The Daily Signal - TOP NEWS | Student Loan Cases Before Supreme Court, White House TikTok Ban, Lori Lightfoot Faces Tough Election Night, Sen. Manchin Weighs in on DC Crime Law | Feb. 28

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

On today’s Daily Signal Top News, we break down: The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today for two cases challenging President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.  Government agencies have less than a month to ban the popular Chinese-owned app TikTok from federal devices Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is criticizing Time magazine because she wasn’t featured on the cover page.  Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia plans to vote for a Republican-sponsored resolution that would block a D.C. crime law, The Hill reports.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Daily Signal that it “will not be tracking” the reasons Americans give for refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine, after House Republicans demanded answers about a new classification system that tracks the reasons for vaccine refusal.  Relevant Links Listen to other podcasts from The Daily Signal: https://www.dailysignal.com/podcasts/ Get daily conservative news you can trust from our Morning Bell newsletter: DailySignal.com/morningbellsubscription   Listen to more Heritage podcasts: https://www.heritage.org/podcasts Sign up for The Agenda newsletter — the lowdown on top issues conservatives need to know about each week: https://www.heritage.org/agenda Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Samantha Sherris. I'm Virginia Allen. And this is the Daily Signal top news for Tuesday, February 28th. Here are today's headlines. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today for two cases challenging President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan. Remember that Biden's plan would forgive $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt for borrowers. It could cost the federal government $400 billion. Joining us in $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt for borrowers. Joining us in the studio today is Jean-Carlow Canaparo. He's a senior fellow in the Edwin Mesa Third Center for Legal and Judicial Studies here at the Heritage Foundation. John Collar, thanks so much for joining us.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Of course. Now, you are actually with us yesterday to discuss these cases. I wanted to get your thoughts on what you heard today in these arguments. Yes, so let me start off with a reminder. There are two issues in both of these cases. one is what's called standing and the other is the merits is Biden's plan lawful. And standing is a uniquely judicial doctrine. And it says, you know, the courts can only hear real cases and

controversies. And the courts have interpreted that to mean that you have to have suffered, if you want to be able to enter court, a real injury caused by the other side that a court has the power to fix. And together, this is called the standing doctrine. So you have a group of states in the first case. And the state with the best standing argument is that is Missouri. And Missouri has a state agency called Moela. If you have student loans, you may have heard of it. In fact, Moela once serviced my student loans before I paid them off.

And Moela services student loans on a contract from the federal government. So the government pays them for every loan that they service. And the state says, look, when you cancel student loans or reduce their balance, Moela loses money, which means all of the scholarships that Moela invests in and the revenue that Moela generates is lost. And that's a harm to the state and the people of the state. And so we have standing as a state to vindicate that harm. In the other case, you have two individual borrowers who, for different reasons, didn't qualify for student loans, forgiveness or cancellation. And they say that because Biden did this by executive fiat and not by the normal administrative.

rulemaking process, which has a notice and comment period, they didn't get to weigh in on this. And that, they say, is a procedural injury that has harmed them. So the Supreme Court in both cases had to discuss the standing issue before it got to the merits. Now, in the state case, it was very clear that the three liberal justices don't think any of the plaintiffs have a right to sue. Of the conservative justice, the conservative justices did not seem so. interested in the standing issue, which suggests to me, although it's always dangerous to read the tea leaves from oral arguments, but it suggests to me that they don't have serious concerns with the standing argument because they wanted to focus on the merits. In the student borrowers'

cases, there's a lot more standing discussion. And the reason for that, and I think it's fair, is that their standing argument is somewhat novel. I wouldn't call it a really strong argument. But ultimately, to reach the merits, you only need one plaintiff with standing. And I, it's It sounded to me from moral arguments like a majority of the justices probably thinks that at least one of the states has standing. That's very interesting. And for these two different cases, when can we expect a decision? Oh, always hard to tell. This is usually high profile opinions from the Supreme Court get handed down at the end of the term, usually the last week of June.

My guess is that this is probably one of those cases. Moving on to the merits, how did the oral arguments go on that front? Well, once again, we saw that the three liberal justices were united in their thought that this emergency statute that Biden relies on is essentially a blank check for emergency powers. Multiple times during the oral argument, Justice Kagan, for instance, interrupted the challengers of the law and just said, you know, it's an emergency, it's an emergency, which seems to suggest she thinks that when the president declares an emergency under this act, he can basically do whatever he wants. The conservative justices, I wouldn't say that there was a clear consensus among them, but many of them for different reasons seem to doubt very much that the executive could just grab this sort of power for himself. Some of the themes we saw was the statute has never been used to forgive student loans

before. It has been used to grant sort of temporary relief in limited circumstances. But this is a generally applicable waiver to 95.5% of all student loan borrowers in the country. Another question was, has the Secretary of Education actually done his due diligence to defend the basis of this policy? So the law says not only do you have the power to waive and modify as the operative language in the face of a national emergency, but that waiver or modification has to be tailored only to people who have actually suffered a financial harm from the pandemic. And the relief granted can only be such that is necessary to keep them where they were, not to make them. them better off. And one of the big questions in the case is had the government done its job.

The government points to the fact that, you know, some people will be at risk of default if student loans continue, but the government didn't identify how many, whether those people would be at a risk of default because of financial hardship or because maybe they've gone accustomed to not paying their loans. For any number of reasons, the government just didn't do that due diligence. And that was a big stumbling block for, for instance, this Justice Korsuch. And the chief, for his part, seemed really skeptical that Congress in a statute, which is sort of at best ambiguous or vague, would just grant the executive branch the power to set nationwide policy to the tune of half a trillion dollars. Well, Jean-Carlo, thank you so much

for joining us to break down these cases once again. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Government agencies have less than a month to ban the popular Chinese-owned app TikTok from federal devices. That's according to an Office of Management and Budget Memorandum issued on Monday. OMB director Shalanda Young issued the memorandum for executive departments and agency heads about implementation guidance for banning TikTok on the government-issued devices, Reuters first reported. Joining us to discuss this news is Jake Den, a recent. associate at the Tech Policy Center here at the Heritage Foundation. Jake, thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. So first and foremost, can you tell us a little bit more

about this OMB memo? Yes, this OMB memo is essentially the plan to execute the law that Senator Hawley was able to pass back in December that banned TikTok from federal devices. So you know, in recent months we've seen a lot of states banning from their state and government employees, but we were actually able to pass a government device ban for the federal level as well. And so this is really just OMB executing that directive. So this was expected. This wasn't as much of a surprise as it was made out to be maybe. Was the timing of the memo a surprise at all? Or was that kind of just like, you know, they just did it when they did it? I think it's more of a they just did it when they did it type of thing. While we do have the

hearing on the horizon, I mean, we've still. are undergoing the Sifias review. And, you know, this is obviously coming from the Biden administration, and they've shown really no interest in engaging in this kind of momentum. So I think you could probably just chalk it up to a coincidence rather than a calculated move. Yeah, I wanted to ask a little bit more about some of the steps that these federal agencies must take over the next few months. I know over the next 30 days, starting on Monday, there are a few steps, then 90, then 120 days. So if you could just walk us through sort of what we can see play out. Yeah.

So it's essentially a baby step process, right? They don't want to rush right into instantly getting deleted from the devices. And so it goes in stages. It gives kind of the IT administrators the ability to actually implement the protocols. And then they set up a framework for them to report back. And it's really like formalizing a structure. And so we're probably still going to be 100 plus days out from this really being executed at, you know, the full degree. And that includes, you know, contractors and things

of this nature. I think what we're beginning to realize when these memos come out is that this is kind of an all-encompassing issue. And it really isn't going to be as simple as, you know, 10 days after we sign this memo and everything's just executed. So they're letting them take their time and it'll probably be well into maybe even the summer before we see this fully played out. And it's off everyone's device. Yeah, definitely. And I, as you were just saying, you know, the extent of which TikTok, whether it's through contracts, whether it's just simply downloaded onto someone's phone, it's very much intertwined with a lot of what the federal government and what these agencies do, which is based on, you know,

these requirements for the next 30, 90, 120 days. So we'll definitely be keeping an eye on that. Jake, any final thoughts before we go? Yeah, I think, you know, this is just adding more to the kind of global consensus now that TikTok isn't safe. We've just seen, you know, Parliament remove it from their government devices. We just saw Canada remove it from their government devices. And I think it really just, you know, reiterates the looming question of like, at what point is it not safe for the average consumer? You know, if globally we agree that it can't be on government devices, when are we going to acknowledge that it probably shouldn't be on the individuals as well? And I think, you know,

as we approach that hearing, that should be at the forefront of everyone's mind, I think we've pretty much resolved that this is a government risk, right? But I think we need to get answers or at least just kind of pivot now towards this is still a risk for the average person. Absolutely. And I just wanted to note that TikTok's chief executive officer is scheduled to testify next month, March 23rd, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is led by Representative Kathy McMorris Rogers of Washington State.

Jake, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is criticizing Time Magazine because she wasn't featured on the cover page. During an interview with Politico, Lightfoot discussed Chicago's former mayor, Rahm Emanuel, and his appearance on Time Magazine's cover. She said, I remember Rahm Emanuel appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. The headline was basically like, tough guy for Chicago. No woman or woman of color is ever going to get that. headline. Today is Election Day in Chicago and Lightfoot faces eight challengers. ABC7 reports the race

will likely head into a runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. The runoff election will take place on April 4th. Elections are also being held for Chicago City Council members and for the first time, as ABC 7 also reports, members of Police District Councils. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia plans to vote for a Republican-sponsored resolution that would block a Washington, D.C. crime law, according to the Hill. The crime law, as the Hill also reports, would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allow jury trials for misdemeanor offenses, and reduce maximum sentences for crimes ranging from robberies to carjackings. Manchin said Monday during an appearance on CNN, I don't support it. I mean, I want to put people away. I don't want to let them out. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was opposed to the law, attempted to veto the bill, but was overridden by a D.C. City Council, according to the Washington Examiner. Breitbart recently reported that crime in Washington, D.C. rose 23% at the start of this year compared to the start of 2020.

specifically homicides increased 25%, vehicle theft increased 111%, and arson increased 300%. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Daily Signal that it will not be tracking the reasons Americans give for refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine after House Republicans demanded answers about a new classification system that tracks the reasons for vaccine refuse. our colleague Tyler O'Neill reports. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans told the daily signal that the CDC failed to respond to their questions by a deadline last week. Representative Josh Burkine, a Republican from Oklahoma, told the daily signal in a statement Monday that two weeks ago we sent a letter to the CDC demanding answers about its new COVID-19 vaccine database. The CDC is stonewalling us and refusing to respond. Brkeen added, why won't the CDC, explain why it's gathering data about Americans' personal choices. House Republicans are not

afraid to use the budgetary process to keep the CDC accountable to the American people. House Republicans race the alarm about the CDC's involvement in the World Health Organization's recently codified international classification of disease or ICD codes related to COVID-19 vaccination status, which went into effect last April. The codes enable the CDC to collect data on the reasons Americans refuse to take one of the vaccines. The CDC told the Daily Signal that it and the National Center for Health Statistics don't have any data and won't track the information. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal's top news. If you haven't had the chance, be sure to check out our morning show right here in this podcast feed,

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