Saturday 1 July 2023

US Supreme Court versus Biden

Even when Donald Trump is not president he is still in charge of much of what is going on in Washington right now. The Supreme Court is heavy with Trump-appointed judges and the decisions they have been making recently have all turned the screws on the Biden administration. Legal judgments or political judgments or a mixture of both? The most stunning overturn of a key Biden policy was his pledge to relieve students of the $400 million debts they had built up in loans. Biden promised to do this when he campaigned for the presidency and it was undoubtedly a vote-winner. Students go to college and university and leave with sky-high debts which they have to pay off for the next few decades. I always remember Obama announcing when he had at last paid off his student debts. But the Supreme Court with its Trump-appointed majority ruled that Biden did not have the power to cancel the $400 million debt. So now poor Biden is facing an angry student body across the nation. A reporter asked Biden whether he had given students false hopes which was pretty unkind. It was the Supreme Court and Trump's influence which destroyed students' hopes, not Biden. This is the United States and the way it works. The Supreme Court is by its very nature politically biased, so the way they interpret the constitution will depend on whether they are Republican or Democratic appointees. It's why one of the biggest decisions ever taken by the incumbent president is to stuff the Supreme Court with as many favourable judges as possible, not just to assist their policy programmes but also for the future when a president from the other party takes over.

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