Seth Frotman

Just a few months ago, Republican lawmakers were saying they were going to fix indebtedness by capping federal student loan amounts, while private lenders were crowing to investors about the opportunity a federal loan cap would create for them. Guess who was telling the truth? 🧵

The grift has been out in the open from the jump. It’s a damn shame that the higher ed press, lawmakers, and beltway higher ed groups got played for absolute fools. Of course colleges aren’t lowering tuition if private loans are on the table. And of course lenders want handouts.

Alternatively, you could have allowed the Biden CFPB rule to prevent debanking to keep going.

A new generation of enforcers must crack down on the companies driving the affordability crisis and end the lawlessness faced by working people every day. @SethFrotman proposes a way to do just that. democracyjournal.org/magazine/80/hi…

This new report from @TCFdotorg and @BorrowerJustice isn't only about cost of living in America. It's about an economy where our leaders think they only the top 10% need to thrive in order to keep the economy strong. Everyone else becomes fodder for big bank profit margins

We can choose a better and brighter future. We just need to show up for each other. This weekend, thousands and thousands showed up for long days doing the work of democracy in county assemblies across the state. The results have been overwhelming. We're building a powerful movement to put the law on the side of working people, and we're going to win. Love you, Colorado.✊

Great joining @NYCMayor, @NewYorkStateAG, @CMPiSanchez, and our @helloDCWP team for our Bronx Rental Ripoff Hearing. Far too many renters are struggling with awful conditions, exorbitant fees, and unresponsive landlords. We can do better, and we will.

Commissioner Levine attended last night’s #RentalRipoffHearing in Queens! Tenants have eight more opportunities to make their voices heard and shape housing policy. Sign up for an upcoming hearing at nyc.gov/rentalripoff — any New Yorker can attend any borough’s hearing.

New paper alert! My latest, "Enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act," w/ Jeff Zhang is forthcoming in @WashULRev. TL;DR: Using 20 years of data, we find that the CRA's enforcement mechanisms do not incentivize banks to invest in low-income communities. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

🧵Families are being squeezed—and not by accident. Today, @TCFdotorg is launching a new campaign, Affordable Futures: Policy for People—Not the Powerful. go.tcf.org/AffordableFutu… Here’s why it matters. 1/x

Incredibly proud of our massive win on behalf of tens of thousands of people detained by the GEO Group in Aurora, Colorado--a case I've been working on for more than a decade. Just claiming you're following the orders of the federal government doesn't put you above the law.

This is bad! It also highlights Trump’s broken promises. The flood of people behind on credit card debt are paying late fees. Trump rolled back a rule that capped those fees at 8 bucks. Every single one of these people paid $30-40 instead. That’s $10B in junk fees each year.

Four days ago, @BorrowerJustice @TowardsJustice put out a blockbuster investigation into an emerging segment of the financial services industry targeting the 109 million Americans who rent. We called these "Rent Now Pay Later" loans. We had no idea what would happen next. 1/

Wall Street & Silicon Valley are profiting off of working families struggling to pay rent by driving them into debt. Read our new joint investigation w/ @towardsjustice shedding light on the predatory “Rent Now, Pay Later” loan industry: protectborrowers.org/rent-now-pay-l…

Last month, @TCFdotorg released research on widespread economic paid facing working people. Our new memo makes the case that leaders should respond by taking on the corporate interests bleeding them dry 1/ production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/20…

As energy bills surge, we are suing Radiant Solar and its president for cheating New Yorkers out of millions of dollars through shoddy solar installations, predatory lending, and junk fees. We will continue fighting every day to stop bad actors driving up costs for New Yorkers.

🧵Yesterday, we filed a first-in-the-nation class action against Eightfold AI—a company most people have never heard of, but that plays a hidden role in deciding who gets hired at some of the biggest companies in the country. /1 nytimes.com/2026/01/21/bus…

NEW: Mamdani consumer and worker protection commissioner @saalevine and his DCWP team uncovered a massive scheme by Uber and DoorDash to drive down worker pay by more than $550 million!

This assertion from Yglesias is quite damning -- for Yglesias. He is claiming it is "basic reality" that Elizabeth Warren is "an electoral underperformer" and that anybody who doesn't understand that shouldn't be trusted to understand more complicated things. But he appears not to understand the numbers himself. He often points out (rightly) that Kamala Harris outperformed Warren in 2024 in Mass. That's true overall. You could note that Warren ran no ads and didn't campaign, so that explains the difference, but it's actually much worse than that for Yglesias. If you look at where the votes were spread out, what you find is that Harris significantly overperformed Warren in the wealthiest, most-educated parts of Massachusetts, while Warren outperformed Harris in the working class areas. So if you think the way for Democrats to win nationally is to keep running up the score with people who read Yglesias' newsletter, then by all means, don't listen to Warren and definitely follow Matt's advice into the arms of Kamala. But if you think Democrats need to do better in working class areas where people don't have advanced degrees, the candidate who does well there is actually Warren. I'm going to assume in the spirit of good faith that Matt has never looked at the numbers beyond the state level. (Matt, is that right?) Once he sees them, I think he'll have to correct his analysis. It is basic reality that in areas that demographically and educationally look more like the rest of the country, Warren outperformed Harris. That doesn't mean he has to like her or her ideas, but he has to confront them head on, and drop this false claim that she is an underperformer. Let's take a look at about a dozen towns and cities that tell the real story:

Wow. According to newly released government data, credit card companies hauled in over $160 billion in interest last year. The average APR was over 25%. This is on top of a massive haul in fees from consumers & merchants. Most of this went to the biggest players in the industry.