The fight over student loan forgiveness is intensifying, even as the nation’s top education official insists it doesn’t really exist.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the U.S. Department of Education to move ahead with a massive loan discharge in the Sweet v. McMahon case, covering nearly 170,000 borrowers who say they were defrauded by their colleges. Those borrowers must receive notices of eligibility by March 30, with full relief delivered within a year, despite the department’s attempt to delay the process.
At the same time, millions of borrowers in the now-defunct SAVE income-driven repayment plan are being told they’ll have to pick a new repayment option after courts killed the rule behind SAVE earlier this month. They’ll get a 90‑day window starting July 1 to switch plans, or risk being moved automatically by loan servicers.
All of this comes after Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared early in the administration that “there’s no such thing as loan forgiveness — it just gets transferred to someone else,” arguing that canceling debt simply shifts the cost to other taxpayers. Yet between the court-ordered Sweet discharges and the unwinding of SAVE, judges — not politicians — are now driving what student loan “forgiveness” looks like in America