Politics
Column: Are Republicans who got pandemic debt relief hypocrites for complaining about student debt relief? Yes
You may have noticed over the last few days that the political world is in an uproar over President Biden’s dispensing of student debt relief.
It’s not so much that Biden implemented the relief program at all; what got politicians and pundits in a tizzy was that he called out the GOP naysayers in the House by pointing out that many of them had received business loans via the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, that had never been paid back.
The White House tweeted out the forgiven PPP balances of 13 GOP House members critical of student loan relief, under the heading, “This you?”
The PPP helped people remain employed while the government literally shut down much of the economy,. Only an intellectual clown would compare that to what Biden is doing now with student loans.
— Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., recipient of $616,241 in pandemic relief
That’s a really unfair comparison, the argument goes, because the PPP loans were never intended to be paid back. Under the program’s terms, the loans would be forgiven if the money was used to support the workers of a small business that had been forced to close or curtail operations because of pandemic restrictions.
In other words, it’s said, the PPP money was never expected to be repaid. By contrast, student loans were taken out in full expectation that they would be repaid — if not for the handouts being distributed by the White House.
“The PPP helped people remain employed while the government literally shut down much of the economy,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), tweeted back in 2022, the first time Biden made this purportedly invidious comparison. “Only an intellectual clown would compare that to what Biden is doing now with student loans.”
Norman received $616,241 from the PPP, according to the White House.
There’s something to be said for the distinction made by the PPP-pocketing student relief critics, but not nearly as much as they claim. More on that in a moment.
This is just another example of how our political press is incapable of telling the forest from the trees, or how it’s perennially distracted by a shiny object. (Insert your own pertinent metaphor here.)
In this case, the shiny object is the idea that it’s Biden who is the hypocrite for comparing the PPP loans to student debt. This misses the bigger picture of how America’s economy is structured to benefit corporations and the wealthy — that is, the patrons of the Republican political establishment — at the expense of average Americans. The pundits who are flaying the White House for making the connection are merely buying a GOP talking point.
Not only right-leaning commentators are committing this error. Not a few progressive-minded writers are complicit. Here, for instance, is Jordan Weissmann of Semaphor, usually a percipient analyst of economics and finance: “The thing about this talking point is that I know everybody in the White House, including the [communications] shop, is smart enough to know how disingenuous it is.”
Let’s take a closer — and a broader — look.
The comparison between student debt relief and the PPP loans first emerged in 2022, when Biden first announced his plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for households with incomes of up to $125,000. The White House then issued a series of tweets targeting GOP critics of student debt relief whose PPP loans had been forgiven.
The Supreme Court invalidated Biden’s original proposal in 2023. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a 6-3 conservative majority that although the law gave the secretary of Education the authority to “waive or modify” the terms of student loans, the White House had gone too far.
After that, the administration implemented a new program, the SAVE plan, that limited monthly repayments on student debt for most borrowers to as little as 5% of their income and ended payments for borrowers living near or below the federal poverty standard. After as little as 10 years, the balance on loans originally totaling $12,000 or less will be permanently forgiven.
The White House issued this roster of GOP politicians who criticized Biden’s student debt relief program but got their pandemic relief loans forgiven
(White House)
The issue erupted again a few days ago when Biden announced new features of his student relief program. They included waiving some accrued interest for borrowers whose balances had grown higher than their original debt, generally because their payments hadn’t covered the accumulated interest — an issue that affects more than one-third of all student borrowers, and two-thirds of Black borrowers.
For the record:
12:22 p.m. April 17, 2024An earlier version of this column incorrectly identified Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) as a Democrat.
Critics, again mostly Republicans, weighed in again with tendentious lectures on social media about the moral imperative of meeting one’s obligation to pay back a loan.
Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.), for instance, tweeted that Biden’s latest initiative, which will relieve student borrowers of about $7.4 billion in principal and interest, would “transfer millions more in student debt onto the backs of hardworking taxpayers.” Clyde called it “nothing more than a desperate attempt to buy votes with Americans’ hard-earned money.”
Clyde’s $156,597 PPP loan was forgiven.
That brings us back to the hypocrisy issue. It’s true that students who took out education loans are expected to repay them, and that businesses that took out PPP loans were led to believe that they would be forgiven — as long as they were used to support their payrolls through business closings and cutbacks.
But things are not so simple. Critics of Biden’s plan argue that the PPP loans were designed to address an acute economic disaster, which isn’t the case with student loans.
The student loan burden, however, has become an economic disaster. The total amount of outstanding student loans for higher education has ballooned over the last two decades to almost $1.8 trillion today, up from about $300 billion in 2000. Those loans are carried by about 43 million borrowers.
The burden has grown in part because the cost of higher education has exploded. That’s so even at public institutions: In 1970, the average tuition at public four-year universities was $358, or about $2,958 in today’s money. Since then, public university tuition and fees have grown to the point that working families can’t afford them without borrowing.
At UCLA and UC Berkeley, those annual costs come to $13,401 and $14,395 for state residents, respectively. It’s proper to note that the University of California was free to Californians until tuition charges were introduced under Gov. Ronald Reagan in the 1970s. Among the beneficiaries of the old system were former governor and U.S. Chief Justice Earl Warren, diplomat Ralph Bunche, L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley, and writer Maxine Hong Kingston, all children of low-income families.
Public university students today accumulate an average of $32,637 to receive a bachelor’s degree. The overall average of student debt reached $37,600 in 2022, more than double the average in 2007.
The economic implications of this burden are inescapable. Households burdened by high student debt often delay or forgo homeownership and face difficulties in starting a family or building up savings. The debt load also contradicts Americans’ cherished assumptions about the value of higher education.
“The whole premise of the main higher education industry is that a college degree pays off,” Marshall Steinbaum, an expert in higher education finance at the Jain Family Institute, told me in 2022. When some people are still paying off their student loans as they approach retirement, that premise loses some of its oomph.
As for the PPP, it was nothing like the unalloyed boon that its GOP defenders portray. The members of Congress who snarfed up loans by the six or seven figures (Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) tops the list of those called out as hypocrites by Biden with $4.4 million in forgiven loans) are beneficiaries of a program they themselves voted for.
Of the 13 on Biden’s list, three (Marjorie Taylor Greene and Clyde of Georgia and Pat Fallon of Texas) hadn’t yet been elected when the PPP came up for a vote in April 2020; another, Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania, didn’t cast a vote. All the others on the White House roster voted in favor. The measure passed the House 388 to 5. Representatives and senators could have exempted themselves from the PPP benefits, but they didn’t. Then they lined up for the goods.
Were the PPP funds invariably used as they were supposed to? There’s reason to be skeptical. Greene, who received a $182,300 PPP loan in April 2020 for her family construction business, donated $250,000 to her own congressional campaign the following June and August. The government subsequently forgave $183,500, including interest.
Did any of those donations come from the PPP? We’ll never know, because days before Biden took office, the Small Business Administration deleted almost all the database red flags designating potentially questionable or fraudulent loans subject to further review. That’s according to the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group that based its findings on a government database.
As many as 2.3 million loans, including 54,000 loans of more than $1 million each, thus may have received a free pass. The red flags included signs that a recipient company had laid off workers or were ineligible to participate in the program.
The SBA’s inspector general’s office later disclosed that it had “substantiated an unprecedented level of fraud activity” in the PPP program, but said the mass closeout, as well as the SBA’s habit of forgiving loans before reviewing them for potential fraud, would hamper the agency’s ability “to recover funds for forgiven loans later determined to be ineligible.”
A larger problem in the haste by politicians and pundits to flay Biden for his defense of student loan relief is that their view is too narrow. As I reported in 2022, many of the politicians wringing their hands over how student loan relief burdens ordinary taxpayers received their higher education courtesy of ordinary taxpayers — by attending public institutions at a time when they were overwhelmingly tax-supported.
That’s not all. Republican fiscal policies are almost invariably aimed to benefit corporations and wealthier Americans. The 2017 tax cuts are a perfect example. The richest 20% of Americans received nearly 64% of the tax benefits. The top 1% received a reduction in their average federal tax rate of 1.5 percentage points, worth an average $32,650 a year; the lowest-income 20% got a tax rate reduction of 0.3 of a percentage point, worth $40 a year.
Student debt relief, however, overwhelmingly favors low-income borrowers. According to a 2022 study done for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), $10,000 in student debt cancellation would reduce the share of people with debt by one-third among the lowest-income 20% and by one-fourth for households among the next 20%. But it would make almost no difference for the richest 10%.
Debt cancellation also would reduce racial gaps in household economics. A $10,000 debt reduction would zero out loan balances for 2 million Black families, the study said, reducing the share of Black individuals with student loans to 17% from 24%.
In other words, student debt relief is a boon for the most economically vulnerable American households. That can’t be said of the PPP program, and certainly not for the GOP tax cuts.
The debate over whether it’s “fair” to juxtapose student debt relief with the millions pocketed by GOP representatives and their patrons is, indeed, a story of hypocrisy. But the hypocrisy is not where our political press has claimed to find it. They should pay attention to what really drives conservatives to hate student debt relief so much.
Politics
JD Vance says Trump is ‘locked and loaded’ to restart military campaign against Iran if nuclear talks fail
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Vice President JD Vance said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is still pursuing a diplomatic deal with Iran but remains “locked and loaded” to restart the military campaign if nuclear talks collapse.
“It takes two to tango,” Vance told reporters at a White House press briefing. “We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a nuclear weapon.
“So as the president just told me, we’re locked and loaded,” Vance added. “We don’t want to go down that pathway. But the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.”
The administration sees two paths forward, according to Vance: a negotiated agreement that permanently blocks Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, or renewed U.S. military action.
VANCE WARNS IRAN THAT ‘ANOTHER OPTION ON THE TABLE’ IF NUCLEAR DEAL NOT REACHED
Vice President JD Vance spoke during a news conference on anti-fraud initiatives in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on May 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration warned states they could lose Medicaid funding if they fail to comply with federal anti-fraud statutes. (Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“We think the Iranians want to make a deal,” Vance said. “The president of the United States has asked us to negotiate in good faith. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
But Vance warned that diplomacy will not come at the cost of Trump’s core demand that Tehran never obtain a nuclear weapon.
“There’s an option B, and the option B is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve America’s objectives,” Vance said. “But that’s not what the president wants. And I don’t think it’s what the Iranians want either.”
TRUMP WARNS IRAN’S ‘CLOCK IS TICKING’: MOVE ‘FAST’ OR ‘THERE WON’T BE ANYTHING LEFT’
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media after returning to the White House on May 15, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Trump is returning to Washington from his trip to China, where he and President Xi addressed ways to enhance bilateral economic cooperation and investment, and agreed that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. ( (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The exchange came after Trump said he was just an hour away from ordering fresh attacks on Iran on Monday night.
“We were getting ready to do a very major attack [Tuesday], and I put it off for a little while — hopefully maybe forever,” Trump said, “because we’ve had very big discussions with Iran, and we’ll see what they amount to.”
“There seems to be a very good chance that they can work something out,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “If we can do that without bombing the hell out of them, I’d be very happy.”
The announcement marked the latest shift in Trump’s handling of the fragile ceasefire reached in mid-April. For weeks, the president has warned Iran that fighting could resume if it did not accept a deal, while repeatedly setting deadlines and then backing away from them.
Ships are anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on May 4. A report on May 15 said a ship was seized off the coast of the United Arab Emirates and is being brought toward Iranian waters. (Amirhossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
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Over the weekend, Trump warned that “the Clock is Ticking” and said Iran needed to move “FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them.”
Trump first disclosed the pause in a social media post Monday, saying he had ordered the U.S. military to be ready “to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if an acceptable deal is not reached.
Politics
Hilton and Becerra lead in a tightening race in final weeks of California governor’s campaign, poll shows
Former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra remains the top Democrat in the California governor’s race despite being targeted by a barrage of negative political ads and enduring sharp attacks from his rival candidates during recent debates, according to a new poll released Tuesday by the state Democratic Party.
Billionaire Tom Steyer, a Democrat who is shattering self-funding records for statewide office, has been flooding the television airwaves, internet and social media with ads ripping Becerra’s long record in public office, as well as for accepting campaign donations from oil giant Chevron. But, thus far, that has not been enough for Steyer to overtake Becerra.
The survey found that 21% of likely voters backed Becerra, who also served in Congress and as California’s attorney general, while 15% backed Steyer. Among the other top Democrats: Former Orange County congresswoman Katie Porter received 7%; San José Mayor Matt Mahan came in at 4%; and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa registered at 1%.
Becerra on Tuesday said he believes he has climbed in the polls because voters are now paying attention to the race.
“They’re really looking closely at who’s out there, and I think I’ve been one of the beneficiaries of folks looking for a place that they can feel comfortable, where they can trust,” Becerra told reporters after a campaign event in South Los Angeles. “I think more and more as people look at the candidates, they’re going to start to crystallize behind somebody who won’t need training wheels, as I say, when they get into the governor’s office and can hit the ground running, day one.”
He said he thinks Steyer’s attacks aren’t working because Californians are skeptical of the billionaire.
“He’s spending like no one before, and he’s hitting like no one before, and so far, it hasn’t made a difference,” Becerra said. “We continue to surge, even after weeks of his barrage of lies and attacks…. California voters are not anxious to have someone who wants to buy the office.”
Leading all candidates in the race was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, who was supported by 22% of likely voters. His top GOP challenger, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, was backed by 10%, the poll showed.
While Hilton and Becerra right now appear to be the likeliest candidates to finish in the top two in California’s June 2 primary, which is required to advance to the November general election, there still remains plenty of time for political fortunes and voter support to rise or fall. Ballots were mailed to the state’s 23.1 million registered voters and early voting sites opened earlier this month, but most Californians have not sent them in thus far.
For Becerra, the strong poll results indicate an astounding turnaround for a campaign that appeared all but dead just weeks ago. In early April, the California Democratic Party tracking poll showed Becerra with support from just 4% of likely voters. That changed after then-Northern California Rep. Eric Swalwell, who had been the front-running Democrat in the race, withdrew from the campaign and resigned from Congress after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct.
The California Democratic Party launched a series of tracking polls in March after leaders and allies grew increasingly concerned that Republicans would win the top two spots in the primary, shutting the party out of the November general election. This prospect, while statistically possible given the crowded field of candidates running for governor, has grown increasingly less likely as California voters finally focused on the contest to lead the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Under California’s top-two primary system, only the candidates who finish in first and second place in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of their political party or affiliation.
The poll of 1,200 likely voters took place between May 14 and 16 and has a margin of error of 2.83% in either direction.
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HEBRON, KY – Ed Gallrein, the Republican congressional candidate backed by President Donald Trump who is challenging Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky for the GOP nomination, landed extra firepower on the eve of the state’s primary.
Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and Kentucky farmer, was joined on the campaign trail Monday by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Massie has long been one of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics in Congress and the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, in the northeastern part of the state, the latest test of Trump’s immense grip over the GOP.
“President Trump needs reinforcements, and that’s what war fighters do. They stand behind leaders and have their back,” Hegseth said at an event organized by America First Works, a Trump-aligned nonprofit political advocacy group.
TRUMP SCORES MAJOR PRIMARY VICTORY AS CASSIDY OUSTED IN LOUSIANA
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, joins former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, at an event on the eve of Kentucky’s primary, in Hebron, Kentucky on May 18, 2026. Gallrein is backed by President Donald Trump as he primary challenges Rep. Thomas Massie for the GOP nomination in the state’s fourth congressional district. (Jessica Sonkin/Fox News)
Massie, a libertarian-minded lawmaker who repeatedly takes aim at the president over foreign policy, including the Iran war and unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel, also successfully pushed for the release of government files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Hegseth argued that Massie’s record is one of “too much grandstanding, too few great votes, years of acting like being difficult is the same thing as being courageous. It’s not. Real courage means stepping up when the mission matters most, when we need that tough vote to beat left-wing lunatic Democrats the most.”
“President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him when it matters the most,” Hegseth added.
Hegseth’s remarks, which came soon after a stop at nearby Fort Campbell to award medals for service members, were rare for the civilian head of the nation’s military. Defense secretaries have traditionally avoided appearing at political events.
Ahead of the stop, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Hegseth would appear only “in his personal capacity” and that “no taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit.”
Hegseth noted the unusual appearance.
“I have to say up front, for the lawyers, that I’m here in my personal capacity as a private citizen, a fellow American, and a fellow combat veteran.”
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But Massie, who’s locked in a competitive clash with Gallrein in what’s become the most expensive congressional primary in history, claimed in a Fox News Digital interview on Monday that Hegseth’s stop “shows that I’m up in the polls. They wouldn’t be sending the Secretary of War to my congressional district if I weren’t.”
“I think it also shows I’m tougher than Iran, and I don’t even have a nuclear weapon. I mean, they are all in at this race. It’s basically a national race at this point, the most expensive race primary in congressional history, and that’s because, you know, I’m up there, I’m getting things done. I got the Epstein files released, I’m getting legislation in the farm bill, I’m getting legislation passed on the floor, and they want to shut me down,” Massie emphasized.
Gallrein, speaking with Fox News Digital ahead of his event with Hegseth, charged that Massie’s “running against President Trump, and the agenda that has been put forward by the Republican Party.”
Kentucky’s primary is being held two weeks after Indiana’s primary, where Trump-backed challengers ousted five sitting Republican state senators who last December teamed up with Democrats to defeat the president’s push for congressional redistricting in the GOP-dominated Midwestern state.
And the ballot box showdown in Kentucky comes three days after Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was ousted as he sought renomination. The senator came in third in the primary, behind Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and conservative Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming.
Cassidy’s political defeat came five and a half years after he voted to convict Trump after he was impeached by the House for his role in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters who aimed to upend congressional certification of former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. Trump was acquitted by the Senate.
Massie said he “absolutely can” overcome the Trump endorsement of Gallrein. “I’ve got the groundswell here, like my events. I’ve got 100-200 sometimes 300 people show up. My opponent had to cancel events because he couldn’t get enough people, you know, to fill up a Dairy Queen, half a Dairy Queen.”
SCOOP: TRUMP-BACKED FORMER NAVY SEAL LAUNCHES GOP PRIMARY CHALLENGE AGAINST MASSIE
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky campaigns on the eve of his state’s primary, in Mason County, Kentucky on May 18, 2026. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)
The race has become the most expensive in House history in terms of ad spending, with over $32 million shelled out, according to the nationally known ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Much of that money has been shelled out by Trump’s allies and pro-Israel groups.
“Here’s the thing, I’ve got nothing against Israel. I just have never voted for foreign aid. When I said America First, I meant it. I don’t vote for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Ukraine. I’ve got a flawless record on this, and I’m not going to ruin it by sending foreign aid to one country,” Massie said as he defended his stance on Israel.
And Massie touted that while Trump’s allies and pro-Israel groups have spent tens of millions to take him out, he said, “I’ve got tens of thousands of grassroots donors who are funding me $50 at a time, $20 at a time. We’ve been able to match them to go toe to toe with them on TV using grassroots donors, and it’s really galvanized the nation.”
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U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) leaves to speak with the media after the House voted 427-1 to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the release of documents and files at the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
Trump has repeatedly targeted Massie in social media posts in the closing days of the primary campaign.
The president said in a video posted to Truth Social on Monday that he hoped Kentucky voters would put Massie “out of business” and that “we’re in a fight against the worst congressman in the history of our country.”
And Trump praised Gallrein as “a great guy” and “a great patriot.”
But Massie said Trump’s taunts on social media may backfire.
“It shows he’s losing sleep, his reputation is on the line. He really shouldn’t have got involved in this race, because I vote with him 90% of the time,” the congressman said.
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