Tuesday’s CNN This Morning anticipated the Supreme Court would rule against affirmative action and student loan forgiveness, cases which still were undecided hours later. Unsurprisingly, CNN preemptively decried possible outcomes and advocated for both liberal policies.
When asked to discuss the cases before the Supreme Court, Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic focused on the two cases affecting students, presenting both policies as black and white:
But the two that I'll highlight for us, Poppy and Phil, involve, you know, higher education and affirmative action for starters, whether racial affirmative action policies that have been in place for decades, and that have enhanced campus diversity, and really given black and Hispanic students a leg up, whether they will be ended. A group of conservatives have challenged that.
Biskupic only mentioned the positives of affirmative action, focusing on black and Hispanic students whom the policy favors. She ignored the argument of Asian and white students facing college rejections because they were not a certain skin tone.
She also falsely blamed the lawsuit on conservatives when the Students for Fair Admissions filed both lawsuits, one against Harvard on behalf of Asian Americans and the other against the University of North Carolina on behalf of white and Asian Americans.
Inculpating Chief Justice Roberts for seeking to undo affirmative action, Biskupic asserted he would stagger the country with his ruling. She offered one narrow angle of the case as a holistic analysis:
If I am going to be shocked by anything this term, it's going to be if they do not roll it back because this has been something that Chief Justice John Roberts has been working towards. He has a conservative majority to do it. I anticipate that he will, which will be staggering for the country, as you mentioned. It's been more than 40 years of policies.
Next, Biskupic turned to the student loan forgiveness plan, again presenting it as an open and shut case without any drawbacks:
Then the other one that will really affect students nationwide involves President Biden's planned loan forgiveness program in the wake of COVID. It's a billion-dollar program that Republican states have challenged, saying that only Congress could have done this, not the executive. But that program could affect some, you know, 40 million students, giving them loan reprieve up to about $20,000 apiece.
Biskupic emphasized the $20,000 reprieve for millions of students but not the opportunity cost of the $400-billion-dollar bill. She ignored the tax burden, how such legislation would decentivize students from working to pay off their debt or earning scholarships, and the inflation caused by flooding the economy with easy money.
CNN hand-picked facts to paint rosy pictures of affirmative action and student loan forgiveness. Naturally, they reported the concentrated benefits to paint conservatives as the destroyers of purely advantageous bills and, worse yet, ignored the adverse effects of the bills on most American citizens, sweeping the dispersed costs under the table – a table that may prove too small to hide $400 billion and racial profiling from the Supreme Court.
Flex Seal sponsored CNN's biased coverage.
The Transcript is below, click "expand" to read.
CNN This Morning
6/27/2023
8:46 AM Eastern
[…]
JOAN BISKUPIC: Let me just mention a couple: Two that really will affect students nationwide and higher education. But, along with those, we have North Carolina redistricting case that could change election law nationwide. We have a religion versus gay rights clash brought by a website designer who wants to start a wedding website business but does not want to serve same-sex couples.
But the two that I'll highlight for us, Poppy and Phil, involve, you know, higher education and affirmative action for starters, whether racial affirmative action policies that have been in place for decades, and that have enhanced campus diversity, and really given black and Hispanic students a leg up, whether they will be ended. A group of conservatives have challenged that.
Then the other one that will really affect students nationwide involves President Biden's planned loan forgiveness program in the wake of COVID. It's a billion-dollar program that Republican states have challenged, saying that only Congress could have done this, not the executive. But that program could affect some, you know, 40 million students, giving them loan reprieve up to about $20,000 apiece. So those, those two cases involving higher education probably will be most consequential.
POPPY HARLOW: Joan, on the affirmative action case—
BISKUPIC: Sure.
HARLOW: It appears that this court is ready to reverse where it has stood since, you know, Greta [sic] versus Bollinger in 2003 when the Court said, the majority said, ‘We think there is a compelling state interest in diversity. And that is such a compelling interest that universities can use race as a factor.’ Do you expect, if you are reading the tea leaves from the oral arguments, that all may change this week?
BISKUPIC: I do, Poppy. And if there is -- if I am going to be shocked by anything this term, it's going to be if they do not roll it back because this has been something that Chief Justice John Roberts has been working towards. He has a conservative majority to do it. I anticipate that he will, which will be staggering for the country, as you mentioned. It's been more than 40 years of policies. But, we never say never, and this Court could surprise us, Poppy. We'll see sometime this week.
HARLOW: We will. Joan, thank you very much. We know you will be with us as those decisions come down.
