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For Immediate Release
January, 13 2016, 09:30am EDT
Contact:
Liz Judge, Earthjustice, ljudge@earthjustice.org, (415) 217-2007
Phillip Ellis, Earthjustice, pellis@earthjustice.org, (202) 745-5221
Earthjustice Reacts to the President's Final State of the Union
Key ways the President can further define history with his climate and energy legacy
WASHINGTON
The following is a statement on the President's State of the Union address from Abigail Dillen, Earthjustice Vice President of Litigation for Climate and Energy:
"Tonight, Earthjustice applauds President Barack Obama and stands with him in his visionary call to secure the future. Now is the moment to harness, in the President's words, 'our optimism and work ethic, our spirit of discovery and innovation, our diversity and commitment to the rule of law' so that we can arrest climate change, advance justice for all of us, safeguard our health, and ensure a secure, bright future for ourselves and generations to come.
"We at Earthjustice are working every day to spur the transformational shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy -- a centerpiece of the President's address. We, too, are thrilled that 'on rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills' and that the solar industry now employs more Americans than the coal industry.
"But solar energy is coming under attack from utilities and fossil fuel interests around the country, and the coal industry is working at every turn to lock us into power that kills thousands of people every year and hurtles us toward catastrophic climate change. We are fighting back to end our dependence on coal and champion the rise of clean energy to benefit all Americans.
"The President also previewed coming reforms to the way we manage our coal and oil resources. This is essential.
"We have to rein in methane pollution from the oil and gas industry, which is driving climate change in the near term. That is something the President can do.
"We have to keep federal fossil fuel reserves unburned, and that too is change the President can lead. This year, the President finalized landmark limits on carbon pollution in the Clean Power Plan. Building on that achievement, last month, President Obama helped to lead the world to a historic, global agreement to address climate change. To meet our commitments to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees centigrade and safeguard a livable planet, we have to stop drilling and mining our treasured public lands, and we can't afford to open up a perilous new frontier for oil in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast.
"We thank the President for his climate and environmental leadership to date, for the excellent team he brought to Washington, and for his commitment to doing more in the face of urgent threats to the health of communities, our natural world, and our climate.
"We pledge to stand strong to defend the great progress made over the past seven years of the Obama Administration and to accelerate the pace of needed change into the future."
ONLINE VERSION OF STATEMENT: https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2016/earthjustice-reacts-to-the-president-s-final-state-of-the-union
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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'Shameful': Trump Threatens to Redirect Student Loan Borrowers to Most Expensive Repayment Plans
More than 7 million borrowers booted from a Biden-era loan forgiveness program will have to quickly switch to a new plan using a system that's been backed up for months.
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After axing a Biden-era student loan repayment program, the Trump administration is threatening to kick its millions of mostly low-income beneficiaries onto the government's most expensive plan unless they switch to a new one quickly.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Department of Education was beginning to email the more than 7 million people enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, telling them they needed to change their plan within the next 90 days.
Around 4.5 million of those borrowers earn incomes between 150% and 225%, allowing them to qualify for zero-dollar monthly payments under SAVE, which the Trump administration effectively killed in December after settling with Republican states who'd brought lawsuits against the program under former President Joe Biden.
Anonymous officials told The Post that those who do not switch plans within three months of receiving the email will automatically be re-enrolled in the Standard Plan. Unlike SAVE, which is income-based, the Standard plan has borrowers pay a fixed rate over 10 years.
Standard typically carries the highest monthly payments, and those transitioning to it from SAVE could pay more than $300 extra per month in some cases, with the poorest borrowers seeing the sharpest increases.
While 90 days may seem like plenty of time to switch to a less expensive repayment plan, it's not nearly that simple.
Due to the large exodus of borrowers, the Department of Education has struggled to process all the forms, processing only about 250,000 per month. Many borrowers who have tried to transition have found themselves waiting months for a reply.
To make matters more confusing, many of these borrowers will have to switch programs again soon, since all but one repayment program will be dissolved on July 1, 2028 as a result of last year's Republican budget law. The remaining plan will also be income-driven, though it is still expected to cost borrowers more each month.
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The report estimated that if those booted from SAVE defaulted at the same rate as other borrowers, the number of student loan borrowers in distress could rise as high as 17 million.
According to Protect Borrowers, the typical family will pay more than $3,000 per year in additional costs as a result of the end of SAVE.
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George Beebe, director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and former director of the CIA’s Russia analysis, and Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, have written an essay published on Thursday by Foreign Policy outlining what an achievable Iran "exit plan" would look like.
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Trump and Macron also warned about the dangers technology poses to children in remarks that came the same week that a New Mexico jury ordered tech titan Meta to pay a $375 million penalty for endangering youth and jurors in a landmark social media addiction trial found that Meta and YouTube harmed a child user of their platforms.
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