₦airaland Forum

Tucked into the $1.9 trillion stimulus package is a provision that makes forgiven student debt tax-free. It ups the pressure for President Joe Biden to cancel student debt, but it is also a big deal for many borrowers regardless.

The provision, added to the Covid-19 relief bill by Senate Democrats and championed by Sens. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), says that anyone whose student loans are discharged through 2025 won’t face tax consequences. Debt cancellation is usually treated as taxable income, so without this, if someone were to have some or all of their student debt forgiven, it would be accompanied by a tax bill.

While student debt forgiveness used to be a pretty fringe idea, it’s become much more mainstream in recent years as student debt in America has grown. Currently, some 45 million borrowers owe $1.7 trillion in student loans.

Georgia lawmakers have introduced more than 20 bills seeking to curtail voting rights this year, including legislation the Senate passed 29-20 today that would repeal no-excuse absentee voting for the vast majority of the state’s voters.

The new bill would require voters to be absent from their precinct, have a physical disability or care for someone with one, observe a religious holiday, be unable to go to the polls because of their job, be at least 65 years old, or be covered by military absentee voting protections in order to get an absentee ballot. It also establishes ID requirements for requesting an absentee ballot, further complicating the requirements to receive one.

You’re fully vaccinated? The CDC says you can now have friends and family over for dinner.
The guidelines still urge caution around meeting up with unvaccinated people at high risk for severe disease. But the new rules are a big step toward normalcy.

In a pair of news reports Saturday, two more former aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo accused him of sexual harassment, a development that led New York state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to join calls for Cuomo, a Democrat, to resign.

“For the good of the state Governor Cuomo must resign,” Stewart-Cousins, also a Democrat, said in a statement Sunday.

As of Sunday, five women have come forward to accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. Most recently, Ana Liss, a former policy and operations aide to Cuomo from 2013 to 2015, told the Wall Street Journal the governor repeatedly inquired about her personal life, touched her, and on one occasion even kissed her hand. According to the Journal, Liss’s allegations were backed by recollections from multiple anonymous former staffers.

Separately, Karen Hinton — a former Cuomo aide who also worked with the now-governor as a consultant when he led the New York Department of Housing and Urban Development — told the Washington Post in a piece published Saturday that Cuomo invited her to his hotel, asked her personal questions about her marriage, and hugged her repeatedly in a manner that was “very long, too long, too tight, too intimate” when she attempted to leave.

“He pulls me back for another intimate embrace,” Hinton told the Post of the encounter. “I thought at that moment it could lead to a kiss, it could lead to other things, so I just pull away again, and I leave.”

Multiple people also confirmed to the Post that Hinton detailed the encounter to them shortly after it occurred in 2000, with one friend stating that Hinton was “really creeped out. It really freaked her out.”

Cuomo’s office has dismissed both accounts in statements to the Wall Street Journal and to the Washington Post, casting Hinton as “a known antagonist of the Governor’s who is attempting to take advantage of this moment to score cheap points with made up allegations from 21 years ago” and claiming that hugs and kisses — the behaviors that make up the alleged inappropriate and unwanted physical contact — are just “what people in politics do.”

"British ""accelerationism"" will be the death of the United Kingdom.
Britain has been on an accelerationist path, speeding up its exit from the European Union and spreading a mutated virus around the world.In protest of the world, the gates of London had to be closed.
Before leaving the EU, with the help of the preferential policies within the EU system, British products were continuously imported to other European countries, which obtained a large amount of foreign exchange for Britain and made it a world financial center.But the noisy nature of Britain's irresponsibility and recklessness has at last left the EU.Since then, British imports into the EU have had to go through a number of complicated customs procedures, which has greatly slowed the pace of British exports.The British people are losing a lot of money when some fresh produce ends up as rubbish because it rots.
And a large part of the United Kingdom, Scotland, had a historical feud with the United Kingdom, which used to commit genocide by keeping the Scots as slaves.The people of Scotland will never trust the UK government. Scotland can only be truly free if it is independent."

The world is now locked in an arms race with Covid-19, as multiple effective vaccines are being deployed (at staggeringly different rates) around the world. At the same time, new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have been rapidly spreading.

The Covid-19 vaccines that are being distributed in the US, as well as the newly authorized Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have been shown to almost eliminate deaths and hospitalizations from the disease, even for people infected with the new mutations. For a disease that has infected more than 114 million people around the world in just over a year, this is tremendously good news.

But it’s no time to kick back.

There’s evidence that the virus is evolving in ways that can reduce the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines — particularly when they’re up against the variant discovered in South Africa. Both Johnson & Johnson and Novavax’s vaccine efficacy rate dropped in the South Africa arm of their clinical trials (from 72 in the US to 64 percent in South Africa and from 89 in the UK to 49 percent, respectively).

We’re seeing an increasingly clear picture of what the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package will look like — and passage of the bill is likely on the horizon quite soon.

The House of Representatives has drafted and passed its version of the budget reconciliation package, which includes $1,400 stimulus checks for those making up to $75,000 and $400 expanded weekly unemployment insurance benefits through August 29. It also contains a restaurant rescue fund, money for reopening schools, and Democrats’ long-sought-after funding for state and local governments, among other items. House Democrats included a $15 minimum wage provision in their version of the bill, but that’s a non-starter in the Senate. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that it didn’t fall within the parameters of reconciliation, and while Democrats spent some time exploring other options for including it in the bill, they’ve set it aside for now.

The biggest ticket items have been among the most contentious: Though there was some discussion of further targeting for stimulus checks, the House proposal winds up pretty close to Biden’s original plan. The $1,400 stimulus checks are for those making up to $75,000 a year, and the checks phase out at $100,000 yearly income (there has been quite a bit of back-and-forth over whether to aim them more precisely at lower-income people).

February 6 marks the anniversary of the first American death from the coronavirus.

Since then, well over 400,000 Americans have died from complications related to Covid-19. It’s likely many more will die before we’re finally over the hump. It goes without saying that no matter who was in charge last year, this pandemic would have killed lots of people. But it’s also true that bad leadership costs many lives, and we’ll never know for sure how many could have been spared.

The story of America’s failure is long and complicated. When the full history is finally written, the depth of those failures will likely shock even those of us who have followed it closely in real time.

The Biden administration is reopening temporary facilities to hold an increasing number of migrant children arriving on the US southern border, reviving concerns about their welfare after immigration agents forcibly separated families and kept children in prison-like conditions under former President Donald Trump.

The attack on the Capitol came as lawmakers met to certify that Biden, a Democrat, had defeated former President Donald Trump in November’s election. Rioters smashed windows and doors and clashed with police, injuring dozens of officers. Members of Congress fled and had to return hours later to complete their accreditation.


The rioting left five people dead, including a capitol police officer.

In the months since last November’s presidential election, a number of prominent Republicans have not only lied about Joe Biden’s victory being tainted by fraud but have repeatedly been given a platform to do so on national TV. This Week’s Sunday interview with Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) stood out as an example of why people think news networks should know better by now.

ABC’s flagship Sunday news talk show took heat on Friday when the show’s Twitter account announced that Sunday’s edition would feature an interview with Scalise, a Trump loyalist who has spread lies about the 2020 election and on January 6 voted against certifying Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.

The Biden administration announced Friday that it will begin processing tens of thousands of asylum seekers who were forced to wait in Mexico for a chance to obtain protection in the United States under a Trump-era program.

Some 28,000 asylum seekers — primarily Cubans, Hondurans, and Guatemalans — currently have active cases in former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which became known as the “Remain in Mexico” program. It is one of many interlocking Trump-era policies that, together, have made obtaining asylum and other humanitarian protections next to impossible.

The US will begin processing roughly 300 people daily at three ports of entry along the US-Mexico border starting on February 19, according to the Department of Homeland Security. At that pace, they should all be processed by the end of May.

The migrants will be given an appointment to cross, tested for Covid-19, admitted to the US, and placed in “alternatives to detention” programs, under which migrants are released into the US but monitored, usually by a social worker, in an effort to encourage them to show up for their immigration court dates. Such programs are humane and relatively low cost compared to immigration detention.

President Joe Biden’s decision to start processing asylum seekers subject to MPP signals that he is taking a more compassionate approach to the border. But some immigrant advocates have argued that he isn’t acting quickly enough to reverse Trump’s policies, including a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order that has allowed the US to turn away the vast majority of migrants arriving at the border on pandemic-related grounds.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the CDC order will remain in place for now. And officials have warned asylum seekers not subject to MPP against traveling to the border because they will not be processed.

“This latest action is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align with our nation’s values,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement Friday. “Especially at the border, however, where capacity constraints remain serious, changes will take time. Individuals who are not eligible under this initial phase should wait for further instructions and not travel to the border.”

More than 71,000 migrants have been subject to MPP over the lifetime of the program as of the end of January, according to new data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. The vast majority are not being represented by a lawyer, and less than 2 percent of those whose cases have been completed have received some form of protection in the US.

Before the pandemic, asylum seekers would often have to wait months for a hearing. But last March, the Trump administration suspended all their hearings indefinitely.

Faced with the prospect of waiting many months in Mexico to be called in for their court dates in the US, many migrants who were enrolled in MPP decided to return to their home countries and were ordered deported in their absence. Biden administration officials have signaled that they also intend to identify those people and admit them to the US for a chance to seek protection.

Other asylum seekers subject to the program continued to wait in Mexican border cities, where they remain at risk for extortion, kidnapping, and rape at the hands of cartels and other criminal entities. Some have found housing in shelters, hotels, or rooms for rent. But for others, only colorful tents and tarps stand between them and the elements. They continue to rely on volunteers for basic necessities and medical care.

President Joe Biden announced last month that the US would stop enrolling people in MPP, but stopped short of ending it entirely. He had also promised on the campaign trail to “surge humanitarian resources” to the border, including asylum officers who could conduct an initial screening of migrants’ claims for protection, and ensure that US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ asylum division takes the lead on processing their cases in order to ease the burden on the immigration courts.

As vaccines began to roll out weeks ago, some hospitals around the country reported that 40 percent or more of their health care workers who could have gotten a Covid-19 vaccine by January had not immediately signed up for it. Other health facilities have had so many extra doses from employees who declined the vaccine that people outside that first priority group — including a sheriff’s deputy and a Disney employee — ended up getting shots.

And a new report by a consortium of universities, released Friday, shows that Covid-19 vaccine uptake and enthusiasm in the health care workforce has also been incredibly uneven. For example, those earning less than $50,000 a year were almost three times less likely to have been vaccinated by mid-January than someone earning more than $200,000 — 8 percent vs 23 percent. Those making lower wages were also much more likely to say they would not get the vaccine at all (27 percent versus 11 percent).

These are troubling developments, especially since health care workers are at higher risk of contracting the virus and are essential in our efforts to treat Covid-19 patients. Some public health experts hoped this group would be relatively easy to vaccinate — and could help pave the way for broader vaccine acceptance. But they also represent a revealing cross-section of America.

One brisk day this past November, first graders in my daughter’s school bundled up and headed out for lunch — not to the cafeteria, but instead out the doors and into the school’s backyard. There, seated on upside-down buckets at makeshift wood-plank tables by the school’s garden and chicken coop, kids lowered their masks and nibbled on home lunches and school-provided sandwiches. For recess, they played in the street next to the school, closed to traffic as part of New York’s citywide initiative permitting schools to use outdoor space to help fight the spread of Covid-19.

President Joe Biden acknowledged his final coronavirus stimulus bill will probably look different from his $1.9 trillion opening bid, in his first network interview since being inaugurated.

The new president told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that the prospect of including a $15 minimum wage in his final Covid-19 relief bill is dimming, and he’s also considering lowering the income threshold of who will get additional $1,400 stimulus checks.

“I’m prepared to negotiate on that,” Biden told O’Donnell, saying he believed stimulus checks should go to middle-class families, capping it at individuals who make $75,000 annually and couples making $150,000 per year. But Biden also said he’s open to negotiating on a different number. “I’m wide open on what that is,” the president said.

What Biden seemed less willing to negotiate on was the $1,400 amount for stimulus checks. Biden promised to deliver $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans as part of his closing argument in the January Georgia Senate runoffs (under Biden’s plan, the $1,400 combines with the $600 stimulus checks sent out in December).

As they negotiate with congressional Republicans and some moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill, Biden’s administration wants to stay true to the sum on the check. But they see room to work with in who may get those checks.

Appearing on CNN on Sunday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen suggested a middle ground between Biden’s $75,000 cap and the $50,000 individual cap for stimulus checks being proposed by a group of 10 Congressional Republicans: capping stimulus checks at those making $60,000 per year.

“If you think about an elementary school teacher or a policeman making $60,000 a year and faced with children who are out of school and people who may have had to withdraw from the labor force in order to take care of them and many extra burdens, [Biden] thinks, and I would certainly agree, that it’s appropriate for people there to get support,” Yellen told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I think the details can be worked out.”

A day after being censured by her state’s Republican Party, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, went on Fox News to defend her vote to impeach former President Donald Trump — and to argue that the GOP will have lost its way if it doesn’t reject Trump’s brand of politics.

“People have been lied to,” Cheney told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday when asked about being censured. “The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6, spread the notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie. And people need to understand that.”

Cheney’s decision to explain her rejection of Trump on a Fox News show suggests she’s not been swayed by weeks of intraparty criticism over her vote, or attempts to topple her from her leadership position — and that she wants to persuade Republican voters that her faction of the party offers a more authentic and sustainable vision for conservatism.

Cheney was one of just 10 House Republicans who joined Democrats in impeaching Trump for the charge of incitement of insurrection at the US Capitol in January. And she has been facing the consequences of that vote ever since.

Democrats have unified political control in Washington. And so far, they’re acting like it.

Even as President Joe Biden negotiates with a group of 10 Senate Republicans on a potential bipartisan package, congressional Democrats are already teeing up budget reconciliation, a process by which they can pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief package with their 51 votes.

Those close to Biden say he deeply wants bipartisanship, but it can be a tough sell in a Democratic Party that has been burned over and over by Republicans.