MWI Weekly 8.26.22

Artemis 1 ascent profile (image courtesy NASA)

This week: Student loans, Rudy in the tunnels, the midterms in New York. And rockets.

An old saying tells us August is a "month of Sundays," a quiet stretch of lazy days, best spent on rest and relaxation. Sue Monk Kidd, in The Secret Life of Bees, said of one August, "the days just lay there and sizzled.”

But this August has been a little different than most. While it's been, as usual, vacation time for a great many people, the march of events hasn't slowed quite as much as it normally would (which also makes us wonder about everything after). And this past week has kept to the pattern.

So, let's dig in a little.

Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz

This week the Biden Administration announced plans to reduce or eliminate the student debt of millions of borrowers. To qualify for the relief, individuals must make less than $125,000 per year and households less than $250,000. For those who are eligible -- something on the order of 43 million borrowers could ultimately be granted the relief -- the first $10,000 in student loans will be forgiven. For Pell Grant recipients, the number goes to $20,000.

The plan would also cap the monthly loan repayment at 5 percent of disposable income, down from 10 percent. And the Education Department is reviewing the rules defining the parameters of discretionary income, which should lower monthly payments even further. The moratorium on student loan payments was also extended to Dec. 31 (according to the president, "for the last time").

AP News offers a handy summary, including some useful links: Student loan forgiveness could help more than 40 million | AP News

Other than the payment moratorium, which takes immediate effect, the rest of the initiative could take up to a year to implement, and that's not including any delays caused by the inevitable lawsuits challenging the president's authority to do this at all. No doubt the issue will end up before the Supreme Court eventually, likely as another test case of the "major questions" doctrine as applied by the Court at the end of last term.

As it is, both the Trump and Biden administrations relied on authority granted by Congress to the executive branch in the HEROES Act of 2003 to freeze student loan payments. According to a Justice Department advisory opinion, the authority granted to the Secretary of Education by the act to "waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV” [20 U.S.C. § 1098bb(a)(1)] is broad enough to include these initiatives, too -- provided certain conditions are met.

And that's the catch. The HEROES Act authorizes such broad action "as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency" [20 U.S.C. § 1098bb(a)(2)]. Absent those conditions, the authority isn't quite as far-reaching.

But we are, of course, and rather conveniently, still under the national emergency declared by the Trump Administration on March 13, 2020 to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. The declaration was extended by the Biden Administration in February of this year. Which means the administration, at least according to the administration itself, is within bounds.

We're sure the question will ultimately be decided in court. It certainly seems an enormous stretch to get from a pandemic-related national emergency to such a broad program of student debt relief and loan modification, involving hundreds of billions of federal dollars. However desirable these measures may be -- and, to put it mildly, that's an open question, even among Democrats -- the connection seems, at best, tenuous and indirect. At worst, it's utterly specious.

This should have been a job for Congress. If it should have been done at all.

For our part, we think the issues surrounding student loan debt relief could have been addressed much more creatively (there are a few ideas how). And the truth is, without reform to the system any temporary relief bears the risk of actually making things worse in the long run. Yet more evidence elections matter; we need real public servants, especially in Congress, to make this kind of executive action necessary only in case of true emergencies, under clear rules and guidelines and a specific, and legitimate, delegation of authority.

The Resort of Last Resort

A book by Andrew Kirtzman, scheduled for publication in September, provides what may be an essential clue to understanding the relationship between Rudy Giuliani and the former president. According to Kirtzman, the former mayor was quite the mess after his failed 2008 presidential bid and came to Mar-a-Lago to cool out. He and his then-wife stayed in a bungalow attached to the main property by a tunnel, evidently so he could move around without being seen by the press and public.

It was obviously a very dark time for Giuliani, and the fact Trump stood by him at a time when he surely needed a friend must have meant the world to him. It may explain a lot of what's come after. Certainly, no matter what the case or controversy, Giuliani has been relentless in his support for Trump and seemingly unconcerned with any possible personal consequences.

On the one hand, it's something of a remarkable story of friendship, although maybe not as unusual or unexpected as others. But what's also striking is how many threads lead back to the compound in Florida. When the Story of Trump is finally written, we can expect Mar-a-Lago to serve as his version of Xanadu.

The former president himself is likely to be heading back to Florida before too long. What awaits him there can only be described as a raft of trouble. And he doesn't seem to have been able to find the best legal representation to deal with it yet, either. Certainly, there doesn't seem to be anything available to him to slow the many investigations into his activities, or to provide a rational defense.

Which means we can expect a steady stream of increasingly desperate statements, more and more reckless public pronouncements and accusations, and increasingly frantic attempts to influence, threaten and intimidate. We're going to be in for a bit of a ride this fall.

It won't be pretty.

That's especially true since the path a significant segment of the population, and the electorate, has chosen can only weaken our Republic rather than strengthen it. It could even be their purpose, regardless of how much they insist they're patriots; there's no denying the seditionist and secessionist sentiment lurking in some corners of the polity.

Trump will surely be out to inflame them all. Fortunately, the president has largely ignored all of it and not fanned the flames further. Neither has the attorney general, who is, by any measure, unquestionably sincere in his dedication to the law and his commitment to the rules and proper procedure and has likewise stuck to policy while refusing to engage in the public relations circus.

Probably the best thing we as citizens can do, at least for the moment, is keep our heads and not join the circus ourselves. And vote.

Stuck in the Middle with You

Which brings us to the midterms.

Probably the most significant outcome was in the NY19, which is considered something of a bellwether to begin with, but even more so this year since it was a special election in a swing district to fill a seat rather than just a party primary. All eyes in the political world were on the race to see if it signaled a possible shift in the electorate. When the dust settled, the Democrat, Pat Ryan, had defeated Republican opponent Mark Molinaro by around 2.3 percentage points.

Molinaro's camp was a bit put out by the scheduling of the election, given the fact it was held at the same time as Democratic Party primaries for the NY18 and NY19, which Molinaro felt boosted Democratic turnout. No doubt the turnout for Democrats was high, but that's actually been a phenomenon across the country. Since the Dobbs decision, there have been some pretty stunning voter registration data, too.

And in another twist, both men are running again in November, but not against each other; Ryan won the primary for the redrawn 18th at the same time as the special election for the 19th, while Molinaro won the Republican nod for the November race in the redrawn 19th despite losing the election for the 19th on Tuesday. So, come January, they could find themselves sitting next to each other on the bus, so to speak.

Welcome to New York politics.

Meanwhile, in the NY21 another interesting race is shaping up. The incumbent, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has gone all-in as a Trump sympathizer. Her opponent will be Matt Castelli, a Democrat who spent 15 years working for the CIA, which he joined after graduation from Siena College (ed. note: my alma mater) and the September 11 attacks. He also had a significant job on the National Security Council, serving as Director for Counterterrorism under both Obama and Trump.

By all measures, Stefanik has a huge advantage. But this could be one to watch. Castelli is a moderate running on a platform which puts dealing with the threat to our democracy first, much as Ryan -- also a moderate, and a West Point graduate with two combat tours in Iraq -- did in the NY19. From the Poughkeepsie Journal:

"This was a race about the future of this country," Ryan told supporters at the Senate Garage venue in Kingston at around midnight after the votes in the 19th Congressional District special election were tallied Tuesday. "And what I am so damn proud of is we stood up in this Hudson Valley and we said this is not what America stands for. We are better than that. And we are going to send a message that is going to echo across the entire country."

Another interesting fact: Ryan was an army intelligence officer.

Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days

Well, summer's almost over and things are about to get back to the normal routine. That includes the constant revisions and additions to our website. It's meant to be a dynamic internet presence, so we're working on it all the time. The latest is a rewrite of the Introduction to the Issues and Policy tab, which you can check out here: Issues and Proposals — Modern Whig Institute

We're also playing around with the format and content of the sub tabs a little. The first one is Political Reform, which we've rewritten and posted here: Issues and Proposals - Political Reform — Modern Whig Institute

Please feel free to drop us a line and let us know what you think.

In other news, Ukraine celebrated their Independence Day this week. And they did it in unique style:

Ukraine holds 'parade' of burned-out Russian tanks to troll Putin (taskandpurpose.com)

That's first-rate.

Meanwhile, NASA has some fireworks of its own planned for Labor Day. If all goes well, the most powerful rocket ever launched will lift off from Launch Complex 39B at Kennedy Space Center sometime after 8:33 a.m. Monday morning. Artemis 1 is a mission to send an unmanned Orion spacecraft on a 42-day voyage to and around the Moon. Exciting stuff.

Artemis 1 passes flight readiness review - SpaceNews

And finally, while we still have doubts about the wisdom or necessity of a Space Force (we think we need a Cyber Force much more, and Space Command was doing a fine job to begin with) we think it's really cool they've captured a UFO already. (That's what the picture looks like, anyway.)

Army hands satellite missions over to Space Force (defensenews.com)

With that, please accept our wishes for a fun, safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend. See you next week.

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The Modern Whig Institute is a 501(c)(3) civic research and education foundation dedicated to the fundamental American principles of representative government, ordered liberty, capitalism, due process and the rule of law.