Free Republic

For most Americans, a U.S. lawmaker with onerous student loan debt pushing for debt forgiveness would be viewed as a conflict of interest. For at least one U.S. representative, it’s apparently a non-issue — and the American Accountability Foundation is livid about it. According to the Daily Wire, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has been accused by the watchdog group over a number of issues. In a scathing letter sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, American Accountability Foundation President Thomas Jones outed Omar’s dubious finances — and “bully” reputation. “We are writing today to share serious concerns about abuse of...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) should garnish leftist Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) taxpayer-funded salary to keep her up to date on her student loan payments, a watchdog said Thursday. Omar has fallen behind on her student loan payments and has attempted to “bully” federal officials over her debts, the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) alleged in a Thursday letter to Johnson. In his letter, AAF President Tom Jones asked Johnson to impound Omar’s Congressional salary to pay her student loans.

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced a reorganization of its Federal Student Aid (FSA) ombudsman’s office into a broader “Office of Consumer Education and Ombudsman.” The aim is twofold: to provide clearer, more proactive information to prospective borrowers and their families before they sign promissory notes and to issue a new “common manual” for loan servicing and collections that standardizes practices across vendors. At first glance, the reform seems sensible. After all, with federal student-loan debt at $1.8 trillion and millions of borrowers delinquent or in default, something must change. Yet a closer look reveals that, while better information...

The Trump administration has agreed to cancel student debt under programs it had partially blocked, reopening a path to student loan forgiveness for millions of borrowers. The outcome is the result of an agreement reached on Friday between the U.S. Department of Education and the American Federation of Teachers, a union. In the agreement, the Trump administration said it will again process student loan forgiveness for eligible borrowers in two income-driven repayment plans — the original Income-Contingent Repayment plan and the Pay as You Earn plan — as long as those programs remain in effect. President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful...

The Los Angeles Film School is caught up in a scandal over its alleged efforts to trick students into believing that its graduates do extraordinarily well in the Hollywood job market. The accusation comes from two former executives of the school, wherein no doubt there is the plot outline for a noir-ish movie about double- and triple-crosses in the shadows of Sunset Boulevard. Happily the Los Angeles Film School sits at 6363 Sunset Boulevard, and it is a private, for-profit entity, just like a movie studio or a casino. I admit that the troubles on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams...

It is sadly humorous to me, but not surprising, that Elizabeth Guevara, writing for Investopedia, can only seem to offer one solution for young people considering college, now that there is a cap on available federal student loans. From a new article via Yahoo Finance: New Student Loan Limits May Force More Borrowers to Take Out Private LoansThe ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ will restrict the amount of federal student loans available to college students next year. Students may have to take out riskier private loans to cover the rest of their schooling. The average medical graduate student will not be...

When Dreams Become Debt: The Moral Failure of Our Student Loan SystemBy The Hermit At 18, you can’t legally rent a car. You can’t buy a drink. In some states, you can’t even rent an apartment without a co-signer. But you can sign your name to $100,000 or more in student loans—debt that you may spend the rest of your life trying to repay, and that can never be erased through bankruptcy. That is not just a legal loophole. It is a moral failure. Each year, thousands of young people graduate high school with dreams of changing the world, fueled...

Last month, a Republican Congress and President Trump achieved, if that is the word, a massive budget-reconciliation bill. As is more and more common, a Congress averse to accountability for particular votes crammed the measure full of many agenda items that the majority and the president wanted but chose to vote up or down on them as a package. Several provisions are relevant to American higher education. They involve the student-loan program, in which the federal government provides both subsidized and unsubsidized loans to both graduate and undergraduate students. Federal grants to needy students, e.g. Pell grants, are only modestly...

Less than half of student loan borrowers have been making their payments on $1.6 trillion of debt as they struggle to afford housing and groceries – and some are letting the bills pile up as a form of protest. Only 38% of the 42.7 million borrowers nationwide are in repayment and current following five years of leniency measures from the US government following the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Education said in April. While most borrowers have loans that are less than $40,000, about 3.6 million Americans owe more than $100,000 each in federal loans totaling $656.7 billion – or...

Australia's parliament on Thursday (July 31) passed a law to cut student loans by 20 per cent, wiping more than A$16 billion (S$13.37 billion) in debt for three million people, and fulfilling a key election promise to help mitigate the rising cost of living. The law is the first passed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labour Party since being re-elected in May with one of the country's largest-ever majorities. "We promised cutting student debt would be the first thing we did back in parliament — and that's exactly what we've done," Albanese said in a statement. "Getting an education...

Millions of Americans rely on Social Security payments to make ends meet, and with June 2025 approaching, many are asking: When will checks arrive — and is anything changing? The good news is that the payment calendar remains consistent, but there are some new developments retirees and disability beneficiaries should be aware of this month.

Jason Collier, a special education teacher in Virginia, often needs to wait until payday to fill up the gas tank of his car — and in the meantime hopes he doesn’t run out. “Money is tight when you’re a teacher,” Collier, 46, said. Now he’s afraid that the U.S. Department of Education will soon garnish up to 15% of his wages because he’s behind on his student debt payments. Collier said he hasn’t been able to meet his monthly bill for years, while juggling the expenses of raising two children and medical expenses from a cancer diagnosis. If his paycheck...

Aubrey Bertram was starting to imagine her life without student debt. Bertram, a staff attorney at Wild Montana, a nonprofit that works on land conservation in the state, had just around two and a half years left of payments before her $247,804 federal student loan balance would be excused under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Bertram took out her loans in law school knowing that she’d work in public service and pursue PSLF. “That was the only way taking on this debt made any sense,” Bertram said. Millions of other student loan holders are in the same frustrating limbo...

Last week we shared some charts on the utter failure and folly of federal intervention in education for K-12.An even bigger failure has been the $1.5 trillion student loan boondoggle. As even more federal dollars have flowed into higher education in grants and (largely forgivable) loans. This is the result:We got a lot of praise and criticism from readers for our call to impose an excise tax on university tax-free endowments above $1 billion. But what is clear is that almost none of these treasure chests of wealth are being used to make college more affordable. Shameful.

A Connecticut student who graduated with honors in June is now suing her former high school, claiming she can't read or write and is failing college as a result of her alma mater's poor curriculum. Aleysha Ortiz was born in Puerto Rico and moved with her family to Hartford, Connecticut, when she was 5 years old. She graduated through the school program despite reading at a kindergarten or first grade level as a sixth grader, according to reporting by CNN. During her last month at Hartford Public High School, after she disclosed she was attending the University of Connecticut in...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration’s recent changes to student loans are causing frustration and confusion for some borrowers. In response to a February court ruling that blocked some Biden-era programs, the Education Department has taken down online and paper applications for income-driven repayment plans. “This especially hurts anyone who’s lost their jobs, including federal workers,” said Natalia Abrams, founder and president of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “A few months ago, they would have been able to get on a zero-dollar income-driven repayment plan.” Adding to the uncertainty are layoffs at the Education Department, which oversees the federal...

As Joe Biden’s presidency ends, it’s clear his record makes him the most aggressive president in history on student-loan forgiveness. His Department of Education * extended the COVID-19 interest-accumulation freeze; * introduced the new SAVE plan, which offered unprecedented interest forgiveness; * began the process of blanket forgiveness of up to $20,000 for borrowers. The second and third initiatives were so aggressive that the judicial branch ultimately blocked them. And, although student-loan forgiveness was not the headline of every speech by Vice President Kamala Harris, it was clear to voters that Democrats were the way forward for removing student debt....

Even a presidential administration as incompetent, feckless, and clueless as the Biden administration, it seems, can read the writing on the wall — if they get their noses rubbed in it. In the latest example of just this, the administration has withdrawn its plan to forgive a large number of student loans — and we can take the word "forgive" to mean "transfer the liability to the taxpayers."The Biden administration has withdrawn two major plans to deliver student loan forgiveness.The proposed regulations would have allowed the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education to cancel student loans for several groups...

Departing President Joe Biden’s administration is nothing if not busy as desks are cleaned out and preparations for final departure made. On Friday it announced federal student loans for another 55,000 workers will be canceled through an existing program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Biden has now canceled an unprecedented $180 billion in federal student loans through existing programs during his term in office, covering 4.9 million Americans. The total cost for Biden’s latest act of Christmas charity will come in at $4.28 billion, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, the bulk of whom previously questioned just how fair such acts...

A coalition of Democratic senators on Wednesday night sent a letter to federal agencies about an investigation that found that a "faulty" transfer of student loan accounts in 2023 resulted in “millions of consumer credit reporting errors." The error occurred when the student loan provider NelNet transferred student loan accounts to MOHELA last year. The change resulted in nearly 2 million duplicate student loan records appearing on borrowers’ credit reports, and negatively impacted hundreds of thousands of borrowers’ credit scores, which were incorrectly reported for up to a year and a half, per CNBC. The senators, led by Massachusetts Sen....