Today, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the cases of Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown. The long-term stakes could not be higher. The proximate question in those cases is whether the president of the United States is permitted to use the 2003 HEROES Act to forgive up to a trillion dollars in student loans without congressional approval. The real question at hand is whether the executive branch will be allowed to transmute a brazen, flagrant, cynical lie into a politically motivated spending binge that eats up 4 percent of America’s GDP, and thereby to signal that the limits on presidential power within the U.S. Constitution are functionally dead.

If you are of the view that the president should not be able to do this, we hope that you will consider supporting us in our work as part of this week’s webathon.

From the start — indeed, before the start — National Review has called out the president’s ploy for what it is: a fiction that represents an abdication of his oath of office. Biden’s claim is not an “interesting interpretation,” or a “tricky grey area,” or a “matter of perspective.” It’s a fabrication, a falsehood, a deception. Sometimes, you’ve just got to point out that the emperor has no clothes, and, in this case, everyone involved in the ruse is as naked as they were the day they were born. President Biden does not actually believe that he can do it. The lawyers at the OLC who wrote the memo arguing that Biden can do it do not actually believe that Biden can do it. The Democrats in Congress who are insisting publicly that Biden can do it do not actually believe that Biden can do it. The media — full of journalists who seek to benefit from Biden’s attempt — don’t actually believe he can do it. Nobody does.

At every step, the argument Biden is offering up has been transparently false. Nobody in America truly believes that the United States is in the midst of an emergency that justifies the invocation of the 2003 HEROES Act, because it is not. Nobody in America truly believes that the text of the 2003 HEROES Act allows the president to cancel, alter, or diminish student-loan debt, because it doesn’t. And, even if both these conditions were somehow met, nobody in America truly believes that college graduates would qualify, because they wouldn’t. As we did during the last presidency — and the one before that — National Review has refused to buy the spin.

In so doing, we have stood firm for the proposition that reality does not change simply because the president insists otherwise. In early 2021, the Department of Education explained that “the Secretary does not have statutory authority to provide blanket or mass cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness of student loan principal balances, and/or to materially modify the repayment amounts or terms thereof, whether due to the COVID-19 pandemic or for any other reason.” This was correct then, and it’s correct now. Later that year, Nancy Pelosi reiterated, with a certain astonishment in her voice, that “not everybody realizes that, but the president can only postpone, delay but not forgive student loans. It would take an act of Congress, not an executive order, to cancel student loan debt.” This was true then, and it is true now. Nothing has changed in the interim. Article I of the Constitution still holds that “all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Article II still requires the president to “faithfully execute the office of President of the United States.” The plain text, historical context, and unbroken understanding of the HEROES Act still militate directly against President Biden’s action.

Thus far, the American court system has proved admirably resistant to Biden’s approach — which has ranged from lying to bullying to attempting to avoid judicial review altogether. If, as we hope it will, our Constitution comes through, it will be because institutions such as National Review helped to push back against the nihilism.

With your support, we can keep doing exactly that. And for all your support so far: Thank you.