It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy.   

Photo by Stefani Reynolds/AFP
THE STUDENT LOAN PAUSE HAS BEEN EXTENDED AGAIN
By Hannah Grabenstein, @hgrabenstein ([link removed])
Digital Reporter

Saher Khan, @SaherMKhan ([link removed])
Politics Reporter-Producer

The moratorium on federal student loan payments has been extended again. It’s the seventh time payments have been frozen in the past two years, due to the pandemic. The start date for repayment has now been pushed to Sept. 1.

Though President Joe Biden announced on April 6 ([link removed]) that he will again extend relief for more than 43 million federal student loan borrowers, his administration hasn’t taken any substantial steps toward permanent relief.

That leaves many people stuck with thousands of dollars of debt, hindering their abilities to plan for the future and invest in assets that would help grow intergenerational wealth. And student loan debt can be particularly damaging for Black Americans, as systemic inequities often hinder the ability to compete on a level playing field in the workplace.

Here’s what Biden promised – and what he’s done
* On the campaign trail, Biden said $10,000 in federal student loan debt would be forgiven for all borrowers ([link removed]) .
* He also promised to forgive all the debt of students attending public schools, historically Black colleges and universities, or private minority-serving institutions, if borrowers had a yearly income of under $125,000.
* A student loan freeze went into effect in March 2020 at the onset of the pandemic through congressional action. After taking office, Biden continued the freeze on loan payments.
* But the administration has no current plan for permanent debt cancellation.
* A year ago, the White House directed the Department of Education to look into the president’s legal authority to unilaterally cancel student debt. But redacted documents obtained by The Debt Collective ([link removed]) , a union aimed at organizing debtors, revealed that the findings have existed for months, but still haven’t been made public ([link removed]) .
* The White House told the PBS NewsHour during a briefing on April 8 that they have no updates on when the findings of that report would be released and instead encouraged Congress to take legislative action that they would then consider.
* In the latest payment pause, there was also major news ([link removed]) for people who were in default before the pandemic by being able to re-enter repayment in good standing.

Student loan debt disproportionately hurts Black borrowers
* Among 2016 graduates, nearly 40 percent of Black students left college with $30,000 or more in debt, compared with 29 percent of white students, according to a 2020 NAACP report. ([link removed])
* Additionally, 86 percent of all Black students graduated that same year with debt of any amount, compared to 70 percent of white students, 67 percent of Hispanic students and 59 percent of Asian students.
* Black students may be more likely to take out loans because their parents’ incomes are lower than those of white students. Forty nine percent of Black students’ parents made less than $35,000, while 69 percent of white students’ parents made more than $70,000, according to the same NAACP report.
* Twenty years after starting college, white borrowers’ median student debt fell to 6 percent, whereas the median Black borrower still owed 95 percent of their loan, according to a 2019 report ([link removed]) by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis.
* When Black students are unlikely to pay down debt, it’s more difficult for them to build intergenerational wealth.

What this means to some borrowers

“I'm drowning every month,” one borrower told the NewsHour ([link removed]) . “Like every month, I'm trying to figure out how to get through the month and stay afloat.”
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The NewsHour’s Nicole Ellis will host a live conversation ([link removed]) on Wednesday, April 13 at 12 p.m. EDT to discuss what borrowers can do amid the push for debt relief and how student loan debt is particularly damaging for Black Americans.

How to prepare for repayment: By all current measures, relief will end eventually – there’s no guarantee of another payment pause or blanket loan forgiveness – but there’s still time to figure out how to plan for ([link removed]) repayment ([link removed]) . Start by updating your contact information on studentaid.gov ([link removed]) .


JUSTICE BARRETT, IN HER OWN WORDS
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Video courtesy of The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

Justice Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t “think most spouses would be very happy” about the idea of Supreme Court guidelines that would detail what they should and should not do.

At a moment of renewed debate over whether sitting justices should have to follow a code of ethics, Barrett last week told an audience ([link removed]) at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, that when she tries to give her husband Jesse Barrett guidelines about what to do in their own home, it “does not go over very well.”

News ([link removed]) outlets ([link removed]) reported last month that Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, sent multiple text messages to Mark Meadows while he was chief of staff to former President Donald Trump that explicitly advocated for efforts to overturn the 2020 election. (The texts were part of materials Meadows turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack before he ceased cooperation). Some Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have called for Thomas to recuse himself from cases related to Jan. 6.

During Barrett’s April 4 talk, she addressed how she and her husband, a practicing lawyer, deal with the same challenges that other couples “who are both working and have children at home always face,” like splitting caretaking duties. She added that they take extra caution to avoid conflicts of interest.

“It is something that we are very conscious of and very careful about,” Barrett said.

There are basic ethics standards ([link removed]) that all other federal judges must follow, but do not explicitly apply ([link removed]) to Supreme Court justices. One U.S. statute – 28 U.S.C. section 455 ([link removed]) – requires any judge to step aside from a case in which their spouse has an interest in the outcome. Legal scholars have said the justices should be held to that statute ([link removed]) , among other ethical requirements. But ultimately, the decision to recuse oneself is up to the justice in question ([link removed]) .

Last month, Ginni Thomas told the conservative Washington Free Beacon ([link removed]) that she and Clarence “have our own separate careers, and our own ideas and opinions too.”

“Clarence doesn’t discuss his work with me, and I don’t involve him in my work,” she added.

Ginni Thomas’ embrace of the Trump administration may add to public sentiment that the Supreme Court is not always a model of impartiality.

Despite Barrett asserting in September ([link removed]) that the Supreme Court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks” and that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties," a poll by Grinnell College ([link removed]) a month later found that 62 percent of people believed that the decisions of the nation’s highest court were driven by politics rather than the U.S. Constitution and the law. That belief was also held by at least 60 percent of Republicans, Democrats and independents, respectively.

More on SCOTUS from our coverage:
* Watch: The Supreme Court’s increasingly partisan divide raises questions about ethics ([link removed]) .
* One Big Question: Should ethical requirements be more explicit at the court, so that it would cover spouses’ activities? Two experts weigh in ([link removed]) .
* A Historic First: Ketanji Brown Jackson is the first Black woman to sit on the nation’s highest court. After her historic nomination, Jackson said in a speech Friday ([link removed]) : “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.”
* Perspectives: Ladoris Cordell, who became the first Black woman judge in northern California, said that Jackson’s confirmation was a “wonderful day for America’s legal system ([link removed]) ,” adding that “we are on a slow, but steady process of making our Supreme Court look like America.”
* Next Steps: What happens now that Jackson has been confirmed to the Supreme Court? The NewsHour’s Nicole Ellis and John Yang discuss what happens next ([link removed]) before she takes the bench in the fall.

#POLITICSTRIVIA

The first official portrait of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, soon-to-be justice on the high court. Photo taken by Lelanie Foster ([link removed]) , who is based in the Bronx. Photo courtesy of White House

By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

By Matt Loffman, @mattloff ([link removed])
Politics Produce

For the next three months, Jackson is a justice in waiting ([link removed]) .

The extended timing of Jackson’s formal entry to the Supreme Court is a combination of two things: the speed at which Senate Democrats confirmed Judge Jackson and retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer being able to finish out the rest of this term. Jackson won’t hear her first arguments until the next term begins in October, though she will likely begin her work before then.

Supreme Court historians said this amounts to an unprecedented waiting period. For comparison, the turnaround time from confirmation to the bench for Barrett was about a week. For Justice Brett Kavanaugh, it was three days. The reason is because the last three justices, including Neil Gorsuch, joined SCOTUS when a term was already underway.

Our question: When was the longest previous gap between confirmation and taking the bench for a Supreme Court justice? Make sure to list the year and the name of the justice sworn in.

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Who was the first president to invite a poet to speak at an inauguration? And who was the poet?

The answer: John F. Kennedy ([link removed]) . And the poet was Robert Frost. The story behind what led Frost to recite a poem for Kennedy’s 1961 presidential inauguration is also worth reading about ([link removed]) .

Congratulations to our winners: Stephanie Phillippi, Tom Holston and Peggy Jeanes!

On a special note, Peggy wrote that she was at the event more than 60 years ago. “It is still a vivid memory,” she told us.

“Snow piles surrounded the Capitol and lined Pennsylvania Avenue, but the cold could not keep my roommates and me away from the inauguration of President Kennedy. Frost’s poem, ‘The Gift Outright,’ unknowingly by us at the time, led to our optimism for the future.”

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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