August, 24 2022, 12:28pm EDT
Congressional Progressive Caucus Statement on Executive Order Canceling Student Debt
Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued the following statement on President Biden's executive order canceling of $20,000 of federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 of federal debt for other borrowers, reaching a total of 43 million borrowers:
WASHINGTON
Representative Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued the following statement on President Biden's executive order canceling of $20,000 of federal student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 of federal debt for other borrowers, reaching a total of 43 million borrowers:
"President Biden's action today on student debt cancellation that will bring relief to 43 million people is a massive step in the right direction. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has made this one of our top priorities for executive action and we have been doggedly pursuing this, including a detailed discussion with the President on the need for debt cancellation on March 30 of this year, where the President indicated his support for some action directly to CPC Executive Board members.
"While not as high as we called for, this crucial step from the President keeps his campaign promise and responds to calls from the CPC, the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, and millions across the country to address the crippling issue of student debt, now totaling approximately $1.7 trillion -- more than even credit card debt in this country. With the President's action, approximately 20 million people will see their loans fully canceled, and an additional 23 million will see relief with a portion of their debt canceled. In addition, the President's order will cap interest for current and future loans at 5 percent of income, half of the current rate. This means that those who still have a balance on their loan after today's forgiveness will be able to lower their average annual payment by more than $1,000 for current and future borrowers.
"Student debt cancellation is a racial justice issue. 90 percent of Black students and 72 percent of Latino students have loans, they borrow at higher rates to attend college, and are more likely than white borrowers to owe more debt 12 years later. By canceling $10,000 of debt and $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients, the administration is making real progress toward closing the racial wealth gap.
"Canceling student loan debt is also essential to lowering monthly costs for Americans across the country who are struggling to keep up with rising prices of housing and food. This action demonstrates the President's commitment to using executive powers to fight for working families and increase opportunity for all. The impact of this cannot be understated: 97 percent of people with federal student loans are low- and middle-income, and 40 percent of them never were able to finish their degree. These loans are holding people back from buying homes, investing in their communities, and starting businesses. They are following millions of seniors into retirement and weighing down our economy.
"The President has already canceled $10 billion in student debt through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and today's order also seeks to expand that successful program further. We are also pleased to see the pause on payments extended through December 2022, but we encourage the White House to ensure that repayments do not begin until debt cancellation can reach the people who need it. Under President Biden, no one has had to make a payment on a federal student loan. If millions have to restart these payments before the forgiveness reaches them, it would only increase the anxiety and hardship Americans are feeling amid other rising costs.
"We applaud the President for this critically necessary and unprecedented action that lifts up working people. We look forward to working closely with the White House to ensure quick relief to 43 million people through this Executive Order."
Progressive Caucus members have led the congressional advocacy to cancel student debt, including naming it as one of the key priorities in the CPC's Executive Action Agenda.
CPC members Rep. Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-43), Rep. Alma Adams (NC-12), andCPC Whip Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-05) introduced a resolution urging President Biden to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt per borrower.
In March, Rep. Jayapal, CPC Whip Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Rep. Pressley, and Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), (D-Calif.), and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), led nearly 100 colleagues in calling on President Biden urging the administration to extend the pause on federally-held student loan payments until at least the end of the year and to provide meaningful student debt cancellation.
On the 30th of same month, Rep. Jayapal, CPC Deputy Chair Katie Porter (CA-45), Rep. Omar, and CPC Chairs Emeritus Mark Pocan (WI-02), Barbara Lee (CA-13), and Raul Grijalva (AZ-03), met with President Biden to discuss the CPC's executive action agenda, including pressing for debt cancellation.
This followed additional advocacy from Rep. Jayapal, CPC Deputy Whip Rep. Mark Takano (CA-41) and Senators Senator Warren, Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), urging Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, urging the Department of Education to swiftly discharge the loans of borrowers defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges and universities.
Reps. Jayapal, Pressley, Omar, Porter, Sens. Warren and Schumer called in a letter to the Department of Education calling for it to release the memo outlining the Biden administration's legal authority to cancel federal student loan debt and immediately cancel up to $50,000 of debt for Federal student loan borrowers.
Rep. Pressley, and Sens. Warren and Schumer released new analysis showing that resuming student loan payments would strip $85 billion every year from the economy.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) is made up of nearly 100 members standing up for progressive ideals in Washington and throughout the country. Since 1991, the CPC has advocated for progressive policies that prioritize working Americans over corporate interests, fight economic and social inequality, and advance civil liberties.
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'We Have a Choice Here to Act': IPCC Climate Report to Sound Most Dire Warning Yet
"The central message from climate scientists is unmistakable: governments must rally to drastically cut emissions and cease the extraction and burning of fossil fuels this decade."
Mar 20, 2023
A United Nations panel composed of the world's top scientists is set to release its latest climate assessment on Monday as governments fail to heed repeated, increasingly urgent warnings that the window for action to prevent catastrophic global heating is nearly shut.
The landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will come after a year in which planet-warming CO2 emissions shattered records once again as the impacts of such pollution—from "apocalyptic" flooding in Pakistan to deadly drought in East Africa—continued to mount.
After repeated delays, government delegations signed off on the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report on Sunday, clearing the way for the formal release of a sprawling synthesis of years of climate research.
The Associated Pressreported that the final decision came after "officials from big nations such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the European Union haggled through the weekend over the wording of key phrases in the text."
Lesley Hughes, a former IPCC author and a director of the Australia-based Climate Council, said ahead of the report's release that "while this is a summary report of work we'd already seen in development, there is no doubt the findings of this report will be dire."
"Since the previous IPCC report was released, we've had even more unnatural disasters," Hughes added. "We must focus on the fact that predictions are now becoming observations. We've also had a period since the previous IPCC report came out where global emissions are rising once again, so the gap between where we are and where we need to go is increasing rather than decreasing."
"If we haven't seriously turned things around by the time the next such assessment report is due, then we'll be in very deep trouble."
The IPCC's 2021 report was deemed a "code red for humanity," a glaring signal that accelerated global action to phase out fossil fuel extraction and use was needed to avert disaster.
But in the years since, governments—specifically the rich nations most responsible for the climate crisis—have refused to act with the speed and ambition that scientists say is necessary.
At the end of 2022, the U.N. climate conference—an event teeming with fossil fuel lobbyists—ended with no concrete action to rein in oil and gas production.
As a result, hugely profitable global fossil fuel giants are planning to expand their operations in the coming years, potentially locking in additional emissions and further imperiling efforts to meet critical warming targets.
Governments, including those that claim to view the climate crisis as an existential threat, are actively aiding the continued extraction of fossil fuels. Just last week, the Biden administration approved the largest proposed oil drilling project on U.S. public land despite widespread opposition.
"This is the kind of thing that we simply can't afford to do anymore," Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote late last week. "The fossil fuel industry has, for decades, opposed and obstructed any meaningful action on climate change. And despite ardent claims otherwise, the industry has refused to commit to align its business model with what the IPCC says is required to minimize climate harms. The industry remains a barrier to the future the world's children deserve."
Simon Bradshaw, the Climate Council's director of research, said Monday that the IPCC's new report will represent "a final warning."
"The central message from climate scientists is unmistakable: governments must rally to drastically cut emissions and cease the extraction and burning of fossil fuels this decade," said Bradshaw. "That message has been delivered repeatedly, and consistently, for many decades."
"We are seeing progress when it comes to renewable energy uptake, and cleaner transport, but things just aren't moving fast enough. If we haven't seriously turned things around by the time the next such assessment report is due, then we'll be in very deep trouble," Bradshaw added. "We have a choice here to act swiftly this decade. If we start giving it our all right now, we can avert the worst of it. So many solutions are readily available, like solar and wind power, storage, electric appliances, and clean transport options. We need to get our skates on."
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Warren Demands Probe Into Bank Failures, Urges Biden to Fire Powell
Jerome Powell "has failed," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "I don't think he should be Chairman of the Federal Reserve."
Mar 19, 2023
Sen. Elizabeth Warren this weekend called on federal officials to investigate the causes of recent bank failures and urged President Joe Biden to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whom she has criticized for intensifying financial deregulation and imposing job- and wage-destroying interest rate hikes.
Asked on Sunday by Chuck Todd of NBC's "Meet the Press" about the possibility of Powell imposing yet another interest rate hike despite ongoing market turmoil, Warren (D-Mass.) said, "I've been in the camp for a long time that these extraordinary rate increases that he has taken on, these extreme rate increases, are something that he should not be doing."
Powell "has a dual mandate," said Warren. "Yes, he is responsible for dealing with inflation, but he is also responsible for employment. And what Chair Powell is trying to do, and he has said fairly explicitly, is that they are trying to, in effect, slow down the economy so that, this is by the Fed's own estimate, two million people will lose their jobs. And I believe that is not what the chair of the Federal Reserve should be doing."
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted international supply chains—rendered fragile by decades of neoliberal globalization—powerful corporations in highly consolidated industries have taken advantage of these and other crises such as the bird flu outbreak to justify profit-boosting price hikes that far outpace the increased costs of doing business.
"Raising interest rates doesn't do anything to solve" a cost-of-living crisis driven primarily by "price gouging, supply chain kinks, [and] the war in Ukraine," Warren said Sunday. "All it does is put millions of people out of work."
"Jay Powell... has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both."
Powell, an ex-investment banker, was first appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018 and reappointed by Biden in 2021. Warren noted that she opposed Powell's nomination in both cases "because of his views on regulation and what he was already doing to weaken regulation."
"But I think he's failing in both jobs, both as the oversight and manager of these big banks, which is his job, and also what he's doing with inflation," said Warren.
Asked by Todd if Biden should fire Powell, Warren said: "My views on Jay Powell are well-known at this point. He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy, one is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both."
"Would you advise President Biden to replace him?" Todd inquired.
"I don't think he should be Chairman of the Federal Reserve," the Massachusetts Democrat responded. "I have said it as publicly as I know how to say it. I've said it to everyone."
Meanwhile, in a Saturday letter, Warren asked Richard Delmar, Tyler Smith, and Mark Bialek—respectively the deputy inspector general of the Treasury Department, acting inspector general of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and inspector general of the Fed's board of governors—to "immediately open a thorough, independent investigation of the causes of the bank management and regulatory and supervisory problems that resulted in this month's failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank (Signature) and deliver preliminary results within 30 days."
Until the Treasury Department, the Fed, and the FDIC "intervened to guarantee billions of dollars of deposits," the second- and third-biggest bank failures in U.S. history "threatened economic contagion and severe damage to the banking and financial systems," Warren noted. "The bank's executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures."
"But this mismanagement was allowed to occur because of a series of failures by lawmakers and regulators," Warren continued.
In 2018, several Democrats joined Republicans in approving Sen. Mike Crapo's (R-Idaho) Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which weakened the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Crapo's deregulatory measure, signed into law by Trump, loosened federal oversight of banks with between $50 billion and $250 billion in assets—a category that includes SVB and Signature.
"As officials sought to develop a plan responding to SVB's failure, Chair Powell muzzled regulators from any public mention of the regulatory failures that occurred under his watch."
Moreover, the Fed under Powell's leadership "initiated key regulatory rollbacks," Warren wrote Saturday, echoing criticisms that she and financial industry watchdogs voiced earlier in the week. "And the banks' supervisors—particularly the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which oversaw SVB—missed or ignored key signals about their impending failure."
It is "critical that your investigation be completely independent and free of influence from the bank executives or regulators that were responsible for action that led to these bank failures," Warren stressed. "I am particularly concerned that you avoid any interference from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who bears direct responsibility for—and has a long record of failure involving—regulatory and supervisory matters involving these two banks."
"I have already asked Chair Powell to recuse himself from the Fed's internal investigation of this matter, but he has not yet responded to this request," wrote Warren. The progressive lawmaker said "this silence is troubling" in light of recent reporting that "as officials sought to develop a plan responding to SVB's failure, Chair Powell muzzled regulators from any public mention of the regulatory failures that occurred under his watch."
"Bank regulators and Congress must move quickly to close the gaps that allowed these bank failures to happen, and your investigation will provide us important insight as we take steps to do so," added Warren, who has introduced legislation to repeal a vital provision of the Trump-era bank deregulation law enacted five years ago with bipartisan support.
In appearances on three Sunday morning talk shows, Warren doubled down on her demands for an independent investigation into recent bank failures, stronger financial regulations, and punishing those responsible.
After lawmakers from both parties helped Trump fulfill his campaign promise to weaken federal oversight of the banking system, Powell "took a flamethrower to the regulations, saying, 'I'm doing this because Congress let me do it,'" Warren toldABC's "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl. "And what happened was exactly what we should have predicted, and that is the banks, these big, multi-billion-dollar banks, loaded up on risk; they boosted their short-term profits; they gave themselves huge bonuses and big salaries; and they exploded their banks."
"When you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever."
"When you explode a bank, you ought to be banned from banking forever," said Warren, who acknowledged that criminal charges could be coming. "The Department of Justice has opened an investigation. I think that's appropriate for them to do. We'll see where the facts take them. But we've got to take a close look at this."
Not only did former SVB chief executive officer Greg Becker, who lobbied aggressively for the 2018 bank deregulation law, sell millions of dollars of shares as recently as late last month, but until federal regulators took control of the failed bank on March 10, he was on the board of directors at the San Francisco Fed—the institution responsible for overseeing SVB.
On Saturday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont announced that he plans to introduce legislation "to end this conflict of interest by banning big bank CEOs from serving on Fed boards."
"We've got to say overall that we can't keep repeating this approach of weakening the regulation over the banks, then stepping in when these giant banks get into trouble," Warren said Sunday, arguing for stronger federal oversight to prevent the need for bailouts.
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Manhattan DA: Trump's Intimidation Efforts Won't Be Tolerated
Alvin Bragg's comments came after Trump urged his supporters to "protest" and "take our nation back" ahead of his expected indictment.
Mar 19, 2023
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Saturday that former President Donald Trump's efforts to undermine his prosecutorial authority won't be tolerated.
In a memo to colleagues, Bragg wrote that "we do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York."
"Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment," Bragg continued.
"As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate," he added.
"We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York."
Bragg's email didn't specifically name Trump, referring only to the "public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office."
But it came just hours after the former president and leading 2024 GOP candidate claimed on his social media platform that he "will be arrested" on Tuesday and called on his supporters to "protest" and "take our nation back."
Trump is expected to be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in a criminal case involving hush money paid to women who alleged sexual encounters with the former president, but its timing remains uncertain.
In a follow-up post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: "It's time!!! We are a nation in steep decline... We just can't allow this anymore. They're killing our nation as we sit back and watch. We must save America! Protest, protest, protest!!!"
Trump's call to action echoed how, six weeks after losing the 2020 presidential election, he fired off a tweet encouraging his supporters to join a "big protest" in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021. "Be there, will be wild!" he wrote. Hundreds of far-right extremists came and—after Trump told them to march from a rally near the White House to the Capitol—ransacked the halls of Congress in a bid to prevent lawmakers from certifying President Joe Biden's win. Several people died as a result of the insurrection, which was precipitated by Trump and his Republican allies' ceaseless lies about voter fraud.
Mother Jones' D.C. bureau chief David Corn noted that Trump has recently "excused or dismissed the violence of January 6."
"He is an authoritarian willing to (again) use violence for his own ends," Corn tweeted. "That is a threat to the nation."
Trump started priming his supporters for unrest more than a year ago. At a January 2022 rally in Texas, the ex-president promised to pardon January 6 rioters if he wins in 2024 and called for protests if prosecutors investigating his effort to subvert the 2020 election and other alleged crimes attempt to bring charges.
"If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had... in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt," Trump told a crowd of his supporters 14 months ago.
On Saturday, HuffPost's senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte asked if high-ranking Republicans had anything to say about Trump's most recent threats.
"If a new round of political violence occurs, McCarthy should absolutely shoulder some of the blame."
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and other right-wing lawmakers quickly made it clear that they're siding with Trump over the rule of law.
Trump is expected to be charged in connection with payments his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to buy the silence of adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal—both of whom say they had affairs with Trump—at the height of the 2016 presidential election.
Cohen has testified that at Trump's direction, he organized payments totaling $280,000 to Daniels and McDougal. According to Cohen, the Trump Organization reimbursed him $420,000 and categorized it as a legal fee. Trump's former fixer pleaded guilty to federal campaign violations in 2018.
Trump has so far evaded charges but that could soon change, as Manhattan prosecutors are expected to accuse Trump of overseeing the false recording of expenses in his company's internal records.
McCarthy on Saturday described Bragg's probe as "an outrageous abuse of power by a radical D.A. who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump."
"I'm directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions," he tweeted.
According toMSNBC's Hayes Brown:
By the time he fired off his own tweet, McCarthy had presumably seen Trump calling his supporters into the streets, echoing the incitement of violence against Congress two years ago. The speaker lived through that experience and witnessed firsthand the effect of Trump's words. And yet he opted to pretend otherwise in the weeks and months after the January 6 attack as he flew to Mar-a-Lago in supplication. In handing over unvetted security footage from the attack to a far-right propagandist last month, McCarthy is once again complicit in trying to whitewash the assault. If a new round of political violence occurs, McCarthy should absolutely shoulder some of the blame.
McCarthy was far from alone. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), for example, baselessly declared: "If they can come for Trump, they will come for you. This type of stuff only occurs in third world authoritarian countries."
The GOP's current framing of ongoing investigations into Trump as political "witch hunts" is not new. McCarthy and others reacted in a similar manner when the FBI in early August searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort and removed boxes of documents as part of a federal probe into the ex-president's handling of classified materials.
In New York, meanwhile, law enforcement and security agencies at all levels are reportedly preparing for the possibility of a Trump indictment as early as this week.
If indicted, Trump would become the first U.S. president to face criminal charges in or out of office. Trump, who has denied all wrongdoing, has vowed to keep campaigning regardless of whether he's arrested.
The New York Times reported that if "Trump is arraigned, he will almost certainly be released without spending any time behind bars because the indictment is likely to contain only nonviolent felony charges."
However, the Manhattan D.A.'s hush money probe is just one of many pending cases against Trump. The twice-impeached former president is also facing a state-level criminal investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn that state's 2020 election results, as well as federal probes into his coup attempt and his handling of classified government documents.
As The Associated Pressobserved, it's not clear when the other investigations into Trump "will end or whether they might result in criminal charges."
"But they will continue regardless of what happens in New York," the outlet noted, "underscoring the ongoing gravity—and broad geographic scope—of the legal challenges confronting the former president."
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