Ranvier

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately the interest rate is specifically set by law and tied to 10 year treasury bill rates. This cannot be altered with an executive action, would need congress to change the law.

https://studentaid.gov/understand-aid/types/loans/interest-rates#who-sets

That's why the executive orders are focused on things like minimum payments, how long it takes to get forgiveness, who qualifies, etc, because the laws give the department of education more latitude to adjust those things (or are supposed to at least, weird rulings from republican judges notwithstanding).

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It wasn't the same thing, all three of them were different plans using different justifications based on different laws. One was a blanket forgiveness based on laws allowing for adjustments of student loans in emergencies. One is need based or other circumstance based forgiveness based on a much earlier law giving the department of education wide latitude to make adjustments. And one was adjustments to the income based repayment plans based on the laws establishing those (this has happened many times in the past, such as the establishment of the PAYE and REPAYE plans).

It's especially egregious that judges are blocking the SAVE plan, as many similar adjustments have been made to income based repayment plans previously with no one taking any issue.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-issues-new-batch-of-sanctions-targeting-west-bank-settlers-amid-rampant-violence/

You can say it's not enough if you want, but you can't say it's nothing. Certainly gets Netanyahu upset at least.

 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman writes in new book that U.S. support for Israeli sovereignty is ‘based first and foremost on biblical prophecies and values’

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The "pro family" party everyone. Don't forget their other greatest hits like, kidnapping children of immigrants and not keeping records of who they were kidnapping them from, making reuniting them with their families ever again difficult to impossible.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Absolutely despicable. How do these people sleep at night?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Would love an electric hatch back. Wish they'd bring more of them to the US.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 month ago

It also includes restoration of the child tax credit, just like we had during the pandemic when monthly checks were sent out to all parents and the child poverty rate was cut in half overnight. This is just an even bigger payment for the year they are a newborn.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

This is also misleading because he has pension funds. Those pensions certainly have the money invested. They're acting like the guy has no retirement plan.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago

We've noticed

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That gas line goes right into Ukraine, they could have blown it up anytime they wanted safely in their own territory. So I'm not sure that makes much sense. They have not done this previously to avoid angering EU allies funding them, as some still rely on it.

I think more likely explanations are it helps make it easier to strike and and shut down a very important rail route for Russian re supply, it brings the war to the Russian people in a way they can't ignore, makes Putin look weak, draws Russian troops away from other fronts, and if the land is held gives Ukraine a bargaining chip in any future negotiations with Russia.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Trying to decipher his words is like dementia astrology, who knows. If he doesn't know what he's talking about, we surely can't either.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Yes this is the direct quote the article refers to. He rambles nonsense, often self contradicting, and then people in the media try to fashion it into coherent points for him, leading to a fake impression of competency, misleading the public and voters. This is the man who had to have his national security briefings summarized into a few brief bullet points with pictures, and he was apparently still unable to read them.

 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to restart its aggressive crackdown against payday lenders and other companies that offer high-cost, short-term loans to poor borrowers, after a Supreme Court ruling this week resolved a challenge to the federal agency’s authority to act.

The decision is expected to ease some of the persistent political and legal obstacles at the CFPB, where powerful financial firms had blocked regulations, jeopardized the bureau’s funding and used the uncertainty generated by their battle to ward off recent probes and punishments.

https://archive.is/uq5G1

 

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/09/trump-oil-industry-campaign-money/

https://archive.is/BquYY

 

A state oversight panel is recommending Wisconsin prosecutors pursue a slate of felony charges against a fundraising committee for Donald Trump and a Republican state lawmaker in a scheme to evade campaign finance laws surrounding an effort to unseat one of the most powerful Republicans in Wisconsin, Trump foe Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.

 

Never before had a president used his constitutional clemency powers to free or forgive so many people who could be useful to his future political efforts. A Washington Post review of Trump’s 238 clemency orders found that dozens of recipients, including Arpaio, have gone on to plug his 2024 candidacy through social media and national interviews, contribute money to his front-running bid for the Republican nomination or disseminate his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Ghost archive link: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IHZj1

 

The federal government is no longer warning Meta about foreign influence campaigns, a shift that comes amid a legal campaign against the Biden administration’s communication with tech platforms.

Archive link: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/4ejOM

 

This report is required by law every four years. The previous report was buried by the Trump administration. This time around Biden admin going to great lengths to publicize the report, including the creation of an Atlas allowing Americans to see how climate change is expected to affect their local area.

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