Breaking news: Biden student loan program cannot go forward
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Proverbs 17:9
Breaking News: SCOTUS: Biden student loan program cannot go forward
This morning, in a long-awaited 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration cannot go forward with its $430 billion student loan bailout program.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/supreme-court-rules-biden-student-loan-debt-handout
The SCOTUS ruled that the “Heroes Act,” which was passed after 9/11 and allowed for student loan forgiveness for active-duty military members and victims of war and natural disasters, was not justification for Biden’s gigantic giveaway to anyone with a student loan. The Court found that a federal agency’s ability to “modify” a law is narrow and limited, and they can’t completely rewrite law without going through Congress.
Those of you who have ever read the Constitution – or even been in the immediate vicinity of a copy of it – won’t be surprised to hear that, but apparently, the Biden White House was.
So, sorry, all you young voters who blunted the “red wave” by voting Democrat because you thought the government was going to pay your debts for you, that’s not going to happen. Think of it as a very costly lesson in how life and politics really work. If it’s any consolation, know that you are hardly the only ones suffering deep regret over the way that you voted.
SCOTUS: A landmark ruling
In another landmark religious freedom ruling, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Colorado graphic designer Lori Smith, who sued the state for violating her First Amendment right to freedom of religion.
Smith sued over Colorado’s anti-discrimination law that prohibits businesses providing sales or other accommodations to the public from denying service based on a customer's sexual orientation, which had the effect of forcing her to create websites for same-sex weddings in violation of her deeply-held religious beliefs.
Smith says that through this ordeal, her business has been harmed, she’s lost clients, been doxed, received death threats and threats of physical violence, her clients have been threatened, hackers are constantly attacking her website, and her child’s school has been put on alert (there’s nothing like a tolerant, peaceful leftist, is there? Seriously, I mean there’s nothing like that.) She says she’s never had any problems working with LGBTQ people, she just doesn’t want to be forced to support same-sex marriage.
Smith said, "The right to speak freely is guaranteed to all of us, and that’s been hard at times. While it has come at a cost, it’s a right worth protecting."
Colorado is notorious for using its laws as a weapon on behalf of LGBTQ activists against business owners of faith, with their endless harassment of cake artist Jack Phillips being exhibit A. Here’s my interview with him from 2020:
Unfortunately, this sort of thing was inevitable from the moment the SCOTUS somehow “found” a right to same sex marriage that had eluded Constitutional scholars for over 200 years, but failed to delineate that this newly-created right did not trump the clearly-enumerated First Amendment rights of people of faith. The original decision had some vague weasel words about expecting people to be reasonable, which obviously wasn’t going to happen.
I hope this ruling finally ends the harassment of religious business owners. But then, I hoped that the last ruling in favor of Jack Phillips would do that, and it didn’t even stop the harassment of Jack Phillips.
The end of “affirmative action”
As expected, the left is having an epic meltdown over the Supreme Court striking down race-based admissions policies at universities. From the women of “The View” to Elizabeth Warren to Michelle Obama, all decried the end of “affirmative action,” insisting that it was necessary to give opportunities to minorities, despite all of them having been successful without it – except for Sen. Warren, who exploited it by falsely claiming to be Native American. They insisted that we still need “affirmative action” to overcome the scurrilous effects of “systemic racism,” which is when an institution discriminates based solely on people's race – which is also the definition of “affirmative action.”
Redstate.com’s Sister Toldjah compiled some of the best responses to the responses to the ruling,
Predictably, President Biden reacted by deriding the Supreme Court and vowing to find a way to have his agencies get around the ruling. He claimed that this is not a “normal court” and “we cannot allow this to be the last word.” Some leftwing pundits confidently predicted that colleges would find a different way to continue doing the same thing. I love it when the people who accuse Republicans of attacking “our democracy” by “shattering norms” react to every Supreme Court decision that they don’t like by attacking the legitimacy of the SCOTUS and vowing to defy their ruling and continue acting contrary to the Constitution.
Let me try to explain this in terms so simple that even Joe Biden can understand them: The Supreme Court IS the last word on whether something is Constitutional. They found that basing college admissions on people’s skin color instead of their qualifications violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. That means that no matter what you call it, or how you try to finagle it, or where you attempt to implement it, it’s still (say it with me) “UNCONSTITUTIONAL.” Or as Justice Thomas put it, “plainly and boldly unconstitutional.”
There were also many people pleased about the ruling. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, since a 2022 Pew survey found that 73% of Americans oppose considering race or ethnicity in college admissions, and only 7% think it should be a major factor. As for the left’s claim that the ruling enforces “white supremacy,” the opposition to race-based admissions standards includes 58% of Asian-Americans, 62% of blacks and 65% of Hispanics.
EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas predicted that the ruling would increase the already rising number of lawsuits challenging corporations’ “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies that clearly discriminate among job applicants and employees based on their race. Amen to that.
But the best response to the left’s meltdown over ending affirmative action came from Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears, responding to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s heated dissent. It included a reminder that Jackson was herself a “diversity hire,” with Biden announcing that he would only appoint a black woman before even considering any candidates.
Lost in all this hyperventilating by the left is the simple question of “Why do we still need ‘affirmative action?’” When it first was created, we were told that we needed to temporarily discriminate in favor of blacks to balance out historic discrimination. But the Civil Rights Act has been around for nearly 60 years, and America’s had a two-term black President who left office over six years ago. How long was this “temporary” discrimination supposed to go on? According to Democrats, forever. Elizabeth Warren ranted that the ruling “reversed decades of settled law,” so apparently, she saw it as a permanent fixture.
But again, why? Why does the Democratic Party think that blacks need special help to get into college? Is it just the soft bigotry of low expectations? Or do they believe that black students are incapable of competing based on merit? If so, why? Is it just racism, or a tacit admission that black students are at a disadvantage because many of them grew up in historically Democrat-run cities, where they have to deal with substandard schools, crime, gangs and drugs that politicians who claim to care about black youth do nothing about?
This is a hot button issue for me. When I became Governor of Arkansas, I was only the third Republican to hold that office since 1874. I wanted to help improve the lives of all the people, so I reached out to black church and community leaders to see what we could do together to make their communities stronger and safer and their schools better. After so many decades of mostly Democrat rule, they were understandably suspicious of me, but they eventually realized I meant it, and we worked together to make real progress. I was proud that when I ran for reelection, I got a historically high share of the black vote. It’s because those voters knew I truly was trying to help them improve their communities and their children’s futures.
Why are the Democrats so fired up over the idea of doing away with “affirmative action” when they’ve allowed the problems that they claim create the need for it to fester for decades? For instance, why do they prioritize the wishes of teachers’ unions over the good of students, or fight like badgers to prevent black parents from having a choice to send their kids to better schools?
If you had a doctor who claimed he was really looking out for your health, but his only prescription was to keep you on crutches for decade after decade, wouldn’t you think it was time to change doctors?
Eye-Opening
This is an eye-opening article about a way in which the Biden Administration has failed to protect America’s security that actually doesn’t involve the border. It’s about a rising wave of cyber attacks by foreign-based criminal gangs, with targets ranging from state governments, airlines and universities to our own federal agencies.
https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-biden-just-failed-america-years-know-extent-damage/
The latest cyber technology is where the fastest-growing danger of espionage, theft and security threats lies, and we have a President who can’t stop his VCR from blinking 12:00.