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As I understand it, Biden accomplished these by slithering through legal loopholes, not disobeying the courts. When the Supreme Court overturned student loan forgiveness, the Biden team did not say "Screw you, Clarence Thomas, let's see you stop us" and strike the ledgers anyway; they set lawyers to find every technicality on the books. Same with opening the borders.
Of course, I am not implying moral superiority on the Biden side. Merely that, as Scott wrote about populism vs. the deep state in Turkey:
Coups are necessary for anti-establishment side of a populist vs. establishment showdown. The establishment side can just let the systems run and get their way.
They pretty much did tell the court fuck you. They were told it’s unconstitutional. They did it anyway. Cases take a long time to make it thru the system. He did it anyway. Sounds like a coup to me.
Choosing not to enforce the border and abusing the meaning of the word “asylum” while importing voters and using tax payer money is a coup in my book. Words have meanings. Asylum when the law was written meant something very specific - as in facing direct violence due to political belief. Biden decided it means I make $1 an hour in Guatemala and want American money.
You can say this is “exploiting loopholes”, but laws and words are always going to have a great deal on inexactness to them. And as the years go by people change the meaning of the word.
I don’t even know what you are complaining about with bureaucrats. They aren’t elected people. How is that a coup? It’s not like importing millions of voters, banning proof of citizenship, and changing election results.
Only in the trivial sense that every time the President breaks a law he also violates the Take Care clause. Biden v Nebraska was a statutory interpretation case which held that the clause in the HEROES act allowing the Secretary of Education to waive or modify student loans in connection with a national emergency (which COVID qualified as) didn't extend to the kind of broad-based loan forgiveness that the Biden administration wanted to do.
Having been told that he couldn't use the HEROES act, Biden looked around for other sources of statutory authority which didn't involve such a big stretch. The biggies are Publicig Service Loan Forgiveness (The statutes say that the government can discharge student loans if someone works for the government or certain other "public service" employers for ten years. This used to be almost impossible to claim because of paperwork requirements, but Biden just cancelled the loans for anyone whose employment record showed the required ten years of public service.) and income-based repayment (The statute allows the Secretary of Education to define rates and thresholds, and Biden made them a lot more generous). These are also going to end up in front of SCOTUS, but if statutes are interpreted to mean what they say Biden would win. But this Supreme Court has tended to interpret delegations of power more narrowly than you or I would based on reading the statutory text because they don't trust Congress to protect its own Constitutional role.
I don't even think this is "exploiting loopholes" at this stage. Congress intended to give the Executive broad discretion to write off student loans for borrowers who were struggling to repay them, and they did. Congress may or may not have intended that discretion to extend as far as Biden is taking it - the answer is probably mu because Congress notoriously doesn't have a brain and can't intend things other than explicitly. If America had a functioning Congress, Congress could have said what it meant. As we are, the administration and the Courts are butting heads over who gets to decide questions that Congress negligently chose not to.
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