More public service student loans forgiven
WASHINGTON — Another 78,000 Americans are getting their federal student loans canceled through a program that will help teachers, nurses, firefighters, and other public employees, the Biden administration announced on Thursday.
The Education Department is canceling the borrowers’ loans because they reached 10 years of payments while working in public service, making them eligible for relief under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
“These public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, never got the relief they were entitled to under the law,” President Biden said in a statement.
Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program in 2007, but rigid rules and missteps by student loan servicers left many borrowers unable to get the cancellation that they were promised.
The Biden administration loosened some of the rules and retroactively gave many borrowers credit toward their 10 years of payments.
Through those actions, the Biden administration has canceled loans for more than 871,000 public service workers. Previously, about 7,000 borrowers had successfully gotten their loans canceled.
The latest round of debt forgiveness will cancel about $5.8 billion in federal student loans.
Starting next week, those receiving the forgiveness will get an email from Biden. A message from the Democratic president, who’s running for reelection, will also be sent to 380,000 borrowers who are within two years of forgiveness under the program. ASSOCIATED PRESS
Menendez won’t run in Democratic primary
Indicted Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, announced Thursday he will not file to run for reelection in the Democratic primary but said he hopes to still seek another term as an independent later this year.
“I will not file for the Democratic primary this June,” Menendez said in a video posted to social media. “I am hopeful that my exoneration will take place this summer and allow me to pursue my candidacy as an independent Democrat in a general election.”
Menendez’s announcement complicates a race that already includes two prominent New Jersey Democrats, first lady Tammy Murphy and Representative Andy Kim.
Menendez, who is fighting federal corruption charges, faced a Monday deadline to decide whether to run in the primary. The deadline for independent candidates is June.
Menendez and his wife were charged last year with taking bribes from three business executives, including gold bars, in exchange for legislative favors. He has pleaded not guilty to the initial indictment, as well as to additional charges since then, including obstruction of justice.
Last week, a judge rejected Menendez’s claim of legislative immunity against some of the charges. A trial is scheduled to start May 6.
Menendez acknowledged in the video that many of his supporters are “hurt and disappointed” but asked them to “withhold judgment until justice takes place.”
The deadline for independent candidates to submit signatures for the November election is June 4, the same day as the primary. Menendez suggested running as an independent would “allow me the time to ... remind New Jerseyans of how I’ve succeeded in being your champion.”
Menendez, a former House member, has served in the Senate since 2006.
Menendez chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee twice, including from 2021 until last year. He had to relinquish the post due to rules that require a chair to step down if they have been charged with a felony. WASHINGTON POST
Valet recalled warning from Trump to Pence
WASHINGTON — The threat from President Donald Trump to his vice president, Mike Pence, was clear and direct: If you defy my effort to overturn the 2020 election by certifying the results, your future in Republican politics is over.
“Mike, this is a political career killer if you do this,” Trump told Pence by phone on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, according to the White House valet who was with the president for much of the day and told Congress
he had overheard the conversation.
The testimony of Trump’s valet, provided to the House Jan. 6 Committee in 2022 but not previously released publicly, offers a rare firsthand look into the former president’s behavior in the hours before, during, and after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol seeking to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
In the valet’s account, laid out in a transcript obtained by The New York Times, an agitated Trump pressured Pence to overturn the election and stewed about Pence’s refusal for hours after violence engulfed Congress. Told that a civilian had been shot outside the
House chamber amid the mob attack, he recalled, Trump appeared unconcerned.
“I just remember seeing it in front of him,” the valet said of a note card Trump was given bearing news of the casualty as he watched the riot unfold on television. “I don’t remember how it got there or whatever.
But there was no, like, reaction.”
As unflattering as portions of the aide’s testimony were to Trump, he did not confirm some of the more graphic and damning claims made by witnesses in front of the Jan. 6 committee.
For instance, the valet said he did not remember hearing Trump use vulgar language in describing his view that Pence was a coward, or agree with rioters who were chanting for Pence to be hung. And he did recall hearing the president ask about contacting top officials about dispatching the National Guard to Capitol Hill — although there is no indication that he ever followed through.
“Did you hear the president say that?” a staff investigator for the House Jan. 6 committee asked the valet, inquiring about reports that Trump had called Pence an expletive meant to refer to a wimp.
“I did not — no, sir,” the valet responded. NEW YORK TIMES
Manhattan DA downplays documents in Trump case
NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney’s office said in court papers Thursday that a large cache of newly disclosed documents contained little that might influence or delay the criminal trial of Donald Trump, which is scheduled to begin in mid-April.
In a surprising move, the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, agreed last week to allow a short delay in the trial to give Trump’s lawyers time to review the records. The documents had been turned over by federal prosecutors who had previously investigated Michael Cohen, the former president’s longtime fixer who is expected to be a key witness in Bragg’s prosecution.
Trump’s lawyers had cast the documents as a potential gamechanging development in the intensely litigated case, which had been set to go to trial March 25. But in Thursday’s filing, Bragg’s office downplayed the documents’ import, although it said its review was continuing.
“The people now have good reason to believe that this production contains only limited materials relevant to the subject matter of this case and that have not previously been disclosed to defendant,” the office said in the filing, adding, “The overwhelming majority of the production is entirely immaterial, duplicative or substantially duplicative of previously disclosed materials.”
It said that the trial’s currently scheduled start date — now set for April 15 — provides “a more than reasonable amount of time for defendant to review the information provided.”
Trump’s lawyers have asked the judge in the case, Juan Manuel Merchan, to dismiss the charges entirely or delay the trial until the summer and sanction the district attorney. A hearing before Merchan is scheduled for Monday.