TONY CARDENAS

President Joe Biden said he is considering forgiving some federal student debt, a step that would help him fulfill a campaign promise and provide relief to borrowers who took out thousands of dollars in loans to finance their higher education.

Some fear providing loan relief to students who attended expensive private universities would provide an easy campaign target for the GOP this fall.

She said Biden “is looking at other executive authority options he has to bring relief to people who have student loans." Even so, remarks by several Democrats suggest a broad effort to ease student debt could help the party with minority voters. Cardenas said he told Biden that Hispanic students with college debt typically face higher long-term debt burdens than white students. The pandemic prompted then-President Donald Trump and Congress to begin providing student loan relief in March 2020. Other participants at that meeting said Biden expressed opposition to the restrictions but did not specifically say what he would do.

President Joe Biden has signaled he might forgive some student loan debt and further extend the federal moratorium on repayments.

Biden, in a closed-door meeting of lawmakers, signaled a new openness to canceling student loans, a politically sensitive idea he has avoided until now.

Federal prosecutors described Zuberi, who reports to prison May 25, as a “mercenary” political donor who gave to anyone he thought could help him. Pay to play, he explained to clients, was just “how America work(s).”Prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips for a stiff sentence, calling the scope of Zuberi's scheme unprecedented. AdPhillips noted the sophistication of Zuberi's straw donor scheme and also spoke of the role such campaign finance investigations play in preserving the integrity of American elections. AdThe trove of court documents offered new details about how prosecutors unraveled Zuberi’s scheme and also include photographs of him rubbing shoulders with then-Vice President Biden and other prominent officeholders. Zuberi secretly lobbied the Trump White House and Congress on behalf of the small gas-rich monarchy, which has paid him $9.8 million, prosecutors have alleged in court papers.

The party's House majority will be as meager as 222-213 next year, the tightest partisan gap in two decades. Maloney worked on Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign and joined the White House after Clinton's 1996 reelection. “Those of us in the LGBT community have seen the system work, and it has worked because we worked,” Maloney said. In 2018 he sought the House campaign committee chairmanship but withdrew when he was hospitalized for an infection. Farrell runs a consulting firm that he says was blacklisted by the campaign committee under Bustos after it helped candidates challenging Democratic incumbents.

Maloney will lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps recruit House candidates, raises money and provides campaign guidance. The 2022 election looms as a difficult one for House Democrats. Also Thursday, Democrats elected Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., to chair the House Appropriations Committee. At the Agriculture panel, Scott replaces Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., who lost his House reelection after 15 House terms. Democrats went into November’s elections with a 232-197 House majority, along with an independent and five vacancies.