Biden’s Student Debt Forgiveness Remains Blocked

“Even as Republicans are increasingly optimistic that they’ll keep control of the House, some conservatives remain wary of Mike Johnson — and they’re discussing how to telegraph their concerns in next week’s secret leadership ballot,” Politico reports. “With nearly two dozen races still outstanding, Johnson seems close to a major victory: Holding the tiny GOP majority, after a campaign season where he tied himself closely to Donald Trump and campaigned heavily for his at-risk members.

Seth Masket: “When Democrats lose a big election, they’re convinced they’ve been doing everything wrong and want to radically remake their party, their nomination systems, and even their approach to politics. When Republicans lose (and acknowledge that loss), they generally regard it as an aberration; with a bit more money allocated a bit better, they could probably have won, and so there’s no need to rethink everything.” “Relatedly, Democrats are convinced that they lose when they nominate someone who is too ideologically extreme and makes working class whites uncomfortable, and when they pivot toward the center they tend to win.

Donald Trump’s win on Tuesday has sent private prison company stocks soaring as investors anticipate that the president-elect’s promises of mass deportation will increase the need for immigration detention. Stocks for GEO Group and CoreCivic, the nation’s largest private prison operators, increased 42 percent and 29 percent respectively on Wednesday. Financial news site Sherwood News concluded that GEO Group “was the single biggest winner in the US stock market — among companies of any size.” “The GEO Group was built for this unique moment,” said GEO Group founder and executive chairman George Zoley on an earnings call on Thursday.

Nicole Chase was a young mom with a six-year-old daughter to support when she was sexually assaulted by her boss while working at a Canton, Connecticut restaurant. When she decided to report the attack, she knew she was risking a lot—her livelihood, for one, but also the reputation she’d build in her small, close-knit town. jQuery(document).ready(function(){prx("https:\/\/play.prx.org\/e?uf=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.revealradio.org%2Frevealpodcast&ge=prx_149_414300dc-f2f2-476c-b0da-c3e333fc44c6", "prx-0", "shortcode")});Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. What happened next went beyond even her worst fears.

Disabled and chronically ill voters: What was your experience casting a ballot in person, either this week or in early voting? Civil and voting rights protections like the Voting Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act are supposed to protect disabled people’s right to vote in person, which means having the right accommodations: wheelchair-accessible entrances; lower voting booths; and chairs for people who have trouble standing for long periods.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and backers of Ballot Issue 2R, a sales tax increase aimed at fueling affordable housing investments and programs, conceded the measure’s narrow defeat early Saturday morning. While it made up ground in later returns after Tuesday’s election, the measure was rejected on 51% of city ballots counted so far, according to the latest results released by the Denver Elections Division on Friday evening. That’s a slight improvement over preliminary results released Tuesday, when the measure had a rejection rate of 52.2%.