Some of the members of the Proud Boys organization who presently are on trial for conspiring to violently overthrow the government on January 6, 2021, are trying to subpoena Donald Trump to testify in their defense.
This presents a problem often encountered in criminal trials: a defendant tries to exercise his 6th Amendment right to compel witness to testify BUT the witness has a 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and can therefore refuse to testify. And Donald Trump quite plainly has a 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in connection with the insurrection. This video discusses what happens when constitutional rights collide.
The veteran senator is now part of Joe Biden’s inner circle, and is still fighting his country’s vast inequalities
After the State of the Union address at the beginning of this month, the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece that argued: “Joe Biden is Bernie Sanders.” By this it meant that, somehow, by stealth, under the cover of darkness, a “democratic socialist” – both words apparently terms of abuse in the WSJ commentator’s lexicon – had invaded the White House and was now making policy for ordinary Americans, interfering in the unjust struggle of their lives, trying to help them get decent jobs and provide them with affordable healthcare. The implication was clear: offshore your assets and offer unhinged prayers to Marjorie Taylor Greene!
Speaking to Sanders last week, I wondered if that was how it felt to him.
The 81-year-old senator for Vermont gave one of his brief, gravelly guffaws, his concession to small talk. “Not quite,” he said. “I do go to the White House every now and then and chat with the president but no, I’m not in the White House. But that’s the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch’s paper – you know Rupert Murdoch in the UK, right?”
I confirm a passing acquaintance.
“Well, the fact is the Wall Street Journal is shocked – flabbergasted! – that an American president would have the courage to mention in his speech, say, that the oil industry made $200bn in profit, while jacking up prices for everyone; they are shocked to hear that a president wants to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry; shocked to hear a president talk about the need to raise teacher salaries. Joe Biden is far more conservative than I am. But to his credit, I think he has seen what the progressive movement is doing in this country. And he feels comfortable with some of our ideas – and I appreciate that.”
In some ways, the Wall Street Journal was more on the money than Sanders allows. Many of Biden’s proposals did appear to come verbatim from the manifesto that saw Sanders twice beaten to second place in the race to become the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2016 and 2020 – policies that Sanders has been pressing since he first ran for the office of Vermont senator in 1972, on behalf of the Liberty Union party, and finished third with 2% of the vote. For much of that time Sanders – the longest-serving independent representative in congressional history – sounded a lot like a prophet railing in a wilderness of Reaganite deregulation (he has been arguing for a $15 minimum wage for two decades; it still hasn’t come to pass). In the years since the financial crash, however, and particularly since the start of the pandemic, many more people have listened.
For a generation of millennials raised on digital noise, Sanders became, in 2016, the political equivalent of a rare vinyl record: tangible, authentic, a reliable source of timeless indy riffs. For all but the most self-righteous of those fans – a strident few believed him a sellout for eventually endorsing the “centrist” Biden – he retains that appeal (strange to think that the progressive hero of the land-of-the-next-new-thing is an octogenarian – stranger that both of his most visible political rivals are, too). Sanders has written a new book partly aimed at that millennial generation – its Day-Glo title is It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism – reminding the young of their age-old rights and responsibilities.
The driving narrative of the book is outrage at the obscene wealth inequalities in the world’s richest economy. One of the things that Biden had the temerity – in the Wall Street Journal’s view – to raise in his State of the Union address was a billionaire minimum tax, “because no billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a firefighter or a schoolteacher”. Under the proposed tax on annual gains in wealth, tech billionaire Elon Musk, for example, would have paid upwards of $20bn a year through the pandemic. Sanders would go further, but he concedes it’s a start. In his book he refers to America’s billionaires as oligarchs. He hopes the pejorative will finally start to catch on.
“One of the points that I wanted to make,” he says, “is yeah, of course the oligarchs run Russia. But guess what? Oligarchs run the United States as well. And it’s not just the United States, it’s not just Russia; Europe, the UK, all over the world, we’re seeing a small number of incredibly wealthy people running things in their favour. A global oligarchy. This is an issue that needs to be talked about.”
There are plenty of others. Sanders writes, likably, as he talks – straight to the point, low on personal digression, high on public policy. A keen admirer of his once observed how “Bernie’s the last person you’d want to be stuck on a desert island with. Two weeks of lectures about healthcare, and you’d look for a shark and dive in.” In this determination, he says, he wants to be an antidote to the oligarch-owned American media, which would have its audience think and talk about anything else – celebrities, the ballgame, the latest “woke” meme – than the stuff that might loosen their control of politics and the economy. “We don’t talk about our dysfunctional healthcare system. We don’t talk about income and wealth inequality. We hardly talk significantly about the existential threat of climate. The purpose of my book is to begin that discussion.”
It is one flank of what might yet be the beginning of the closing chapter of Sanders’s unique career, a suitably raucous throat-clearing for a last hurrah. There is another thrust to that campaign. Sanders has just become chair of the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee. He clearly intends to use that office not only to pursue his primary long-term aim – Medicare for all – but to create some proper political theatre along the way. His opening acts have seen him request the presence before the committee of Stéphane Bancel, the chief executive of Moderna, who Sanders argues “has become a multibillionaire” by creating a coronavirus vaccine with government money. Calls have also gone out to Howard Schultz, the chief executive of Starbucks, to address his “union-busting” policies and their relation to his staggering personal fortune. Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, a long-term bete noire of Sanders, should also look out for an invitation. Expect TV ratings of Senate hearings to soar.
One of the inspiring things about Sanders’s devotion to his cause – in light of the factional divisions of the British left – has been his grownup willingness to get behind Biden’s programme and try to influence it from within. The two of them have profound political differences, but, as he outlines in the book, a sincere personal respect; their wives get along well. Sanders would probably hesitate to use a term as emotional as friendship for a political adversary, but that’s how it sounds.
“For us to get along was a) the right thing to do,” he says. “And b) good politics. If you’re a smart guy and you want to win an election, why wouldn’t you sit down and work closely with the person who came in second place? The results didn’t go as far as I would like, but there are solid ideas which have been incorporated, in some cases, into governmental policy.”
Having ceded the nomination, he was not interested in any kind of pious sulk that might have divided the Democrats and allowed Trump to return. He is very clear about the existential threat that Trump posed to American democracy. To what extent does he think that threat still will be a factor in 2024?
“Well,” he says, “just before talking to you, I came from a meeting with Lula [Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva], the president of Brazil. That is exactly what we talked about. He had the same phenomenon with a rightwing authoritarian, [Jair] Bolsonaro, refusing to accept the election result.” He had been discussing with Lula something Franklin Roosevelt argued in the 1930s: “FDR said freedom is not just the right to vote. It is the right to healthcare, housing, a secure job. When [government] works to do that rather than looking after the interests of billionaires, then people will say ‘you know what, I think democracy works’. If it doesn’t do that, bad things happen and Trump and Bolsonaro gain a foothold.”
The 6 January hearings about the insurrection at the Capitol were important historically but had a limited political effect, he believes. “Trump supporters don’t sit around watching CNN. Many of them still believe that the election was stolen and Trump is right.” He points to an ABC-Washington Post poll of a couple of days earlier that, while expressing little excitement about either candidate, had put Trump three points ahead of Biden in a presidential race.
One of the causal factors Sanders addresses in his book is the alarming growth of news deserts in the US: cities and regions where there are no local news outlets at all. In the absence of knowing what is happening in their neighbourhood, people become entangled in the seductive conspiracy threads of social media. But as well as proposing a method of federal funding for local news, Sanders also keeps the faith that social media – a powerful personal campaigning platform for him – can be redeemed. Isn’t there a certain naivety in this? Isn’t the divisive anger that drives the revenues of Twitter and the rest always more likely to be a reactionary than a progressive force?
“Well,” he says, “I think, the more we know, the more positive options are open to us. And in terms of anger, I think people do have the right to be angry. In America right now, weekly inflation-adjusted wages for workers are lower than they were 50 years ago. Should people be angry that their bosses now make 400 times what they make? I know in the UK you have in a lot of strikes and turmoil. It is about the fact that in the last 40 years, 50 years, there has been an unprecedented transfer of wealth, from the working families to the top 1%. Should people be angry about that? Damn right they should.”
The hero in his book is Eugene Debs, five times presidential candidate of the Socialist party of America at the turn of the 20th century. Before Sanders went into politics – when he was living somewhat off-grid in Vermont (“definitely not a hippy”) – he made a documentary about Debs, designed to be sent to schools across the country. He is the figure he has always tried to live up to.
“Debs is almost unknown now, but he was a remarkable man. A great orator, a great organiser. Contemporaries referred to him as almost a Christ-like figure, prepared to give you the shirt off his back. He ended up spending three years in jail for his opposition to world war one.”
I wonder, in relation to this, if any of his early interest in socialist history came from his family.
He suggests not. “My father immigrated to the United States from Poland at the age of 17, without any money at all. He got a job as a paint salesman and was a paint salesman his whole life. He was never a union man.”
What would his parents have made of how things have turned out for their son?
“Both of them died young. To be honest, I think they would have been delighted to discover I graduated college. Being a United States senator, running for president, all that would have been unthinkable.”
And would it have seemed unthinkable for him at the time too?
“It was never about a career,” he says. “When I was in college I got involved in the civil rights movement, then I worked for a union. Those were the things that I was motivated by. Eventually I ended up becoming mayor of Burlington, Vermont by 10 votes. But no, I never thought that I would get elected anything.”
With Sanders making noises about his schedule, this leads us to the billion-dollar – or $15 – question. His book-length manifesto ends with something of a rallying cry: “Let’s do it!” Is he still thinking of another run for the Democrat nomination for 2024?
“I think what’s going to happen,” he says, “is that President Biden is going to run for re-election. And if he does, I will support him.”
And does he think age is a key issue in that choice – for Biden and for himself?
“Age is always a factor,” he says. “But there are 1,000 factors. Some people who are 80 or more have more energy than people who are 30. I would hope,” he says, warming, as ever, to his theme, “that we will fight ageism as much as we fight sexism and racism and homophobia, judge people on how they are and not simply by their age. There are,” he says, “a lot of elderly people with a whole lot of experience who are very capable of doing great work.”
Even the Wall Street Journal should be grateful he still counts himself among them.
Two top partners at Chevron law firm Gibson Dunn – the same firm that had me illegally detained for almost three years – were hit with a massive fine for lying to courts to help a scandal-ridden corporate client obstruct a case that could lead to a massive liability.
One of the two Gibson Dunn lawyers fined was deeply involved in Chevron’s “demonize Donziger” campaign. He and others have spent 12 years persecuting me for my work in holding Chevron accountable for its “Chernobyl” disaster in Ecuador.
According to Law.com, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria ruled: "This case is an example of a wealthy client and its high-powered law firm using delay, misdirection, and frivolous arguments to make litigation unfairly difficult and expensive for their opponents.”
Judge Chhabria went on to state that the Chevron law firm was found to use “sustained, concerted, bad-faith efforts to throw obstacle after obstacle in front of the plaintiffs to push the plaintiffs into settling the case for less than they would have gotten otherwise.”
Sound familiar?
These are the exact same tactics used against me after our legal team helped Indigenous peoples in the Amazon win a historic $9.5 billion pollution judgment against Chevron. Chevron did not want to pay what they owed to remediate their destruction of Indigenous ancestral lands.
Instead, the company spent more than a decade retaliating against me – and I am still not free.
When my legal struggles began, Chevron hired Gibson Dunn to retaliate against me as a way of distracting attention from the real issue: that the company had deliberately dumped billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste into the Amazon, potentially wiping out generations to cancer and other oil-related diseases.
Chevron used everything in its power to manipulate the law – including orchestrating my private corporate prosecution and detention at the hands of the same law firm.
We have known since my sentencing in 2021 that Chevron weaponized the legal system against me. Clearly, this is not the first time Gibson Dunn has abused the courts – and unless we fight back, it won’t be the last.
These funds will be used to help our team grow its extraordinary advocacy campaign that has galvanized millions of people around the world. The ultimate objective is to hold Chevron fully accountable by forcing the company to move massive resources into the hands of Indigenous peoples to help restore the rainforest for the benefit of all.
Finishing the job in this way will send shock waves through the entire fossil fuel industry.
We have an unprecedented opportunity. Please help us make history by generating the resources needed to move forward quickly and effectively to “finish the job” against Chevron.
Onward,
Steven Donziger
Steven Donziger is a U.S. human rights attorney who helped communities in Ecuador’s Amazon win a historic multibillion-dollar pollution judgment against Chevron for the dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste onto Indigenous ancestral lands. Since the judgment issued in 2013, Chevron has used dozens of law firms and 2000 lawyers to carry out a demonization campaign targeting Steven to send a message of intimidation to all environmental advocates. Steven served 993 days of detention at home and in prison after being prosecuted directly by a Chevron law firm in the nation's first corporate prosecution; he still faces the threat of additional jail time after he appealed an order to turn over confidential information held by his Indigenous clients.
Donate NOW to help support Steven as he and the Ecuadorian communities continue their fight for corporate accountability, environmental justice, Indigenous rights, and Free Speech.
All funds are administered by the Friedman Rubin law firm in Seattle. Funds are used to pay legal fees and Steven’s basic household and work expenses given that Chevron has taken his law license.
A train derailed and flooded a town with cancer-causing chemicals. But something larger, and more troubling, is at work
Earlier this month, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in eastern Ohio, exploding into flames and unleashing a spume of chemical smoke on the small town of East Palestine. The train’s freight included vinyl chloride, a chemical known to cause liver cancer and other sicknesses.
In response, government and railway officials decided to “burn off” the vinyl chloride – effectively dumping 1.1m lbs of the chemical into the local community, according to a new lawsuit. Officials said that they did so to avert the vinyl chloride from exploding; in contrast, an attorney for the lawsuit has said that the decision was cheap, unsafe, and more interested in restoring train service and appeasing railway shareholders than protecting local residents.
East Palestine residents are reporting headaches, sore throats, and burning eyes; dead pets and chickens; and thousands of fish corpses in nearby waterways. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources has said that approximately 3,500 fish, of 12 different species, died across 7.5 miles.
In other words, Norfolk Southern’s “controlled burn” may have caused a mushroom cloud of poison to spread over eastern Ohio. The situation demands immediate action from President Biden. Without it, thousands of people – including children and the elderly – and animals will be at continued risk of premature death. Biden must declare a state of emergency and create an independent taskforce to take over the remediation of this eco-catastrophe.
Norfolk Southern “basically nuked a town with chemicals” to “get a railroad open”, a former hazmat technician told a local news outlet. It certainly seems like a company with a $55bn market cap chose to sacrifice the health of thousands of people to keep its profits flowing.
We need to try to understand how this happened.
For one thing, even the initial derailment wasn’t necessarily just an “accident.” It was a function of our out-of-control corporate culture in the United States, which has neutered effective government oversight of hazardous activities – including the rail transport of highly flammable and carcinogenic chemicals. The EPA’s response thus far has been to send a feckless letter to Norfolk Southern pleading it pay for clean-up.
That’s not going to cut it. We need to do better.
In terms of the sheer quantity of carcinogenic chemicals being released over an area of hundreds of miles, the catastrophe in Ohio is a major, unprecedented public health crisis. Biden must publicly recognize it as such and act to protect the people who live in the affected area. This requires a rapid, all-of-government response overseen not by the EPA but by independent scientists and taskmasters who will be immune to pressure from industry. This sort of taskforce must be willing to threaten the suspension or even nationalization of Norfolk Southern if it does not cooperate.
After battling an oil company over the discharge of toxic waste in the Amazon, I can say with some assurance that Norfolk’s response to this crisis so far comes from a time-tested corporate strategy: manage the situation as a public relations challenge and not the humanitarian and ecological catastrophe that it is. Norfolk’s leadership bailed out of a townhall meeting this week, blaming security risks, and has refused to face residents to answer questions.
That’s certainly cowardice. But it is also a function of the fact that industry does not respect the power of government to regulate it. Government is supposed to protect us from the excesses of industry; instead it often acts like its partner.
If the consequences of not attending had included a sufficient threat to his bottom line, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw – who earns a reported $4.5m a year – probably would have been at the town hall. And if the government had been doing its job in the first place, there is a good chance this accident would not have happened. During the Trump administration, Norfolk successfully lobbied to repeal a safety rule requiring new electronic brakes. The train was also dangerously long – with only two crew members, and a trainee, supervising its 1.7-mile length.
I’m not a scientist. But I know a fair amount about toxicology and how the world’s polluters use a playbook invented by law firms and consultants to downplay the impact of major disasters and lower their legal liability. Local and state officials – who may be under enormous pressure from these industries in the form of campaign donations – often work alongside polluters to “manage” disasters’ political fallout.
It’s a one-two punch of disaster mismanagement that is playing out now, in Ohio, with awful consequences for people and the planet. Here are three takeaways about what is really happening and what needs to be done:
Be skeptical of claims by authorities that it is “safe” to return to the area. The EPA and state environmental officials have been opaque about what chemicals are being tested for and by what methods, and news reports haven’t indicated any plans so far for any sort of environmental restoration. We also do not know what new chemical compounds the so-called “controlled” burn may have created, and whether tests have been run for those chemicals. In fact, test results have not even been released publicly.
Bottom line: there is no transparent scientific or public health basis for declaring the area safe. Until there is, I wouldn’t go near the site of the disaster.
The EPA can help, but cannot oversee a clean-up. Corporate lobbying in recent years has undermined the ability of the EPA to regulate industry. Under the Trump administration, chemical lobbyists took over important jobs on the inside and the agency is severely understaffed. Further, the EPA is required by Congress to “balance” industry needs with public safety. It is not focused solely on protecting the community. It sent a letter to Norfolk pleading with it to pay for a cleanup; a real government would have sent a disaster management team to Ohio to take over.
Longer-term, the railway industry needs to be revamped. We have civil-war era braking systems on trains carrying deadly chemicals though our communities. Railway unions and whistleblowers have repeatedly raised safety concerns only to be ignored. A new industry concept called “precision scheduling” has pushed trains and workers to the breaking point to extract greater profits for shareholders, which include some of the largest hedge funds on Wall Street.
Our government institutions as currently constituted are unable or unwilling to respond effectively to industrial disasters. It is preposterous for any ostensibly advanced country to let a massive chemical polluter clean up a mess like this on its own terms and without effective oversight. This is not an isolated incident. Unless we demand accountability, it will happen again.
Set your emotions aside and think about things for a moment. If we want any meaningful change on issues all of us care about - we need more Democrats in Congress.
Oh, the things you will learn in a court filing from the company suing Fox News for defamation (and $1.6 billion).
Donald Trump has been called a lot of things by a lot of people over the last number of years. “Agent Orange.” “Sentient circus peanut.” “Staph infection on the ass of society.” Something that “came out of a clogged drain at the Wonka factory.” Still, no one expected the ex-president to be described in anything less than glowing terms by the gang over at Fox News, the network that effectively served as state TV while he was in office. And yet, at least one of Fox’s top talking heads likened him to none other than the devil back in 2021, all while slinging the guy’s election lies on live TV.
In a text message to his producer, Alex Pfeiffer, sent the day of the January 6 insurrection, Tucker Carlson—friend to war criminals and serial liars alike—called Trump “a demonic force, a destroyer.” The host added: “But he’s not going to destroy us.” We know this thanks to a Thursday court filing from Dominion Voting Systems, the voting technology company currently suing Fox News for $1.6 billion over the network’s 2020 election coverage. The filing offers an inside glimpse at what the network’s top stars and executives were saying amongst themselves about Trump’s election lies—i.e., that they were bullshit—despite claiming that the election had been stolen with Dominion’s help.
“From the top down, Fox knew ‘the dominion stuff’ was ‘total bs,’” the filing reads, citing “a mountain of direct evidence.” Positing that the reason the network “peddle[d] this false narrative to its viewers,” attorneys for Dominion said that “Fox’s correct call of Arizona for Joe Biden triggered a backlash among its audience and ‘the network [was] being rejected.’” For example, two days after the election, on November 5, 2020, Carlson texted Pfeiffer to claim that the team that had called Arizona for Biden was going to screw up his reputation as a right-wing crackpot (our words). “We worked really hard to build what we have,” Carlson said, according to the filing. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.” Pfeiffer then responded that “many on ‘our side’ are being reckless demagogues right now.” (“Our side” presumably refers to hosts like Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham.) “Of course they are,” Carlson wrote back. “We’re not going to follow them.” He added that the then president was good at “destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”
The filing notes that, days later, Carlson wrote privately that Trump needed to admit “that there wasn’t enough fraud to change the outcome” of the election. Later, he wrote that Sidney Powell, one of Trump’s lawyers, was “lying” about having evidence of fraud. A few days after that, Carlson expressed similar ideas to Ingraham, saying, “Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane.” Ingraham responded, “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.” Carlson replied, “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”
And yet, by mid-January, Carlson was apparently all in on publicly pushing Team Trump’s election lies on his viewers. Just weeks after the insurrection and his likening of Trump to the devil, the prime time host had Mike Lindell on his show, where, per the filing, the My Pillow founder “spouted…conspiracies on air after previewing them for Carlson’s staff during a pre-interview.”
In a statement, Fox News said: “There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan.” The network also insisted that Dominion “mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context, and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law.”
President Biden made a dramatic, unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday, in a display of robust American support for Ukraine just four days before the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The high-risk visit to the historic Ukrainian capital — where air raid sirens blared as Biden walked the streets with President Volodymyr Zelensky — signals continued commitment from the United States, the largest financial and military backer of Ukraine’s effort to repel Russian invaders from its territory.
Biden was spotted with the Ukrainian leader outside St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery shortly before noon local time, his appearance capping hours of speculation during an intense security lockdown that had blocked car traffic and even pedestrians from certain streets.
Following talks with Zelensky and a visit to the U.S. Embassy, Biden departed Kyiv several hours later, according to a reporter traveling with him. Though brief, Biden’s visit represented one of the most remarkable presidential trips in modern history, sending him into a country at war and a city under regular bombardment without the heavy U.S. military presence that provided a protective shield during visits to Iraq or Afghanistan.
In his remarks alongside Zelensky, Biden said the U.S. would provide another half-billion dollars of assistance to Ukraine.
Biden has insisted the United States will continue to back Ukraine against Russia for “as long as it takes” despite flagging support among the American public and no near-term prospect of peace talks.
His administration has provided some $30 billion in security aid since President Vladimir Putin sent Russian forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, initiating the largest ground war in Europe since World War II — one that has cost his country and Ukraine hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Under Biden’s leadership, the United States and its NATO allies have gradually expanded the array of weaponry they have pledged to include heavy tanks, but Ukrainian leaders continue to press for more sophisticated weapons as the combatants prepare for renewed offensives this spring.
Biden said his visit was intended to reaffirm American backing for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, which Russia has violated since 2014, when Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and launched support for a separatist campaign in the eastern Donbas region.
Photos showed Biden and Zelensky embracing in front a wall where photos of slain soldiers were displayed.
The White House has attempted to cast the deepening conflict as a high-stakes battle that will determine not only Ukraine’s fate, but also that of democracies and the rule of law everywhere, arguing that if Putin is permitted to seize parts of another nation by force, it will give a green light to other autocrats.
“When Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought he could outlast us,” Biden said in a statement issued by the White House. “But he was dead wrong.”
Video later showed the president, wearing a dark suit and striped tie, seated with Zelensky, who wore his trademark military-style attire.
The visit represented a major boost for Zelensky, whose domestic support has soared, in line with national unity and anti-Russian fury, since Putin’s invasion.
As a wartime leader, Zelensky now faces the formidable task of propelling Ukraine’s fatigued military into Russian-occupied territory while also persuading foreign partners to provide ever greater military support, including fighter jets. U.S. officials have so far declined to provide aircraft to Ukraine.
Biden’s trip comes as questions abound about the longevity of global backing for Ukraine and the cohesion of the U.S.-led coalition that has enabled Kyiv’s military success so far, and China is reported to be actively considering sending military aid to Russia.
While Western nations continue to proclaim strong support, many have grown worried about the economic and political costs of a protracted conflict — and about their ability to keep the money and munitions flowing.
Opinion polls show that Americans are growing weary of the aid effort, mirroring complaints across the globe about billions going to Ukraine instead of other priorities. In recent weeks, the White House has told Kyiv that it could soon see limits in support from the United States and other countries.
The series of massive U.S. aid packages approved to date for Ukraine materialized under a Democratic-controlled Congress. Republicans retook the House in November, and a vocal right-wing minority in the GOP has threatened to curtail support.
Biden’s trip was shrouded in secrecy and, on the ground in Kyiv, involved even greater security than other high-level visits. Biden had been due to leave for an announced visit to Poland from Washington on Monday evening but, according to a small group of reporters who traveled with Biden to Kyiv, actually departed Washington around 4 a.m. Sunday.
Journalists accompanying Biden reported that they had agreed to withhold real-time details of the president’s movements until he departed, including information about how he arrived in the Ukrainian capital. The country’s airspace has been closed for the past year.
While other world leaders have visited Kyiv to meet with Zelensky and tour the war-scarred city over the past year, Biden has stayed away because of security concerns and fears about the possibility of conflict between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. He sent senior aides including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin his place. First lady Jill Biden made a surprise visit to western Ukraine on Mother’s Day.
In contrast, Britain’s Boris Johnson visited Kyiv three times as prime minister in the months following the February invasion.
A reporter traveling with Biden reported around 2 p.m. local time that the president had left Kyiv. No further details about his travel were immediately available.
During the visit, Biden and Zelensky held private talks at the Mariinsky Palace, a ceremonial Baroque structure overlooking the Dnieper River in central Kyiv.
Zelensky said the discussion “brings us closer to victory,” according to a White House pool report.
He noted that his first call as the Russian invasion began on the night of Feb. 24, 2022, was to the United States.
“You told me that you could hear explosions in the background,” Biden said in response. “I’ll never forget that.”
Biden said he had asked Zelensky that night how he could be of help and twice repeated what he said was the Ukrainian leader’s response: “Gather the leaders of the world. Ask them to support Ukraine.”
“You said that you didn’t know when we’d be able to speak again. That dark night one year ago, the world was literally at the time bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden continued. “Perhaps even the end of Ukraine.”
“One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” he said. “The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”
Biden also made a stop at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, which was closed for several months after Russia’s invasion. He was accompanied by aides including national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
It was not immediately clear whether Biden would still make his previously announced trip to Poland, where he had been scheduled to meet with President Andrzej Duda and leaders of the Bucharest Nine, a group of mostly former Eastern bloc nations once under Soviet influence that formed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and is increasingly wary of its larger neighbor’s expansionist aspirations.
Antony Blinken, right, said Wang Yi, left, did not apologise for the overflight of the Chinese balloon over US territory. (photo: Stefani Reynolds/Reuters)
Top diplomats hold ‘direct, candid’ talks in Munich amid tensions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the downing of a suspected Chinese spying balloon.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned China against providing “lethal support” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and condemned the violation of United States airspace by an alleged Chinese spying balloon as he held rare talks with Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi.
Relations between the two countries have been fraught since Washington said China flew a spy balloon over the country before US fighter jets shot it down on President Joe Biden’s orders. The dispute also came at a time when the West is closely watching Beijing’s response to the Ukraine war.
In an interview to be aired on Sunday morning on NBC News’s “Meet the Press with Chuck Todd,” Blinken said the US was very concerned that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia and that he made clear to Wang that “would have serious consequences in our relationship”.
“There are various kinds of lethal assistance that they are at least contemplating providing, to include weapons,” Blinken said, adding that Washington would soon release more details.
Speaking to reporters in a briefing call, a senior State Department official said China was trying to “have it both ways” by claiming it wants to contribute to peace and stability but at the same time taking “concerning” steps to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“[The] secretary was quite blunt in warning about the implications and consequences of China providing material support to Russia or assisting Russia with systematic sanctions evasion,” the senior official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Russia and China signed a “no limits” partnership last February shortly before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and their economic links have boomed as Moscow’s connections with the West have shrivelled.
The West has been wary of China’s response to the Ukraine war, with some warning that a Russian victory would colour China’s actions towards Taiwan. China has refrained from condemning the war or calling it an “invasion”.
Earlier, speaking at a panel at the conference, Wang reiterated a call for dialogue and suggested European countries “think calmly” about how to end the war.
He also said there were “some forces that seemingly don’t want negotiations to succeed, or for the war to end soon,” without specifying to whom he was referring.
The balloon’s flight this month over US territory triggered an uproar in Washington and prompted Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing. That February 5-6 trip would have been the first by a US secretary of state to China in five years and was seen by both sides as an opportunity to stabilise increasingly fraught ties.
In the interview with NBC, Blinken said Wang did not apologise for the balloon’s flight.
“I told him quite simply that that was unacceptable,” Blinken said, referring to the balloon’s violation of US air space, adding that he had not discussed with Wang rescheduling his trip to China.
China reacted angrily when the US military downed the 60-metre (200-ft) balloon on February 4, saying it was for monitoring weather conditions and had blown off course. Washington said it was clearly a surveillance balloon with a massive undercarriage holding electronics.
For his part, Wang told Blinken that their countries’ relations had been damaged by how Washington reacted to the balloon, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Wang “made clear China’s solemn position on the so-called airship incident” and “urged the US side to change course, acknowledge and repair the damage that its excessive use of force caused to China-US relations,” Xinhua reported.
Earlier, speaking at a panel at the conference, Wang reiterated a call for dialogue and suggested European countries “think calmly” about how to end the war.
He also said there were “some forces that seemingly don’t want negotiations to succeed, or for the war to end soon,” without specifying to whom he was referring.
The balloon’s flight this month over US territory triggered an uproar in Washington and prompted Blinken to postpone a planned visit to Beijing. That February 5-6 trip would have been the first by a US secretary of state to China in five years and was seen by both sides as an opportunity to stabilise increasingly fraught ties.
In the interview with NBC, Blinken said Wang did not apologise for the balloon’s flight.
“I told him quite simply that that was unacceptable,” Blinken said, referring to the balloon’s violation of US air space, adding that he had not discussed with Wang rescheduling his trip to China.
China reacted angrily when the US military downed the 60-metre (200-ft) balloon on February 4, saying it was for monitoring weather conditions and had blown off course. Washington said it was clearly a surveillance balloon with a massive undercarriage holding electronics.
For his part, Wang told Blinken that their countries’ relations had been damaged by how Washington reacted to the balloon, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Wang “made clear China’s solemn position on the so-called airship incident” and “urged the US side to change course, acknowledge and repair the damage that its excessive use of force caused to China-US relations,” Xinhua reported.
Contemporary deaths at the hands of police—deaths like those of Tyre Nichols and George Floyd—are not much different from the way my grandfather was murdered in Birmingham.
Like others, I suspect, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the issue of excessive force used by law enforcement. Police shootings of citizens occur almost daily, but as is evident in the case of 29-year-old Memphis resident Tyre Nichols, firearms don’t have to be in the equation for policing in communities of color to become violent and lethal.
Nichols was stopped for a traffic violation on Jan. 7 that turned into an altercation, a chase, a brutal beating, and days later his death as a result of his injuries. Officer body-camera and other police video show the horrific and escalating force of that night. The Black officers involved in, or witness to, Nichols’ beating were indicted, fired, and now face murder charges. The special police unit—for high-crime areas—that retained these officers was disbanded, and other police, fire and EMT personnel have, or will, face additional disciplinary action.
This latest example of excessive use of force by police comes 32 years after another videotaped police beating of another Black male motorist.
After a police chase, Rodney King was ordered out of his automobile and assaulted. I watched appalled as four Los Angeles police officers kicked and clubbed King for 15 minutes. A bystander caught the confrontation on camera in what even police leadership called an aberration. Police use of excessive force was ubiquitous 30 years ago, but personal video devices were not, and I remember thinking at the time that this footage will finally prove to white America what Black America already knows—law enforcement doesn’t protect and serve all its citizens. Some it brutalizes. But real-time images, obviously, didn’t have the influence they do now, and despite the recording of King’s vicious beating, a jury found that the officers in the case—three of them white—acted within the purview of their authority. That verdict incited the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Thankfully, there were no riots in Memphis when Nichols’ videotaped beating was broadcast to the public. Most credit the quick and decisive acts of justice by police leadership and local prosecutors for quelling what could have been a backlash of outrage. Those actions prove a lot has changed in societal attitudes about policing since 1992. Unfortunately, not enough to have saved George Floyd in 2020.
Another video by another bystander allowed us to watch as Floyd struggled for air and life under the knee of a Minneapolis policeman. That eight minutes and 46 seconds of video further galvanized public perception about the misuse of police power and proved fundamental to the prosecution’s case against the officers involved.
Ninety years ago, another Black man was killed by a police officer acting under the authority of the laws and rules of the times. Robert Harrington was the same age as Tyre Nichols, 29, when he was shot multiple times by Birmingham Alabama police for what a newspaper account called “resisting arrest.” Harrington was a master wood carver from St. Petersburg, Florida who had moved with his pregnant wife and young daughter to work on the homes of the bustling steel industry moguls of the “Magic City.” Driving a new car and having been seen around town with his wife who could pass for white, he’d been in Birmingham only a few months before he was beaten and shot.
Jim Crow police forces had members who wore blue uniforms by day and white sheets by night. Birmingham’s police department was no different, and were notorious for enforcing the strict, and draconian, laws of segregation with threats, and force. In Birmingham those laws and rules were dubbed the “black codes.” Police boasted and joked about the beating they’d given Harrington, and his enraged wife, Anna Kate, was vociferous in her anger and complaints about the police. Not something Black people did in those times, and for her own safety she fled Birmingham in secrecy.
Robert and Anna Kate were my grandparents. There were no bystanders with phones or video cameras, no police investigation, and no protests over his death.
The Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Project, based at Northeastern University School of Law has recorded more than 150 incidents of police violence against Black citizens in Alabama in the years 1930-1970. In a report released by CRRJ, at least 144 African Americans were killed by police officers during that period, and 129 of those incidents occurred in Jefferson County, where Birmingham is the county seat. The CRRJ cases are the ones where researchers were able to identify a paper trail, and were primarily police shootings. One can only imagine the countless other assaults and shootings—in this century and last—that were unwitnessed, undocumented, and will remain forgotten.
I’ve written a novel about my grandfather’s police shooting—a response to the pain and anger I felt watching the Floyd video. In my research I pored over the archives of Black newspapers dating to the early 20th century, and marveled at what has changed for Black people in America, and what hasn’t. My biggest takeaway: the news and headlines offered in those early publications are painfully similar to those sparking today’s national conversation about race, social justice, and policing.
Last year, 2022, marked the highest number of shooting fatalities by on-duty police officers in this country since tracking began in 2015. Nearly a quarter of those killed last year were Black citizens. Sadly, we’re off to a troubling start in 2023. Through the last week in January, reports from local police departments indicate there have been 79 police shooting fatalities. Race identifiers aren’t clear, because police departments either did not report the race of the deceased, or as is the case in most of these incidents, body camera documentation is not available.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act—addressing racial bias, excessive use of force by police, and aiming to reduce misconduct by law enforcement officers—was introduced in Congress two years ago this month. It passed the House but stalled in the U.S. Senate. The bill has an ambitious agenda with elements that will inevitably lead to extensive negotiations between federal, state, and local agencies, and police unions. But there are two, very common-sense, and actionable components, that would immediately point American policing on a path toward equal treatment for all citizens, in all its communities.
First, establish a federal registry of police misconduct complaints and officer disciplinary actions. It’s a forthright and prudent idea. This information, if reported at all, resides in unlinked databases that don’t allow law enforcement agencies to properly vet officers who transfer from one police force to another.
Second, mandate that all police officers use body cameras and dashboard cameras. A no-brainer. These images speak louder than a thousand excuses, fabrications, and differences of opinion about what constitutes excessive force.
I wish there had been some police accountability when my grandfather was killed almost a century ago—an investigation that would shed light on the circumstances of his death. It would have given my family closure, and maybe some peace. Because there was not, grandpa is just another tragic example of what can result when Black citizens, and disproportionately Black men, interact with the police on any day of any month in America.
Beatriz Gonzalez and Jose Hernandez, the mother and stepfather of Nohemi Gonzalez, who died in a terrorist attack in Paris in 2015. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in Gonzalez v. Google on Tuesday. (photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The justices are set to hear a case challenging Section 230, a law that protects Google, Facebook and others from lawsuits over what their users post online.
The next year, her father sued Google and other tech companies. He accused the firms of spreading content that radicalized users into becoming terrorists, and said they were therefore legally responsible for the harm inflicted on Ms. Gonzalez’s family. Her mother, stepfather and brothers eventually joined the lawsuit, too.
Their claims will be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. And their lawsuit, with Google now the exclusive defendant, could have potentially seismic ramifications for the social media platforms that have become conduits of communication, commerce and culture for billions of people.
Their suit takes aim at a federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google’s YouTube from lawsuits over content posted by their users or their decisions to take content down. The case gives the Supreme Court’s justices the opportunity to narrow how that legal shield is applied or to gut it entirely, potentially opening up the companies to liability for what users post and to lawsuits over libel, discriminatory advertising and extremist propaganda.
A day after hearing the Gonzalez v. Google case, the court is scheduled to hear a second tech lawsuit, Twitter v. Taamneh, over whether Twitter has contributed to terrorism.
What the Supreme Court ultimately decides on the cases will add to a pitched battle around the world over how to regulate online speech. Many governments say that social networks have become fertile ground for hate speech and misinformation. Some have required the platforms to take down those posts. But in the United States, the First Amendment makes it difficult for Congress to do the same.
Critics of Section 230 say that it lets the tech companies avoid responsibility for harms facilitated on their watch. But supporters counter that without the legal shield, the companies will take down more content than ever to avoid lawsuits, stifling free expression.
The Supreme Court case “can have an impact on how those companies do business and how we interact with the internet, too,” said Hany Farid, a professor at the school of information at the University of California, Berkeley. He filed a brief with the Supreme Court supporting the Gonzalez family members who are suing Google.
Ms. Gonzalez, a first-generation college student who was studying design at California State University, Long Beach, was killed while out with friends during the Paris attacks in 2015. The Islamic State later claimed responsibility. She was the only American killed.
Her father, Reynaldo Gonzalez, sued Google, Facebook and Twitter in 2016, arguing the platforms were spreading extremist content. That included propaganda, messages from the Islamic State’s leaders and videos of graphic violence, he said. Citing media reports, the lawsuit mentioned specific videos that showed footage of Islamic State fighters in the field and updates from a media outlet affiliated with the group. The online platforms didn’t do enough to keep the terrorist group off their sites, the lawsuit said.
YouTube and other platforms say they screen for such videos and take down many of them. But in 2018, research that was based on a tool developed by Mr. Farid found that some Islamic State videos stayed up for hours, including one that encouraged violent attacks in Western nations.
Facebook and Twitter were removed as defendants in the lawsuit in 2017, the same year Ms. Gonzalez’s mother stepfather and siblings joined plaintiffs. Last year, a federal appeals court ruled that Google did not have to face the Gonzalez family members’ claims because the company was protected by Section 230.
In May, lawyers for Ms. Gonzalez’s family asked the Supreme Court to step in. By using algorithms to recommend content to users, the lawyers argued, YouTube was essentially engaging in its own form of speech, which was not protected by Section 230.
Ms. Gonzalez’s father and the plaintiffs in the Twitter case declined to comment through their lawyer, Keith Altman. Mr. Altman said that courts had “pushed the limits” of the Section 230 legal shield to the point that it was “unrecognizable.” A lawyer for Ms. Gonzalez’s other family members did not respond to a request for comment. The lawyer who will argue both cases before the Supreme Court, Eric Schnapper, also declined to comment.
Google has denied the Gonzalez family’s arguments about Section 230. It has said that the family’s claims that Google supported terrorism are based on “threadbare assertions” and “speculative” arguments.
In Congress, efforts to reform Section 230 have stalled. Republicans, spurred by accusations that internet companies are more likely to take down conservative posts, proposed tweaking the law. Democrats said the platforms should take more content down when it spreads misinformation or hate speech.
Instead, courts started exploring the limits to how the law should be applied.
In one case in 2021, a federal appeals court in California ruled that Snap, the parent of Snapchat, could not use Section 230 to dodge a lawsuit involving three people who died in a car crash after using a Snapchat filter that displayed a user’s speed.
Last year, a federal judge in California said that Apple, Google and Meta, Facebook’s parent, could not use the legal shield to avoid some claims from consumers who said they were harmed by casino apps. A federal judge in Oregon also ruled that the statute didn’t shield Omegle, the chat site that connects users at random, from a lawsuit that said an 11-year-old girl met a predator through its service.
Tech companies say it will be devastating if the Supreme Court undercuts Section 230. Halimah DeLaine Prado, Google’s general counsel, said in an interview in December that the protections had been “crucial to allowing not just Google but the internet to flourish in its infancy, to actually become a major part of the broader U.S. economy.”
“It’s critically important that it stands as it is,” she said.
A spokesman for Meta pointed to a blog post where the company’s top lawyer said the case “could make it much harder for millions of online companies like Meta to provide the type of services that people enjoy using every day.”
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Activists have raised concerns that changes to the law could cause the platforms to crack down on content posted by vulnerable people. In 2018, a new law ended the protections of Section 230 when platforms knowingly facilitated sex trafficking. The activists say that caused sites to take down content from adult sex workers and posts about L.G.B.T.Q. people.
The Gonzalez case has also attracted interest from the Justice Department. In a December brief, the agency told the Supreme Court it believed that Section 230 “does not bar claims based on YouTube’s alleged targeted recommendations of ISIS content.” The White House has said the legal shield should be removed.
Mr. Farid acknowledged it was possible the court could gut the Section 230 protections, leading to unintended consequences. But he noted that the social networks already comply with laws governing how they treat certain types of content, like German restrictions on digital hate speech. He said they could navigate narrow changes to the legal shield, too.
C.W. Hamilton, a 72-year-old Army veteran in Reno, took out a $5,200 student loan in 1977 and still owes almost that amount decades later. (photo: Max Whittaker/WP)
When C.W. Hamilton took out his first student loan in 1977, the Education Department wasn’t even a federal agency. The $5,250 he borrowed to complete an associate’s degree at Cochise College in Arizona was supposed to be an investment in his future, not a lifelong burden. Yet after more than 40 years of payments and bouts of default, Hamilton still owes almost as much as he first borrowed.
“It’s like an anchor around my neck,” said Hamilton, a 72-year-old Army veteran in Reno, Nev. “I live on peanuts. ... I can never get from underneath this debt.”
There are nearly 47,000 people like Hamilton who have been in repayment on their federal student loans for at least 40 years, according to data obtained from the Education Department through a Freedom of Information Act request. About 82 percent of them are in default on their loans, meaning they haven’t made a voluntary payment in at least 270 days.
“This is sort of a monumental failure,” said Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “There are so many relief programs in the student loan system to address some sort of financial distress. But it’s this real patchwork, and borrowers struggle to navigate it. The department itself and its servicers often can’t navigate it either.”
While these borrowers represent a sliver of the 43.5 million people with federal student debt, their existence is an indictment of policies meant to help people manage their loans. Years of administrative failures and poorly designed programs have denied many borrowers an off-ramp from a perpetual cycle of debt. Even as the Biden administration tries to remedy these problems — including fighting legal challenges to its plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for many — the fixes could still leave vulnerable borrowers like Hamilton on the sidelines.
The road to repayment
To understand how tens of thousands of people could be in debt for decades, consider the options for repaying federal student loans. When borrowers leave school, they are automatically assigned to a standard 10-year repayment plan. Others extend the period by enrolling in graduated plans that increase payments over time or income-driven repayment plans that tie their monthly bill to earnings and family size.
People can also temporarily pause their payments through deferment or forbearance, which can lengthen the timeline. From the time student loan borrowers’ first loans enter repayment, the median length of time it takes to pay in full is 15½ years, according to the Education Department. How much you borrow, how much you earn and whether you get your degree can all play a role in how quickly you pay off the debt.
Those last two factors played a starring role in Hamilton’s struggle to repay his student loans. After a dispute with an instructor, he left Cochise before completing his aviation studies. That led to a series of low-wage jobs and relocations for work. School loans were low on the list of priorities for the father of five. Hamilton doesn’t recall receiving any notice to make payments for the first decade after leaving school, which he suspects is because he moved around so much.
“The job market was really tight at the time, so I was taking different jobs for a while and didn’t have a locked-down address,” Hamilton recalls. “We didn’t have cellphones at that time, so they couldn’t call and say, ‘Hey, you’re behind on your loans.’”
But the debt caught up with him soon after he began receiving Social Security disability benefits. Injuries from stints fighting wildfires and fixing airplanes left Hamilton unable to work, and his federal benefits became fair game for collection. Through the Treasury Offset Program, the federal government has been garnishing his disability benefits on and off since 2002.
Before the Education Department paused payments and collection in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he’d involuntarily paid more than $13,000. Treasury last deducted $175.05 from his $1,165 monthly Social Security check to service fees and interest on his loans — leaving Hamilton still owing $4,963.
“It’s tough because they’re taking all of this money, for all of these years, and nothing is going to the principal,” Hamilton said. “I’m getting nowhere. I was climbing up, but my debt kept going up.”
He had tried to shake free from the offset. Given his disability, Hamilton applied for a discharge of his loans through a program for totally and permanently disabled borrowers but was denied. He opted for student loan rehabilitation, a one-time process that brings a borrower back into good standing after nine consecutive payments. But Hamilton fell back into default. He said he was then advised to consolidate, another way to exit default by taking out a new loan to repay the past-due debt, but felt uneasy about another loan.
A fresh start
An analysis of federal data from July 2003 to April 2016 found 70 percent of borrowers in default were able to bring their student loans back into good standing within 10 years, but the rest remained in default. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that up to a third of borrowers who exit through loan rehabilitation default again within two years. It’s a problem that reflects the limitations of the system, said Brian Denten, an officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ project on student borrower success.
“You only get one shot at each of these options,” Denten said. “After that, if you default again, you can either pay off your entire loan in full or essentially sit there and have your wages, Social Security or tax refund garnished until your obligation is resolved.”
The Biden administration is temporarily waiving the rules governing default, offering 7.5 million people like Hamilton a “fresh start” by placing their loans in good standing when the payment pause ends even if they’ve defaulted multiple times in the past.
The initiative will eliminate borrowers’ record of default before the repayment pause and reinstate their eligibility for federal Pell grants, work-study and additional student loans to help those who may have dropped out before completing their degrees. It will also spare people from the seizure of wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits.
Rich Williams, senior adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary at the department, said the Biden administration is working to understand the administrative, regulatory and statutory changes needed to realign the existing delinquency and default consequences.
“The principles that we are following as we’re exploring policies like the new income-based repayment plan ... [are] that borrowers shouldn’t be in repayment for more than 25 years,” Williams said. “We’re going through that exploration phase, and Fresh Start is the first step.”
The one-time initiative isn’t exactly seamless. Rather than being automatically enrolled, people in default must contact the department’s Default Resolution Group or their loan holders to take full advantage of the program. They will have one year from the end of the student loan payment pause — set to expire later this year — to make payment arrangements. Failure to act will throw borrowers back into default.
“A big part of it will be getting the word out,” Denten said. “We know from speaking with servicers and borrowers that it can be hard to establish a regular line of communication.”
Even if people take advantage of the program, they could end up defaulting again. Denten said connecting distressed borrowers to an income-driven repayment plan will be critical. Depending on their income, people enrolled in such plans can pay as little as $0 a month and it would count as credit toward loan cancellation. It is a lifeline, however, that doesn’t always reach the people most in need.
Promise and failure
With the advent of income-driven repayment nearly 30 years ago, borrowers could avoid being saddled with education loans in old age: If you keep up with payments, the federal government will forgive your remaining balance after 20 years for undergrad loans or after 25 years for graduate school debt. The plans also let people struggling with their debt avoid delinquency and default, as the less you earn, the less you pay each month.
But in the early days, the Education Department and its student loan servicers did little to publicize the plans.
Rosalie Lynch, 72, said she learned about them only in 2015 after doing her own research. By then, she had twice defaulted on the $25,000 in student loans she amassed in the early 1980s for a bachelor’s degree in social work from Bethel College and master’s degree in counseling from Kansas State University. Lynch had tried to stay ahead of her payments but stumbled in the wake of a “toxic” marriage, she said.
“He wouldn’t help me and expected me to take on all of the financial responsibilities,” said Lynch, who works as a mental health counselor in Idaho. “There were times I just couldn’t afford [my student loans]. They had to be a low priority. The kids needed food, they needed clothes. I don’t make that much money.”
On the advice of her loan servicer, Lynch said she often postponed her payments through forbearance. It paused the bill, but not the interest. Between the periods of forbearance and default, Lynch accumulated enough interest and fees to more than double her debt to $65,000. Because of her wages, Lynch qualified to make a $0 monthly payment under the IDR plan. Still, she worries she will die in debt. Federal student loans are discharged upon death.
Like Lynch, Patricia C. Vener-Saavedra, 70, spent years in forbearance before enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan a decade ago. Working as an adjunct instructor for years left her stretching to cover basic living expenses, which didn’t include student loans. Vener-Saavedra said she learned about income-driven repayment after her loans were transferred to a new servicer.
“I kept asking my different servicers if there was anything I can do besides forbearance. And all I heard was ‘No, no,’” Vener-Saavedra said. “Finally, it changed to someone who said, ‘Oh, yeah, you can get an income-based plan.’ And I’m like, ‘How long has this existed?’”
With a $0 monthly payment, the IDR plan provided a path to clearing the debt Vener-Saavedra acquired for a master’s degree in astrophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But the $35,000 in student loans she graduated with in 1991 has since ballooned to $88,141.
“I’ll be 85 when the loans are forgiven,” Vener-Saavedra said. “If I knew about these income plans earlier, I might not be in this position.”
Shafroth at the National Consumer Law Center said that with the existence of income-driven plans, no one in the federal student loan system should be in repayment for more than 25 years. The Education Department has previously disclosed that 4.4 million borrowers have been repaying their debt for at least 20 years, with half of them in default.
Yet a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that the department had erased the balances of only 132 people as of June 2021 under the IDR plans. It said the agency failed to ensure that payments were accurately tracked until a decade after the first income-driven plan was implemented. As a result, some people with older loans are at high risk of spending more time in repayment than necessary.
Researchers at the GAO said the department never provided borrowers regular updates on their progress toward debt cancellation or readily available information about forgiveness requirements. Without that guidance, researchers said, people who believed they were making progress may not have known that postponing payments doesn’t count.
The blistering report arrived a day after the Biden administration announced in April that it would temporarily allow any month in which borrowers made payments to retroactively count toward forgiveness, even if they were not enrolled in an income-driven plan. The one-time revision meant at least 40,000 people would now receive automatic loan cancellation.
“There are student debts that should have been canceled, but no one bothered to do that,” Williams of the Education Department said. “So we’re automatically correcting those errors and discharging those loans.”
Under the initiative, the department will also grant a one-time account adjustment to count the months borrowers postponed their payments through forbearance if they remained in that status for years. Still, other features of the IDR adjustment will shut out many distressed borrowers.
Months in which borrowers are delinquent or in default do not count toward the forgiveness threshold. What’s more, the department is only counting payments as far back as 1994. Both of those stipulations will probably leave Hamilton and Lynch out in the cold.
“There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this,” Shaforth said of the exclusions.
In January, the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center sent a letter urging the Education Department to reconsider excluding time in default from the account adjustment, saying “failure to fully remedy these harms would be an unforced error.”
The Education Department declined to comment on the matter.
Advocates have long questioned the rationale behind the federal government’s relentless pursuit of student loan payments from distressed borrowers.
Unlike the Education Department, banks and lenders in the private market routinely write off the debt they can’t collect, and there is a statute of limitations on collection, Shaforth said. While the federal student loan program is not as flexible, she said, the department does have the power to settle, compromise and terminate the collection of debts. She said the agency could use other regulations that give the government an out when it can’t collect a debt within a reasonable time.
“I would think that 40 years should be a reasonable time,” Shaforth said.
A plume of dark smoke rises over East Palestine, Ohio, after a freight train derailed earlier this month. The smoke is from a controlled detonation of chemicals. (photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP)
Unions say rail companies’ desire for increased profits is driving up safety risks – and more accidents will happen without action
US railroad workers say the train derailment in Ohio, which forced thousands of residents to evacuate and is now spreading a noxious plume of carcinogenic chemicals across the area, should be an “eye-opening” revelation for Congress and “an illustration of how the railroads operate, and how they’re getting away with a lot of things”.
Workers and union officials cited the Norfolk Southern Railway derailment in early February as a glaring example of why safety reforms to the industry – which include providing workers with paid sick leave – need to be made.
Thirty-eight cars on the train derailed in the town of East Palestine, near the Pennsylvania border, including 11 cars carrying hazardous materials that incited an evacuation order, a controlled release of chemicals, and fears of harmful chemical exposure to residents, wildlife and waterways.
Unions and rail companies have been at loggerheads for years over new contracts that would address what workers describe as poor working conditions, and would provide paid sick days amid grueling schedules caused by labor cuts.
“Without a change in the working conditions, without better scheduling, without more time off, without a better work-life balance, the railroad is going to suffer,” said Ron Kaminkow, the general secretary of Railroad Workers United, an Amtrak engineer in Reno, Nevada, and the vice-president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (Blet) local 51. “It’s just intrinsic, with short staffing. Corners get cut and safety is compromised.”
Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO’s transportation trades department, said the loss of workers in recent years, which has coincided with record profits for railroad corporations, was the driving force for deteriorating conditions on US railroads.
The railroad industry workforce plummeted from over 1 million workers in the 1950s to fewer than 150,000 in 2022, with a loss of 40,000 railroad jobs between November 2018 and December 2020. The six major railroad corporations that have yet to agree to provide workers with paid sick days reported over $22bn in profits, and spent more than $20bn on stock buybacks and shareholder dividends last year.
Regan said the derailment in Ohio was an example of why these working-condition issues need to be addressed.
“It increases a lot of risk in what is a very dangerous industry. When things go wrong there can be very tragic consequences,” added Regan.
The corporations are also opposing reforms to implement mandatory participation to an anonymous close-call reporting system so workers can report safety concerns without fear of reprisal and identify problems before they result in accidents, said Leo McCann, chair of the rail labor division of transportation trades department.
“It’s kind of an eye-opener,” McCann said of the Ohio derailment. “It’s an illustration of how the railroads operate and how they’re getting away with a lot of things.”
Workers criticized the decision by Congress and the Biden administration to impose a tentative new contract agreement on all railroad unions, despite more than half of represented members voting to reject it due to the lack of paid sick days.
The majority of workers in precision railroad scheduling systems – operational systems focused on cutting costs – currently have no paid sick days and face attendance points for taking time off, which could result in termination.
Workers have complained that disciplinary attendance systems, coupled with drastic staffing cuts, have diminished morale, incentivized workers to continue working through illness or fatigue, and increased safety risks.
On 2 February, all 12 railroad unions issued a resolution demanding paid sick days for railroad workers. Bernie Sanders and Republican senator Mike Braun held a press conference with union representatives on 9 February to add further pressure to corporations to provide workers with at least seven paid sick days.
The renewed push comes shortly after CSX Transportation announced it came to an agreement with two unions representing 5,000 railroad workers to provide four days of paid sick leave to all workers and allow workers to use up to three personal leave days for sick leave.
“The next step is to make sure we bring other railroads to the table and hopefully get a resolution,” said Regan. “This is the worst relationship that has been between the railroads and their workers in my career.” He said the tension had been exacerbated by the rail companies’ determination to increase profits by cutting staff.
“When you’re going to treat your employees that way, to continue to try to squeeze as many pennies out of each individual worker as you possibly can, without any regard for their wellbeing, you’re going to have really contentious bargaining sessions like we had last year,” he said.
“The railroad companies do not want to actually participate. They’re just anti-regulatory in their mind, but that’s not the case here: it’s about safety, and to ensure workers can go home to their families at night and not have a tragedy happen to them,” added McCann.
“The railroads are more interested in profitability and keeping their return on investment up and their numbers down so they can satisfy Wall Street, and they just live behind this shield hoping nothing will happen.”
