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--:-- Georgia Howe: A teenage volleyball star lost her legs after a repeat criminal out on bond ran her over in St. Louis. Now many are blaming Kim Gardner, the city's soft-on-crime district attorney, for the horrific tragedy. She's lost the trust of the people.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Tuesday, February 28th, and this is Morning Wire. The rankings are antiquated and do not fit with our values. Another prestigious college has pulled out of the U.S. News and World Report rankings, citing a commitment to equity and anti-racism. And can the president forgive nearly half a trillion dollars in student loan debt? The Supreme Court will weigh that case today. No policy taken by unilateral executive action has ever had a higher price tag than this, somewhere north of $400 billion.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. Turn up the heat and visit cinch.com slash offer for details.
--:-- John Bickley: A horrific incident in St. Louis that caused the double leg amputation of a 17-year-old star volleyball player has sparked a movement to oust progressive prosecutor Kim Gardner.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Hey, John. First, tell us more about the circumstances of this really senseless tragedy.
--:-- John Bickley: Sure, Amanda. On February 18th, a 17-year-old volleyball standout from Tennessee named Janae Edmondson was walking with her parents to their family's hotel after the first day of a volleyball tournament in St. Louis. That's when 21-year-old Daniel Riley allegedly blew a yield sign and crashed into another car that struck Janae. Now, Riley, allegedly speeding at the time of the crash, is a suspect in an armed robbery dating back to 2020 who remained free despite violating his bond order. reportedly more than 100 times, and he never had a driver's license. More than 100 times.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Right. Now, the girl's mother said she watched as one of Janae's legs was torn off. The other leg had to be amputated, too, and the teen was placed on a ventilator at a nearby hospital. It's really believed that Janae was only able to survive due to the actions of her father, who's a military veteran. He was somehow able to fashion two belts from others nearby into a tourniquet to help quell the bleeding.
--:-- John Bickley: So tell us about this move from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey against Gardner and about the backlash from others, including Democrats.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Sure. In the wake of the case, Bailey gave Gardner until Thursday of last week to resign. And when she refused and claimed this was all a political stunt, he filed legal action to oust Gardner from office Bailey cited a pattern of Gardner mishandling cases It wasn isolated to this incident with Janae Edmondson That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel back The circuit attorney has failed to prosecute cases that are pending in her jurisdiction. She has a constitutional, statutory, and moral obligation to stay in contact with victims of crime and has failed to do so. Finally, she has neglected her duties by failing to charge new cases referred to her by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. These three behaviors constitute a continued pattern of failure to discharge her duties in office and represent neglect and warrant removal.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And as you said, backlash is not just coming from Republicans. The mayor of St. Louis, a Democrat named Tashara Jones, harshly criticized Gardner over her handling of the case and demanded she take responsibility.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: She needs to do some serious soul searching and whether or not she wants to continue as circuit attorney for the city of St. Louis.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, what has Gardner's response been to all this backlash?
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: She said her office had requested three times that Riley's bond be revoked, sort of pushing the blame onto the judge. She's also characterized the criticism of her as politically and even racially motivated. Because, of course, we want to blame the violent crime of the city of St. Louis on the first African-American elected prosecutor. This is nothing more than a political ploy of the unelected attorney general.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Gardner, who's been in office since 2016, has really embraced the far-left police reform movement and has routinely stressed race during her time as the lead prosecutor. She actually filed a lawsuit in 2020 claiming there was a racist conspiracy by the city's police union and others to oust her from office. The suit was dismissed by an Obama-appointed judge who described the lawsuit as, quote, nothing more than a compilation of personal slights.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Well, we'll certainly be tracking this legal action. In the meantime, let's hope St. Louis makes some changes to better protect innocent people like Janae.
--:-- John Bickley: Amanda, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Amanda Prestigiacomo: Thanks for having me.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo. Coming up, yet another college rejects its ranking on the U.S. News Best Colleges list.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Megan, how big of a deal is it for this school to withdraw from the U.S. News and World Report rankings?
--:-- John Bickley: Well, I think it's a big deal in what it tells us about trends in higher education in general right now. So Colorado College's decision is noteworthy, especially because it has traditionally fared so well in those rankings. And it follows a string of defections at high-ranking specialty programs.
--:-- Megan Basham: So if you're looking at law schools, for example, Stanford, Columbia, Yale, Georgetown Law have all withdrawn from these rankings. And as far as medical schools, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Duke have also left.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, why are these schools rejecting the rankings?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, there can be a range of reasons. To give you one example last year Columbia dropped out of the rankings after one of its own professors questioned the data that they had provided that actually landed them in the number two spot. But one of the more common arguments you seeing among these schools is that the rankings are part of an antiquated system that benefits the privileged. Some school presidents have said the rankings force them to emphasize some metrics or statistics that ultimately don't serve the educational needs and goals of their particular students.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Others have specifically framed the issue in terms of racism. Colorado College President L. Song Richardson put out this video statement on Monday morning addressing her school's decision. The reason that we won't continue to participate in this deeply flawed ranking is because the way in which it measures colleges are antithetical to our values, our vision, and our mission.
--:-- Megan Basham: So let me give you a few examples. U.S. News continues to equate academic excellence and quality with high school rank and standardized test scores. We don't believe in that. And in a press release attached to that video, Richardson hailed the school's commitment to anti-racism as part of its decision. And she said that U.S. News and World Report's ranking system relies on, quoting here, opaque criteria associated with wealth and privilege. And as an example of that, she pointed out that the rankings score schools on how much debt students have taken on to attend. She argued that it has created an incentive for schools to admit more students whose parents can pay for college so that the school's borrowing rate looks better on paper.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, I noticed that she also brought up the fact that Colorado College no longer requires standardized testing for admission.
--:-- Megan Basham: Right, exactly. That's also been a really big part of this push for what the administrators are calling racial equity. So nearly 2,000 bachelor degree granting institutions have made the ACT and SAT tests optional. And that includes all eight of the Ivy League schools. That was originally introduced as a temporary measure related to the pandemic. So it does remain to be seen whether they're going to implement that permanently. But the entire California public university system, so think your UCLA's, your Berkeleys, will no longer consider test scores at all, even if an applicant submits them.
--:-- Georgia Howe: And the argument for that has been that the tests favor students whose families can afford to get them special tutoring specifically for the test or who just generally come from more advantaged backgrounds. But there's a lot of controversy about that because Asian students, for example, tend to perform very well on these tests. So there's been some outcry that dropping them as admissions criteria unfairly penalizes those students.
--:-- Megan Basham: Regardless, though, of whether schools pull out of doing these surveys for the rankings, U.S. News says it is still going to rank the schools. It's just going to have to use publicly available information to do it.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, a lot of things about the academic landscape are changing. Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Megan Basham: Anytime.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- John Bickley: President Biden's initiative to forgive student loan debt will be debated before the Supreme Court today. Since announcing the program, more than 26 million people have applied for forgiveness, and the program is expected to cost $400 billion.
--:-- Giancarlo Canaparo: So both the cases raise the same merits arguments that Biden student loan cancellation program is unlawful But what separates the two cases is the issue of standing And that is a legal doctrine that says if you want to bring a lawsuit, you have to have a real injury that is caused by the other side that the courts can fix.
--:-- John Bickley: I think the state case, which is led by Nebraska and Missouri, they probably have the stronger argument. And what they say is that they operate student loan servicers. These are state entities that collect money from the federal government for servicing student loans. And when student loans are canceled, they're going to lose all of that money, which means that the states are going to lose all of that revenue.
--:-- Giancarlo Canaparo: And in the second case, a person who argues that he was ineligible for loan forgiveness is suing under the theory that he has a procedural injury. Now, that's a colorable argument, but it's less straightforward than the states.
--:-- John Bickley: So in your opinion, did the Biden administration have the authority to forgive student loans under the Constitution?
--:-- Giancarlo Canaparo: No. So here Biden points to an emergency act called the HEROES Act. And this was a bill passed in the aftermath of 9-11, and it targets military personnel deployed overseas. And what it says is that the president has the power during an emergency to waive and modify certain provisions of the federal student loan statutes. But Biden says that he can reinterpret this law to give him the sweeping power to forgive student loans for 95.5 percent of all borrowers in America to the tune of somewhere north of 400 billion dollars.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, there's a couple of problems with this argument. Number one is that the statute says that he can waive and modify. It's not clear that that means cancel all student loans at all. The act has never been interpreted that way. Certainly, Congress didn't intend that the act would be used that way. But it also says that this relief is limited to what are called affected persons. Now, one of the definitions of affected persons says anyone who has been harmed in their ability to repay their student loans with respect to the emergency.
--:-- Giancarlo Canaparo: So Biden has said there is a COVID-19 emergency. Some people have been harmed. The problem is that he hasn't made any effort to tie the loan forgiveness to people who are actually harmed by the pandemic financially. That's going to be a major problem for Biden at the Supreme Court because he just can't prove that the remedy he has picked for giving or canceling student loans for almost everybody is tied to people who have actually suffered harm.
--:-- John Bickley: Which suggests that this is really about delivering a political promise that he's been making since before he was elected and not really about helping people who need it.
--:-- Giancarlo Canaparo: All right. Well, we're going to be following these cases.
--:-- John Bickley: Giancarlo, thanks so much for coming on.
--:-- Giancarlo Canaparo: My pleasure.
--:-- Georgia Howe: That was Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Mies Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Giancarlo Canaparo.
--:-- John Bickley: Other stories we're tracking this week. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is reportedly looking to remove alleged obstacles that prevent minorities from qualifying for police training. Critics say those efforts will remove standards and result in a lower quality police force.
--:-- Georgia Howe: SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher gave a speech at the 2023 SAG Awards Sunday night, urging Hollywood to use its power to end its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The industry's pandemic protocols were initially set to expire January 31st, but will now expire April 1st.
--:-- John Bickley: Well, that's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back this afternoon with more of the news you need to know.
