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On today's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Police say a 6th-grader was killed and 5 people were injured in an Iowa school shooting. USA TODAY Congress and Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin looks at the importance of democracy guardrails. Bill Clinton and Mar-a-Lago are mentioned in the latest batch of released Jeffrey Epstein documents. USA TODAY Breaking News and Education Reporter Zach Schermele explains the challenges and benefits of erasing student loan debt through bankruptcy court. The American Kennel Club welcomes its 201st dog breed.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, January 5th, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today there's been another school shooting in America, plus we look at the guardrails of democracy, and just how possible is it these days to erase student loans through bankruptcy court.

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A gunman opened fire at a high school in Perry, Iowa yesterday, killing a sixth grader and injuring five others. Officials said the gunman was also dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said the shooting was reported in the morning shortly before classes were set to begin. Deputies were on the scene within seven minutes. Officials said the five injured included four students and an administrator, and that one person was in critical condition but expected to survive. The suspect has been identified as a 17-year-old student at the school and was armed with a shotgun and a handgun. According to federal data out last year, the number of deadly school shootings for the 2021 to 2022 school year hit a record high for the second year in a row.

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As he seeks a second term in office, former President Donald Trump has indicated that he plans to expand the power of the presidency. He said he may use the Justice Department to go after political adversaries, has mentioned military force to stop demonstrations, and said he would be a dictator for one day if reelected in 2024. Those comments are worrying many, but as USA Today Congress and Campaigns Reporter Riley Beggin and I discussed, there are still a number of democracy guardrails in place.

Riley, thanks for hopping back on the show.

Riley Beggin:

Yeah, of course.

Taylor Wilson:

What do experts in authoritarianism say about some of these comments?

Riley Beggin:

I think it's certainly raised some alarms for them. Before we get into it, I want to note that Trump is not the first president to stretch the bounds of executive power. Of course, in American history, overall FDR served multiple terms and then they created that rule to sort of bound him in. But even in modern times, there are presidents that have been pushing the bounds of executive power, but they have said this is different. Trump is straightforwardly saying that he would like to grab more power than is traditional in the three-party system. They've said, if someone tells you something, listen to them.

Taylor Wilson:

You wrote about some of these guardrails for democracy. I want to start with the courts. How can the courts act as a kind of guardrail here?

Riley Beggin:

You're really already seeing that play out with some of the criminal indictments that he is working through. But when we're talking about policies, the courts are one of the backstops to ensure that any policies that are put in place by any presidential administration adhere to the constitution. So the experts that we spoke to had, I think, a relatively sunny outlook actually for this. Trump made significant changes to the court system when he was president in the first term, including appointing more than 200 federal judges, many in the higher ranks. He appointed 54 judges to the appeals court and three supreme court justices, which have resulted in a conservative super majority that you're seeing right now. But even with all of that in mind, the experts that we spoke to said that they still have a reasonable amount of certainty that the folks that are working in the judicial system will likely adhere to the constitutional guardrails and enforce them.

Taylor Wilson:

Of course, Congress is also a major check on executive power. Can you talk through its role as a counterbalance?

Riley Beggin:

The executive branch, even before Trump, has been taking more power compared to Congress from sort of the early days of the republic. The way that experts spoke about Congress right now is Congress does have a lot of power to check the executive branch, but it really hinges on the makeup of Congress and on members of his own party standing up to him if there are breaches of traditional democratic powers. The experts we spoke to had sort of mixed feelings about this that really depends on the results of the 2024 election. Of course, voters are not just choosing a president, they're choosing Congress as well. But they said Trump really has solidified a lot of power within the Republican Party and has shown a willingness to retaliate and use sort of the force of his grassroots against members of this one party who go against him. So that is a guardrail that is potentially weaker than one might expect.

Taylor Wilson:

Riley, you write about the so-called power ministries as another counterweight. What are some of these and how can they act as a democratic guardrail?

Riley Beggin:

One scholar I spoke to called these different agencies the power ministries. That's the Justice Department, the military, the intelligence community, these bodies that are typically relatively independent, even though the president is the commander in chief of course. These different agencies have a lot of institutional knowledge and they have people within themselves that pledge to serve the constitution and have a lot of military and physical might to enforce or go against a president's directives. The experts that we spoke to said this is probably one of the things that our democracy hinges on the most, is the members of these communities' willingness to say no if asked to do something unconstitutional. At the end of the last term, you saw a lot of members of the Justice Department do so. That is part of one of the reasons that Trump allies are really looking to replace those bureaucrats with people that are loyalists to Trump, but because they have that power, that is going to be an interesting one to watch.

Taylor Wilson:

And finally, elections are supposed to be one of the major democratic tools for the country. How can the electoral system push back against authoritarianism?

Riley Beggin:

The folks that we spoke to in the end said people have the power right now to decide what kind of leader they want. Trump and Biden are straightforwardly saying what they would do if they're in office. And obviously Trump is immensely popular and the public has an opportunity to look at what might happen in a second term, decide what would serve them and use the power of their vote.

Taylor Wilson:

Riley Beggin, great insight. Thanks so much.

Riley Beggin:

Of course. Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

More documents were unsealed yesterday from a lawsuit tied to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Documents mentioned prominent people, including former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew, and they include a reference to a time around 2000 when the plaintiff in the case, Virginia Giuffre, said she first met Epstein's former girlfriend and convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, while working at former President Donald Trump's private Mar-a-Lago Club. Epstein was linked to celebrities, politicians, and billionaires. He died by suicide in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Giuffre has claimed she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell to various men, including Prince Andrew, who settled a lawsuit with her in 2022, though he did not admit wrongdoing. Mentions of Clinton and Trump in the documents did not contain allegations of illegal activity against either former president.

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For years, erasing student loans through bankruptcy court has been a long and often unsuccessful process. President Joe Biden promised to make it easier, but has that actually happened? I spoke with USA Today Breaking News and Education Reporter Zach Schermele for more.

Zach, thanks for hopping on The Excerpt today.

Zach Schermele:

Thanks so much for having me, Taylor.

Taylor Wilson:

Zach, why have student loan discharges been so unsuccessful in bankruptcy court historically?

Zach Schermele:

Let's take a step back first and look at regular bankruptcy. So people typically file for bankruptcy when they're in a dire financial situation and can't pay their debts, right? It's a legal proceeding that can be costly and affect credit scores and people's abilities to get approved for loans, but it also helps people get a fresh start by liquidating their assets and creating a repayment plan, according to the federal government. In the year ending in June 2023, about 400,000 people filed for bankruptcy, according to the Feds.

Now, a good chunk of those people typically also have student loan debt, and many of them want their student debts forgiven too, but they have to go through a whole new process to do that. USA Today's reporting on this subject started back in 2022 with our colleague Bart Jansen, who covers the Justice Department. He reported at the time that only about one in 1,000 student loan discharges were historically successful in bankruptcy court. And a lot of it has to do with a higher legal standard called undue hardship that judges have to decide borrowers meet or not. There is also the fact that not all of this happens in one big office. Federal lawyers around the country handle each case for federally held loans individually, and the outcome many times depends on which assistant US attorney is handling your case.

Taylor Wilson:

And this has been a focus for the Biden administration. What did President Joe Biden promise when it comes to making student loan forgiveness in bankruptcy court easier? And, Zach, what have we seen since then?

Zach Schermele:

Well, despite being a supporter during his time in Congress of making student loan discharges through bankruptcy harder, Biden did pledge during his 2020 campaign for president to "end the absurd rules that make it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy." In November of 2022, the Justice Department made good on that promise, releasing new guidance for federal lawyers meant to streamline the process and theoretically lead to more discharges. Then a year later, the department said roughly 630 cases had been filed in 10 months using the new system, and that "the vast majority of those borrowers had received full or partial discharges."

Taylor Wilson:

In speaking with folks around the country, Zach, what do you hear from those who have gone through this process?

Zach Schermele:

For this story, we reviewed dozens of recent discharge cases and got in touch with more than a dozen borrowers, lawyers, and student loan experts, and many of them acknowledged the system has indeed improved. But the process hasn't been a total overhaul and a lot also said that whether a bankrupt borrower can actually have their student loans discharged still depends a lot on which federal lawyer is assigned to the case and in which jurisdiction their case is filed. The timeline in many places varies significantly as well. As one student loan researcher told us, "I do think the process is better than it was before," but in her words, that was a very low bar.

Taylor Wilson:

And going forward, what's the future look like for this bankruptcy strategy and also student loan forgiveness kind of writ large?

Zach Schermele:

Yeah, in a statement the Justice Department acknowledged the recent frustrations and said the agency along with the Education Department remains committed to improving the ability to address student loans via bankruptcy. All of this, Taylor, is coming in the context of the Education Department holding a series of talks with a panel of borrowers, lawyers, and others trying to brainstorm how it can come up with next steps for student loan relief after the Supreme Court struck down Biden's original broad forgiveness plan in June of last year. And as the department mulls the possibility of potentially another meeting to take some more recommendations, borrowers still can expect a full proposal by May of this year at the earliest.

Taylor Wilson:

Zach Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA Today. Fascinating insight here. Thanks for the time, Zach.

Zach Schermele:

Thanks so much, Taylor.

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Taylor Wilson:

A new dog breed is being recognized by the American Kennel Club. The the Lancashire Heeler is the 201st breed recognized by the organization, and it became eligible to start competing on January 1st as the newest member of the Herding Group. Lancashire Heelers are small and usually weigh 9 to 17 pounds with a dense waterproof coat. And the breed has been official across the pond for decades, earning full recognition from the UK Kennel Club in 1981.

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And you made it folks. The first work week of 2024 is in the books for many. Thanks for sticking with us throughout. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you use a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.