion. 

Democrats are hoping the policy will boost support for them in the November 8 midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake, even as many Republicans criticize the plan. 

Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell called the debt forgiveness “socialism” that would worsen inflation, reward “far-left activists” and deliver a “slap in the face” to Americans who paid back their student loans or picked career paths, including serving in the military, to avoid taking on debt. 

President’s authority challenged

Several legal challenges have been filed contesting Biden’s authority to cancel the debt under a 2003 law called the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, which lets the government modify or waive federal student loans during war or national emergency. 

Biden’s administration asserts that the COVID-19 pandemic represented such an emergency. 

The six states sued on September 29. That same day, the U.S. Department of Education closed the forgiveness program to borrowers with loans issued by private banks but guaranteed by the federal government, a move seen as an attempt to avoid lawsuits involving state entities that profit from such loans. 

In a 19-page ruling, Autrey cited that decision in dismissing the states’ cases. He said claims by several of the states that their tax revenues would be also harmed were “tenuous” and “speculative.” 

The Wisconsin group brought its case to the Supreme Court after rapid losses in lower courts. It sued on October 4, arguing that the policy “obligates federal taxes and erases federal assets (in the form of debt) without any authority whatsoever.”  

U.S. District Judge William Griesbach in Green Bay threw out the case two days later, noting that merely paying taxes is not enough to challenge federal actions. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently refused the group’s request to block the debt relief program pending an appeal. 
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Appeals Court: Graham Must Testify in Georgia Election Probe

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham must testify before a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia, a federal appeals court said Thursday.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paves the way for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to bring Graham in for questioning. She wants to ask the South Carolina Republican about phone calls he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who said Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots.

Raffensperger said he took that as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes, an interpretation Graham dismissed as “ridiculous.”

Graham could appeal the ruling to the full appellate court. An attorney for Graham deferred comment Thursday to a spokesperson for the senator’s office, which did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Graham had challenged his subpoena, saying his position as a U.S. senator protected him from having to testify in the state investigation. He has also denied wrongdoing. In a six-page order, the judges wrote that Graham “has failed to demonstrate that this approach will violate his rights under the Speech and Debate Clause.”

Willis opened the investigation early last year, shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger was made public. In that call, Trump suggested Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Willis requested a special grand jury, saying the panel’s subpoena power would allow the questioning of people who otherwise wouldn’t cooperate with the investigation. She has since filed several rounds of paperwork with the court, seeking to compel the testimony of close Trump advisers and associates.

Some of those associates include former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who has testified before the special grand jury, according to a person familiar with Cipollone’s testimony who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a private appearance. Cipollone’s appearance was first reported by CNN.

Cipollone vigorously resisted efforts to undo the election and has said he did not believe there was sufficient fraud to have affected the outcome of the race won by Biden.

Graham was in the first group of people close to Trump whose testimony Willis sought to compel in a batch of petitions filed with the court in early July. He challenged his subpoena in federal court, but U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May refused to toss out his subpoena. Graham then appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Graham’s lawyers argued that the U.S. Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which protects members of Congress from having to answer questions about legislative activity, shields him from having to testify. He contends that the call he made to Raffensperger was protected because he was asking questions to inform his decisions on voting to certify the 2020 election and future legislation.

Lawyers on Willis’ team argued that comments Graham made in news interviews at the time, as well as statements by Raffensperger, show that the senator was motivated by politics rather than by legislative fact-finding.

They also argued that the scope of the special grand jury’s investigation includes a variety of other topics that have nothing to do with the Raffensperger call. They also want to ask Graham about his briefings by the Trump campaign, including whether he was briefed on the Trump-Raffensperger call, and whether he communicated or coordinated with Trump and his campaign about efforts to overturn the election results in Georgia and elsewhere.

Invoking ‘sovereign immunity’

Graham’s lawyers also argued that the principle of “sovereign immunity” protects a U.S. senator from being summoned by a state prosecutor.

Even if the speech or debate clause or sovereign immunity didn’t apply, Graham’s lawyers argued, his status as a “high-ranking official” protects him from having to testify. That’s because Willis has failed to show that his testimony is essential and that the information he would provide cannot be obtained from someone else, they argued.

Judge May had found that Graham cannot be questioned about any “investigatory fact-finding” on his call with Raffensperger because that is protected legislative activity. But she rejected his other arguments, saying Willis’ team and the special grand jury can ask him about any attempts to encourage Raffensperger to throw out ballots and about any communications and coordination with the Trump campaign on post-election efforts in Georgia, as well as his public statements about the election in Georgia.

In their ruling Thursday, the appellate judges ruled that Willis “can ask about non-investigatory conduct that falls within the subpoena’s scope” but “may not ask about any investigatory conduct,” noting that Graham could note any issues over specific areas at the time of his questioning.

Others have already made their appearances before the special grand jury. Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe, testified in August. Attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro have also appeared before the panel.

Paperwork has been filed seeking testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. 
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Republican Party Targeting Hispanic Voters in Texas

In this year’s midterm elections in the United States, the Republican Party is pushing to expand recent gains among Hispanic voters. VOA’s Scott Stearns narrates this story from Christian von Preysing-Barry in Texas, where Republicans this year won a congressional seat long held by the Democratic Party. Videographer: Christian von Preysing-Barry
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Emails Show Trump Knowingly Pressed False Voter Fraud Claims, Judge Says 

A California federal judge on Wednesday said then-U.S. President Donald Trump had signed a sworn statement asserting that voter fraud numbers included in a 2020 election lawsuit were accurate, despite being told the numbers were not correct. 

U.S. District Judge David Carter made the disclosure in ordering lawyer John Eastman to provide more emails to the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s supporters. 

Eastman was one of Trump’s attorneys when the former president and his allies challenged his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. 

Representatives for Trump and Eastman did not immediately return requests for comment. 

Carter said Wednesday that Trump had “signed a verification swearing under oath” that the inaccurate fraud numbers were “true and correct” or “believed to be true and correct” to the best of his knowledge and belief, when alleging the improper counting of votes in a county in Georgia. 

“The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public,” the judge wrote. 

Carter has previously ruled that Eastman and Trump had likely committed a felony by trying to pressure his then-vice president to obstruct Congress. 

The ruling was made in a lawsuit filed by Eastman to block disclosure of the emails to the January 6 select committee, following a congressional subpoena.  

Carter has previously ordered Eastman to provide more than 200 emails to the committee, after the lawyer resisted the subpoena and claimed that the communications were privileged. 

The judge said Wednesday that the vast majority of emails still being sought by congressional investigators should not be handed over, because legal protections given to attorneys and their clients apply to those records. 

He said eight emails that would normally be shielded under those protections must be given to the committee, after he found that the communications were in furtherance of a crime — one of the few times those legal safeguards can be lifted. 

Carter found that four emails show that Eastman and other lawyers suggested that the “primary goal” of filing lawsuits was to delay Congress’s certification of the 2020 election results. 

The judge said four other emails “demonstrate an effort by President Trump and his attorneys to press false claims in federal court for the purpose of delaying the January 6 vote.” 

Trump and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the 2020 election, which Biden won, with some complaints alleging voter fraud without evidence to support those claims. Those cases were overwhelmingly rejected by judges, some of which Trump appointed to the federal courts. 

The January 6 select committee last week voted to subpoena Trump in its investigation. It is set to issue a report in the coming weeks on its findings. 
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Why US Courts Are Allowing Voters in 4 States to Use Rejected Congressional Maps

When midterm elections get under way next month, voters in several Republican-controlled states will be casting their ballots in congressional districts with borders that courts have rejected.

In Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio, the congressional maps were drawn by Republican legislators in the aftermath of the 2020 census. Judges later ruled that the maps were illegally drawn or likely to be proven illegal at trial.

But the U.S. Supreme Court, and other federal courts following its precedent, have allowed the rejected maps to be used for this election, rejecting proposals to make them fairer.

Their rationale? A little-known legal concept that says judges should refrain from changing voting rules close to an election because doing so can lead to chaos and confusion and keep voters away from the polls.

Known as the “Purcell principle,” the concept takes its name from a 2006 Supreme Court case called Purcell v. Gonzalez. The case involved a legal challenge to Arizona’s voter ID requirements. It was a midterm year, and the Supreme Court dismissed the challenge.

‘Bedrock tenet’

In the 16 years since the Arizona ruling, the “Purcell principle” has become what Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh has called a “bedrock tenet of election law.”

“When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Kavanaugh wrote in February, explaining his decision to allow Alabama’s Republican-backed congressional map to take effect even though it had been rejected by a three-judge panel. “Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences for candidates, political parties and voters, among others.”

That means judges should be wary of issuing orders that change voting rules close to an election, and so they have. In 2020, the Supreme Court repeatedly blocked changes that sought to make it easier for voters to cast their ballots during the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.

Critics say this amounts to putting the administration of elections ahead of safeguarding the right to vote.

“I think the balance they’ve chosen is out of whack,” said Dan Vicuna, the national redistricting manager for the watchdog Common Cause.

Rick Hasen, a University of California-Los Angeles election law expert who coined the term “Purcell principle” in 2016, has argued that the Supreme Court should “rein in” the doctrine.

Republicans have stood by their maps.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former county election official now with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the Purcell principle is a “good rule” with an important purpose.

“Anyone who’s got a problem with [an election] law or regulation has plenty of time before an election to file a lawsuit,” von Spakovsky, manager of the Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative, said.

Districts redrawn each decade

The disputed congressional maps in the four states are considered “gerrymandered,” a portmanteau with origins in early 19th-century American politics.

Every 10 years, following a constitutionally mandated census, U.S. states redraw their congressional and state legislative maps to reflect changes in their electorate.

Gerrymandering occurs when voting district maps are redrawn for political gain, for example by packing opposition party voters into one district so as to reduce their influence in others.

The practice is legal in most states, and both Democrats and Republicans engage in it. But when a map is flagrantly drawn to favor one group over another, it can run afoul of state and federal laws.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racial discrimination in voting. Under the law, voters can seek judicial relief if they believe a voting practice or procedure such as a new political map “abridges” their right to vote.

Under the Voting Rights Act, challengers can also bring claims of “vote dilution.” Vote dilution occurs when minority voters cannot elect the candidate of their choice because of gerrymandering. This was part of the claim in the legal challenge against the congressional maps in Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

Former procedure

Before Purcell, aggrieved voters could sue for judicial relief and courts did not dismiss the challenge simply because an election was close at hand.

But that changed with Purcell, according to David Gans, director of the human rights, civil rights and citizenship program at the Constitutional Accountability Center.

“Purcell has made it incredibly difficult for courts to provide relief when state governments violate the right to vote, when they put in place discriminatory maps that dilute the vote for communities of color,” Gans said.

Consider what happened in Georgia.

In December, civil rights groups filed lawsuits against the state’s new political redistricting maps that appear designed to give Republicans an additional House seat even though the state’s electorate has become increasingly Democratic.

Then in March, with the state’s primary elections under two months away, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones, citing the Purcell principle, ruled that the challenged maps could be used even though he found that they included boundaries that violated the Voting Rights Act.

“Changes to the redistricting map at this point in the 2022 election schedule are likely to substantially disrupt the election process,” Jones wrote.

In Alabama and Louisiana, federal courts found that the two Southern states’ redistricting maps violated the Voting Rights Act, only to be overruled by the Supreme Court.

High court’s rulings

The Supreme Court, dominated by six conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents, has applied the Purcell doctrine “in a way that’s mostly friendly to Republicans,” Vicuna said, but that has not always been the case.

In March, for example, the high court refused to overturn a map drawn by the North Carolina Supreme Court over the objection of Republican lawmakers who wanted to use their own map.

In addition, the high court has rejected Republican challenges to redistricting maps drawn by Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though not on the grounds of Purcell.

Election law experts say that while the likelihood of voter confusion can be a strong argument against making last-minute changes in voting procedures, it should not be the sole factor.

“One of the reasons the court has gone awry is that it’s not looked at the sort of traditional factors that apply when there’s a request for emergency relief,” Gans said. “Purcell has essentially replaced that sort of more careful fact-specific analysis with this across-the-board hostility to protecting voting rights.”
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Analyst Acquitted at Trial Over Discredited Trump Dossier

A jury on Tuesday acquitted on all counts a think-tank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump. 

The case against Igor Danchenko was the third and possibly final case brought by Special Counsel John Durham as part of his probe into how the FBI conducted its own investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin. 

The first two cases ended in an acquittal and a guilty plea with a sentence of probation. 

Danchenko betrayed no emotion as the verdict was read. His wife wiped away tears after the fourth and final “not guilty” was read by the clerk. 

The acquittal marked a significant setback for Durham, who declined to comment after the hearing, as did several jurors. 

Despite hopes by Trump supporters that the prosecutor would uncover a sweeping conspiracy within the FBI and other agencies to derail his candidacy, and then his presidency, the investigation over the course of more than three years failed to produce evidence that met those expectations. The sole conviction — an FBI agent admitted altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump aide — was for conduct uncovered not by Durham but by the Justice Department’s inspector general, and the two cases that Durham took to trials ended in across-the-board acquittals. 

The Danchenko case was the first of the three to delve deeply into the origins of the “Steele dossier,” a compendium of allegations compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was colluding with the Kremlin. 

Most famously, it alleged that the Russians could have blackmail material on Trump for his supposed interactions with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel. Trump derided the dossier as fake news and a political witch hunt when it became public in 2017. 

Danchenko, by his own admission, was responsible for 80% of the raw intelligence in the dossier and half of the accompanying analysis, though trial testimony indicated that Danchenko was shocked and dismayed about how Steele presented the material and portrayed it as factual when Danchenko considered it more to be rumor and speculation. 

Prosecutors said that if Danchenko had been more honest about his sources, the FBI might not have treated the dossier so credulously. As it turned out, the FBI used material from the dossier to support applications for warrantless surveillance of a Trump campaign official, Carter Page, even though the FBI never was able to corroborate a single allegation in the dossier. 

Prosecutors said Danchenko lied about the identity of his own sources for the material he gave to Steele. The specific charges against Danchenko allege that he essentially fabricated one of his sources when the FBI interviewed him to determine how he derived the material he provided for the dossier. 

Danchenko told the FBI that some of the material came when he received an anonymous call from a man he believed to be Sergei Millian, a former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce. 

Prosecutors said Danchenko’s story made no sense. They said that phone records show no evidence of a call, and that Danchenko had no reason to believe Millian, a Trump supporter he’d never met, was suddenly going to be willing to provide disparaging information about Trump to a stranger. 

Danchenko’s lawyers, as a starting point, maintain that Danchenko never said he talked with Millian. He only guessed that Millian might have been the caller when the FBI asked him to speculate. And they said he shouldn’t be convicted of a crime for making a guess at the FBI’s invitation. 

That said, Danchenko’s lawyers say, he had good reason to believe the caller may well have been Millian. The call came just a few days after Danchenko had reached out to Millian over email after a mutual acquaintance brokered a connection over email. 

And Danchenko’s lawyers say it’s irrelevant that his phone records don’t show a call because Danchenko told the FBI from the start that the call might have taken place over a secure mobile app for which he had no records. 

The jury began deliberations Monday afternoon after hearing closing arguments on four counts. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga threw out a fifth count, saying prosecutors had failed to prove it as a matter of law. 

 
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Biden Vows Abortion Legislation as Top Priority Next Year

President Joe Biden promised Tuesday that the first bill he sends to Capitol Hill next year will be one that writes abortion protections into law — if Democrats control enough seats in Congress to pass it — as he sought to energize his party’s voters three weeks ahead of the November midterms. 

Twice over, Biden urged people to remember how they felt in late June when the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, fresh evidence of White House efforts to ensure the issue stays front of mind for Democratic voters this year. 

“I want to remind us all how we felt when 50 years of constitutional precedent was overturned,” Biden said in remarks at the Howard Theatre, “the anger, the worry, the disbelief.” 

He lambasted Republicans nationwide who have pushed for restrictions on the procedure, often without exceptions, and told Democrats in attendance that “if you care about the right to choose, then you gotta vote.” 

As he has done all year, Biden emphasized that only Congress can fully restore abortion access to what it was before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned Roe. But he also acknowledged “we’re short a handful of votes” now to reinstate abortion protections at the federal level, urging voters to send more Democrats to Congress. 

“If we do that, here’s the promise I make to you and the American people: The first bill that I will send to the Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade,” Biden said. “And when Congress passes it, I’ll sign it in January, 50 years after Roe was first decided the law of the land.” 

That’s a big if. 

For Biden to follow through on his pledge, Democrats would have to retain control of the House and pick up seats in the Senate — an unlikely scenario considering current political dynamics. Abortion rights have been a key motivating factor for Democrats this year, although the economy and inflation still rank as chief concern for most voters. 

Abolishing the filibuster — the legislative rule that requires 60 votes for most bills to advance in the Senate — amid opposition in their own ranks will also pose a significant challenge for Democrats. 

Long resistant to any revisions to Senate institutional rules, Biden said in the days after the June decision to overrule Roe that he would support eliminating the supermajority threshold for abortion bills, just as he did on voting rights legislation. 

But two moderate Democrats — Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — support keeping the filibuster. Sinema has said she wants to retain the filibuster precisely so any abortion restrictions backed by Republicans would face a much higher hurdle to pass in the Senate. 

Democratic Senate candidates in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — the party’s two best chances to flip seats currently held by Republicans — have both said they support eliminating the filibuster in order to pass abortion legislation. Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman has actively campaigned on being the 51st vote for priorities such as legalizing abortion, codifying same-sex marriage protections, and making it easier for workers to unionize — all measures that would otherwise be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. 

Abortion — and proposals from some Republicans to impose nationwide restrictions on the procedure — have been a regular fixture of Biden’s political rhetoric this election cycle, as Democrats seek to energize voters in a difficult midterm season for the party in power in Washington. 

In fundraisers and in political speeches, Biden has vowed to reject any abortion restrictions that may come to his desk in a GOP-controlled Congress.  

As he did Tuesday, Biden has also urged voters to boost the Democratic ranks in the Senate so enough senators would not only support reinstating abortion nationwide but would change Senate rules to do it. 

Opponents of abortion rights have also sought to capitalize on the issue, with Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, saying Tuesday that the stakes of next month’s midterm elections “could not be higher.” 

“Doubling down on an extreme agenda of abortion on demand until birth won’t stop Democrats from losing Congress, even with the abortion industry spending record sums to elect them,” Dannenfelser said. “Biden’s party is on the wrong side and stunningly out of touch. 

On Tuesday, Biden made a pointed appeal to young voters, who traditionally participate in lower rates than other age demographics in midterm elections. Though his remarks were primarily focused on abortion, Biden also mentioned his decisions to forgive billions of dollars in student loan debt and to issue pardons for marijuana possession — moves popular with younger voters. 

“What I am saying is, you represent the best of us. Your generation will not be ignored, will not be shunned and will not be silent,” Biden said, adding: “In 2020, you voted to deliver the change you wanted to see in the world. In 2022, you need to exercise your power to vote again for the future of our nation and the future of your generation.” 

Court decisions and state legislation have shifted the status of abortion laws across the country. Currently, bans are in place at all stages of pregnancy in 12 states. In Wisconsin, clinics have stopped providing abortions though there’s dispute over whether a ban is in effect. In Georgia, abortion is banned at the detection of cardiac activity, generally around six weeks and before women often know they’re pregnant. 

Meanwhile, codifying Roe remains a broadly popular position. In a July AP-NORC poll, 60% of U.S. adults said they believe Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide. 

 
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