First lady Jill Biden called for community college education to be “free in America” during her commencement address in Arizona to Mesa Community College’s class of 2024.

At the Saturday event in Tempe, on Arizona State University’s campus, Biden’s call was met with cheers from those assembled, as she further spoke about her own role as an educator at a Virginia community college while her husband serves in the White House.

“On behalf of President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the Second Gentleman: Congratulations, Class of 2024, we are so proud of you,” Biden said.

“I teach at a community college for the same reason students go to community colleges. They’re flexible and meet people where they are. And, as my husband, President Biden, says, they provide the ‘best career training in America.’”

FLASHBACK: BIDEN’S 2020 PLAN FOR FREE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, EXPANDED LOAN PROGRAMS

Biden praised Mesa Community College’s “Promise” program, which its website describes as a needs-based commitment from the city of Mesa to residents that eligible students can attend the school without paying tuition or registration fees.

“Community colleges should be free in America,” she said.

The first lady’s remarks come as the Biden administration continues to take heat over its machinations to cancel student loan debt.

Yet, the U.S. national debt is climbing at a rapid pace and has shown no signs of slowing down. As of last week, the national debt – which measures what the U.S. owes its creditors – rose to $34,541,727,970,599.17, according to the latest numbers published by the Treasury Department.

In June 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against the Biden administration, in asserting 6-3 that federal law does not permit Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to cancel more than $430 billion in student loan debt.

GOP REP JABS EDUCATION SECRETARY OVER DEBT FORGIVENESS: ‘ARE CAR LOANS NEXT?’

In February, President Biden, in turn, received blowback for saying the high bench “didn’t stop me” after “my MAGA Republican friends” sued. 

One critic wrote on X that “one of the ‘nobody is above the law’ people is debunking that again,” while Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., said, “the decay of checks and balances isn’t a flex.”

In his 2020 campaign platform, Biden called for making community colleges and tech schools free.

However, an analysis by The Associated Press suggested that the cost of his proposal stopped short of the $1 trillion mark, a figure associated with the more expansive education funding plans championed by his progressive counterparts, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

President Biden’s 2025 fiscal budget also seeks $90 billion to expand access to free community college despite congressional and judicial resistance.

During a hearing last week before the House Education & Workforce Committee, Cardona was confronted by a Republican member over the administration’s overall efforts to forgive student debt.

Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., pointedly asked if car loans are next on the administration’s debt-cancellation agenda, while also appearing to suggest the administration sees themselves as “above the law.”

“Mr. Secretary, President Biden’s Department of Education has canceled $153 billion in student loans, with plans to cancel $1.4 trillion. The House of Representatives said no – We actually passed legislation on that – The Senate said no. The Fifth Circuit Court said no. And the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, said no,” McClain said.

“Yet you continue to march on. I would like to know what makes you qualified to ignore the majority of Congress and the Supreme Court.”

Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick, Elizabeth Elkind and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned down an appeal from California prison officials who sought immunity from lawsuits for having transferred inmates with COVID-19 to San Quentin in May 2020, setting off an outbreak that killed 26 prisoners and one guard.

The justices denied the appeals with no comment or dissent.

The transfer decision was later lambasted by state lawmakers as a “fiasco,” “abhorrent” and “the worst prison health screw-up in state history.”

The California Institution for Men in Chino had been hit hard by COVID-19. Nine of its inmates had died and about 600 were infected in May 2020.

San Quentin then had no known cases at that time. In an effort to prevent further harm at CIM, prison officials decided to move 122 inmates from Chino north to San Quentin.

Within days, San Quentin reported 25 COVID cases among the 122 new arrivals. Within three weeks, the virus spread to 499 others.
By early September, at least 2,100 inmates and 270 staff had tested positive.

The state now faces four major lawsuits from the families of those who died as well as from inmates and staff who were infected but survived.

Those lawsuits can proceed now that the federal courts in California and the Supreme Court have denied the state’s claim that prison officials had “qualified immunity” that shielded them from being sued.

“The state has had its due process all the way to the Supreme Court. They’re not getting off on a technicality,” Michael J. Haddad, the attorney for the families, said in response to the court’s order. “Now it’s time to face the facts. Prison administrators killed 29 people in what the 9th Circuit called a ‘textbook case’ of deliberate indifference.”

The defense of qualified immunity often shields police officers from lawsuits. The justices have said that police and other government officials may be sued for violating the constitutional rights of individuals, but only if they knowingly violated a “clearly established” right.

Courts have said that police officers frequently must make split-second decisions on whether, for example, a suspect being pursued has a gun. For that reason, the courts sometimes shield officers from being sued for an “unreasonable seizure” if an officer shoots a fleeing person based on the mistaken belief that the suspect was armed.

The pending prison cases are quite different, lawyers for the families said, because prison officials decided to make the transfers without taking the precautions that were understood as needed at the time.

Sgt. Gilbert Polanco, the guard who died, was 55 years old and had worked at San Quentin for more than two decades. He had multiple health conditions, including obesity, diabetes and hypertension, which put him at high risk if he were to contract COVID-19.

His duties during the pandemic included driving sick inmates to local hospitals, but lawyers said prison officials refused to provide him or the inmates with personal protective equipment.
In late June 2020, he contracted COVID-19, and after a lengthy hospital stay, he died in August.

In Polanco’s case, the lawsuit alleges he lost his life because of a “state-created danger.”

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said prison officials had affirmatively exposed Polanco to a danger he would not have faced otherwise and failed to take steps to protect him from the danger they had created.

The Supreme Court in the past had also ruled that prisoners have a right to be protected against “the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,” including as a result of “deliberate indifference to their serious medical needs.” Lawyers for the San Quentin inmates said prison officials can be held liable under that standard.

California state attorneys urged the Supreme Court to review and reverse the 9th Circuit decisions that rejected a qualified immunity defense for the prison officials.

“The facts of these cases are undeniably tragic,” they said. But in “the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little was known about the disease and testing supplies were limited, the defendant officials attempted to protect the lives of scores of vulnerable inmates who were confined in a prison where the virus was rampant.”

With the benefit of hindsight, they agreed their actions may be judged as mistaken, but “no clearly established law placed them on notice that their alleged mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic at San Quentin prison was unconstitutional.”

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen is expected to take the stand Monday morning to testify in the criminal trial of former President Trump. 

Cohen is said to be the star witness for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team as they try to prove the former president falsified business records related to a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and maintains his innocence. 

Cohen, who once famously said he would “take a bullet” for Trump, his former longtime boss and friend, will testify against him about his role in arranging the hush money payment to Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election in an effort to keep her allegations of a sexual encounter with Trump in the early 2000s from becoming public. 

MICHAEL COHEN TO TESTIFY IN TRUMP TRIAL ON MONDAY

Trump, for years, has denied the encounter with Daniels ever happened.

Trump later made several payments of $35,000 to Cohen, who was serving as his personal attorney at the time. The payments totaled $420,000. 

The payments from Trump to Cohen are the basis for Bragg’s indictment of Trump. Bragg is trying to prove that the payments were reimbursements to Cohen for the hush money payment to Daniels. 

But Trump defense attorneys maintain that the $35,000 payments were “not a payback,” but were, instead, legal payments. 

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said, “If falsifying a business record is because a bookkeeper wrote down ‘legal expense’ in paying a legal fee, that’s not falsifying.

HOUSE GOP GOES AFTER ‘CONVICTED LIAR’ MICHAEL COHEN, URGES JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO INVESTIGATE RECENT LIES

“They call it a legal expense, and that’s what it was,” Trump told Fox News Digital. “It was a legal expense. It was legal fees paid to a lawyer. That’s called a legal expense.” 

Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order on the former president, preventing him from speaking about any witnesses. Trump’s legal team has argued that is a violation of his First Amendment rights and filed an appeal. 

Trump has already been fined $10,000 for violating the gag order — $1,000 per violation — and has been threatened with jail time should he violate the order again. 

While Cohen is not under any gag order, Merchan on Friday directed prosecutors to tell Cohen not to make statements about Trump or the case. 

In this courtroom sketch from Manhattan state court in New York City May 9, 2024, Stormy Daniels testifies during former President Trump’s criminal trial on charges he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence Daniels in 2016. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)

Merchan said he would “direct the people to communicate to Mr. Cohen that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements” about the case or Trump.

Merchan told prosecutors to inform Cohen the direction was coming from the bench.

TOP REPUBLICANS DOUBLE DOWN ON CALL FOR DOJ PROBE INTO BRAGG’S ‘STAR WITNESS’ MICHAEL COHEN

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations, making false statements to Congress and tax evasion. He was sentenced to three years in prison. 

House Republicans, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner and House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, have referred Cohen to the Justice Department for investigation, saying he should be subject to further prosecution for lying to Congress. 

President Trump boards Air Force One before departing Harlingen, Texas, Jan. 12, 2021.  (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Republicans say that, most recently, Cohen “admitted to lying to Congress” during his testimony in the Letitia James case against Trump. 

CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

When asked if he was being “honest” in front of the House Intelligence Committee in February 2019, Cohen testified, “No.”

“So, you lied under oath in February of 2019? Is that your testimony?” Trump attorney Alina Habba asked him.

“Yes,” Cohen replied.