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May is shaping up as a clash between renters and landlords, as soaring unemployment could leave millions of tenants unable to pay, and some organizers of rent strikes urge even those with means to hold back, the Wall Street Journal reported. April rent payments turned out better than expected, landlord representatives said. With the economy still strong in the first half of March — before the worst hit from the coronavirus pandemic — about 9 in 10 renters in professionally managed apartments paid at least some of their April rent, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council, a landlord trade group. Now, rent for May is coming due after millions of Americans have been unemployed for weeks. Many more are worried about keeping their jobs, and housing activists in at least 15 cities, including New York and Chicago, are organizing rent strikes. They are calling on tenants to withhold May payments in hopes of provoking federal and state lawmakers to provide more financial support for renters.

Last summer, on his final day of work at the nation’s consumer finance watchdog agency, a career economist sent colleagues a blunt memo. He claimed that President Trump’s appointees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had manipulated the agency’s research process to justify altering a 2017 rule that would have sharply curtailed high-interest payday loans, the New York Times reported. The departing staff member, Jonathan Lanning, detailed several maneuvers by his agency’s political overseers that he considered legally risky and scientifically indefensible, including pressuring staff economists to water down their findings on payday loans and use statistical gimmicks to downplay the harm consumers would suffer if the payday restrictions were repealed. Political appointees at the bureau, led by its director, Kathleen Kraninger, have pressed forward with the Trump administration’s deregulatory drive despite the logistical hurdles posed by the coronavirus pandemic. This week, the agency is expected to release the revised payday rule, which will no longer require lenders to assess whether customers can afford their fees before offering a loan.

The Senate passed a $484 billion deal yesterday to replenish a small-business loan program that’s been overrun by demand and to devote more money to hospitals and coronavirus testing, the Washington Post reported. President Trump said he would sign it into law. The legislation, which came together over days of intense negotiation that followed a bitter partisan standoff, would increase funding for the Paycheck Protection Program by $310 billion. It would also boost a separate small-business emergency grant and loan program by $60 billion, and direct $75 billion to hospitals and $25 billion to a new coronavirus testing program. The House is expected to approve the measure on Thursday. The Paycheck Protection Program was designed to help firms with fewer than 500 workers, but a number of larger companies found ways to obtain the funds in the past two weeks, leading to bipartisan outrage. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said yesterday that larger firms would now be blocked from using the program, and Trump called on some big companies that had already obtained taxpayer-backed loans to return the money.

The Treasury Department is reviewing whether it has the legal authority to prevent banks and private debt collectors from seizing $1,200 government stimulus payments, as blowback builds over private lenders clawing back parts of the emergency financial relief package, the Washington Post reported. he review is being conducted by legal counsel at the Treasury Department, said the person, who declined to speak on record because the matter had not been finalized. It was unclear when a determination about the payments would be made. Earlier this month, the Trump administration began directly depositing stimulus checks in the bank accounts of 80 million Americans to help them survive the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus. Reports quickly surfaced that some of these payments were being redirected to banks and private debt collectors from people who have overdraft fees, delinquent loans or other debt obligations. These garnishments have sparked a bipartisan backlash in Congress, with lawmakers arguing the money should be walled off from collection by banks and private debt collectors. Several large banks announced they would stop taking the money amid public criticism.

In a peace offering to progressives a day after Sen. Bernie Sanders quit the presidential race, Joe Biden announced support on Thursday for an expansion of Medicare and education policies that move closer to his former rival’s agenda, the Los Angeles Times reported. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, proposed expanding government health insurance coverage by lowering the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60. The former vice president also called for forgiving college debt for low- and middle-income borrowers at public colleges and universities as well as at minority-focused private institutions. Both proposals are less expansive than Sanders’ campaign proposals, which would provide Medicare for citizens of all ages and cancel student debt for all borrowers regardless of income. But they go further than Biden's previous plans, and he gave Sanders credit for inspiring his new policies. In previous policy overtures, Biden embraced bankruptcy reform policies backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, another progressive former rival for the 2020 nomination. He proposed a Sanders-inspired plan to provide free tuition at public and community colleges, but to a more limited population. And he embraced Warren’s proposal to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt for every borrower to provide relief amid the coronavirus outbreak. Going further in his debt relief plan Thursday, Biden is calling for forgiving tuition-related debt for borrowers earning up to $125,000 income if they attended public colleges or universities, private historically black colleges and other institutions serving minority students.