Biden will warn of ‘disastrous consequences’ if GOP states succeed in blocking student debt relief efforts

President Joe Biden will take on Republican-led efforts to challenge his administration’s plans to extend student debt relief to millions of Americans when he travels to Albuquerque, New Mexico on Thursday, attempting to highlight another policy contrast with the GOP in the closing days of the election.

In an appearance at Central New Mexico Community College, the President will talk about his administration’s efforts to “lower college costs and provide extra breathing room” to student borrowers, a White House official said, while also warning of “disastrous consequences for middle-class American families if Republican officials succeed in their plan to rob tens of millions of borrowers of their opportunity to receive debt relief.”

Republicans have argued the plan is too costly. The debate comes as voters heading to the polls say their top concern is the economy.

The President’s student loan forgiveness remarks will come ahead of his appearance at a campaign rally to help boost New Mexican Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is locked in a tough re-election fight against Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Ronchetti in a state the Biden won by double digits.

More on Biden’s student loan forgiveness program: Nearly 26 million people have submitted their information to the Department of Education to be considered for loan forgiveness, according to the White House, with 16 million applications expected to be approved by the end of the week. But the President’s student loan forgiveness program remains tied up in the courts, creating uncertainty over when or if that relief will ultimately be extended to applicants. 

A federal appeals court put a temporary hold on the student loan forgiveness program last month, pausing its implementation while the court considers a challenge brought by six Republican-led states. The Biden administration has argued it should be able to carry out its policy while the appeal plays out.

The Biden administration is also facing lawsuits from Arizona’s GOP Attorney General Mark Brnovich, and conservative groups such as the Job Creators Network Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The President has expressed confidence his plan will be upheld by the courts, predicting student loan borrowers will begin receiving relief within weeks.

The speech in New Mexico follows a similar event last month when the President traveled to Delaware State University, one of the country’s historically Black colleges and universities, to promote his loan forgiveness plan as officials have hoped the issue will motivate young voters heading into the midterm elections.

Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Ohio, aired a new ad Thursday with an explicit appeal to independents and disaffected Republicans, highlighting his 2016 challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and adapting Donald Trump’s “America First” mantra. 

He continues, “Let’s turn the page on this era of stupidity, and reject the extremism, and get back to being Americans first.” 

Ryan has made a determined effort to appeal to voters outside the Democratic base in the race against J.D. Vance in Ohio, a state that has trended increasingly red in recent election cycles. Ryan’s campaign has run dozens of ads showcasing his independence and examples where he’s bucked his party. 

Republicans have been compelled to respond to Ryan’s messaging tactics. Vance launched an ad last month, saying Ryan “pretends he’s a moderate, but votes 100% with Biden [and] Pelosi.” 

And Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC which has spent $28 million in the race, also aired an ad featuring soundbites of Ryan saying “I love Nancy Pelosi” in an interview, charging that he’s “devoted to the liberal agenda.” 

Ad spending in this race: Ohio’s US Senate race has drawn over $66 million in ad spending since Labor Day. While polls show Ryan has kept the contest close, national Democrats have been reluctant to commit resources to the race, and Democrats have been outspent $37.9 million to $28.1 million in that stretch. 

President Joe Biden’s failure – whether it is all his fault or not – to quell inflation and the worries of a nation already demoralized by a once-in-a-century pandemic created the electoral conditions that look likely to restore Trumpism to power, in the form of a volatile, extreme GOP majority in the House of Representatives at least, with the Senate still on a knife’s edge.

Throughout history, inflation has often been a pernicious political force that breeds desperation in an electorate and seeds extremism as a potential response. That’s why politicians fear it so acutely and why it is so curious that the Biden White House initially didn’t take the surge of prices that seriously, repeatedly insisting that this was a “transitory” problem caused by Covid-19.

Elections should be about more than one thing. Voters can walk and chew gum at the same time. Biden’s argument is implicitly that while inflation will fall, and economic damage can be repaired, the current election – and its legions of anti-democratic Republican candidates – could cause political wreckage that is beyond mending.

“This year, I hope you’ll make the future of our democracy an important part of your decision to vote, and how you vote,” he said. “Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose?” he added, at the end of a campaign in which several GOP nominees have not guaranteed they would accept voters’ will.

But in the heartlands of Pennsylvania, the suburbs of Arizona and cities everywhere, the gut check issue is still about feeding a family. This is an election more about the cost of a cart full of groceries or the price of a gallon of gasoline than America’s founding truths.

As Scottsdale, Arizona, retiree Patricia Strong told CNN’s Tami Luhby: “The price of everything was better during Trump,” adding, “We were looking forward to retirement because everything was good.”

What polling shows: In a new CNN/SSRS survey published on Wednesday, for instance, 51% of Americans said inflation and the economy was most driving their vote in the midterms. Abortion – the issue Democrats hoped would save them next Tuesday after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer – was the only other concern in double figures, polling at 15% of likely voters. And voting rights and election integrity – the focus of the president’s speech on Wednesday night – polled at only 9%.

The fight for control of the US Senate could come down to Georgia — again.

For the second time in less than two years, the Peach State, which elected two Democratic senators in the last election cycle, is home to a contest that has gripped both national parties and potentially holds the key to the fate of President Biden’s agenda.

This time around, though, at least one key characteristic of the race has been reversed: Democrat Raphael Warnock has gone from challenger to incumbent, trying to fend off Republican nominee Herschel Walker. The former football great, recruited and endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has run an uneven campaign and spent the past month beset by controversy, but is still running neck-and-neck with Warnock with early voting in high gear and Election Day nearing.

A Warnock victory would likely foreclose Republicans’ path to a majority in the Senate, which is currently split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a decisive vote. That reality, coupled with headwinds — in the form of economic angst and Biden’s low approval ratings — familiar to Democrats across the country, has helped coalesce Republicans behind Walker. 

The most recent polling of the race, from the New York Times and Siena College, showed no clear leader, with 49% of likely voters supporting Warnock to the 46% backing Walker — a difference well within the survey’s margin of error. Another poll, from Fox News at the end of October, also found a remarkably close contest, with Warnock at 44% and Walker at 43%. If neither candidate notches a majority of the vote, the race would be decided in a Dec. 6 runoff.

Walker, whose candidacy has endured a stream of gaffes on policy, has more recently been contended with allegations from two women who say he had pressured them to have abortions. Warnock, meanwhile, initially sought to steer clear of directly addressing the controversy. But late last month, he launched a television ad titled “Hypocrite.”

“For you, Herschel Walker wants to ban abortion,” says a narrator, before playing comments the Republican made supporting no exceptions to a national abortion ban. “But for himself,” the narrator then asks before playing news reports about the allegations.

To say that Donald Trump is returning to the campaign trail would suggest he’s ever gone away.

But starting Thursday night, the former president is back in a new way – four rallies in five days – for his sprint to Election Day, putting himself at the forefront of the GOP fight for control of Congress.

The rallies in Iowa, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio serve another purpose as well – to buttress Trump’s increasingly likely 2024 presidential campaign.

His final push to boost Republican candidates whose races could determine control of the US Senate begins Thursday in Sioux City, Iowa, a state he won comfortably in 2016 and 2020 but where Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley is looking for a last-minute boost from Trump’s base after a Des Moines Register poll last month found the seven-term senator in a far closer contest than expected against Democrat Mike Franken. Two people familiar with the matter said the Iowa Republican asked Trump to make a stop in his state.

But the former president’s appearance there, along with the other stops on his final midterm blitz, is also motivated by his desire to return to the White House, said multiple sources close to him. Trump, who lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016, hasn’t returned to Iowa in more than a year, and some Republicans suggest his absence has opened the door for other presidential prospects, some of whom have already made multiple trips to the first-in-the-nation state

“In this climate, there is zero chance Chuck Grassley is truly in trouble. There’s a major opening [in the Iowa caucuses], so this is a 2024 thing,” said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg.

Yet several top Republicans in Iowa were caught off guard by the former president’s decision to choose Sioux City for a rally on Thursday night as Gov. Kim Reynolds was already scheduled to be on the opposite end of the state for a bus tour, officials said. When Trump decided to parachute in days before the election, she and other candidates adjusted their plans to join him for the first stop of his pre-election rallies.

One Trump adviser said the former president wants his appearance in Iowa “to be a show of force for 2024,” adding that Trump’s Sunday night rally in Miami should be viewed through the same lens.

But others insist that Trump’s primary focus over the next five days is to carry embattled Republicans to victory, acknowledging that his own political future will be inextricably linked to Tuesday’s outcome.

When Hillary Clinton takes the stage on Thursday in New York City to boost Democrats in her deep blue adopted home, it will be an unfamiliar scene for someone who was the party’s presidential standard bearer just six years ago.

Clinton, along with former President Bill Clinton, have been far less visible in campaign rallies in recent years. Her event with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will be the first candidate-specific rally she will headline this year. She will join Hochul, Vice President Kamala Harris and New York Attorney General Letitia James for an event at Barnard College that, organizers say, will bring together the top female political figures in the state and nationally to energize women voters to turn out and elect Hochul to her first full term. Hochul, New York’s first female governor, was elevated to the top position in August 2021 following former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation amid sexual harassment scandals.

Clinton, according to a spokesperson, will make the case for Democrats’ record on the economy and urge unconvinced voters to consider the alternative, arguing they must take Republican candidates — some of whom have flirted with the idea of altering Social Security and Medicare — at their word.

Democrats currently control every major state and citywide office and legislative body. No Republican has won statewide office in New York since former Gov. George Pataki secured a third term in 2002. But Hochul, who faces many of the same headwinds beating down Democrats across the country, now finds herself in a surprisingly competitive race with Zeldin, a Trump acolyte, who has hammered her on inflation, crime and a controversial bail reform law passed in 2019 — more than two years before she became governor.

Republican state Assemblyman Mike Lawler, who is running against Maloney in the 17th Congressional District and is allied with Zeldin, acknowledged Hochul was dealt a bad hand — her three Democratic predecessors all left office in disgrace — but argued she has leaned too hard into a messaging around “abortion and Trump”

The race for the House is tilting strongly toward the GOP, but what’s keeping this cycle interesting is the unpredictability of the Senate map. Here are the seats that could flip:

1. Pennsylvania: The race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey represents Democrats’ best pickup opportunity. President Joe Biden narrowly won the commonwealth in 2020, after former President Donald Trump had carried it in 2016, making it a pivotal battleground for the midterms and the next presidential contest. The tight Senate race is between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor.

2. Nevada: Incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s task to win over voters dissatisfied with Biden is complicated with a transient population in a state that was hit hard by the pandemic and where average gas prices remain near $5 a gallon. Cortez Masto and her GOP challenger Adam Laxalt were tied at 47% in a the New York Times/Siena poll — a similar finding to a recent CBS poll and CNN polling from early October, which showed no clear leader. 

3. Georgia: No race has seen more drama in the last month than Georgia, where Trump’s hand-picked candidate, Herschel Walker, is facing allegations from two women that he urged them to get abortions, which he has denied. But the accusations, which have played into the Democratic narrative about the retired football star being a hypocrite, don’t seem to have done much damage to his standing in the race against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who’s seeking a full six-year term. After at first steering clear of the allegations, Warnock used them in a recent ad against his opponent.

4. Wisconsin: As the only Republican senator running for reelection in a state Biden won in 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson is the chamber’s most vulnerable GOP incumbent. A Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday showed no clear leader in the race between Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes — similar to a CNN survey from mid-October — which is comparable to the close governor’s race. Biden only carried Wisconsin by less than half a point in 2020, so it’s still a tough state.

5. Arizona: The race between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters has also narrowed. A Fox News poll released Tuesday shows no clear leader with Masters picking up support from Republicans. But Kelly, who won a 2020 special election and is running for a full six-year term, has proved a much more resilient Democrat to tarnish than some of the GOP’s other targets. That has kept this race — in a purple state Biden won by less than half a point — more competitive for Democrats.

6. North Carolina: The race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr looks closer than many observers had expected at the beginning of the cycle. Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Rep. Ted Budd were tied among registered voters in a late October Marist poll. Budd, a third-term congressman, had a small edge among definite voters. North Carolina is accustomed to close elections — Trump only won it by about 1 point in 2020. But Democrats haven’t won a Senate race here since 2008, the last time the state went blue at the presidential level.

7. New Hampshire: This race’s position on the rankings continues to be one of the biggest surprises of the 2022 cycle. Retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc is taking on first-term Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan after making it through the September primary.

8. Ohio: The race for retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman’s seat wasn’t supposed to be competitive. Trump won the state by 8 points and, with the exception of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s success, it’s been trending red over the past decade. Given those fundamentals and the national mood, Republicans still very much have the edge here, which is why it’s in the second half of this list. But there’s no denying that Trump’s hand-picked Republican candidate, J.D. Vance, struggled to raise money and consolidate GOP support after a divisive primary. Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan had the airwaves mostly to himself over the summer, and his vast fundraising advantage has allowed him to run plenty of ads in which he says he has sided with Trump on trade and takes on his own party. The candidates were essentially tied in a late October Marist survey.

9. Florida: The Sunshine State has ranked lower on the list of seats most likely to flip because Republican Sen. Marco Rubio — although he’s been out-raised by a strong challenger in Democratic Rep. Val Demings — is a two-term incumbent who seems to be doing everything he needs to do to win in this environment. 

10. Colorado: Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet is used to close races; he won his last reelection in 2016 by just 6 points against a GOP challenger whom the national party had abandoned. He’s facing a much more formidable opponent this time in businessman Joe O’Dea, who has expressed support for abortion in the early stages of pregnancy and has criticized Trump. Biden’s smaller margin in Colorado — he won Washington by 19 points — makes it more likely to flip if the national environment gives Republicans a chance to pick up a seat in a state seen as safely blue.

President Joe Biden heads out west on Thursday to stump for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in what is poised to be one of his final western campaign stops of the midterms, aimed at boosting a key ally locked in one of the marquee gubernatorial races of the cycle.

The President’s visit will underscore the high political stakes for Democrats as they look to keep as many governor’s mansions in their control, in a midterm election that has largely focused on the question of whether Biden’s party will be able to keep control of Congress – and if not, how much it might be able to minimize its losses.

It marks the third time in as many weeks that the President has dropped into typically Democratic territory where his party’s gubernatorial nominees are facing tough races.

Last week, the president touted manufacturing investments in Syracuse, New York, alongside Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is in a tighter-than-expected reelection race against Republican US Rep. Lee Zeldin. Hochul will get an additional boost Thursday when she appears with Vice President Kamala Harris and former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton at a get-out-the-vote event in New York City.

In early October, Biden made his way to Portland, Oregon, where his party’s gubernatorial nominee – Tina Kotek – hopes to retain Democratic control in a close three-way fight for the governor’s seat

While in New Mexico, the President is also set to deliver a speech on student debt relief, an issue Democratic officials have hoped will energize young voters heading into the midterm elections.

And while the political rally that Biden will headline on Thursday will most prominently feature Lujan Grisham, there are also competitive House races in New Mexico that officials hope will stand to benefit significantly from a high-profile visit from the President.

Former President Barack Obama rallied voters in Phoenix late Wednesday night, urging Arizona voters to reject the Trump-endorsed slate of election deniers at the top of the ticket, including GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, Senate nominee Blake Masters and Secretary of State nominee Mark Finchem. All three won their primaries after echoing former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. 

“If you do need one more reason to vote – consider the fact that our democracy is on the ballot and nowhere is that clearer than here in Arizona,” Obama said. “If you’ve got an election denier serving as your governor, as your senator, and your secretary of state, as your attorney general, then democracy as we know it may not survive in Arizona. That’s not an exaggeration. That is a fact.” 

The former President lamented the current state of the Republican Party in Arizona, which is controlled by Trump allies, and the repeated lies that he has heard from the GOP candidates this cycle about the 2020 election.

“Right now, you’ve got Republicans right here in this state. They’ve nominated a whole cast of characters who at least say – I don’t know if they really believe it – but they have decided it’s advantageous for them to just assert that Donald Trump won the last election, and now they want control over the next election,” Obama said. “And their argument has no basis in reality. You had other Republicans conduct audits, and look and say, ‘No, I’m sorry, you’re wrong’ [about the 2020 presidential election tallies]. And it doesn’t matter. Then they got threats. They got drummed out of the party.”