[Obama puppet...] White House starts scrapping pending regulations on transgender athletes and student debt

https://apnews.com/article/student-loan-forgiveness-debt-cancellation-
619a94aa46c4e356f6d6cf7c6fa13e32

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is abandoning his efforts to provide 
some protections for transgender student athletes and cancel student loans 
for more than 38 million Americans, the first steps in an administration-
wide plan to jettison pending regulations to prevent President-elect 
Donald Trump from retooling them to achieve his own aims.

The White House expects to pull back unfinished rules across several 
agencies if there isn’t enough time to finalize them before Trump takes 
office. If the proposed regulations were left in their current state, the 
next administration would be able to rewrite them and advance its agenda 
more quickly.

Even as the Biden administration moves to pull back the rules, it pushed 
ahead with cancellation through other avenues on Friday. The Education 
Department said it was clearing loans for another 55,000 borrowers who 
reached eligibility through a program known as Public Service Loan 
Forgiveness, which was created by Congress in 2007 and expanded by the 
Biden administration.

As the pending Biden regulations are withdrawn, nothing prevents Trump 
from pursuing his own regulations on the same issues when he returns to 
the White House, but he would have to start from scratch in a process that 
can take months or even years.

“This isn’t the way I wanted it to end,” said Melissa Byrne, an activist 
who has pushed for student debt cancellation. “Unfortunately, this is the 
most prudent action to take right now.”

She blamed Republicans for putting the Biden administration in this 
position. “It’s a bummer that we have a GOP that is committed to keeping 
working-class Americans in debt,” Byrne said.

The withdrawals are beginning as Washington braces for a potential 
government shutdown that could further complicate efforts by the Biden 
administration to tie up loose ends.

In documents withdrawing the student loan proposals, the Education 
Department insisted it has the authority to cancel the debt but sought to 
focus on other priorities in the administration’s final weeks. It said the 
administration would focus on helping borrowers get back on track with 
payments following the coronavirus pandemic, when payments were paused.

“The department at this time intends to commit its limited operational 
resources to helping at-risk borrowers return to repayment successfully,” 
the agency wrote.

For the regulation on transgender students, the department said it was 
withdrawing the proposal because of ongoing litigation over how Title IX, 
the landmark law preventing sex discrimination, should handle issues of 
gender identity. In addition, the department said there were 150,000 
public comments with a range of feedback, including suggestions for 
modifications that needed to be considered.

At this point, the department wrote, “We do not intend for a final rule to 
be issued.”

Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, accused the White House of 
“adding more red tape and making it more difficult for him to govern.”

“President Trump will not be deterred by their dirty tricks and will use 
every lever of power to reverse the damage Biden has done and implement 
his America First agenda,” Leavitt said.

Kate Shaw, who served in the White House counsel’s office under President 
Barack Obama, said it’s not unusual for administrations to speed up or 
slow down rulemaking. It’s more typical, she said, for the federal 
government to race to finalize regulations during a transition period, but 
that can be difficult when there’s a time crunch.

“If you haven’t started it early enough, you’re not going to be able to 
wrap it up,” she said.

An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to 
discuss internal deliberations, said the administration still supports the 
goals of its regulatory proposals. However, the process can be lengthy 
because it requires legal reviews and collecting input from the public.

Federal agencies are now analyzing which rules to finish and which to pull 
back before the end of Biden’s term, the official said.

In recent years, presidents have tended to rely more on executive orders 
and federal regulations to sidestep gridlock in Congress. However, the 
rulemaking process can be less durable than legislation, leaving policies 
more vulnerable to shifts between administrations.

There are dozens of other pending regulations across the Education 
Department and other agencies, ranging from relatively trivial updates to 
sweeping policies that carry weighty implications for the nation’s schools 
and businesses.

If a rule has already gone through a public feedback process under Biden, 
Trump could simply replace it with his own proposal and move straight to 
enacting the policy, effectively bypassing the comment period.

The pair of student loan proposals expected to be withdrawn Friday 
represented Biden’s second attempt at widespread debt cancellation after 
the Supreme Court rejected his first plan.

One of them is a proposal from April that would have provided targeted 
debt relief to 30 million Americans. It laid out several categories of 
borrowers eligible for relief. Borrowers who saw their balances balloon 
because of interest would have had their accrued interest wiped away. 
Those who had been repaying loans for 20 years or more would have gotten 
their loans erased.

That proposal was halted by a federal judge in September after Republican-
led states sued, and it remains tangled in a legal battle.

The second rule being withdrawn is a proposal from October that would have 
allowed the Education Department to cancel loans for people facing various 
kinds of hardship, including those struggling with steep medical bills or 
child care costs.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said Biden never had the 
authority to accomplish these plans.

“With today’s latest withdrawal, they are admitting these schemes were 
nothing more than a dishonest attempt to buy votes by transferring debt 
onto taxpayers who never went to college or worked to pay off their 
loans,” he said in a statement.

Although Biden did not achieve the sweeping loan cancellations that he 
initially promised, his administration has forgiven an unprecedented $180 
billion in federal student loans through existing programs.

“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have 
the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue 
life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan 
debt,” Biden said in a statement.

On Friday, officials announced they were erasing debt for another 55,000 
workers — including teachers, nurses and law enforcement officials — 
through Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The program promises to cancel 
loans for borrowers who spend 10 years in government or nonprofit jobs.

The $4.28 billion in relief is expected to be the final round of public 
service loan forgiveness before Biden leaves office in January.

Biden’s rule on transgender sports was proposed in 2023 but was delayed 
multiple times. It was supposed to be a follow-up to his broader rule that 
extended civil rights protections to LGBTQ+ students under Title IX.

The sports rule would have prevented schools from banning transgender 
athletes outright while allowing limits for certain reasons — for example, 
if it was a matter of “fairness” in competition or to reduce injury risks.

Biden’s proposal left both sides of the issue asking for more. Advocates 
for transgender athletes said it didn’t go far enough in protecting 
transgender students from school policies that could unfairly exclude 
them. Opponents said it fell short of protecting girls and ensuring 
fairness.

The regulation sat on the back burner through the presidential campaign as 
the issue became a subject of Republican outrage. Trump campaigned on a 
promise to ban transgender athletes, with a promise to “keep men out of 
women’s sports.”

Had Biden’s proposal been finalized, it was certain to face legal 
challenges from conservatives who said Biden overstepped his authority. 
Biden’s broader policy on Title IX, which was finalized in April, faced a 
barrage of legal challenges that prevented it from taking effect in 26 
states.


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and 
eradicated.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.