Some time ago, President Biden announced an executive order aimed at helping students with college debt, promising $10,000 in debt relief from federal student loans for most and $20,000 in debt relief from the poorest recipients who qualified for Pell grants. 

It was "Pandering 101" and really aimed at getting college students to vote Democrat ahead of the midterms. 

What else was it?  Well, it worked, and the young voted for Uncle Joe and his loan-forgiving ideas. 

They probably saved the U.S. Senate for the Democrats and cut losses in the House.

It was a brilliant political move, reminiscent of President Obama's DACA executive order in the summer of 2012.  It energized the intended voters, and a judge stopped it eventually.

My guess is that both presidents knew that a judge would stop it, but they got the desired electoral results from it.

What amazed me is that so many university students and recent graduates fell for this in 2022.  Don't they teach the U.S. Constitution anymore in school, or is that in the section of documents written by dead white guys?  I wasn't the world's smartest guy on constitutional law, but I would have laughed at the suggestion that a president could forgive a loan.  Well, that was then, and this is now. Too many students today actually believed it, and that scares the heck out of me.  What else do these people believe?

Last week, reality knocked on the door:

Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ruled that Biden's student debt relief program is "an unconstitutional exercise of Congress's legislative power and must be vacated." He permanently prohibited the Education Department from carrying out the program. Any appeal by the Department would take the case to the 5th Circuit in New Orleans, where the Department is likely to face defeat.

In a separate case three days later, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis issued a nationwide injunction temporarily barring the said debt relief program. CNBC reported that the ruling came after six states argued in a lawsuit that the program threatens their future tax revenues and circumvents congressional authority.

Let me be cynical and say that the Biden White House knew that this executive order would not survive.  But the real story here is that young voters believed it and fell for it 100%.  What are we teaching these young people at some of these schools?  It can't be anything worthwhile or useful if they can be played with in this fashion.

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Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art / The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick, via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0, Universal Public Domain Dedication.