Nebraska

Nebraska attorney general Mike Hilgers expressed optimism about the outcome of a Supreme Court case challenging President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness program during a Tuesday interview with The Spectator. Hilgers said following oral arguments on Tuesday morning that the justices asked "very positive" questions about the White House's authority to institute the program, which would offer up to $20,000 in loan forgiveness to individual borrowers making less than $125,000 a year or $250,000 a year for households. "To some degree it's always a little bit of reading the tea leaves, but I thought I the questions the justices asked were very positive.

The 2022 midterm elections are less than a month away. And while the focus will be on the winners and losers, perhaps the more important story will be about the lawmakers who dodged the ballot entirely. Already this cycle, we’ve seen a remarkable number of retirements. Republican Senators Roy Blunt (Missouri), Rob Portman (Ohio), Richard Burr (North Carolina), and Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) have all announced they will not seek reelection. Those familiar with the Senate will recognize these as some of its more bipartisan members. Earlier this month, another senator joined them: Ben Sasse from Nebraska. Yet his move is more provocative: he has four years left in his six-year term.

In the summer before an election year, a Midwestern Republican announcing he’s running for reelection to the Senate shouldn’t be particularly newsworthy. But then there’s Nebraska senator Ben Sasse. A sample Twitter reaction to his reelection announcement this week: ‘In the annals of absolute uselessness, whole chapters will be devoted to the political career of Ben Sasse.’ Indeed, the Harvard-educated Sasse had become a sort of folk hero for the Acela corridor. He was the one member of the Senate who wouldn’t just respond to your tweets, he’d clap back. He wrote books that weren’t about politics.