Randi Weingarten, 65, said it 'pisses me off' that the pandemic stimulus provided to small businesses was not challenged, but student debt is
'All of a sudden, when it’s about our students, they challenge it, the corporations challenge it, the student loan lenders challenge it. That is that not right,' she said
Following a series of legal challenges, including from six GOP states, the nine justices will hear arguments for Biden's plan to eliminate up to $20,000 in individual federal student loan debt, which could cost taxpayers as much as $400billion
Republicans denounced Biden's order as unfair to those who didn't go to college and would need to help pay through taxes for the forgiveness plan – or to those who have already paid off their loans or never took out loans.
Biden's legal basis for trying to cancel a portion of student debt is a 2003 law known as the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, better known as the HEROES Act.
Implemented after the September 11, 2001, terror attack, the law was intended to keep service members from being worse off financially while deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now extended, the law allows Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to grant relief in times of national emergency - in this case, COVID-19.
The White House argues that ending the national emergency doesn't change its legal standing for canceling student loan debt because COVID-19 affected millions of borrowers who might have fallen behind on their loans during the pandemic.
According to their legal brief, the states argue that the proposal seeks 'breathtaking and transformative power' by relying on 'a tenuous and pretextual connection to a national emergency.
Student loan borrowers have been thrown into a year of uncertainty.
Biden's announcement for forgiveness in August also came with him declaring the last extension of student loan deferment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that people would need to resume regular payments on January 1, 2023.
The president, however, decided to extend the moratorium until the summer, when the Supreme Court's term typically ends, and an opinion must be issued on the case.
Since the program launched, 26million borrowers have applied for the relief despite its limbo status.
The White House continues to insist that its approach is legally sound.
[Red State] As we reported, a Department of Energy report said the theory that COVID leaked from the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology is the "most likely" explanation for its emergence.
This is something that many have pointed to for a long time, but if you said it you could be accused of spreading conspiracy theories and booted off of social media. Infuriated Republicans are demanding answers and the House has launched an investigation into the origins.
As we noted, here’s what House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer said on the Committee’s website about the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its origins.
The relationship between the NIH, the WIV, and EcoHealth raises serious questions about use of taxpayer dollars for gain-of-function research and when U.S. health officials became aware of the WIV’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic. The public health community—including the NIH—and the American people deserve the truth. The truth will enable American public health officials to prevent and minimize the effects of future global pandemics.
Now Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan has gone even further on Tucker Carlson’s show, saying that the DOE finding was important, but also that there was more to the story.
#1
Now Chinese virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan has gone even further on Tucker Carlson’s show, saying that the DOE finding was important, but also that there was more to the story.
#4
#2 They first spread it with the world military games in Wuhan then tried to lock that city down. Our own government knew that onr.
Once it was wild in China they used that as an excuse to hard lock down their own population and kill of the elderly?
Infected tourist sent to Italy. Infected management types sent to our meat packing planets. With the CCP's planned invasion of Taiwan and the USA election rigged for Biden...
The ChiComs think long term. follow the chain, hell yes this was a bio weapon planned globally.
We read the quoted Chinese military general touting this type of plan. That paper was public on our own .gov .mil websites. Destroy the economies with a virus, then invade. And invade they will include our mainland.
#5
unlikely, since the bug seems to hit Chinese harder than most.
They have a billion people. You think the CCP cares if they lose a couple million? Covid was a convenient excuse for the Democrats to implement the fraudulent cheat-by-mail balloting in 2020 and they got Trump out of the White House so I'm thinking they think it was worth it. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want. I call it connecting the dots. They had motivation and opportunity. It's not a smoking gun but it is sure as hell suspicious.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/01/2023 13:07 Comments ||
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#6
"They have a billion people. You think the CCP cares if they lose a couple million?"
And the Biden Admin wants to pick a war with this country[, too]. Brilliant.
#7
The CCP owns Biden. He might talk tough but he will not fight them.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/01/2023 13:56 Comments ||
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#8
If Biden was going to fight the Chinese, a good way to start would be to stop the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals from China into Mexico. Notice how he won't do that?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/01/2023 14:23 Comments ||
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#9
We all know this was the deal. China did not want Trump. The Dems did not want Trump. Xi (looks around)pulls the trigger. Annnnnnnnd he won. Easy peasy. All it took was the balls.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
03/01/2023 18:26 Comments ||
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[DM] Russia’s paratroopers – the VDV – are supposed to be the best of the best.
The 45,000-strong elite and experienced force has a reputation for ingenuity, toughness, and violence. What's more, its soldiers are among Moscow’s best equipped and best trained fighters.
This makes it all the more shocking that, seven months after Vladimir Putin ordered his armies to invade Ukraine in February 2022, half of them were dead.
Here, Chris Pleasance examines how 50 percent of Putin’s elite fighting force were wiped out as Ukraine put up a fierce defence of its country, and what that means for the Kremlin’s remaining army.
Nice deep dive on it. Also in short, Russia forgot how to war, Ukraine knew they were coming due to western intelligence, blew a damn to prevent a river crossing, moved their anti-air sites every 12 hours to prevent Russians from finding them and had a great counter-attack plan.
Seizing the airport would have worked if Ukraine was caught flat footed and the convoy wasn't hung up at the river, but that didn't happen and the airborne units got slaughtered in a mechanized counterattack.
#3
Seizing the airport would have worked if Ukraine was caught flat footed and the convoy wasn't hung up at the river, but that didn't happen and the airborne units got slaughtered in a mechanized counterattack.
Posted by: DarthVader 2023-03-01 11:20
DV,
This sounds a lot like Desert One - an extraordinarily over-complex plan that required EVERYTHING to work perfectly, and also required the other side to cooperate.
#4
Question: Does anybody really believe Putin was planning to conquer Europe with such a pathetic army? Do you really believe his is that stupid?
I think Putin invaded Ukraine out of fear that he would soon have NATO troops on his doorstep in Donbas and Crimea. I think he's scared shitless because Biden has made it clear he wants Putin's head on a platter and he just might get it.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/01/2023 13:20 Comments ||
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#5
Evidently the Ukrainians were shelling Donbas (allegedly admitted by OSCE observers) right up until the special military operation.
I hardly think the Russians were planning on rolling through the Baltics on its way to Poland and Kaliningrad/Königsberg. NATO is a whole different ball of dysfunctional wax.
#7
^ like a predecessor before him, he was gambling on the 'allies' doing nothing, Sudetenland, Austria, Czechoslovakia. They were largely bluffs. Each indecision, each equivocation signal the next move. Even with Poland, the allies didn't really do anything, the Sitzkreig. Putin has the same mentality.
#8
You believe what you want to believe. I think it sounds pretty far fetched. But then, it's hard for me to believe that anybody would follow Joe Biden into war.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/01/2023 18:14 Comments ||
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#9
How? Ask Von Paulus.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
03/01/2023 18:24 Comments ||
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#10
I think Putin invaded Ukraine out of fear that he would soon have NATO troops on his doorstep
More like the expectation he would soon have NATO troops on his doorstep, given the recent admissions from both Angela Merkel and the head of NATO that the West has been planning this for some time. I believe there was also a mobilization taking place in Ukraine - one of those things we do not seem to hear much about in our press.
For Putin, the question becomes is it better to fight them now or later?
[Hot Air] The Left is circling the wagons around the risible notion that COVID has a purely zoonotic origin.
I say the notion is risible despite several Intelligence agencies and many "experts" maintaining that the virus jumped species at a wet market in China because...it really is laughable. There is no identified animal reservoir for the virus, no evidence of "bat soup" at the market, and the Wuhan Insitute of Virology—a few blocks away—did research on bat viruses and even gain-of-function research that was funded by the EcoHealth Alliance, using NIAID money.
And we all know that China has been covering up since the beginning of the pandemic. It would be a hell of a coincidence if this weren’t a lab leak.
Occam’s razor says the virus escaped the lab, almost certainly by accident. I don’t buy the intentional release scenario because China has paid an enormous price for its Zero-COVID strategy. I doubt it was biological warfare research, but maybe I am just naive. I think it was arrogant scientists doing what arrogant people do: playing God.
The recent change in the Department of Energy’s position regarding the origins of COVID—and I expect that over the coming years, the rest of the Establishment will similarly admit the obvious—is driving the Left nuts.
There really is no explanation for this if you assume that they actually care about the facts. Even should they disagree with the analysis, about which we have relatively little concrete data, the origin of the virus is a matter of fact, not ideology. Right?
Well, no. Just as the issue of whether masking works or not is hardly a matter of science, but of commitment. When the Left speaks of The Science™ they are actually asserting the importance of authority. Science is about discovering what is, authority is about obeisance to the powerful.
It is the latter that matters to the powers that be.
#1
The possibility of a lab leak needed to be debunked in 2020 because Donald Trump pushed the idea, and he could never be right. The world was divided between The Science™ and The Orange
The Orange. I like it!
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/01/2023 8:22 Comments ||
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#2
^^ I highly dislike the term science being applied to those who disdain the scientific method for their political purposes.
#3
"don’t buy the intentional release scenario because China has paid an enormous price"
I do. People, particularly governments, do counterproductive things all the time. Usually short term limited gains versus unanticipated results.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/01/2023 12:33 Comments ||
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#4
They did add the TM although quotes would have been a nice addition to add a bit more sarcasm to it.
#9
Now, That Guy was at least an active statist sympathetic willing to dress up a cudgel in conservative clothes for anyone who was more than a gimmie-putt away from the current directive.
"don’t buy the intentional release scenario because China has paid an enormous price"
A government who sponsors various cards of violence against its citizens, its deplorable hobbits if you will, who may not be on board with their leadership?
-looks around-
[Daily Beast] What if I told you there was a pill you could take every day that would lower your risk of heart disease, prevent multiple types of cancer, and even reduce your odds of an early death? That pill doesn’t exist (yet), but in one of the largest studies to date, Cambridge University researchers found the next-best thing: 11 minutes of daily physical activity.
You read that correctly. Just over 10 minutes of walking, jogging, playing sports, exercising, or otherwise being active—basically anything other than sitting or lying down—reduced the risk of cancer by 10 percent, heart disease by 19 percent, and death by any cause by 23 percent, compared to no activity. These results came from a meta-analysis of studies that looked at more than 30 million people in total and was published on Feb. 28 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
"We know that physical activity, such as walking or cycling, is good for you, especially if you feel it raises your heart rate," study co-author and Cambridge University public health modeling researcher James Woodcock said in a press release. "But what we’ve found is there are substantial benefits to heart health and reducing your risk of cancer even if you can only manage 10 minutes every day."
[C4ISRNET] The U.S. Space Force is developing a plan for a satellite refueling and servicing capability that takes advantage of technology being developed by commercial space companies, according to the head of the service’s mobility enterprise.
The newest military service has been closely watching as companies test concepts for refueling and repairing satellites on orbit but hasn’t yet established acquisition programs or operational units to leverage that work. In August, the Space Force created a new role, deputy director of operations for servicing and maneuver, and appointed Col. Meredith Beg to lead the office. It held an industry day in September to learn more about the technology industry is developing.
These activities come as U.S. Space Command is seeing a need for its surveillance satellites to be more maneuverable, both to dodge debris and enemy spacecraft and to observe new areas in the space environment.
Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, program executive officer for assured access to space, told C4ISRNET this week that once the service has funding available, it wants to be ready to pay industry to provide those services for its own satellites.
“We want to do on-orbit servicing and maneuver and refueling as a service,” Purdy said in a Feb. 21 interview at the inaugural Space Mobility Conference in Orlando, hosted by the Space Force. “The urgency now is [to] figure out . . . what’s going to be there, figure out how to take advantage of it and then build that complicated structure internally.”
That internal structure, he said, includes manpower, physical space and contracting and acquisition strategies. It also means ensuring that satellites are equipped with the hardware to receive fuel or have a part replaced or added.
The service has proposed funding for on-orbit servicing as part of the Pentagon’s budget process, but those attempts have never made it to the Space Force’s final funding request, Purdy said. Congress added $30 million for space mobility and logistics in the Fiscal 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Act, which he views as an indication that lawmakers are interested in the concept.
“There’s interest on the hill already, so we’ll continue to push that effort,” Purdy said.
Beg, who leads the new servicing and maneuver office, said during a panel discussion at the same conference that the Space Force plans to use the funding to develop an operational concept for using these services.
She noted that the Space Force is working with NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, which was created to strengthen partnerships between non-traditional companies and DoD. The Space Force is also taking advantage of contracts awarded last June by its technology arm SpaceWERX, which chose 125 teams to advance in-space servicing and orbital debris removal technologies.
“It’s not going to be easy, but we’re partnering with the right individuals to help us,” Beg said.
Claire Leon, head of the Space Force’s space systems integration office, highlighted efforts to develop a propulsion interface. She said that until the service has a formal program, it will likely take slow steps toward embracing these capabilities.
“There isn’t a program out there that has a hard requirement that says, ‘You will be refueling,’” she said during a panel discussion at the conference. “We are taking baby steps.”
#2
Make those bastards on the moon suffer through daylight savings like the rest of us.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/01/2023 12:33 Comments ||
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#3
Well the "US Space Force" doen't atually own a space vehicle, so it would kind follow, wouldn't it?
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/01/2023 13:19 Comments ||
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#4
Come on, man! Give the Space Force a break. Do you know how hard it is to get an electric vehicle into orbit? Hell, getting an EV from New York to LA is a hit or miss proposition. And that's barely 0 AGL.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
