Thread by @studentactivism

While I was teaching this afternoon, Chuck Schumer (!) signed on to a Warren call for Biden to cancel $50K in student debt for every borrower in the country. Wow. (And quick thread.)

So this is presented as a Senate resolution, but that's just a way of getting attention. The premise here is that the president has the power under federal law to wipe out student debt. Unilaterally. With a stroke of the pen.

This isn't a call for congressional action, or a proposal to draft a proposal to create a plan. This is "Biden, you could wipe out $50K of student debt for every borrower in the country on January 20. You should do that." And it's cosigned by Chuck Schumer.

And of course because this is an executive action, it's something that Trump could do today. (Or tomorrow. Or yesterday.) They're basically daring him to do it, confident that he won't.

Which raises an extremely big and extremely obvious question to which I don't know the answer: What coordination with the Biden campaign preceded this announcement?

It could be that there was none, of course, though that seems very much not in line with how Warren has been comporting herself since the primaries, and VERY much not like something Schumer would do.

Or it could be they got a green light to make the announcement and introduce the resolution but no commitment from the Biden camp to do it. Which seems plausible, but also deeply weird—and more weird the more you think about it.

So maybe the plan is to get a wave of publicity for this as a Schumer-Warren kumbaya moment, and then ... announce it as a new Biden campaign promise. Which would be wild on multiple levels.

Or maybe they're just going to leave it hanging out there on the assumption that it'll be a question at the first presidential debate, and that Biden's pledge to do it will immediately become the biggest story of the night.

I've honestly got no idea. I don't even have a strong hunch. But wow. This is a whole huge thing, however it shakes out—and would be utterly momentous if it were implemented.

Anyway, the first debate is in twelve days.