The Supremes blocked his most comprehensive student loan relief policy but it hasn’t stopped them from doing what they can. He should get some credit for it:
Although the Supreme Court blocked Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness plan, his administration has found alternative ways to provide relief to more than 3.7 million people.
The majority of borrowers who will benefit from the latest round of forgiveness are teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public service professionals, per a White House release.
The remaining borrowers who will benefit have repaid their loans for at least 20 years but never got the relief they were entitled to under their income-driven repayment plans.
Biden said in a statement his administration would continue to find other ways to forgive loans held by “as many borrowers as possible.”
“I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams,” he said.
It’s not enough but within the ridiculous boundaries of our system of government, they have not given up. I know for a fact, you get anything better from a Republican.
A new report claims “resounding evidence” shows that high corporate profits are a main driver of ongoing inflation, and companies continue to keep prices high even as their inflationary costs drop.
The report, compiled by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative thinktank, found corporate profits accounted for about 53% of inflation during last year’s second and third quarters. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the 40 years prior to the pandemic, according to the report.
Prices for consumers rose by 3.4% over the past year, but input costs for producers increased by just 1%, according to the authors’ calculations which were based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Income and Products Accounts.
“Costs have come down substantially, and while corporations were quick to pass on their increased costs to consumers, they are surprisingly less quick to pass on their savings to consumers,” Liz Pancotti, a Groundwork strategic advisor and paper co-author, told the Guardian.
Since pandemic inflation spiked in 2021, a high-stakes debate has played out about its sources. Many progressive economists pointed to corporate profits – or “greedflation” – and supply chain issues as a driver of high prices, while their more conservative counterparts singled out government stimulus cash and high wages.
The report’s authors scoured corporate earnings calls and found executives bragging to shareholders about keeping prices high and widening profit margins as input costs come down.
The findings come as the Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates to their highest point in 20 years. The report casts serious doubt on the need for further interest rate hikes, and instead calls for stronger policies to rein in “corporate profiteering”.
Oy vey. If it isn’t the fascism it’s the corporate greed. And the two so often go together perfectly.
Former President Donald Trump might owe Sen. Ted Cruz an apology.
And no, it’s not about the long list of things Trump has said about Cruz and his family. Rather, it’s about how Cruz and his allies complained in 2016 about how non-Republican voters helped hand the nomination to Trump. They even tried to formally change the party’s rules to incentivize states to move away from elections that allowed independent and possibly even Democratic voters to weigh in on the Republican presidential race.
Trump ran away with the 2016 Republican presidential nomination in part due to his sheer dominance in these so-called “open primaries.” While at the same time, Cruz struggled to keep up by winning in closed primaries and caucuses.
Now, Trump is sounding the alarm at the possibility that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley could use his old playbook against him.
“As you know, Nikki Haley, in particular, is counting on the Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary, you know that, that’s what’s happening,” Trump said at a rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday evening. “A group of people coming in that are not Republicans and it’s artificially boosting her numbers here, although we are still leading her by a lot.”
Boo hoo hoo. Somebody’s always cheating poor old Trump.
But I have to say that Haley’s comments on this are as cowardly as ever:
“Nikki has always believed that the Republican Party has to be about addition, not subtraction. Republicans have lost the popular vote in the last seven of the eight elections,” Haley spokesperson AnnMarie Graham-Barnes said in a statement to Insider. “We lost races we should have won in 2018, 2020, and 2022. If Republicans want to start winning again, we have to start bringing in people fed up with Joe Biden’s disastrous administration, not pushing people away.”
Please. They mean, “we have to start bringing in people fed up with Donald Trump. not pushing people away” but they just can’t bring themselves to say it. So they just act like the big orange elephant in the room isn’t whining like a five year old.
President Joe Biden visited North Carolina on Thursday to remind Tar Heel State citizens what his infrastructure plan has already delivered:
Who remembers, you know, during the pandemic when schools were shut down and … the kids weren’t able to attend schools. They had to go online. How many of you spent time in McDonald parking lots tapping into their Internet so you could do the homework with your kid?
Look, think of all the workers who need Internet to do their jobs when they’re working from home. So many are working from home — have to work. Small businesses need Internet to reach more customers here at home and literally around the world. And our seniors who need it in connection with their doctors through telemedicine because they can’t make it to the doctors in person.
High-speed Internet isn’t a luxury anymore, it’s an absolute necessity. It’s an absolute — (applause) — no, it really is. And yet, when I became president, around 24 million Americans didn’t have access to affordable high-speed Internet. And for millions more, their Internet connection was limited or unreliable.
That’s why, as soon as I came into office, I took action with what we call the American Rescue Plan. And it included — (applause) — it included more than $25 billion to invest in affordable Internet, high-speed Internet all across America.
A few months later, I signed a piece of legislation, which many people didn’t think we could get done: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. (Applause.) A once-in-a-generation investment to rebuild America’s infrastructure — our roads, our bridges, our railroads, our high-speed Internet — all of it paid for.
And, look, our goal is to connect everyone in America to affordable, reliable high-speed Internet by the year 2030 — everyone in America — just like Franklin Roosevelt did a generation ago with electricity.
Biden went on:
Folks, what we’re doing here in North Carolina is just one piece of a much bigger story. To date, 400- — excuse me, 40,000 infrastructure projects have been announced across this nation. Since I’ve been to office, we’ve created 14 million new jobs — 440 [thousand] new jobs in North Carolina alone, just since I came to office. (Applause.) And that’s because of this guy right here. Nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide.
It’s crazy they think this is an attack line.
The only way that Biden getting a Cookout milkshake in North Carolina would be more relatable is if he had gone at 2am with his friends after drinking half a bottle of moonshine and then calling an ex-girlfriend three times #ncpolhttps://t.co/VYvGOuI8e1
The pandemic relief bill combined with the $1 trillion infrastructure bill will help connect some 300,000 more homes and businesses to high-speed internet by 2027, the White House said. The measures will also help some 885,000 North Carolina households save up to $30 a month on their internet bills, according to the White House.
“It’s not enough to have internet access, but it has to be affordable,” Biden said.
Having mentioned FDR, Biden made sure to take a jab at Donald “Infrastructure Weak” Trump:
And now, my predecessor likes to say America is a failing nation. In my faith — (the President makes the sign of the cross) — bless me, Father, for he has sinned. I mean, come on. (Laughter.) A failing nation?
And, by the way, did you hear he wants to see the stock market crash, because he does not want — now. We’re doing well. He’s acknowledging — by that — we’re doing pretty damn well economically and we’re getting better. He wants to see the stock market crash. You know why? He doesn’t want to be the next Herbert Hoover.
As I told him, he’s already Hoover. (Laughter.) He’s the only president to be president for four years and lose jobs, not gain any jobs. Come on, man. (Laughter.)
North Carolina is getting a $26.7 million grant from the Biden administration to buy new electric school buses for low-income, rural, and tribal areas in the state.
That’s a big deal.
Michael McElroy, political correspondent for Cardinal and Pine, takes a look. pic.twitter.com/iyc3mB1IQf
Biden’s reelection campaign has made winning North Carolina and its 16 electoral votes a top priority. The Democrat narrowly lost the state in 2020 by 1.34 percentage points to Trump. They are expected to face each other again in November.
Fast-growing North Carolina is considered a presidential battleground, but only twice in the last 40-plus years has a Democrat won the state’s electoral votes: Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008.
Republicans no longer have abortion to run on in 2024 thanks to Donald Trump and his SCOTUS appointments. They’re running away from abortion. With good cause. They have lost everywhere abortion rights have been on the ballot in election after election since SCOTUS overturned Roe in June of 2022.
So they’ve latched onto scare-mongering about brown-skinned immigrants, the real ones at the southern border and the even scarier Others they can conjure in the minds of their voters. Immigration is too good a campaign weapon to lose before November.
Of course, they’re going to sabotage the border bill. Republicans don’t want to fix the border. They want to campaign on the border being broken. pic.twitter.com/ubBUaGWN69
Laura Ingraham claimed on her show Wednesday that she’d spoken with Trump and he’s adamant that House Republicans reject the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the U.S. Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is on board (Meidas Touch):
Republican Speaker Mike Johnson admitted to Laura Ingraham on Fox News Wednesday night that he has been talking to Donald Trump “pretty frequently” about a possible deal being negotiated to fix problems at the border.
A bipartisan border deal was reached recently between Republican Senator James Lankford and Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer to solve many of the issues the country is facing at the southern border. Soon after, Laura Ingraham aired a misleading graphic on her show, cherry picking portions from the bill that would be most likely to anger hardline MAGA Republicans.
It worked.
Almost instantly, Johnson was pressured to denounce the bill and said that it would never reach the House Floor. On Wednesday, Johnson said, “I don’t think now is the time for comprehensive immigration reform, because we know how complicated that is.”
Complicated? Complicated? Not for Donald Trump, The Wizard of Wharton. He claims every problem can be fixed quickly and easily. Why not this one?
They want their weapon.
Republicans in the House have been pretty blunt about it (Business Insider):
“Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas told CNN this week. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”
Rep. Jared Mosckowitz (D-Fla.) took House Republicans to task over their grandstanding on immigration reform. He brought a prop of the Nehls quote above to reinforce the GOP’s refusal to address what they’ve made a signature campaign issue: “They want to use it to raise money. They want use it to politicize it. But they don’t want to solve the issue.”
They want their weapon.
President Joe Biden worked the problem this week with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other congressional leaders at the White House (NBC News):
“I’ve been a part of enough negotiations to know when you’re coming close to finishing, and I feel like we’re there,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told reporters. “But didn’t I say something like that last three weeks ago?”
Leaving the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called Wednesday’s meeting “productive,” saying he told Biden and Democrats: “We must have change at the border — substantive policy change.”
[…]
McConnell said earlier Wednesday he expects that the Senate could vote on the emerging immigration package — tied to Ukraine aid, Israel funding and assistance for Taiwan — next week.
“We have a number of important international responsibilities. And I think it’s time to go ahead with the supplemental, and I’m anticipating it’ll be before us next week,” he said.
That prompted a speedy rebuke from Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas:
Former President Donald Trump‘s convincing victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses shows his continued strength among Republicans, and a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds once more that Trump is both viewed nationwide as the candidate whom Republicans and Republican-leaning independents would be most satisfied with as their 2024 nominee as well as the highest-rated contender across a range of other attributes.
Three out of four Republican-leaning adults say they would be very or somewhat satisfied with Trump as the GOP’s presidential nominee, compared to 64% who say the same about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 50% for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Trump’s two remaining rivals in the nominating race.
Trump’s advantage tracks closely with the findings about Republicans who were interviewed as part of a more extensive ABC News poll conducted the week before the Iowa caucuses.
And much like Iowa entrance polls that indicated Trump was able to dominate among evangelical or born-again Christian voters in the state on Monday, he maintains a sizable advantage in that group’s assessments nationally as well. According to the new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, 74% of evangelicals or born-again Christians are somewhat or very satisfied with Trump. He has a stronger rating on this question than both Haley and DeSantis among this group.
Sitting in here earlier, I was listening to the discussion on jobs and that the whole reason claimed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is that they want to bring in as many illegal aliens as possible, give them amnesty so they can fill jobs in America,” Greene claimed. “And then they talked about that we have a population growth problem in the United States.”
“Well, I think we can all say that if maybe, perhaps, 63 million people weren’t murdered in the womb, we wouldn’t have a population growth problem, would we?” she asked. “That’s not women’s reproductive rights. That’s called abortion. It’s called murder.”
Greene blamed abortion rights for slowing population growth.
Never say there is no plan:
I gotta give to it to MTG. She really understands what America’s all about: the mass deportation of immigrants. https://t.co/1FX3cXe9A5
Is it possible Trump will actually choose Stefanik? I still doubt it. She’s not out of central casting after all, at least not in the way Trump thinks is important. But apparently he’s talked about it”
During a candlelit dinner with Mar-a-Lago members in late December, former President Donald Trump walked around the table as the conversation turned to one of the biggest decisions he’d have to make should he become the Republican nominee: Whom should he pick to be his running mate?
That’s when Rep. Elise Stefanik, the hard-charging upstate New York Republican, came up, according to a person at the dinner table. Attendees around Trump raved about her viral moment just weeks before, when she grilled three university presidents at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus.
At the thought of Stefanik as a possible choice for vice president, Trump nodded approvingly.
“She’s a killer,” Trump said, according to the person at the event.
Ever since then, Trump and a growing group of allies have started to look more closely at Stefanik as a running mate, according to eight people familiar with the matter, including people in Trump’s orbit, Stefanik fundraising bundlers and former Trump administration officials.
At the time, the 39-year-old congresswoman was at the crest of a wave of national publicity after taking on the top leaders of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their answers to the question, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your college’s] rules on bullying and harassment?” eventually resulted in two of them resigning and brought a firestorm of criticism on the schools.
But Stefanik was on Trump’s radar long before that hearing, because she possesses one of the key attributes he’s looking for in a 2024 running mate: loyalty. That, mixed with her ability to drive the news on key issues, may be an irresistible mix for a vice presidential pick.
“Stefanik is at the top,” said Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s chief strategist in the White House and the architect of his 2016 campaign strategy.
“If you’re Trump, you want someone who’s loyal above all else,” a Republican campaign operative said. “Particularly because he sees Mike Pence as having made a fatal sin.”
Stefanik won’t make that mistake. She has shown herself to be completely without morals or principles of any kind.
I’m not sure she brings anything other than that to the table (which, granted, may be all that counts to Trump.) She’s just not a very likable politician and I suspect she could be as polarizing in her own way as Sarah Palin was in the 2008 race. I just don’t think she would bring in any of those suburban moms they’d really like to have back in the fold.Why else put a woman on the ticket in the first place? It’s not like they care about “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
I just want you to take a minute and contemplate what a Stefanik presidency would be like (just in case Trump falls face first into the omelette station at Mar-a-Lago.) She might be the most craven politician I’ve ever seen and that’s saying something. What the hell would she do if she finally got what she wanted?
Keep this in mind when you hear that Trump has changed his spots and “won’t have time for retribution.” It’s what he lives for:
Former President Donald Trump and people in his inner circle have told down-ballot Republican candidates not to hire Republican strategist Jeff Roe or his political consulting firm after Roe worked to elect Ron DeSantis, according to four people familiar with the conversations.
The admonition against hiring Roe represents an attempt to choke off revenue for his consulting firm, Axiom, in an act of political retribution. Roe was a top strategist for the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down. Roe resigned in mid-December after the Washington Post published a story detailing backbiting at the super PAC.
Candidates have been warned that hiring Roe could create a political problem for them with the Trump team.
“It’s an open secret that candidates who want to stay on President Trump’s good side should not hire Axiom,” said one of the four people, an influential Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “They are enemy No. 1.”
