Here Are the Three “Liberal” Senators Who Helped Republicans Block Biden’s Student Loan Relief

On Thursday, the Senate voted to block President Joe Biden’s student loan relief program. Senate Republicans were joined by Democrats Joe Manchin and Jon Tester and independent Kyrsten Sinema in leaving up to 43 million people in crippling debt.

Thanks to their vote, the legislation now heads to the desk of Joe Biden.

Note that these conservative senators, all of whom caucus with the Democrats, are fans of preserving the 60-vote filibuster threshold, which prevents affirmative policy changes from happening. Meanwhile, they’ll happily vote with a simple minority to do whatever they can to actively stop affirmative government action too.

The vote comes after two House Democrats, Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, joined Republicans to block the plan last week. Golden and Perez are co-chairs of the famously inefficacious conservative Blue Dog caucus, which has served as a home to corporate-chasing Sinema and NRA A-rated, anti-choice conservative Henry Cuellar.

As a reminder, while these conservative Democrats pretend their votes are in line with “everyday Americans,” their votes signify keeping the soul-crushing boot of wildly undue debt on the backs of 43 million people. That boot harms those individuals’ lives, as well as the lives of the millions of friends, family members, and neighbors who surround them.

Estimates show that 87 percent of the relief from Biden’s plan would go to individuals earning less than $75,000 a year, while none would go to those earning more than $125,000. Ninety-five percent of the total benefits would go to households making less than $150,000.

Biden has previously said he would veto such a measure to block his plan; some thus argue the conservative Democrats’ votes are symbolic. But even if they are, the symbol is one of cowardice, of an incredible refusal to communicate to voters that a policy that uplifts millions of working people is worth pursuing at all.

On Wednesday, when he wasn’t busy snapping like a petulant child at reporters, Ron DeSantis was assuring Iowa voters that he is “gonna do ballot harvesting.”

To be clear, ballot harvesting—or what it’s known as when not in scare quotes: ballot collection—has long historical precedence in helping burdened communities have their voices heard (and those most burdened by society ought to be heard, so those burdens ideally become less heavy). The practice can help collect the ballots of the elderly, disabled, or those who do not have easy access to polling locations. Consequently, 24 states and Washington, D.C., allow voters to choose someone to return mail ballots on their behalf.

The left has long sought to expand voting access for all voters, no matter their party identification. Republicans, on the other hand, facing loss after loss, have only recently begun to embrace measures like ballot drop boxes and ballot collection. It’s often framed as “getting back” at the supposedly cheating left, and paired with more troubling proposals on voting rights.

DeSantis, for example, while telling the Iowa voter of his plans to pursue ballot harvesting, made sure to contrast such a practice with Nevada’s, where everyone is sent a ballot, “which is bad.”

The oscillation has been championed by the Republican primary leader as well. In February, twice-impeached, criminally indicted, and liable-for-sexual-abuse former President Donald Trump called putting ballot drop boxes “ALL OVER THE PLACE” the “BEST IDEA I’VE HEARD IN A LONG TIME.”

DeSantis, though, has been at the forefront of making the case. In April, after a left-leaning judge beat a conservative one by 11 points to give Wisconsin a liberal majority on the Supreme Court for the first time in 15 years, the Florida governor chided Republicans for their “culture of losing.” He called on the party to use tactics like ballot harvesting.

“I think you should have ballot harvesting where it’s legal and then fight to have the legislatures in those states get rid of it, because that’s not the way you should conduct an election,” DeSantis said.

Last year, DeSantis signed a bill making ballot harvesting a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, a $5,000 fine, and up to five years of probation. Other recent Florida laws have cut the number of ballot drop boxes available to the public and made it more difficult for formerly incarcerated individuals to regain their voter rights (to the point of intimidating them from trying at all).

Instead of calling for ballot harvesting while also working to make it illegal, Republicans could make ballot collection moot by making voting more accessible in general. Until that mythical day that conservatives support more democratic enfranchisement, though, we’ll keep seeing Republicans clamoring to reap whatever advantage they can out of an electoral system that already allows them to win elections, and policy outcomes, while barely ever winning the popular vote.

Another Republican accidentally admitted Thursday that the party’s investigation into Joe Biden is not actually about turning up the truth.

House Republicans have been investigating the president and his family for months but have been unable to provide any actual evidence linking Biden to any wrongdoing. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer demanded last week that the FBI hand over a document he claims will prove some of these allegations, and threatened FBI Director Christopher Wray with contempt of Congress if he doesn’t provide the document.

But it seems the actual evidence doesn’t matter all that much. Speaking on Fox News Thursday morning, Senator Chuck Grassley said that Republicans are only interested in making sure the FBI complies with the investigation. “We aren’t interested in whether or not the accusations against Vice President Biden are accurate or not,” he said.

When pressed, Grassley admitted he didn’t know whether the document would actually prove any of the accusations against Biden. Fox News host Bill Hemmer incredulously asked whether he had read the document.

“Let’s put it this way, there’s accusations in it,” Grassley said. “It’s not for me to make a judgment about whether these accusations are accurate or not. It’s up to my job to make sure the FBI’s doing their job.”

Comer has accused the Bidens of influence peddling in Romania, and Hunter Biden of having business deals in China. He keeps insisting that he will soon have proof, but it’s gotten to the point that even some Fox News hosts are growing weary of the constant posturing.

Comer also seemed to imply last week that one major goal of their investigation has been to tank Biden’s popularity in the 2024 presidential election polls. Between his and Grassley’s comments, it would seem that Republicans aren’t interested in exposing wrongdoing after all.

Has ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods been infected by the woke mind virus? At a conference hosted by the financial analytics firm Bernstein, Woods—who enjoyed a 52 percent pay bump in 2022 amid soaring profits—spoke fondly about environmental, social and governance principles. ESG, as the abbreviation goes, has become a bogeyman for the right in recent years: Conservative state legislatures continue to pass sweeping bans on public employee pension funds’ ability to consider things like climate change in their investment decisions.  

But Woods gave a hearty endorsement for why his company employs ESG principles throughout its operations on Thursday. “I don’t think any company’s been around—particularly one that has the exposure that we do with regards to the impact on the environments and communities that we operate in—I don’t think you can survive for 140 years and not have ESG elements, or the focus of ESG, embedded in your organization,” he said, calling it a “really critical component of our success.” 

This is a funny statement for two reasons. First, the day before the conference, Exxon shareholders—in line with recommendations from corporate management, including Woods—voted down all of the 13 climate resolutions put before them. Eight-nine percent rejected a petition to have them set emissions-reduction targets consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, to limit warming to well below two degrees Celsius. The measure that earned the most support from Exxon shareholders (36 percent) stipulated that the company should report more about its methane emissions.

Second, when right-wing politicians funded by dark money rant about how bad ESG is, they typically claim they’re defending fossil fuel companies. These politicians say fossil fuel companies are being unfairly maligned by the likes of Blackrock CEO Larry Fink and other globalists looking to undemocratically enforce the whims of investor-led climate efforts like the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (a toothless group of banks, asset managers and insurance companies). 

Yet as Woods conveyed on Wednesday, ESG is principally a way to ensure that companies can continue to make as much money as possible—whether by examining the risks that climate change might actually pose to their operations or by burnishing their green credentials with flashy pledges. “Using” ESG in one’s day-to-day operations, ironically, doesn’t actually mean reducing fossil fuel use—the thing the right is most worked up about. 

For companies like Exxon, the ginned-up culture war over largely cosmetic differences in business strategy is a win-win: While they can talk up their company’s ESG moves to curry favor with liberals, right-wing attacks simultaneously provide cover for them to stop paying as much lip service to climate change and continue proudly with business as usual. Last year, 28 percent of the company’s shareholders voted for the resolution asking Exxon to align its emissions targets with the goals of the Paris Agreement. This year, with Republicans complaining about ESG to anyone who will listen, the same resolution received less than half that level of support. If you’re an oil and gas executive, ESG raises one key question: What’s not to love? 

To mark the start of Pride Month, the Pentagon has canceled a drag show that was scheduled for Thursday at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

This would have been the third year that Nellis hosted a performance by artists from the nearby Las Vegas drag community. The event, which billed itself as family-friendly, has been generally popular among both people on the base and performers.

Air Force leaders had approved the show, but Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley ordered that the show be canceled or moved off base, claiming it is not Pentagon policy to fund drag shows on bases, NBC reported late Wednesday.

“Hosting these types of events in federally funded facilities is not a suitable use of DOD resources,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement. “Our Service members are diverse and are allowed to have personal outlets.”

Coco Montrese, a drag queen who performed at the first Nellis show and was expected to take the stage Thursday, said she was “shocked and disappointed” by the decision to cancel.

“Recently the attacks on the LGBTQ+ community are getting louder and louder. Fear is a very big business for politicians who use it to control the masses,” she told the local CBS news station.

“Creating a narrative by certain actions is careless because actions do speak louder than words. This action, 24 hours before the event would take place, is a clear message. I think we all know what that message is.”

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz took credit for the decision, hailing it as a “HUGE VICTORY.” Gaetz had grilled Austin and Milley about drag shows on bases during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in March on the defense budget.

Gaetz took particular issue with drag queen story hours being hosted on bases and accused the military of using federal dollars to fund such events. Austin said that “drag shows are not something the Defense Department supports or funds,” and Milley said he wanted to look further into drag shows on bases because “those things shouldn’t be happening.” Gaetz later sent the two officials a letter requesting more information about Pride events held on bases, including the show at Nellis.

Drag shows are a new favorite target among the far right. Tennessee, Florida, and Montana have passed laws banning drag performances (the Tennessee law is currently blocked), and a similar bill has passed the Texas legislature. Governor Greg Abbott is widely expected to sign the measure into law.

One chilling element about the Pentagon’s move is the language the department has used to explain the decision. The statements use words that imply that drag is inappropriate and should be done in private. Similarly, the Republicans backing drag bans argue that the art form is obscene and not suitable for children. In reality, these arguments aim to force LGBTQ people back out of public view.

Apparently Lauren Boebert didn’t care that much about the debt ceiling—she skipped the vote!

On Wednesday, the House voted 314–117 to raise the debt limit in return for weakening the IRS, increasing work requirements on social services, restarting student loan payments, and expediting the Mountain Valley Pipeline project.

The bill’s austerity measures and giveaways to corporate America were certainly not as much as Republicans wanted, leaving some unsatisfied, like the far-right House Freedom Caucus—including Boebert herself. She’s been among the Republicans making the rounds everywhere, for instance Steve Bannon’s War Room program, to whip up opposition to an agreement not as extreme as they would like.

And yet, after all that, Boebert was caught like a middle schooler running just late of catching the school bus in the morning:

To Boebert’s credit, the past few weeks for her seem to have been busy. Last week, she admitted she only had her third son because birth control was too expensive.

Also last week, reports came out of 911 call tapes of Boebert’s son desperately calling for help, saying his father (Boebert’s then husband) was “fucking throwing me around the house.”

The boy was crying, saying, “He does this to me so much.” Boebert then is heard intervening in the call, insisting that her son “doesn’t need help.”

Despite the external happenings, it’s astonishing Boebert missed voting on a bill she spent so much time deriding.

In total, more Democrats voted for the debt ceiling bill than Republicans; McCarthy’s alleviating headache is thanks entirely to the Democrats.

The debt limit bill now goes to the Senate, with Democrats like Tim Kaine, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jeff Merkley expressing discontent or outright opposition to it. Kaine was particularly incensed by the inclusion of expedition of the Mountain Valley Pipeline project. Sanders said he cannot “in good conscience” vote for a bill that cuts programs for working people and gives favors to the fossil fuel industry.

Donald Trump’s legal team reportedly has so much internal conflict that it could actually hinder its ability to defend the former president for his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

The infighting began soon after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago last August, but the division only came to light when Trump’s lawyer Tim Parlatore abruptly quit two weeks ago. Parlatore’s main reason for leaving was irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel, Boris Epshteyn.

Most of the problems stem from a lack of trust on the team, The Guardian reported Thursday. The lawyers don’t trust each other and especially not Epshteyn, because they felt he micromanaged them and blocked direct access to Trump.

Some of the lawyers reportedly agreed to quit in solidarity if Parlatore were fired. Parlatore and another lawyer, Jim Trusty, disliked Epshteyn so much that they began withholding information from him.

Trusty chafed at having to run all of his decisions by Epshteyn first, according to a Guardian reporter who overheard him complaining last August. Trusty felt Epshteyn was not a trial lawyer and focused too much on Trump’s P.R. issues, not legal ones.

Parlatore has accused Epshteyn of attempting to block searches of Trump’s properties for classified documents. And both Parlatore and Trusty were frustrated by the fact that Epshteyn was usually included in any phone calls with Trump. They felt Epshteyn was misleading Trump about the state of the lawsuit.

It got to the point that the pair began withholding information from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran because they worried he would brief Epshteyn without their knowledge. But that hobbled the team’s ability to build a defense, as the different factions had no clue what the others were doing.

Parlatore and Corcoran have since testified in front of the grand jury investigating Trump’s decision to keep classified documents. Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the investigation, also interviewed Epshteyn in April.

As it turns out, not only were the lawyers hiding things from each other, but Trump was hiding things from his lawyers. A judge ruled in March that some of Trump’s attorney-client privileges could be “pierced” after prosecutors for Smith’s team found that Trump intentionally misled his own lawyers about keeping classified materials when he left office. New reports have revealed that Trump knew he wasn’t supposed to keep classified documents and that he couldn’t automatically declassify them, but he hid the papers anyway.

Smith has not yet issued any criminal charges, but he seems to be circling ever closer to Trump. And that’s not even the end of the former president’s legal troubles. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He has been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Trump was found civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll—and last week, she sued him for defamation again over comments he made about her during a CNN town hall. So his legal team should probably start working together pretty soon.

On Wednesday, a heavy-duty police truck, flanked by hordes of riot police, descended upon a house in Atlanta to conduct an arrest raid.

Were the police arresting a cadre of heavily armed bandits? A bunker where a mass shooter had holed up? No. The police were detaining three individuals who had been helping organize bail funds and legal defense for the Cop City protesters that Atlanta police injudiciously arrested on the grounds of crimes like having muddy shoes.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, alongside the Atlanta Police Department, arrested Marlon Scott Kautz, Savannah Patterson, and Adele Maclean on charges of “money laundering” and “charity fraud.” The trio are organizers with the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which has been at the forefront of providing legal support and bail assistance to the at least 42 people who have been entrapped by massively high bonds from the courts and face bewildering criminal charges for exercising their right to assemble or protest.

There has been no public evidence thus far of any mishandling of the funds raised to support arrested protesters.

The harrowing display of fascism is just the latest chapter of an ongoing struggle by waves of people to protest the construction of a gargantuan police training facility—known as “Cop City”—that would raze the Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta.

Governor Brian Kemp celebrated the arrests Wednesday as part of a crackdown on “mostly out-of-state activists” (the trio are all from Atlanta) and “domestic terrorism.” In simpler terms, Kemp is celebrating the police state’s arrest of people who have labored to provide legal support for people facing undue charges by that police state. If FascismforDummies.com needs a more modern example, there you go.

One of the arrested organizers, Kautz, had predicted the forthcoming possibility of Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organization, or RICO, charges.

“We understand that this movement is as broad as society itself. It includes environmental activists, community groups, faith leaders, abolitionists, students, artists, and people from all over,” Kautz said back in February. “But police, prosecutors, and even Governor Kemp have been trying to suggest in the media and in court that the opposition to Cop City is actually the work of a criminal organization whose members conspire to commit acts of terrorism. In essence, they’re trying to concoct a RICO-like story about the movement.”

The state escalation against its people comes after revelations confirming that the police unprovokedly murdered a protester and forest defender, Manuel Esteban Paez Terán. Police shot Terán, also known as “Tortuguita,” at least 57 times. What may have been warning bells for more sane actors seemed only to be a rallying call for Georgia’s authorities. As TNR has written previously:

While the police continue to prove why they warrant more scrutiny and less leeway, their behavior has yet to change; it is unclear how much more damage they will need to cause to inspire enough change to stop them from causing such damage at all.

Donald Trump knew that he couldn’t declassify documents—and now the special counsel investigating him over it has a recording of the former president admitting as much.

Federal prosecutors for Jack Smith have obtained a recording of a meeting held in July 2021, long after Trump had left the White House, during which he says he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, CNN reported. Although CNN has not heard the audio, multiple anonymous sources described it to it.

Trump met with two people working on an autobiography of his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Neither writer had security clearance. In the recording, Trump brings up the classified document, which he says came from chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. Trump claims that if he could show it to people, the document would undermine previous reports that Milley had convinced Trump not to attack Iran near the end of his presidency.

Trump refers to the document as if he has it in front of him, and at one point there is the sound of paper rustling “as if Trump was waving the document around,” CNN wrote, although it is not clear if it was the paper in question. Sources told CNN that the classified document Trump referred to in the recording was not produced by Milley, but it is a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran.

The meeting took place six months before Trump’s legal team sent 15 boxes of records and classified documents back to the National Archives, and more than a year before the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, seizing more than 100 documents.

Trump’s acknowledgment that he couldn’t show the document to people demonstrates that he knew full well that he wasn’t able to declassify documents at whim. His allies had previously argued that he had a “standing declassification order” that would immediately declassify any document removed from the Oval Office. Trump himself claimed he could declassify things “just by thinking about it.” But he knew it was all bunk.

And now Smith, who is investigating Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents and role in the January 6 insurrection, has proof on tape.

It’s not clear how prosecutors got the recording, but they also recently acquired a slew of records including handwritten notes, transcriptions of audio recordings, and invoices from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran. A judge ruled in March that some of Trump’s attorney-client privileges could be “pierced” after prosecutors for Smith’s team found that Trump intentionally misled his own lawyers, including Corcoran, about keeping classified materials when he left office.

Those records reveal that Trump knew he wasn’t supposed to keep classified documents. Not only did he do so anyway, but Corcoran was also prevented from searching Trump’s office at Mar-a-Lago, where the FBI later found some of the most sensitive material.

Smith has not yet issued any criminal charges, but he seems to be circling ever closer to Trump. And that’s not even the end of the former president’s legal troubles. Trump is also under investigation in Georgia for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He has been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records for paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Trump was found civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll—and last week, she sued him for defamation again over comments he made about her during a CNN town hall.

Amid the day-to-day rough-and-tumble of Washington, D.C., we become susceptible to forgetting that days turn to months, and months turn to years. But as the sands of time drift, scientists have been loudly warning about the prognosis of our planet as we know it: It’s not “we need to change before it’s too late,” but “we are on the final brink of being too late.”

On Wednesday, Senator Bernie Sanders announced his opposition to the debt ceiling agreement Republicans ironed out with the White House due to its giveaways to fossil fuel companies and its targeting of social services.

“The best thing to be said about the current deal on the debt ceiling is that it could have been much worse,” Sanders began in a statement. “Instead of making massive cuts to health care, education, childcare, nutrition assistance, and other vital programs over the next decade, this bill proposes to make modest cuts to these programs over a 2-year period.”

Sanders panned the agreement for austerely cutting programs for working people, while doing nothing to challenge entrenched power centers in America, like the bloated military budget or Big Pharma. And he also focused on one of the more puzzling add-ins (whose presence in the bill can only be explained as a favor to Joe Manchin, an emblem of fossil fuel corruption): the expediting of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

“At a time when climate change is, by far, the most existential threat facing our country and the entire world I cannot, in good conscience, vote for a bill that makes it easier for fossil fuel companies to pollute and destroy the planet by fast-tracking the disastrous Mountain Valley Pipeline,” Sanders said. “When the future of the world is literally at stake we must have the courage to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them, and the politicians they sponsor, that the future of the planet is more important than their short-term profits.”

Sanders instead offered an alternative path for the Biden administration. “The fact of the matter is that this bill is totally unnecessary. The President has the authority and the ability to eliminate the debt ceiling today by invoking the 14th Amendment,” Sanders said. “I look forward to the day when he exercises this authority and puts an end, once and for all, to the outrageous actions of the extreme right-wing to hold our entire economy hostage in order to get what they want.”

Sanders’s statement was refreshing—not just for its refusal to cave to the hostage situation that Republicans built but for its clarity in reiterating that while the latest episode of D.C. melodrama plays out, indeed, the health of the planet as we know it is “literally at stake.”

Such a statement of opposition stands in stark contrast to those put out by the likes of Nancy Mace or the extremist House Freedom Caucus, as they complain the bill does not do enough to cut government investment in the lives of its people.

“Deficit reduction cannot just be about cutting programs that working families, the children, the sick, the elderly, and the poor depend upon,” Sanders said. “It must be about demanding that the billionaire class and profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes, reining in out-of-control military spending, reducing the price of prescription drugs, and ending billions of dollars in corporate welfare that goes to the fossil fuel industry and other corporate interests.”