$39 Billion Student Debt Relief Plan, US Military Emails Mistakenly Sent to Mali, $15M Liquor Store Settlement, Controversial House Defense Bill, Gilgo Beach Suspect Charged, and More.
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You are listening to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back. Welcome back. Happy Tuesday. I have three deep dives for you today and six notable mentions. We're going to start talking about that $39 billion student debt relief program that President Biden just announced. The second deep dive will be about the House passing the National Defense Authorization Act.

what it means, why it's far off from becoming a law, but at the same time, why it's causing some controversy. The third deep dive will be about Rex Heuermann, that man that was just arrested in connection with the Gilgo Beach killings. We're going to talk a little bit about him, the evidence that led investigators to him, and the charges that he is facing. And then, of course, we will finish with those notable mentions.

Please don't forget to review my show if you have already. Thank you so, so much. Your reviews mean a lot, and I love reading them as they come through. If you haven't, you can leave a review on whatever platform you listen. Apple Podcasts actually lets you write a review, whereas on Spotify, you just rate it based on the stars. But nonetheless, a review is always appreciated. Another way that you can help me is by sharing my show with your friends, your family, your colleagues.

Whoever it might be that you think will also appreciate nonpartisan news or just simply needs nonpartisan news in their life. Word of mouth is really everything to us podcasters, so just know that it is very appreciated. Before we get into the stories, let me just remind you that yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. ♪

On Friday, President Biden announced a new $39 billion student debt relief program. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about what it is, who qualifies, and what modifications were actually made to allow for this forgiveness. So there are two components to this plan. The first is a forgiveness component, and the second is the SAVE plan, which is a new income-driven repayment plan. But let's first focus on the forgiveness component. Under

Under the Higher Education Act and Department of Education regulations, borrowers enrolled in income-driven repayment plans are eligible for relief after making either 240 monthly payments or 300 monthly payments. This is equivalent to about 20 or 25 years, respectively.

Whether a borrower qualifies for forgiveness after either 240 monthly payments or 300 monthly payments depends on a few different factors. So when the loan was taken out, the type of loan that was taken out, and the type of income-driven repayment plan that the borrower was on.

When I say income-driven repayment plan, it's a specific type of plan. Not all borrowers are enrolled in income-driven repayment plans, but they really set your monthly loan payment at a certain amount depending on your income. There's also other factors like, are you a single borrower? Are you, you know, do you have a family? Things like that. But again, not all borrowers have IDR plans.

plans. They're more so for people who can't afford their loan payments, so they'll enroll in an IDR plan to get a lower monthly payment. But sometimes these plans actually create a situation where the borrower is paying back more in interest than they otherwise would have. So they're not always a great option. They're certainly not the best solution for everybody.

But that's what an income-driven repayment plan is. Let's talk a little bit about the rationale behind this forgiveness. So what the Biden administration is saying is that, look, previously there were certain conditions that didn't count towards that 240 or 300 payment count number. And we think that these conditions should have counted all along. And therefore, we're going to retroactively apply

them and credit them towards each borrower's payment count. Therefore, some borrowers will be put over the forgiveness threshold, therefore qualifying them for automatic forgiveness. And for those borrowers that aren't maybe pushed over that forgiveness threshold, they'll at least be closer to that threshold than they otherwise would have been had we not changed the rules and allowed for these certain conditions to count towards borrowers' payment counts.

So before we get into what some of those conditions are that now count towards a borrower's payment count that didn't before, let's first note a few of the different statuses of a loan. So you have the repayment status, and that's pretty straightforward. You're making payments on your loan. You have to be making at least the minimum monthly payment. If you can't pay, you can put the loans into deferment or forbearance.

Deferment means that your payments and interests are delayed, so they're put on pause. But this is really only available at certain times for certain loans. Forbearance, on the other hand, covers situations where deferment isn't an option. And you have discretionary forbearance versus mandatory forbearance. Discretionary is up to the lender, whereas mandatory covers things like economic hardship, teaching service, serving the National Guard, things like that.

When it comes to forbearance, this differs from deferment in the sense that interest continues to accrue when you're in that forbearance period, but your payments are paused.

So now that we've gone over that, some of the conditions that now count towards a borrower's payment count and will be credited towards the payment count include any month where a borrower was in repayment status and made a late or partial payment previously that did not count. Now it will.

any period in which a borrower spent 12 or more consecutive months in forbearance, any month in forbearance for borrowers who spent 36 or more cumulative months in forbearance,

any month spent in deferment except for in-school deferment prior to 2013, and any month spent in economic hardship or military deferments on or after January 1st, 2013. So those are the conditions which now will be credited towards a borrower's payment count, either making them eligible for forgiveness or pushing them closer to that 240 or 300 number.

So who qualifies for this? The Biden administration estimates that roughly 804,000 borrowers will have their loans forgiven. But more specifically, this is for borrowers with direct loans or federal family education loans held by the Department of Education. So that's the forgiveness component of this plan. But now let's talk about the save plan. So this is, as I said, a new income-driven repayment plan, and it's a way for borrowers to save money.

hence the name. Now, keep in mind, this is something you have to apply for and enroll in. It's not an automatic guarantee. So if you apply for it and you are enrolled in a save plan, what it says is that any single borrower making less than $32,805 a year or any family of four making less than $67,500 a year won't have to make payments.

On top of that, as long as borrowers are making their payments consistently and they're not missing any monthly payments, interest will not accrue.

Third, for undergraduate loan borrowers, the Department of Education will now base the monthly payment amount on 5% of a borrower's remaining income, not 10%. And finally, those who borrow $12,000 or less are eligible for forgiveness after 10 years of payments. For every $1,000 borrowed over that $12,000 amount, just add an extra year, and that's when the debt could be forgiven.

Now, again, this is something borrowers have to apply for. It's not an automatic guarantee. Also keep in mind that those eligible for the save plan are student borrowers with federal loans, not parents taking out loans for students, not commercial loans, student borrowers with federal loans. So all direct subsidized loans, unsubsidized and consolidated loans. And this also includes plus graduate loans.

The Biden administration says this is only part of its plan following the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down that previous student loan forgiveness program. In a statement, the White House said, we will not stop there. Our administration will continue to fight to make sure Americans can access high quality post-secondary education without taking on the burden of unmanageable student loan debt.

So that concludes our conversation on the student debt relief program. Let's now talk about the National Defense Authorization Act. After late night negotiations on Thursday, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024. It passed with a 219 to 210 vote with four Republicans opposing it and four Democrats supporting it. Now, I wanted to include this as a story because I think there's an opportunity to clear up some headlines. The

The main thing I want to clear up is that just because it didn't have bipartisan support on Friday in the House doesn't mean it won't end up with bipartisan support when all is said and done. So let's get into it. The reason it didn't pass the House with bipartisan support lies in the fact that there were some amendments attached to it that not everyone was in support of. So let's first talk about the not-so-controversial elements of the bill, and then we'll get into the more controversial elements.

The not-so-controversial elements are the things we see every year, like the bill authorizes a national defense budget of $886 billion for fiscal year 2024. This is a $28 billion increase from fiscal year 2023. The bill also calls for a 5.2% military pay increase. It authorizes over $240 million to reduce service member out-of-pocket housing expenses and

and it reduces Department of Defense child care fees for military families. The more controversial elements of the bill include a repeal of the Department of Defense's chief diversity officer position,

reversal of a Department of Defense policy of reimbursing expenses for service members who travel to get an abortion. It also prohibits the Pentagon from paying for gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatment. It eliminates funding for drag shows, drag queen story hours, or similar events.

It puts in place measures to prevent a military green new deal, and it prohibits funding for the teaching of critical race theory in the military. Now note that that is not an exhaustive list of the more controversial amendments, but I wanted to give you an idea of what they look like. So here's the deal. From

From here, the Senate will work on its own version of the bill. They are set to begin discussions this week. Once the Senate has their version passed, the two chambers will work out a compromise version. That compromise version will then have to pass the House and the Senate before it can be sent to the president's desk for a signature.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul, who voted for these controversial measures, told CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday that he's very confident the act will be a bipartisan bill when all is said and done. And what he said was this. He said, at the end of the day, this always ends up as a bipartisan bill. But there were certain policies like, for instance, the Hyde Amendment since 1980 not to fund taxpayer abortions our members felt was very important to put in there. I think that's one that will survive.

And he reiterated that it's vitally important that we not politicize this bill. And again, he's one of the representatives that voted for these amendments. So even he knows that this bill isn't going to end up the way it looks right now. The overarching thought is that it won't be enacted the way it currently stands. This bill will look different in the Senate because the Senate is, you know, it's controlled by the Democrats. So it's definitely going to look different than the House bill does.

And then they'll eventually have to find a place to compromise and it'll have to pass both the House and the Senate before it even eventually makes its way to the president's desk. And again, as Representative McCaul said, at the end of the day, this bill will end up more bipartisan than it is now.

Rex Huberman, a 59-year-old New York City-based architect, a husband, a father, was arrested on Thursday in connection with the Gilgo Beach killings. But it wasn't until Friday that we learned just how damning the evidence was against him. Friday was the day he had his first court appearance, he pled not guilty, and his indictment was unsealed. So let's go over it.

We'll run through what the Gilgo Beach killings were, how investigators were led to Heuermann, what triggered authorities to finally arrest him after having their eyes on him for over a year, and what his charges are. According to the indictment, the investigation began shortly after December 11th, 2010, when Officer John Malia was conducting a training exercise with his canine. His canine's name was Blue.

and they were walking along Ocean Parkway in Gilgo Beach, and during the course of the training exercise, Blue found a set of human remains. Two days later, Suffolk County Police Department continued to search in the area and found three more sets of remains within a quarter mile of the first. The cause of death of all four women was homicidal violence, and after looking into all of the women, the investigation found the following commonalities—

All victims were petite females around 22 to 27 years old. All victims were believed to be working as sex workers. All had missing clothes and personal possessions. All had been killed by homicide. All had contact shortly before their disappearances with a person using a burner phone. The cell phones of two of the victims were used by the killer after their deaths. All

All victims were in close proximity to one another, 22 to 33 feet from the edge of the parkway. They were all similarly positioned, bound in a similar fashion by either belts or tape, and three of the four victims were wrapped in burlap-type material. These commonalities then led investigators to believe it was a serial killer that was responsible for these killings. Despite this, though, the case went cold for just over 11 years.

And then finally, in January of last year, January 2022, the Suffolk County DA assigned a team of investigators, analysts, and prosecutors to work with law enforcement partners from the Suffolk County Police Department, the New York State Police Department, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, and the FBI. So all

of these law enforcement partners are working together with the DA to try to figure this out once and for all. Only two months after the commencement of the investigation, through a review of all of the evidence that had been acquired thus far, the team discovered this Chevy Avalanche that was registered to Heuermann. And this was important because a witness to the disappearance of one of the victims described a Chevy Avalanche as the car that they thought the killer was driving.

And this single discovery, plus the facts that Heuermann lived where the victims were believed to have disappeared from, and he worked in Manhattan, which was the vicinity in which these taunting calls were made, which I'll get into in a little bit. But those things led to an investigation into Heuermann specifically, consisting of over 300 subpoenas and search warrants.

And these subpoenas and search warrants turned up old phone billing records, credit card statements, multiple Google accounts, and burner numbers associated to fake names. And all of this is pretty damning. So as an example, the phone records show that obviously, you know, they show the locations or the cell towers that certain calls were pinged off of. But not only was Heuermann in the same vicinity as these warrants,

women when these women were last seen. But then the women's phones, all three of them that he's charged in connection with,

then traveled to either Manhattan where he worked or the town in which he lived. And at all relevant times, his phone was traveling the same route that their phones were traveling. Then on top of that, following the killing of two of the girls, he made these taunting calls from the girls' cell phones. So he used their cell phones to call their family members and admitted to being the killer, obviously didn't reveal his identity or anything, but he

but taunted the family members. And these calls were pinged from towers just mere feet from his office. So just the phone calls alone or the phone records alone were pretty damning. But then he also has these Google accounts and burner numbers that were

linked to various things. So one of the Google accounts was linked to a Tinder profile. Another Google account was used to make hundreds of searches, which are pretty disturbing. I'll spare you guys the really graphic details, but they range from porn searches of 10-year-old girls, to girls begging for rape, to mature escorts in Manhattan, to girls crying. And

And there were more searches specifically between March 2022 and June 2023 related to serial killers and specifically the Long Island serial killer, which is apparently what the news had called him. So you would search for things like why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the Long Island serial killer?

Another search was Long Island serial killer phone call. He'd also search for the victim's names, names of the victim's family members. And again, there's 200 to 300 searches and the indictment sets forth a few of them. But if

If you're interested, you know, in seeing what the searches were exactly, you can look at the indictment, which I have on my website. But then you have the hairs found on the bodies. So there are multiple hairs found on each of the victims that DNA evidence in July of 2022 determined it didn't belong to the victims. And that same month, Suffolk County Police Department took 11 bottles from a trash can outside of Huberman's house because at this point they had narrowed down the investigation to him and

and they swabbed these bottles that were taken and sent them for DNA profiling. In February of this year, DNA testing concluded that one of the DNA profiles generated from the bottles matched the profile of the hairs found on the victims' bodies. And the DNA profile, it's believed to be Heuermann's wife. However, his wife was out of town on the dates that each of these girls went missing.

So it's believed to be her hair that transferred from his clothes. Then just last month in June, investigators linked a male hair that was found on one of the victim's bodies by taking a pizza box out of the trash can outside of Heuermann's office on Fifth Avenue. They sent the DNA in for testing and it came back that it matched.

So then on Thursday, just about a month after that DNA from the pizza box linked him to one of the victim's bodies, he was arrested as he was walking down Fifth Avenue, leaving his office for the day.

And at the time of his arrest, he had on him in his possession that burner phone that was linked to that Google account that made all of those disturbing searches. So he ended up being charged with six counts in connection with three of the murders, three counts of first degree murder, three counts of second degree murder. He pled guilty to all counts.

And while he hasn't been charged with crimes in connection with the fourth murder, he is the prime suspect as of now, and prosecutors are expecting to bring charges soon. They just are trying to solidify the case. Again, that fourth victim we're talking about here, Matt,

everything lined up with the other three. So they're bound the same way. They were placed in the, in the same vicinity. She was a sex worker like the others. So all of those commonalities that fourth victim shares with the other three, but again, they're just trying to solidify that case before they bring charges.

Suffolk County D.A. Ray Tierney said that although they've had Heuermann on their radar for more than a year, they were obviously just trying to get as much evidence as possible against him before they brought charges. But they ultimately decided to arrest him because there were actually concerns that he had his sights set on another potential victim.

I do have his indictment linked for you on JordanIsMyLawyer.com. If you're into this true crime stuff and you're interested in more details, feel free to take a look. You can get there by clicking the link in the podcast description that says sources can be found here, or you can just go to JordanIsMyLawyer.com and find it there. That takes us into our notable mentions.

The first notable mention is that the Fifth Circuit paused this order that restricted the Biden administration's communication with social media platforms. You may remember a few episodes ago, I covered this story about the district court judge in Louisiana restricting the Biden administration's communication with social media platforms when it came to moderating content.

Now, why was this order entered? Well, this order stemmed from a lawsuit filed by Louisiana and Missouri alleging that the Biden administration had colluded with social media platforms to censor certain types of speech. So speech surrounding the efficacy of masks, quarantine, the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, just bad things generally about President Biden and his family, things like that.

Following the judge entering this order, the Biden administration appealed, as was expected. They appealed this to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and when they appealed, they asked the district court judge to put the order on hold while the appeal was pending. The judge said no, so the administration then asked the appellate court, who they appealed to, to put the lower court's order on hold.

And what the appellate court said was, OK, we'll put it on hold pending the appeal. But we are going to expedite this appeal and get it done with as quickly as possible. So that's where that stands. So as of now, the administration is not bound by the judge's order restricting its communication. It will be up to the Fifth Circuit to determine whether that order will be kept on hold for the duration of the lawsuit or the Fifth Circuit can always allow that order to go into effect while the merits of the case are still being decided.

it.

The second notable mention is that Threads has been subpoenaed. So this is kind of along the same lines as the previous notable mention, but following that lawsuit that was brought by Missouri and Louisiana, in February of this year, the House Judiciary Chair, Jim Jordan, sent subpoenas to five big tech companies demanding that they hand over any documentation and communication that they had with the Biden administration. On Monday, Jim Jordan brought Meta's new Threads app into the mix.

So he sent Zuckerberg a demand, and what that demand said was this. It said, given that Meta has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies' requests and demands in the past, the committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred or will occur on the Threads platform. There are reports that Threads will enforce Instagram's community guidelines, which resulted in lawful speech being moderated following protests.

pressure by the government. The letter goes on to say, despite launching only 12 days ago, there are reports that Threads is already engaging in censorship. And if you look at the citations in that letter, what the report is citing to is from a user named DC Drano.

And he had posted, quote,

So that's what the judiciary chair is using when it says there are reports that Threads is already engaging in censorship. This letter to Zuckerberg specifically requests all documentation be produced to the committee by July 31st at 5 p.m. And if you would like to read that full letter, I do have it, of course, linked for you on my website. The third notable mention deals with the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Do you remember when the debt limit deal was struck? And as a part of that deal, construction of the mountain Valley pipeline was fast tracked. So the mountain Valley pipeline is a 303 mile pipeline that runs through Jefferson national forest and is considered key to unlocking more gas supplies in the country. Well,

Well, environmentalists argue that the project is going to harm soil and water quality in the forest and increase the use of natural gas. Despite arguments from these environmentalists, though, the debt ceiling deal authorized the pipeline to resume construction that had previously been was was a stalled project.

But not only did it authorize resumption, but part of the deal also specifically stripped jurisdiction over the project from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the appellate court in the pipeline's jurisdiction, and specifically transferred all future litigation to the appellate court in D.C.,

On Friday, though, despite that, the Fourth Circuit halted construction. The Mountain Valley Pipeline, though, says the appellate court doesn't have this authority. So for this reason, the Mountain Valley Pipeline has asked the Supreme Court to vacate or remove the appellate court's order and allow construction to proceed. And they specifically cite to the debt deal, arguing that the debt deal unambiguously deprives the Fourth Circuit of jurisdiction.

From here, either Chief Justice Roberts can render a decision himself or he can refer it to the whole court for consideration.

Our fourth notable mention is about this grain deal in Russia. What's going on with this grain deal? Let me tell you. The Black Sea Grain Initiative was signed in July of last year, and it was between Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine. It was set up to avoid a global food crisis when Russia invaded Ukraine because both Russia and Ukraine are top wheat exporters, and they share this Black Sea where the exporting happens.

So all was good. Turkey had brokered this deal to allow, you know, exporting to continue despite the war. And it was getting renewed every so often. Well, the deadline to extend was...

And Moscow says it pulled out. It will not be extending or renewing because Turkey and Ukraine had failed to honor parts of the deal relating to Russia. And what that means, Russia not agreeing to extend their part of the deal. It means the deal is effectively terminated there.

There were reports from Moscow that the Kremlin was open to considering an extension if its demands were met as far as improving exports of its own grain and fertilizer. But those same reports said that Monday's attack on the Crimean Bridge allegedly cemented its decision not to negotiate further. On the other side of that, though, other reports say that the Kremlin said there was no link between the attack and its decision to suspend the deal. In

Until an agreement is reached or the war ends, Ukraine will have to export most of its grains and oilseeds through its land borders and other ports, which will essentially drive up transportation costs and pile further pressure on Ukrainian farmers' profits.

Following the news on Monday that Russia is out, wheat prices jumped 3.5% and global commodity food prices rose, but the increase was limited, which suggests that traders may not be anticipating a severe supply crisis, which is good news. The countries that would be most impacted by this would be the poorer countries like Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya. We here in America may see a slight rise in price, but likely nothing too concerning.

The fifth notable mention is about this liquor store that just settled a $15 million lawsuit with the family of Mallory Beach.

If you're familiar with the Murdoch family saga, the story will make sense to you. If you're not, let's recap as quickly as possible. The Murdoch family of South Carolina has had quite the downfall. In 2018, the Murdoch housemaid died after she fell down the stairs at the family's home, allegedly tripping on the family dogs. However, it has since come out that Alec Murdoch, the father of the family, the patriarch, for

fraudulently used her death to obtain an insurance settlement. He's also an attorney in the area. In 2019, one year later, Alec Murdoch's youngest son, Paul, crashed a boat while drunk, killing his friend Mallory Beach. Shortly before Paul was set to stand trial for Beach's death, he was shot and killed along with his mother on one of the family's properties. There is a lot more to the family story, but let's talk about what we're here to talk about.

The family of Mallory Beach, the young girl that was killed on the boat driven by Paul Murdoch, reached a $15 million settlement with a convenience store that sold underage Paul Murdoch the alcohol he consumed before he crashed the boat. The attorney for Mallory Beach's family said the settlement will be paid by the convenience store's insurance and that this is the amount that the Beach family believed would show the store that it has to take these alcohol laws seriously.

A lawyer for the store said that the owner felt like he had no other choice but to settle because Alec Murdoch and the store would have been tried together in the wrongful death lawsuit if it hadn't settled. And under South Carolina law, even if the jury found the store to only be 1% responsible because Alec Murdoch is now basically broke, the store would have had to pay basically the entire settlement.

So for them, it made more sense to settle this lawsuit for $15 million rather than taking the chance at a wrongful death trial where they would be tried together with Alec. The sixth and final notable mention, news broke on Monday that for the last 10 years, millions of emails intended for Pentagon employees were mistakenly sent to email accounts in Mali.

How does this happen? Maybe you've mistakenly sent an email to, let's say, johndo at gmail.com, but instead of writing .com, you wrote .cm. You just forgot the O. In your case, the server will likely kick it back and tell you that the email address does not exist.

However, in the military's case, the military's domain and Mali's domain are very similar. Military accounts end with .mil, Mali's email accounts end with .ml. The mistake was caught by a Dutch internet entrepreneur who had received these emails because his company was contracted to manage the .ml domain.

And he said he's brought it to the attention of U.S. officials since 2013, including to the U.S. embassy in Mali earlier this year, but no one's done anything about it. And he finally took it to the media within the last few days because the United States wasn't taking him seriously. And his contract to manage the ML domain just expired and will now revert back to Mali's government, who happens to be closely allied with Russia. So this guy's looking out for us.

He said while the misdirected emails have become less frequent in recent years, they still come by the hundreds per day. Luckily, most of them are spam emails. None of them are marked classified, but some are sensitive and include details about military personnel, their families and information like medical data, tax and financial records, contracts and more. Mike Rogers, a retired U.S.

American admiral who used to run the National Security Agency and U.S. Army's Cyber Command said, quote, this is not uncommon. It's not out of the norm that people make mistakes. But the question is the scale, the duration and the sensitivity of information.

So all we can do is hope that Mali is not getting sensitive information that they now want to send to Russia and help out Russia in any way. But that concludes this episode. Don't forget to leave me a review. Share this episode with your friends. Have a great week and I will talk to you on Friday.