Court rulings leave student loan borrowers waiting for Biden relief - USA TODAY

This week wasn’t the first time – nor will it likely be the last – that legal hurdles put a damper on President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness policies. 

In separate rulings Monday, federal judges in Missouri and Kansas blocked parts of the president’s income-driven repayment program known as Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE. That plan, which the Biden administration has tried to roll out quickly, has lowered monthly payments to $0 for millions of borrowers. The secretary of education frequently refers to it as the “most affordable repayment plan in history.” 

Although the decisions won’t reverse any of the roughly $5.5 billion in student debt cancellation the federal Education Department says it has already provided to more than 400,000 borrowers through SAVE, the rulings prevent the agency from moving ahead with full implementation of the program, which was slated for next week. 

That means some portions of the plan, including cutting down monthly payments for some borrowers who took out undergraduate loans and wiping out balances of borrowers who have been in repayment for a decade, are in legal limbo for the foreseeable future. 

More legal woes:Latest GOP lawsuit targets SAVE plan

In a statement Tuesday, Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the administration will appeal the rulings. In the meantime the affected borrowers might have to wait an indefinite amount of time for more reliable news about their debt forgiveness. 

“We will never stop fighting to lower monthly payments and help borrowers get out from under the burden of student debt – no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us,” Jean-Pierre said. 

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the ranking Republican on the Senate education committee and a frequent critic of Biden’s student loan agenda, applauded the injunctions, blasting the president’s income-driven repayment plan. 

“These unfair, irresponsible policies from President Biden are nothing more than a cynical attempt to buy votes before the next election,” Cassidy said in a statement. 

Who is affected by latest court rulings on student loans? 

As the dust settled Tuesday, it still wasn’t entirely clear how the injunctions could immediately impact the more than eight million borrowers enrolled in SAVE. But based on the judges’ rationale and the Education Department’s initial reactions to the decisions, borrowers can be certain of a few things. 

First, anyone who already had their debt canceled won’t have to worry about it being clawed back. Daniel Crabtree, the federal judge in Kansas, tailored his ruling to the parts of SAVE that were set to take effect July 1. 

In Missouri, U.S. District Judge John Ross made a different argument. He determined only the debt cancellation portions of Biden’s plan were unlawful. The part of the program he greenlit “still provides a vast majority of borrowers with a plan that is likely to lower their payments and limit interest accrual,” he wrote in his decision.

The Education Department has said borrowers enrolled in SAVE could have their debt wiped away if they originally took out $12,000 or less in student loans and had been in repayment for at least 10 years.

Jean-Pierre said the Education Department will continue to sign up additional borrowers who could be helped by SAVE. She said those benefits include lower monthly payments, slashing bills to $0 for anyone making $16 or less an hour and protection from ballooning interest. 

Will the rulings impact other student loan relief? 

Although the Biden administration has canceled billions of dollars in student debt, the specter of court challenges continues to loom over those efforts. 

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his initial large-scale plan last summer, the president has been working on several alternative paths to deliver relief to borrowers. One of those strategies is SAVE. Another is potentially much more far-reaching and is currently working its way through the regulatory process.

Monday’s decisions cast another pall over any broader hope Biden will succeed in delivering more forgiveness in the near future. 

What now for student loan borrowers?

The legal tit for tat between the Biden administration and Republican state attorneys general trying to take down the program is not expected to end any time soon. The procedural dynamics in different courtrooms could affect the timeline in unexpected ways. 

Biden’s other student loan relief plan, meanwhile, would not take effect until July of next year at the very earliest – and that timeline does not take into consideration other legal obstacles, which could further delay borrowers from getting help.

Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.

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Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao FBI raid update: Chief of communications Francis Zamora says he's resigned - ABC7 San Francisco - KGO-TV

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Francis Zamora, the chief of communications for Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, tells ABC7 that he resigned his position in the wake of the FBI raid on the mayor's house.

RELATED: Attorney Anthony Brass no longer representing Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

Zamora has been in the position for nine months, and there's no information directly from him about his reasons for resigning.

He released the following statement to ABC7: "I resigned my position as Chief of Communications. I thank my colleagues for their professionalism and dedication. It was an honor to serve the City of Oakland beside them."

This comes one day after noted attorney and former federal prosecutor Tony Brass resigned as Thao's counsel, saying he will no longer represent her just hours after she held a news conference on Monday. He told the ABC7 I-Team's Dan Noyes he had no idea Thao was going to give that speech and that he would not have approved of the angry tone and conspiracy content.

During the press conference, Mayor Thao refused calls for her resignation and proclaimed her innocence.

RELATED: Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao sheds tears in fiery speech responding to FBI raid, recall effort

The public heard from Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao for the first time on Monday since her house was raided by the FBI last week.

This adds to the deepening turmoil surrounding the mayor, whose home was raided by the FBI last week, along with those associated with the Duong family, owners of the city's recycling contractor, California Waste Solutions.

While the FBI didn't say what type of investigation the raids were linked too, Thao, two members of Duong family and Cal Waste are all under investigation by the Oakland Public Ethics Commission, which is looking into alleged illegal campaign finance contributions.

Stay with ABC7 News for updates on this developing story.

Bay City News contributed to this report.

RELATED: Report alleges 'campaign contribution laundering scheme' involving Oakland mayor, city officials

RELATED: FBI raids Oakland mayor's home, several other locations in political corruption probe: source

There is no official word about the reason for the investigation, but sources tell the ABC7 I-Team it involves a political corruption case against the mayor and some of her supporters.

Copyright © 2024 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.

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Live updates: Primary election day in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam - The Journal News

Primary election day in the Lower Hudson Valley is today, Tuesday, June 25, 2024. Polls opened at 6 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. In New York, you can vote in a primary if you are a registered member of the party having a primary election. Early voting happened from June 15 to June 23. Check results here.

Related coverage:What to know about primary elections in 2024 in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam

What's the turnout like in the primary election?

As of 12:25 p.m., the turnout in Westchester County is 17,451.

This year's key race is Jamaal Bowman vs. George Latimer

In New York's 16th Congressional District, it's the battle between incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman and challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer in a Democratic primary.

Much of the focus in the race has been on the spending in the race, the most expensive primary in the House of Representatives this year. The other focus has been on the differing opinion between the two on the Israel-Hamas war.

Early polls had Latimer ahead, but in recent days, Bowman has rallied with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to drum up support for his primary campaign. Latimer, meanwhile has enjoyed the support of Former First Lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton and a former ally of Bowman's, Former Rep. Mondaire Jones, who himself is running for Congress in NY-17 in November.

Check back here as polls close for the latest results.

Westchester DA primary for replacing Mimi Rocah

Another race to keep an eye on Tuesday is the Democratic primary for Westchester District Attorney between Susan Cacace and William Wagstaff.

The candidate recently answered a series of questions from lohud reporters here and here.

The candidates seek to replace Mimi Rocah who announced last year she was stepping down.

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Biden and Democratic Leaders Condemn Protest Outside L.A. Synagogue as Antisemitic - The New York Times

A protest outside of a synagogue in Los Angeles’s most densely populated Jewish enclave on Sunday drew unusually swift and forceful condemnation from top Democratic leaders including President Biden, reigniting debates about the boundaries of acceptable protest as tensions over the war in Gaza continue to flare across the country.

The president, along with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, joined Jewish groups in seeking to cast synagogues and other houses of worship as off-limits to demonstrators.

“Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American,” Mr. Biden said in a statement posted on Monday on social media. “Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship — and engaging in violence — is never acceptable.”

Pro-Palestinian groups criticized that characterization, defending Sunday’s demonstration and arguing that protesting an event at a synagogue was not inherently antisemitic.

In this case, demonstrators were protesting a real estate fair at Adas Torah synagogue, where attendees were invited to meet “representatives of housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel” on Sunday afternoon.

It was unclear whether some of the property sales being promoted at the event were in disputed territory that could make them illegal under international law. Similar events, which have taken place for decades, have drawn protests in the past, particularly during the current violence in Gaza.

In March, for instance, hundreds protested outside an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Teaneck, N.J., where Israeli real estate companies were advertising property to prospective American buyers.

Mr. Biden was, in essence, claiming that it adhered to American values “to use a place of worship to illegally sell ‘Anglo neighborhoods’ on stolen, occupied land,” organizers with the antiwar activist group Code Pink, which supported Sunday’s demonstration, said in a statement. “This mischaracterization by President Biden is outrageous and has real consequences.”

Rabbi Dovid Revah of Adas Torah said the event was the first of its kind that the synagogue had hosted, and it would probably be the last. Still, he disputed that the event was promoting illegal land sales.

“It was really properties in very established, legal communities,” he said. The fact that the event drew such an outcry, he said, “shows it wasn’t just about Gaza, it was having Jews in Israel altogether.”

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrived around midday on Sunday at Adas Torah, a synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles, after various activist groups circulated the event flyer and called on protesters to show up.

Counterprotesters supporting Israel also gathered outside the synagogue, and soon the two groups began fighting. Images posted on social media showed scuffles breaking out, punches being thrown and people chasing others down the street. Witnesses on both sides accused the other of being aggressors.

The Los Angeles Police Department sent officers to the scene, but Rabbi Revah said that he believed the department underestimated how many people would be at the protest, and that there initially were not enough officers to keep the two groups separated. One person was arrested after being accused of having a spiked post at the protest. The person, whom officials did not identify, was cited and released. The department said on Monday that it was still investigating two reported incidents of battery.

The episode on Sunday comes as protests have roiled Los Angeles’s top university campuses, with the responses by campus leaders and law enforcement officers sparking outcry.

At the University of Southern California in April and again in May, administrators at the private university called the Los Angeles Police Department to dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments and arrest people there.

Largely because the University of California, Los Angeles, is a public university, administrators there did not initially try to dismantle an encampment that had assembled on a main quad. For days, it was the site of a mostly peaceful demonstration. But on the night of April 30, a large group of what administrators later called outside agitators attacked the encampment as police officers stood by for hours without intervening.

The only person arrested in connection with that attack, Edan On, who had been initially identified as one of the counterprotesters, will not face felony charges, prosecutors said.

The next day, police officers in riot gear dismantled the encampment and arrested more than 200 protesters. Student demonstrators and their faculty supporters were furious about what they said was an unfair crackdown on protesters who were themselves victims of violence.

But U.C.L.A.’s chancellor and other higher education officials have also been criticized by politicians outside of California for allowing antisemitism to flourish unchecked.

Mayor Bass said in a statement on Sunday night that she planned to meet with Chief Dominic Choi of the Los Angeles police on Monday. She asked the department to provide extra patrols in the neighborhood, as well as outside other houses of worship.

“Los Angeles will not be a harbor for antisemitism and violence,” she said. “Those responsible for either will be found and held accountable.” Ms. Bass said she also planned to convene a community meeting with faith leaders, law enforcement officials and others.

Mr. Newsom, too, described the protest as antisemitic because of its location. “There is no excuse for targeting a house of worship,” he said. “Such antisemitic hatred has no place in California.”

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that protests should never involve violence, but also that the right to speak out should not be limited.

Israeli real estate events, he said, “could have been hosted at a Motel 6 or a mosque, and they would still be subject to protest.”

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for First Amendment rights at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, says that violence and blocking access to buildings are never protected under the First Amendment. But protesting outside of houses of worship is protected speech — a fact, he noted, that the Supreme Court has affirmed.

He added that leaders’ quickness to condemn the protest as antisemitic, without knowing specifics about the violence, was troubling. That impulse, Mr. Eliasberg said, was something he observed in responses to the campus protests, as well.

“In some of the responses, it’s really sloppy thinking and some ignorance or deliberate ignoring of what the Constitution protects,” he said.

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Crews Race to Fortify Levees as Floods Swallow Midwestern Towns - The New York Times

Midwestern towns were racing this week to strengthen their levee systems as rising rivers enveloped homes, drowned farmland and led to daring water rescues across three states.

In South Dakota, record flooding on the Big Sioux River washed out a major railroad bridge overnight Sunday and destroyed or damaged several homes in North Sioux City, a town of 3,000 people. Without last-minute efforts to strengthen levees, official said, the damage could have been even worse.

“If we did not take the mitigation efforts that we took yesterday, much of North Sioux City itself would be underwater,” Jason Westcott, the emergency management director in Union County, S.D., said on Monday.

The floods were continuing to challenge officials across the region, with shifting river forecasts making it difficult to know how bad flooding would be and when the worst would hit.

In Iowa, where hundreds of properties were destroyed, rivers were receding in some places but still rising in others. In Minnesota, the National Guard was mobilized after as much as 18 inches of rain prompted evacuations. And in South Dakota, though river levels were starting to fall near North Sioux City, towns such as Yankton and Vermillion remained under threat.

“These next few days are going to be tough,” Gov. Kristi Noem said, “and the next few months to restore some of these homes and families back are going to be difficult.”

Officials with BNSF Railway said the middle span of a rail bridge over the Big Sioux River collapsed around 11 p.m. on Sunday. Because of the conditions, the railroad said it had stopped using the bridge before the collapse, and that trains were being rerouted.

The flooding followed heavy rains in recent days. With the ground already saturated, many creeks and rivers were overwhelmed. The Midwest has faced a range of weather extremes over the past several years, including record-breaking floods in 2019, persistent drought and relentless rainstorms this month. As climate change causes the planet to warm, such events will become more common, scientists say.

Workers in Union County, in southeastern South Dakota, were adding one-ton sandbags to levees as the week began and were working to protect the local water treatment plant. As the Big Sioux River in nearby Sioux City, Iowa, reached its highest level ever recorded on Sunday, Ms. Noem warned people to stay away from the floods.

“It’s incredibly dangerous for them to be anywhere near this kind of water flow that we’re seeing,” she said.

Farther north, in Lincoln County, S.D., the state’s Department of Public Safety said that an 87-year-old man had died while trying to turn around a utility terrain vehicle on a closed road where the shoulder had washed away.

In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds said the recent rains had overwhelmed drainage systems, destroyed homes and swallowed farm fields. She said that the state’s Department of Natural Resources conducted 250 water rescues in a single day over the weekend, and estimated that at least 1,900 properties were affected in the state. Aerial photos of Rock Valley, a town of 4,000 people in northwestern Iowa, showed many homes underwater.

“Businesses are shuttered. Main streets have been impacted. Hospitals, nursing homes and other care facilities were evacuated,” Ms. Reynolds said. “Cities are without power, and some are without drinkable water.”

In some areas, including Sioux Falls, S.D., and parts of northwest Iowa, the water was retreating and property owners were getting a clearer view of the damage. Elsewhere, the worst was likely still to come.

“That water will head downstream,” Ms. Reynolds said, “and areas to the south are planning for rivers to continue to crest at record levels.”

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Texas woman allegedly tried to drown Palestinian-American girl, aged 3 - The Guardian US

The US’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization is calling for hate crime charges to be filed against a Texas woman accused of trying to drown a three-year-old Palestinian-American girl while saying that the child’s mother wasn’t really American.

For now, the suspect in the case has been booked on counts of attempted murder and injury to a child.

The case dates back to 19 May, when police in Euless, Texas, were called to an apartment complex swimming pool where there had been reports of a disturbance between two women, according to the local NBC affiliate.

Witnesses told police “a woman who was very intoxicated had tried to drown a child and argued with the child’s mother”. said a police news release reviewed by CNN.

The child’s mother told police that the alleged attacker – since identified as 42-year-old Elizabeth Wolf – questioned where she was from and whether the two children playing in the pool were hers, police said. Wolf also made statements about the mother not being an American, police added.

In a news release on Friday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) said the child’s mother wore a hijab and modest swimwear, and she was watching her children play in the shallow end of the pool when Wolf approached her.

“The alleged attacker reportedly approached the mother with racist interrogations then jumped into the swimming pool and grabbed the children to the deep end of the pool to allegedly drown them,” the statement said, adding that the mother’s six-year-old son was able to escape but her three-year-old daughter was unable to do the same.

“The alleged attacker snatched off the mother’s head scarf and used it to beat the mother as well as kicking her to keep her away while forcing her daughter’s head underwater,” Cair’s statement said.

A bystander helped rescue the three-year-old, Cair said, with the police news release adding that the child “had been yelling for help and was coughing up water”.

According to Cair, after police were called out and an officer arrested Wolf, she allegedly yelled to another bystander who was comforting the mother: “Tell her I will kill her and I will kill her whole family.”

Wolf has since reportedly made $40,000 bail to be released from jail pending the resolution of her case.

In a statement released through Cair, the mother – identified only as Mrs H – said: “We are American citizens, originally from Palestine, and I don’t know where to go to feel safe with my kids.

“My country is facing a war, and we are facing that hate here. My daughter is traumatized; whenever I open the apartment door, she runs away and hides, telling me she is afraid the lady will come and immerse her head in the water again.”

She continued: “Also, my husband’s employment is jeopardized, due to having to leave work to accompany me and our four kids whenever we have appointments and errands to run.”

The case against Wolf has triggered outrage from American Islamic community members, especially as anti-Muslim and Arab sentiments have grown across the US amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

Since Hamas’s 7 October attacks killed 1,200 Israelis and took hostages, Israeli military strikes have killed more than 37,500 Palestinians while leaving nearly 2 million survivors forcibly displaced across Gaza amid severe shortages in food, water, medical supplies and fuel as a result of Israeli aid restrictions, according to officials.

“We are seeing a new level of bigotry here where a person deeply believes they get to decide, based on religion, spoken language, and country of origin, whose kids deserve to stay alive and whose don’t,” Cair’s Austin, Texas, operations manager, Shaimaa Zayan, said.

Zayan added: “We ask for a hate-crime probe, a higher bail bond, and an open conversation with officials to address this alarming increase in Islamophobia, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian sentiment.”

The Texas state representative Salman Bhojani echoed similar sentiments, saying: “I’m shocked and appalled by this alleged racist, Islamophobic occurrence that took place in my town. Hate has no place in Euless … or anywhere in our great state.”

In some respects, the case called to mind that of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Muslim boy who was stabbed and killed while his mother was seriously wounded in an attack in their apartment in Illinois just days after Israel launched its war on Gaza.

The boy’s family’s landlord, identified as 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, was later charged with murder and a hate crime.

Advocacy groups have reported an uptick in both antisemitism and Islamophobia since 7 October.

With respect to the latter of those categories, Cair reported in January that it received 3,578 complaints of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incidents in the last three months of 2023, marking a 178% increase over a similar period in the previous year.

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A fourth victim has died a day after a shooting at an Arkansas grocery store - The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Police said a fourth victim died a day after a shooter opened fire at an Arkansas grocery store, wounding nine others and riddling cars with bullet holes as panicked bystanders scrambled for cover.

The latest victim died Saturday evening, Arkansas state police said in a statement, listing a total of 14 people as hit by gunfire, including 11 civilians, two law enforcement officers and the suspect.

It was the latest mass shooting with a grocery store as its backdrop. In 2022, a white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. That came a little more than a year after 10 people were fatally shot at supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

The shooting in Arkansas took place around 11:30 a.m. Friday at the Mad Butcher grocery store in Fordyce, a city of about 3,200 people located 65 miles (104 kilometers) south of Little Rock.

Video posted on social media showed at least one person lying in the parking lot, while another captured multiple gunshots ringing out. Images from reporters on the scene showed a slew of bullet holes in the store’s window, and spent shell casings strewn throughout the parking lot. Local and state agencies could be seen responding, with at least one medical helicopter landing nearby.

The dead were identified as Shirley Taylor, 62; Callie Weems, 23; Roy Sturgis, 50; and Ellen Shrum, 81. They were all civilians, according to the statement.

The wounded range in age from 20 to 65, police said. Four were still hospitalized, including a woman who was in critical condition.

The wounded agents were identified as Fordyce Police Officer James Johnson, 31, who was released from a hospital Saturday evening; and Stuttgart Police Officer John Hudson, 24, whose injuries were said to be minor.

Police identified the suspect is Travis Eugene Posey, 44, of New Edinburg, and said he will be charged with four counts of capital murder.

“He was treated for non-life-threatening injuries after exchanging gunfire with law enforcement,” police said in the statement. Posey was released to police custody and taken to the Ouachita County Detention Center.

Authorities have not released a motive. A media briefing to update the public about the shooting was slated for 2 p.m. Sunday.

As of Friday, a state police spokesperson did not know if Posey had an attorney, and there was no immediate response to a phone message left with the agency’s public information office Saturday night. The Ouachita County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Posey was being held at the detention center, but said the office had no information about who might be representing him. An inmate record had yet to be posted online.

Roderick Rogers, a member of the city council, said he called the sheriff when employees at his restaurant nearby notified him of the shooting. When he got there, he saw people running for cover in every direction, even one running to the hospital nearby.

“People were just jumping into cars to get to safety,” Rogers said Friday.

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