House Passes NDAA, New Student Loan Relief, Floods In India
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The U. S, has on friday passed the national defense authorization act, but only just, that's right.

The N, D, A, A usually has overwhelming bipartisan support, but this time he passed by margin of two to two, ten, five. And i'm such a fiver. And this is up first from npr news.

The annual world defense bill got caught up in the culture words with house republicans pushing to a men. Pentagon policies on transgender health care.

diversity and abortion will let you know what to expect as the bill advances to the senate.

Also, a new plan to student loans for eight hundred thousand borrowers, ers and IT is separate from the plan the U.

S. Supreme court recently. Next plus will bring you the latest updates on the deadly floods .

in northern india. With this, we've got the new you need to start weekend.

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The national defensive authorization act, the annual defense will also known as the india, defines national security priorities for the gone and .

historical because that bill is deemed ed crucial that has passed with support, but on friday, IT very narrow ly passed the republican controlled house with votes falling along party lines.

The eight hundred and eighty six billion dollar bill became the latest target in culture wars between democrats and republicans, doing in everything from diversity to abortion access.

speaker Kevin barthes said. The bill sends this message to democrats.

stop using taxpayer money to do their own voguish a military cannot defend themselves if you train him and work and .

political correspondents s and David choices suisan, thanks so much for being with this.

He's got thanks for him.

How did this defense bill become while hard .

line conservatives in the house freedom caucus really focus their political muscle in shaping this bill in a way they never have before, very broadly, republicans do take issue with by administration policies that they say make the military too socially progressive. So in this bill, for example, they passed a moment that would roll back existing policies that fund dei programs that diversity, equity and inclusion.

They also added in prohibitions on things like specialized health care for transgender service members. Democrat opposed these, but they also counter that their policies that make the military to attract more diverse workforce and could help struggling recruitment if they're seen as more inclusive. That's the force of the democratic opposition to these amendments. Much of this bill, Scott is important to remember, is very bipartisan. One good example of that, this bill includes a five point two percent payer ise for service members and more childcare and housing assistance for military families.

There is a significant divide in this defense build, though, over access to abortion.

isn't there? Yeah, the bine administration enacted a policy that cover certain costs of service members if they have to travel to receive abortion services. This came in response to the supreme court docs decision when IT overturned robi weight. Since that point, more than a dozen states have enacted near total bans on abortion.

Republicans say that this policy violates a very well established, all known as the high amendment, that says that taxpayer dollars can be used to pay for anyone's abortion, but this bin policy does not actually pay for abortion cost. IT does reimburse for travel expenses, and IT also allows up to three weeks of administrative leave to receive that care. But the republican pass bill would effectively in that policy.

we've been talking about what's what happened in the republican controlled house. Democrats controlled the senate. Can we expect these these fights to resume there?

Well, there hasn't been as much interest among republicans and focusing on these culture world type issues, specifically in a defense spell, Frankly, none of these republican amendments can survive in a democratic controlled senate. Cent majority leader chuck summer says they want to pass their own version of the bill before the August break, and then they're gonna to try to reconcile two competing versions. S of the bill.

It's really hard to say how that can happen unless speaker mccarthy is willing to water down his bill to get more democrats on board, but dripping out these amendments would likely see support collapse among the conservatives that helps write IT. So for now, mccarthy seems ready to fight. One sign of that, he already announced that one of the negotiators he's sending to that table will be far right, conservative georgia .

congresswomen margry telegram, political correct so much you are welcome.

Just two weeks after the supreme court struck down president student loan forgiveness program, some low income borrowers got so much needed relief through a different plan.

On friday, the department of education said IT would be erasing the debts of more than eight hundred thousand borrowers.

It's part of a pledge administration made last year, in part in response to an imperial investigation. And here is corry Turner. Let that investigation and join just corry.

Thanks for being with us. Thanks for me. Got so convinced me that this is somehow not related to the supreme court, right?

I know the timing weird it's weird. It's surprised me too ah and IT is confusing, but no, this has been in the works since April of twenty two. IT has been on a completely separate track.

This relief is also real. IT is happening imminently. Uh IT affects some of the oldest loans and some of the oldest barware in the system, Scott. And that's because, by definition, folks who are gonna get this relief have head loans for at least twenty years. And when were thing here? While we're talking about the court, this move is not gonna be vulnerable to a court chAllenge the way bindon's broader program was and then is because this is essentially the ed department trying to fix years of pretty serious mistakes with the one program IT help .

us understand those mistakes that affected these eight hundred thousand.

sure. What IT all has to do with what was really meant to be the safety net of the federal student month program for loving come barriers. It's a sweet of repayment plans that peg monthly payments to borrowers income.

So folks who don't make very much don't pay very much, they can even qualify for a zero dollar monthly payment. And these income driven repayment plans, they're called ID r plans a have four years, made one really big promise to borrow. And that is, if they make these monthly payments for twenty years, the government would forgive whatever that is left over.

After that, here's the problems, got barriers were spending twenty years or more in the system, but nobody was getting forgiveness. There is this incredible review from bour advocates came out in march of twenty twenty one. IT found that some four million barriers had been in the loan system for at least two decades. Yet just thirty two, that is a three, two. Scott, I gotten long forgiveness through one of these are plans.

Thirty two, how is that possible?

Well, it's possible because these plans didn't have one problem. They had all of the problems. So first, for years when low income barbers would call their loan service and say, help, I can't afford my monthly payment services.

Instead, put millions of hours in the four barrels when they could have put them in these D. R. plants. Forbearance means payments are paused, but interest keeps building and buildings got IT is not good. And then last April twenty twenty two, N, P, R.

Published an investigation that I did around a bunch of leaked ed department documents that showed even more problems and that the department knew about them. So several loan services weren't keeping track of bar our payments. That means even if a barr did reach twenty years and technically qualified for forgiveness, the service didn't know IT.

And then one of the stranger things I found was that the record system that ed and its service use is so bad that when a barrow is transferred from one service to another, which happens a lot, their payment history can get cut off or lost. The ad department called our findings unacceptable. They quickly pledged to do a one time review of millions of borrower accounts. And that, Scott, is basically what we're seeing now, the department giving this retrod active credit to barriers a towards loan forgiveness to the two of thirty nine billion dollars. And there is more to come to.

More to come. how? So yeah, these eight .

hundred thousand powers are just the beginning. This account adjustment, that's what the department calls IT, is going to last into twenty, twenty four. So stay tuned. Um both the cost and the number of barriers helped are both guarantee to grow.

I APP core turn or thanks so much.

You welcome.

More than one hundred people have died in flooding and land slides caused by monsoon rains in india over the past two weeks.

Flooding is been occurring in the northern parts of the country, with large eries of the capital new delhi also underwater.

We have freely reporter sush meter potter, who is based in delhi with us now. Good morning. sushi.

Ta, good morning.

What are you seeing in delhi? What's the situation there?

We are seeing really dramatic scenes here. The other river that goes through delhi has been throwing at record high levels, and IT was about six hundred and eighty feet on wednesday, and that has inundated nearby low lying areas. Uh, thousands of people have been evacuated.

You know, they're been shifted to relief camps set up in the city, and traffic came to a halt in several places. IT is also affected the city's drinking water supply. Uh some important landMarks like the iconic maham gandhi memorial are also waterlog.

There's water around india supreme gold um there's waste reporter in some places there's also the seventeen th century red fort that flooded uh, another red food where the prime minister gives his uh independence day speach every year. And what striking is that originally the yuma were used to flow right by the fort. IT used to feed the mode surrounding the fort, but the river changed course over the years, and now IT seems like the river has recalled imm. Its solution path, and delhi residents are getting a glimpse of of what the fort looked like several centuries ago.

So how interesting would you give us a sense of what's been happening in india over the past two weeks that got the country to this point?

So over the last two weeks, there have been intense spells of rain across northern india, so that an area that spends several states, most of the damage has been in the himym state of himself al tradition, that a mountainous area about three hundred miles north of delhi, key highways there, are damaged due to landslides. Uh, we've seen, again, very dramatic footage of bridges and buildings being swept away in overflowing rivers.

Tens of thousands of tourists were stranded. Its tourist destination. The army has been called there for rescue Operations.

Most deaths i've also occurred in himself al tradition and more heavy rainy forecast across a number of states over the next few days. Coming to delhi. Uh, last weekend, delhi had the third highest amount of rain recorded in a single day in july.

IT was about six inches, according to india's weather department. I didn't rain much last week in delhi, but a damn north of delhi has been releasing water, and that has caused the ema river to overflow. I went there on tuesday.

I took the metro over, uh, a bridge on the ema river, and I could just see this huge expense of Brown, muddy water. And by thursday, the river was flowing at an old time high. H, I started receding on friday, though, and such meeting is IT clear.

Whether this is signal rain and flooding, or is this also the influence of climate change?

So this is monsoon season. Uh june to september is monsoon season in india, so heavy rains are uh common during this a time of the yard but climate change is making intense cycles of rain more frequent and that increasing the likelihood of landslides and flash floods, especially in vulnerable mountains areas like himself to date and um that state has also seen a lot of construction activity in recent years so um after this disaster experts are cautioning that infrastructure development should be mindful of the fragile environment dead and the risks associated with that climate change is also making heat waves more common. So overall extreme mother events are increasing in india because climate change .

that is reported sushi ta patek and delhi. Thank you.

Thank you.

And that's the first president of your life fifteen, twenty, twenty three. I'm Scott Simon .

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