The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is returning after a two-year break due to Covid, and amid all the expected festivities, the event will take time to applaud excellence in local journalism.

The Miami Herald, the Charlotte Observer, and ProPublica will be honored at the dinner as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners of the 2022 Collier Prize for State Government Accountability. The award is offered by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications in recognition of investigative and political reporting, and the school acclaimed the outlets for publishing stories that “resulted in genuine reforms and resignations.”

The Miami Herald and ProPublica will share the first place for their “Birth & Betrayal” series, which examined Florida’s Neurological Injury Compensation Association program. NICA was created to protect obstetricians and gynecologists from malpractice lawsuits in the event that a baby is born with severe brain injuries at birth, while also providing aid to the child’s family. The program often failed to provide the aid it was supposed to give to families, however, and the exposé was followed by an audit resulting in every member of NICA’s board of directors wound up resigning.

"We are grateful for this honor and especially grateful for the difference our work, in conjunction with ProPublica, has made in these families’ lives," said Herald Senior Editor for Investigation Casey Frank in a statement.

The Charlotte Observer is in 2nd place for their “Death in the Fast Lane” 5-part series, which examines how extreme speeding on North Carolina’s highways claimed more lives than alcohol. The investigative series led to beefed-up safety measures, and the University of Florida notes that it also put a spotlight on “lax treatment of speeders by judges, repeat offenders and a lack of enforcement by police.”

In 3rd place, ProPublica is honored for their “Welfare States” series, which scrutinizes how several states have managed federal welfare funding for struggling families. The series looked at how some state governments forced single mothers to reveal personal information about themselves, hoarded federal welfare assistance, and how states eventually made welfare changes after ProPublica’s investigations.

Congratulations to all these journalists on recognition for their hard work and dedication.

Cohosts of The Five took aim at one of their favorite policy punching bags on Wednesday: student loan debt cancelation.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to cancel a minimum of $10,000 in student loan debt for each borrower. He has so far dithered on that promise, and instead has extended the moratorium on debt repayments multiple times. Lately, however, some Democrats are hopeful Biden will deliver.

Jeanine Pirro was particularly riled up at the proposal.

“Let me just finally say this,” she said. “This asinine ‘I wanna pay off student debt’ is an insult to the senior citizens, to the people who pay taxes, to people who decide, you know, ‘Do I wanna buy meat this week or pay for my medicine?’ That’s hogwash. You’ve got so many jobs, you’ve got a great economy? Let ’em work and pay off their bills – just the way all of us do. That’s the end of it.”

Pirro pointed to herself when saying “just the way all of us do.”

Ironically, her 2006 U.S. Senate campaign still owed $600,000 to 20 vendors as of 2019.

Pirro ran for Senate on the Republican ticket in New York, but dropped out before the primary. Instead, she ran for attorney general and won the Republican nomination, unopposed. She lost to Andrew Cuomo in the general election.

The Fox News host’s campaign had tried to dissolve, but the Federal Elections Commission said it must pay its outstanding debts in order to so do.

“The failure to timely file a complete report may result in civil money penalties, an audit or legal enforcement action,” an FEC letter from 2019 stated. “The civil money penalty calculation for late reports does not include a grace period and begins on the day following the due date for the report.”

Granted, taxpayers are not on the hook for the Pirro campaign’s debt. Nevertheless, the deadbeat entity appears to go against what Pirro has preached.

It’s not the first time she has scolded student borrowers seeking relief. Earlier this month, she told them, “If you can’t pay it, that’s your problem.”

It is unclear if Pirro’s campaign has paid off its debt.

Opposing the popular policy proposal is already going against the grain. Pirro put a hat on a hat when she gave that bad look an even worse one, by way of petard.