The Young Turks - Repeal 2nd Amendment, NJ Gun Control, Census Question, and Student Loans

Episode Date: March 27, 2018

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I didn't know if I was going to intro that or you were going to intro that, but welcome to another episode of the Young Turks, the dark episode. Both dark and we can't see ourselves, and no one's watching this live. But people are going to be watching it, and so we are going to do our best to deliver the news in the fashion that we normally do. Yes. Even though the camera angles will be a little bit odd. I feel like I'm back on the think tank. Look, what matters is the content, right, guys? So we're going to dedicate the entire two-hour program today to the Russian investigation.

John, proceed. Russia, Russia, Russia. No, we do have a lot of important news, and I don't think that that is actually a part of any of it. So why don't we launch into something a little bit controversial? Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens published an op-ed today on the New York Times, calling for more than just new gun control laws.

He wants the Second Amendment to be repealed entirely, although that doesn't necessarily mean what people think it means. I don't think. So we're going to read a couple of excerpts from his op-ed, Not the entire thing. This is probably more than I should be anyway, but it's interesting, so bear with me. John Paul Stevens said, in reference to the March for Our Lives and the push for gun control laws, that support, talking about how many people turned out for the marches, is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semi-automatic weapons,

increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. they should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment. And he goes back through the history of why he thinks that's necessary, and a lot of it has to do with the changing interpretation of what the Second Amendment actually represents, what it says and what it means.

For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun-controlled legislation. In 1939, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sought-off shotgun because that weapon had no reasonable relation the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.

And there's other examples of that as well. If the gun or the ability to have the gun doesn't have anything to do with the clearly worded Second Amendment, then it could in fact be regulated, either at the federal level or at the state level. And he goes farther even more recently. During the years when Warren Berger was our Chief Justice from 1969 to 1986, no judge, federal or state, as far as I am aware, expressed any doubt as to the limited coverage of that amendment.

When organizations like the National Rifle Association disagreed with that position and began their campaign claiming that federal regulation of firearms curtailed Second Amendment rights, Chief Justice publicly characterized the NRA as perpetrating, quote, one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I've ever seen in my lifetime. And it has been successful because much more recently, just in the past couple of decades, the District of Columbia v. Heller decision happened where they did, in the end, say that certain types of gun control would go against the personal ownership of firearms having nothing to do with militias whatsoever.

And the only reason to get rid of that would be to get rid of the Second Amendment. Right. So the DC v. Heller case back in 2008 really did change the way people perceived gun rights in the country. So previously, the way that the Second Amendment was interpreted was that a well-regulated militia had the right to bear arms. the DCV Heller decision focused primarily on individual gun rights, right? They interpreted it in a different way and essentially that opened the floodgates for further deregulation of guns. And so what was fascinating about this op-ed piece written by John Paul Stevens was that it wasn't coming from a progressive former Supreme Court justice.

It was coming from an individual who identifies as a Republican. And he sees that, you know, the Second Amendment has been misinterpreted. The NRA has become too powerful. And as a result, innocent lives are being taken in, you know, these instances of gun violence. And so, look, my read of his op-ed was, yeah, he wants to repeal the Second Amendment. But I, and this is my own speculation. My interpretation of what he really wants is for people to interpret the Second Amendment, way that it was actually written, right, in the context of a well-regulated militia.

But since it seems as though we're unable to do that, then let's... More recently, we've been unable to do that since 2008, when this DCV Heller Supreme Court case came about and was decided on, it just, we're never going to get any real, you know, fundamental change in gun control unless we repeal the Second Amendment. Yeah, and I think that this entire topic, you could have a lot of different approaches. to it. I mean, you could also say we need to repeal it entirely because even if we were to get back to that old understanding of it, there hasn't been a well-regulated militia in a hundred-plus years. It's nonsense. Some people are saying that this is a terrible idea for him to publish this

because this confirms to the right all of their fears that this movement isn't about new gun control regulations. It's about taking all the guns. I would say, don't worry about that. They already are saying we're going to kill every gun owner. You're right about that. In that, in that, You know, the NRA has done a fantastic job in spreading their propaganda about what people really want when it comes to gun regulation, right? And so gun advocates have already bought into that propaganda and there's no changing their mind. But I do agree that his op-ed, it is not representative of what most people want when it comes to gun regulation. Yeah, I think he's trying to guide them, saying that so long as we allow this much, modern interpretation of the Second Amendment to exist, all of your efforts at the state level

are going to continually butt up against the NRA Republican lawmakers and stuff like that. And I said something like probably a month ago now that I think we need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-F-The Republic or UNFTR. As a young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies. debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic

that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be. Featuring in-depth research, razor-sharp commentary, and just the right amount of vulgarity, the UNFTR podcast takes a sledgehammer to what you thought you knew about some of the nation's most sacred historical cows. But don't just take my word for it, the New York Times described UNFTR as consistently compelling and educational, aiming to challenge conventional wisdom and upend the historical narratives that were taught in school.

For as the great philosopher Yoda once put it, you must unlearn what you have learned. And that's true whether you're in Jedi training or you're uprooting and exposing all the propaganda and disinformation you've been fed over the course of your lifetime. So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained, all at the same time. Need an amendment to amend the Second Amendment, not to get rid of it entirely, but to entirely reword it into something that works not just for those who want gun control, but also the Second Amendment, as it's constructed right now, doesn't serve anyone's interests because it is far too vague. I mean, I would say with the well-regulated militia part's not vague, but in terms of what's well-regulated and what it allows and what it doesn't allow, it's vague. And we know now that the ways that Supreme Courts can interpret it can change massively over time. So I think we need to amend it to say there will be a limited ability to own guns for certain functions such as hunting self-defense with further regulations of various sorts coming from federal and state laws. Or something more specific.

I don't have my actual wording down, but that's what I want. So the Constitution was obviously written in a way to keep things vague, right? It's not meant to be a document that outlines policy. It's supposed to be a document that guides policy. And so the amendments are intentionally vague in some regard, right? But what John Paul Stevens wrote, and something that I completely agree with, is that the Second Amendment's current terminology and current meaning is antiquated. And so it makes sense to update it, right?

And so I agree with him on that. Let's say we update it once every 200 years. That would be fair. Not too much, but... That would be fair, because I highly doubt our founding fathers, you know, really considered how much this weaponry would advance, you know. And it's advanced considerably. I mean, they weren't thinking about high-capacity magazines.

They weren't thinking about military-style assault weapons. They weren't thinking about, you know, AR-15s and those types of weapons. And so I think it does make sense to look back at, you know, the Second Amendment and think about how to modernize it in a way where it will apply to our current society. And, yes, in a way that benefits both parties, both gun advocates and individuals who want common-sense gun legislation. Yeah, yeah, perhaps not gun advocates who are out of their minds and want everyone to have tanks.

And by the way, reasonable gun owners. Reasonable gun owners. And I would argue that the majority of gun advocates are reasonable. Unfortunately, they are being represented by the most extreme individuals in the NRA who, of course, have a profit motive to push out more guns. Yeah, and just one final point I want to make about what this means. Again, I think we should amend the Second Amendment, not remove the Second Amendment. But if you remove the Second Amendment, it does not mean that people can't have guns.

It doesn't mean that you round up all guns. There are plenty of countries around the world that have no constitutional provisions for gun ownership, but people can own guns. You could still have laws. There's no constitutional right to smoke cigarettes, but people smoke cigarettes all over the place. There would still be laws at the federal and at the state level

regulating what sorts of guns and gun accessories you'd be able to have. So even if we got rid of the entirety of this, it does not mean they'd be coming for all your guns. It doesn't mean it would be illegal to own a gun. That is complete misinformation. Fresh off the March for Our Lives, the New Jersey Assembly has passed not one gun control law or two, but six all in one day, which is, I think, objectively, a lot of movement on one policy. Now, look, New Jersey is an area that has fairly strong gun laws, especially in comparison to some parts of the country.

So in some ways, this just a little bit strengthens it or opens up new areas where they're going to do some gun control. And, of course, gun rights advocates in New Jersey are saying that this is. is traitorous and all that. But I want to talk about all six of these, at least briefly, because it's progress. And we need to highlight the areas where progress needs to happen. But we can't just forget when we're succeeding.

I think people are too worried about it. It's like a sort of superstitious thing where we don't want to jinx it or something. Or we think that if we talk about the good things, then we're not doing enough to acknowledge the bad things. But this is progress. And so I want to break these down. Before you jump in, I'll explain why I think people

worried it's because in the past whenever there's a little bit of progress on a difficult political issue people get complacent so I think I think there's a worry about complacency which we have seen in the past when it comes to gun violence and gun legislation but I agree with you in that it's important to celebrate some of the victories that we're seeing across the country with gun control and New Jersey has in the past attempted to pass similar measures and unfortunately they were unable to do so because Chris Christie was their governor. Now Phil Murphy, a Democrat, is the governor, and he intends on signing this legislation into law. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, and I would say, look, I mean, when I was

in grad school, it was for political psychology, so I think your concern is very justified. But I think at the same time, we can worry about complacency. We can also worry about apathy, which could result from not thinking that anything is happening. Absolutely. We need to deal with both of those. So now let's jump into the bills. We're going to talk about each of these. Please feel free to jump in if you want to comment. Two bills would make it easier to seize guns from certain owners, like if they're a member of the NRA. I'm kidding.

That's the conspiracy theory, but no. One passed 62 to seven with seven abstentions, so very popular, would require law enforcement to seize firearms from those who mental health professionals determine are, quote, likely to engage in conduct that poses a threat of serious harm to the patient or another person. That seems incredibly reasonable. It seems like it would have already been the law in many places. The other bill would allow a police officer, family member, or household member of a gun owner who, quote, poses a significant danger of bodily injury to sell for others to file a petition with law enforcement or state superior court for a temporary extreme risk protective order allowing authorities to seize the weapon. And then there would be a very short horizon for how long they have to bring into court and talk about it before they can get their gun back.

But it could allow them to stop something from happening. So I think that that part of their gun control legislation is the most important because a common misunderstanding that people had in regard to the Parkland Florida shooter was that the police and the school administration had absolutely no power to take any weaponry away from that student, none whatsoever. He would have to go through a very lengthy court situation and no one can come in and unilaterally take. someone's gun away even if that person poses an imminent threat there needs to be uh... laws put in place policy put in place that would allow uh... proper law enforcement to come in and take action if they deem that individual uh... you know a threat

uh... some uh... work quite as controversial necessarily uh... one bill uh... to ban armor piercing bullets which are already prohibited generally in new jersey passed with zero no votes uh... after the state attorney general explained that they wanted to better line up state law with federal law and effectively what it was is they added one additional type of ammunition to the banned list and this is important to highlight both because these are the sorts of types of ammunition that should definitely be banned but also when we talk about different forms of

gun control very often gun rights advocates will say well like you're you're defining these classes of weapon in a way that well what if you change this type of thing or you take this scope off or something like that and that is a great concern and legislation can be updated. If it's not quite doing what it needs to do, you can add new types of ammunition or take them off or vice versa and things like that in the future. They're doing that here, shows how easy it is. Another bill lowered the limit for magazine rounds from 15 to 10, although there was one type of 22 caliber firearm that had an exception. 22 caliber is a relatively small round used for like target shooting because

ammunition is very cheap and also for like hunting small animals and things like that. Not the type of weapon necessarily that is used in a lot of mass shootings. But overall, it does limit the magazine size, which is progress. Another required background checks for private gun sales. Boom. Boom. That's also incredibly important. Yes.

That's a big update to gun control policy. And look, it makes me sad that right now action is being taken on a state-by-state level. Florida, for instance, did pass some gun control legislation. But I would like to see this on a federal level because people could easily drive across state lines and purchase weapons, you know, without the limitations that they're experiencing in their own states. Yeah, 100%. And it's never made sense to me that if you're going to have gun sales out of stores and then you have private gun sales. If you were only going to have background checks in one of the two, how did it end up that the private gun sales are the ones without it? Right. Like you have some guy who sells guns all day long. He deals with a lot of people. He could probably pick up on a creepo a little bit easier. Some random guy is supposed to personally determine if you should sell this gun to someone. There should obviously be background checks. Exactly. And when it comes to private sales, remember, you're talking about one party that is looking to, you know, get rid of a gun and make some money. They have an incentive to sell that gun. They want the money. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's easy for me to say, well, why would anyone be against this? But it's a myth. People are not against this. Something like 90 plus percent of America is for this. It should already be law across the country. It is BS that we have to fight for in this particular fashion. And so those are your six. And as Anna alluded to, the bills will now go to the Democrat-led Senate, where the president of the Senate says it is likely to pass. And the governor supports all of them. It's a reminder that, again, party control.

of Senate and assemblies matters. Certainly the party control of the governorship matters because many of these bills would not become law if Chris Christie was still running New Jersey. So these sorts of things matter in a very real way. Can I read one quote by the way? So this is from one of the Republicans in the Assembly who does not support this. So understand that this quote, this is a recent quote. This is from just yesterday. And this is after, you know, Parkland, is after Manley Bay. This is after this huge movement. The marches have happened and Assemblyman Harold Worths says they're just feel-good politicians that are

trying to get headlines and use a horrible tragedy. When I first ran for assembly, I told people they were coming for your guns. Remember, we broke down all six of those. They're not coming for your guns unless you pose an imminent threat to yourself or others. The ultimate goal of many of these people, if they had a magic wand, would be to take every firearm away from you. Don't believe the rhetoric that they say, we're for law-abiding citizens, we're for hunting. That's Pure B.S. But we told you what all six of the bills are. And you can see for yourself, what are they doing? Are they doing sensible gun control that still allows people to hunt and protect themselves? Or are they taking every gun? You can decide for yourself. They love to use the slippery slope argument when it comes to gun control. Even though the slippery slope argument is a ridiculous argument when it comes to pretty much any other policy. And this is not a slippery slope. Again, we have constitutional protections. We have the right to bear arms. We just have to ensure that we do. don't allow people who have no business owning lethal weapons

to go out there and purchase those lethal weapons. Exactly, exactly. So it will now go to the Senate, and then the governor is likely to pass, so there is some progress, at least in New Jersey, coming out of this movement. After a number of different warning signs that it might happen last year, it has now been confirmed that the Trump administration will be attempting

to add a citizenship question to the upcoming census. This is the first time that a question like that will be on the census since 1950, which is important. I'll repeat that. It has not been on since 1950. That's a fact. You can check the old sense sigh. And the reason I bring that up is because of some breaking news that I saw on my phone between stories. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked today about this at a press conference and she said, this is a question that's been included in every census since 1965 with the exception of 2010 when it was removed. She then repeated that. It hasn't been on since 1950. So it's one thing where the president,

lies and then she has to go and sort of talk circles around his lie, but she is now simply lying about an objective fact. It hasn't been on there. So why would we care about this? Why is it important? Why is California now suing to stop that from happening? Well, there's a lot of different reasons, but basically the idea is that if you have a citizenship question on the census and people know that it's going to be on there, then people who are not citizens might not want to fill out the census, which is incredibly politically important because a number of different government policies and sets of money are apportioned to different areas based on responses from the census.

And that is supposed to be completely divorced from whether people are citizens or not. For instance, how many congressmen a state will have? Now, the Constitution is very clear. We are supposed to do a census, figure out how many people live in a household, how many households are in an area, and apportioned congressmen based on that. It does not say based on how many citizens are living in an area. And that is just one way that apportionment works across the country. And so the idea is that if this goes on there, it's the entire reason they're doing it, then blue states and cities are going to be hurt by this, and rural areas and red states are going to benefit.

We had something similar in 2010 for different reasons, but this would be putting that on steroids. Right, but I also want to mention some of the red states that do have, you know, large immigrant populations that would also be hurt by this. So Texas would be hurt by this, Arizona to some extent would be hurt by this. And so it's a really bad idea because, yes, you're absolutely right in that it will deter people from filling it out and answering because of worry of retaliation by the Trump administration and ICE officials. It will impact the way districts are drawn in given states. So right now you have the Justice Department arguing that, oh, come on, that one question isn't really going to have a huge impact on whether or not people respond to the census. I think they're really underestimating, you know, the impact that it's going to have. Well, they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't going to have an impact.

That's why they've been fighting for it for over a decade. Exactly. And another argument that I keep hearing over and over again from those who want the question on the census is that historically, the individual, you know, who are compiling data for the census do not share or transfer that data and information to other government agencies, like ICE, for instance. But things are very different under the Trump administration. And we are seeing unprecedented activity by immigration officials because they are emboldened and they are more than emboldened.

I think some of them are a pressure to be more draconian in the immigration officials. their enforcement policies and in deporting people. So it really worries me that, A, some of this information might be used as something that could disadvantage people who do answer, and B, that it'll lead to a population count that isn't actually accurate or representative of what we're seeing in various states. Yeah, I mean, I would not be surprised if they share the information throughout the government. At the very least, Facebook's going to get access to it. Well, they already have access to it.

They somehow already did the census themselves. They did. So I want to read a quote from former attorney general, Eric Holder, who had this to say. The addition of a citizenship question of the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy. Make no mistake, this decision is motivated purely by politics. In deciding to add this question without even testing its effects,

the administration is departing from decades of census policy and ignoring the warnings of census experts. And has reason to believe, by the way, that that lack of testing could be significant, not just for the likely effects of having this question on the questionnaire, But also for the ability of the people running the census to actually run it. The Census Bureau's top two positions right now

have interim occupants. They don't even have permanent leadership. And it's been forced to skip two of its three trial runs for the 2020 census because of funding shortfalls. If response rates for the census are low, critics worry that the Bureau may be unable to adjust the data or deploy enough census takers to low response communities. Because obviously what they're trying to do

is they're not going to talk to every community. They're going to attempt to talk to a representative sample of those communities and if they go into an area and people aren't responding they're gonna be forced to adapt uh... how they model the information they got to the population at large and if they have too few responses they might not be able to do that in an accurate fashion especially if they don't have good leadership if they're not being funded at the right levels which has all been true over the past uh... year plus

exactly uh... there's one other area that i want to get into uh... obviously fox and friends is excited about this and so they were talking about that and uh... they didn't necessarily get the answers they wanted on the constitutionality of this particular question, which you'll see. At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing and selling our data. But that doesn't mean we have to let them. It's possible to stay anonymous online and hide your data from the prying eyes of big tech.

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Okay, good. Okay, that's what you alluded to earlier. Yeah. Yeah, so Napolitano is not one of my favorite people, but there, at least, he seems to understand a little bit of the background of this particular topic. And thanks to California's pending lawsuit over this, it is going to be interesting to see if they're able. as we have in many other areas where judges have had to step in

and curb the excesses of the Trump administration. It's going to be interesting to see if they can do that in this area. Right, exactly. And to be clear, and I really want to re-emphasize, you don't have to answer anything that is asked of you when there's a census official knocking on your door. Now, you can't lie on the census. You shouldn't lie on the census,

but if you choose not to answer and you get approached by a census official, you have that right to remain silent. You have that protection. Exactly, yeah. And if this does actually go into law, I think that some sort of massive campaign is going to be necessary to tell people

both that they should still fill it out and they could not respond to particular questions if that's what they're worried about. Right. Okay, that's it for that one. You're right in the middle of this podcast. We've got another great segment coming up for you. If you'd like the full show, which is actually five segments,

go to t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. You become a member, you support the show, you support independent media, and you get the whole two-hour show ad-free every day. Let's go do it now. We have a shocking and disturbing update on the case involving Larry Nassar. He was the serial pedophile who is going to spend the rest of his life in prison after sexually molesting and abusing female athletes. And it turns out that the former dean of MSU, his name is Dr. William Strampel, has been arrested. And when the story first broke, people were speculating as to why he was arrested. Maybe an investigation was done to see whether or not he knew about Larry Nassar's activity and refused to report into the authorities.

And that's the reason why he got arrested. But the story is actually even worse than that. So let's give you the details. Now, Dr. William Strample has been charged with allegedly using his office to harass and sexually assault female students, as well as having pornographic material on his work computer, including a video of Nassar performing that so-called treatment on a young female patient. That's going to hurt him in court.

Probably ought not to have that. Wow. Any of the stuff is going to sound bad. But some of it, the harassing and the individual reports of sexual assault could, in theory, be disconnected. It could be that these are just two bad guys who were close to each other, but independently, they awful but once he's like the the fact that he has the video implies that there's

some sort of long-standing back room deal between them I I and again this is my speculation because I don't have all the evidence in front of me but I've even less but based on what I've pieced together it seems as though Strample did know about what Nassar was doing because not only was that video found on his computer back in 2014 a you know athlete, female athlete, came to Strample and said that she had been assaulted, and he claimed that he investigated it and found no wrongdoing. However, he had new rules for Nassar.

For instance, there needed to be another person in the room while Nassar was performing treatment, yada, yada. But did they do that? Because weren't there far more... Hold on. I'll give you the details. But it was based on the honor system. He'd never enforced, you know, his new policies for Nassar. He never checked up on Nassar, and the abuse continued.

So that is another reason why I think there's some evidence indicating that Strample knew what was going on with Nassar. However, again, you know, what was found on his computer was bad enough. Let me give you more details. According to Tuesday's affidavit, he used his position to sexually harass and assault at least four female medical students. The allegations include groping and inappropriate sexual comments. So he's facing some pretty serious charges, including a charge of misconduct in office, a misdemeanor of criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree, and also of willful neglect of duty. Now, according to the document, one woman alleges that he told her she would not make it in the medical field unless she started to dress sexier.

The same woman said he groped her buttocks in 2013 during a scholarship dinner. Investigator sees the former Dean's computer and found approximately 50 photos of bare vaginas, nude or semi-nude women, sex toys, and pornography. Several of the women in the photos appear to be MSU students. Yeah, he's going to be a lot of trouble. It seems like this, the Nassar originally, is probably going to go down as one of the worst serial pedophiles and sexual assaters in our country's history. But imagine finding out about it as a separate human being and not feeling compelled to do. something to stop it. In fact, taking advantage of it for yourself. The reason why Nassar was able to get away with what he did for decades is because he

happened to be surrounded by some people who were not only complicit, who were engaging in similar activity. And so I'm glad that these investigations are happening. And the investigations are looking into people who were close to Nassar in a professional. setting to see whether or not they knew about his behavior. And it just so happens that through these investigations, we find out the former dean of MSU was engaging in misconduct himself. So we will update you on this story as we get more information about it, but it is devastating to know that these people in positions of power were not only complicit, but again,

were involved in their own misconduct. If you're concerned about programs that offer student loan forgiveness, under the Trump administration. You should be, but it turns out that Congress actually included some funding to help those with student loan debt in their new spending bill. So let me give you the details on it.

Keep in mind that this is by no means a big fix or even a small fix. It is a minuscule fix, but it could positively impact your life, and I want to make sure you have the information about it. Now, this story has to do with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which was implemented under the Bush administration.

The whole point of the program was to offer student loan forgiveness to individuals who take up jobs in public service or for nonprofits, and as long as they work at that organization for 10 years and make payments toward their student loan in those 10 years, after that decade is up, that student loan would be forgiven. Now, there was some worry that the Trump administration would not honor the program and there was a lack of funding to honor the program. However, Congress has included some funding in their recent spending bill to help with this issue. Now, as part of the new

$1.3 trillion federal spending bill, Congress authorized a $350 million fix to fund a popular student loan forgiveness plan that many financial experts say is currently failing. Now, in order to qualify, you'll still need to have a loan from this direct program. You've had to have made all your payments in full and on time in that 10-year span, and you had to have worked 10 years in a public service job with a qualifying employer. Now, as long as you meet all of those requirements, you could apply to have your debt forgiven in about two months. So in two months, they will open up the application process. Now, the forgiveness plan will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis. The reason why I mention that is because $350 million, obviously, is not

enough to help all students who are part of this program, which is frustrating because it is unprecedented for Congress to implement something on this first-come, first-serve basis. However... I mean, there's some, like, a lot of the tax credits for electric vehicles and things like that had a certain amount that it was large enough that presumably most people would be able to get it, so it wasn't stringent, but there was a cap. So let me give you the caveat so you understand what I mean. What I mean is this program was implemented without this first come, first served basis.

Oh, and now it's being put on top of it. Exactly. So there were people who under the Bush administration thought, hey, this is a good deal. I want to have my loans forgiven in 10 years. So I'm going to apply for this program, and I'm going to do exactly what this program needs me to do. So they entered public service or worked for a nonprofit. They made their payments toward their loan dutifully over the last decade. And then boom, under the Trump administration, we're only going to apply a $350 million funding effort toward this and its first come for a serve basis.

That's what I mean. So they kind of reneged on a promise that was made under the Bush administration, but still. If you do want to see this continue past when this money runs out, it could be that future spending bills will be similar. I know that Trump wasn't a fan of it, partially based on what's in the bill and partially based on we're now seeing reports today that he doesn't actually know what's in it. I'm never going to sign a bill like this again. I don't know what's in it, but I don't like it. I'm never going to sign it. That's a strong position.

But anyway, but maybe we'll have more bills like this that will continue it. Maybe not. Maybe we need a fundamental change to Congress to hopefully ensure that these sorts of programs will be funded in the future. But yeah, look, that spending bill overall, we talked about it when it was passed. They spent way too much money on the military in it. There's a number of things that I disagree with that are huge wastes of money. but they did get quite a few things like this and didn't fund a number of different programs that I found most objectionable. So I know we're not supposed to say anything positive really ever,

but certainly about the people who are in government right now, but it could have been much worse. Now, this $350 million is a tiny, unnoticeable fragment of $1.3 trillion, but for the people who will have their student loans forgiven as a result of this program, that's very positive. And again, I want to make sure that if you were part of this program, that you stay on top of this and when you're able to apply for the loan forgiveness in about two months you go for it because again first come first serve basis and just want to look out for you guys oh and one other thing if you're a conservative doesn't like this program and

especially doesn't love having to continually fund it over and over and over let's just have tuition-free public access to colleges and then we don't have to worry about the debt after all I'd like that I mean it's it is fascinating that we always have enough money to fund weapons manufacturers and private contractors in the defense department. But we don't have the money to help out our fellow Americans and help them wipe their debt after dedicating a decade of their lives to public service. Thanks for watching. We're listening to this free version of the Young Turks podcast.

You know that the full show is at t-y-tnetwork.com slash join. If you become a member, you have the full show ad-free. We love you for watching or listening either way. there's going to be a new free podcast tomorrow you can keep on doing that but if you want to get to full show ad free t yt network.com slash join thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank yugar and i'll see you soon