Newsletter: Essential Politics: Let’s talk about those White House student loan tweets

WASHINGTON —  The fight over limited student loan forgiveness President Biden announced last week may signal a change in how the federal government uses social media.

While progressives praised Biden for fulfilling a campaign promise by canceling a limited amount of student debt, some moderate Democrats and many Republicans blasted the president for making an “unfair” move that would exacerbate inflation and primarily benefit coastal elites. Biden had betrayed millions of working-class, tax-paying Americans who make their way in the world without federal handouts, his critics insisted.

In a television interview, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the debt reprieve “completely unfair” and a ploy by Democrats to earn votes ahead of the midterm elections. Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly tweeted that Biden was essentially having “plumbers and carpenters to pay off the loans of Wall Street advisors and lawyers.” And Oklahoma Rep. Markwayne Mullin said the president’s decision would place an “undue burden on those already suffering due to the weight of Biden’s failed economic policy.”

But White House officials knew that each of those lawmakers had borrowed money through the Paycheck Protection Program, the part of the initial COVID-19 relief package designed to help businesses avert furloughs and layoffs.

The White House press shop hit back at GOP critics directly.

“Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven,” the official White House account tweeted. “Congressman Mike Kelly had $987,237 in PPP loans forgiven,” the account tweeted. “Congressman Markwayne Mullin had over $1.4 million in PPP loans forgiven.”

Although it is common for the White House to use its social media accounts to express the president’s viewpoint, it’s unusual for the president and his representatives to name and shame specific Republican members of Congress.

Biden’s fans seemed to like the new approach. The official White House tweets went viral — across platforms. On TikTok, a creator praised Biden’s team for finally hiring “someone who knows how to talk on social media.” On Instagram, one user noted that the account has “taken a turn on Twitter into very snarky territory.”

Should the most powerful federal social media account engage with internet culture in this way? Could attacking backbench members of the House GOP backfire? Or are the people who run the White House Twitter account on to something?

Hello besties, I’m Erin B. Logan, a reporter with the L.A. Times. I cover the Biden-Harris administration. Today, we will talk about student loans, the internet and the federal government’s social media accounts.

Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene so mad?

If you haven’t heard about Biden’s plan to forgive student debt, here’s a quick rundown:

Individuals who make less than $125,000 annually are eligible to get up to $10,000 in federal student loans forgiven. Pell Grant recipients can get up to $20,000 of their debt canceled if they are under the same income threshold. A new rule could soon limit some borrowers’ payments on their undergraduate student loans to 5% of their monthly income. Many progressives had asked Biden to cancel even more student debt, noting that it is disproportionately held by Black borrowers and next-to-impossible to discharge in bankruptcy.

Loan-forgiveness advocates mostly praised Biden, calling his decision a step in the right direction that would help restructure how students pay for undergraduate degrees.

But not everyone agreed. Republicans blasted the policy as unfair and claimed it would exacerbate inflation and slow economic growth. (Experts are split on how the new policy will affect the economy.) Shortly after announcing the plan, Biden likened the debt cancellation to the tax breaks billionaires and corporations have gotten over the years.

“Is it fair to people who in fact do not own a multi-billion-dollar business if they see one of these guys give them all a tax break? Is that fair?” he asked reporters.

The comparison did not resonate with many in the GOP, including Greene, Kelly and Mullin.

Engagement, engagement, engagement

Former President Trump frequently used Twitter to connect with his base, attack critics and promote his policies. But Trump tended to use his personal account, rather than the official White House account.

The way the White House engaged with Greene, Kelly and Mullin’s attacks is “unusual” and a change from how official White House social-media accounts have been used, particularly under previous Democratic administrations, Pinar Yildirim, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told The Times.

Directly responding to individuals is a more effective way to communicate political messages because it tends to get more engagement online, Yildirim said.

“If you want to communicate with people, if you want to get their attention and if you want others to also capture the attention, this style of communication, compared to the other styles of communication... captures attention,” she said.

Still, Yildirim found the tweets “less formal” in a way that “might open up a further debate,” she said. “I’m not so sure... this is necessarily a good look,” she added. “I think it would have been more acceptable perhaps to hear an individual account speaking directly compared to the [White House] account.”

The history of social media is not particularly long. Facebook and Twitter are both less than 20 years old.

“We will have to see if this is something that’s just temporary or if this is going to stay as the new style of communication that the government is following,” Yildirim said. “Something tells me this might be just about the times that we’re in and that might not be something permanent.”

In a statement to The Times, White House spokesperson Alexandra LaManna said the Biden administration has “never hesitated to call out hypocrisy, and we’re not going to stop now.”

“It’s important to make clear that many of the same people calling student loan debt relief — which will help the middle class and working families by giving them more breathing room — a bailout for the wealthy had no issue with loan bailouts that benefited their own companies, and no issue with giving tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy,” LaManna said.

The view from Washington

— A federal judge has ordered the Department of Justice to release a less-redacted version of the 2020 search warrant it used to seize North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr’s cellphone, Times writer Sarah D. Wire reported. The investigation into Burr, which was closed last year without charges, focused on the Republican lawmaker’s stock trades at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Los Angeles Times had sought the release of documents related to the investigation in court. A heavily redacted affidavit released in June provided few insights into the evidence the FBI had used to obtain the warrant.

— Also from Wire: The Justice Department is challenging Trump’s call for a special master to review documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, with a filing that represents the government’s most detailed accounting yet of its attempts to work with Trump’s legal team and staff to recover the materials quietly and why it conducted the court-approved search of his property.

— For years, Rep. Eric Swalwell has been pitching a bill that would set the interest rate on new federal student loans at zero and forgive the interest borrowers currently owe, Times writer Arit John reported. His approach is reflective of his own battle with a loan balance that was once nearly $200,000, and the interest it accrued: He’s paid $28,177 in interest over the last 10 years. Congress has not passed a comprehensive reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965, the landmark law that covers education and financial aid, since 2008. As a stand-alone bill, Swalwell’s No Student Loan Interest Act has just seven co-sponsors.

— Two-thirds of Biden’s nominees to federal courts have been people of color; 70% are women and 8% identify as LGBTQ, Times writer David G. Savage reported. His first nomination to the Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, is the first Black woman to serve there. But when it comes to Latinos, Biden’s record in expanding the diversity of the U.S. judicial system is falling well short of the community’s size and growth, advocacy groups say.

— Biden traveled to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to address the issue of crime. Eli Stokols writes that two years after Republicans blamed Democratic candidates for activists’ calls to “defund the police,” Biden is working to flip the script and convince voters that his is the party of law and order.

The view from California

— In the two months since the Supreme Court’s ruling overturned Roe vs. Wade, stripping away constitutional protections for abortion, three California Republicans who were once boisterously anti-abortion have been noticeably quiet on the issue, Times writer Jasper Goodman reported. Nationally, Republican candidates in tight races have appeared on the defensive, releasing ads downplaying their anti-abortion stances. Instead of celebrating the monumental reversal of Roe vs. Wade, the GOP is trying to turn the focus elsewhere, even as Democrats aim to keep the spotlight fixed on the change.

— Days after they reached a rare deal between affordable housing advocates and labor unions, California lawmakers on Monday approved two significant bills that would guarantee livable wages on projects to convert underutilized commercial buildings into housing, Times writer Hannah Wiley reported. Senate Bill 6 and Assembly Bill 2011 represent a potentially major shift in the Capitol, where agreements between the state’s powerful labor organizations and advocates for a more robust housing supply are notoriously difficult to negotiate. Both bills would incentivize and expedite housing construction in commercial corridors traditionally reserved for big-box stores or office buildings close to city services. Advocates hope the measures will help limit sprawl.

— California is one step closer to mandating that children attend kindergarten, a requirement that would come after droves of the state’s youngest students skipped the grade during the COVID-19 pandemic, Times writer Mackenzie Mays reported. A bill approved by the state Senate late Monday night is headed to the governor’s desk and, if signed, would require children to complete a year of kindergarten before entering first grade, beginning in the 2024-25 school year.

The view from the campaign trail

— As parts of rural Nevada plan to count ballots by hand amid misinformation about voting machines, the Nevada secretary of state’s office Friday approved regulations for counties to hand-count votes starting as soon as this fall’s midterm elections, the Associated Press reported. But the revised regulations will no longer apply to the one county that has been at the forefront of the drive to count by hand. That’s because Nye County, in the desert between Las Vegas and Reno, will use a parallel tabulation process alongside its hand count, using the same machines that are typically used to count mail-in ballots.

— After a fiery spring and a relatively quiet summer, Rep. Karen Bass and Rick Caruso will soon enter the final stretch of the Los Angeles mayor’s race: a months-long, all-out sprint to November, Times writer Julia Wick reported. With fewer than 75 days until the November election, polls now show the six-term congresswoman with a double-digit lead over the real estate developer in a head-to-head matchup. It’s a plum position for Bass to be in as the race to lead America’s second-largest city accelerates into its final stretch, though experts say Caruso could still carve a comeback path to victory.

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