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student debt
Teachers Union Sues Over Trump Attack on Student Loan Repayment Programs
"By effectively freezing the nation's student loan system, the new administration seems intent on making life harder for working people."
Mar 19, 2025
A leading teachers union announced Wednesday that it is suing the Trump administration for cutting off public service workers with federal student loans from affordable repayment and debt relief programs.
"By effectively freezing the nation's student loan system, the new administration seems intent on making life harder for working people, including for millions of borrowers who have taken on student debt so they can go to college," said American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten in a statement. "The former president tried to fix the system for 45 million Americans, but the new president is breaking it again."
"The AFT has fought tirelessly to make college more affordable by limiting student debt for public service workers and countless others—progress that's now in jeopardy because of this illegal and immoral decision to deny borrowers their rights under the law,” the union leader continued. "Today, we're suing to restore access to the statutory programs that are an anchor for so many, and that cannot be simply stripped away by executive fiat."
The 1.8 million-member union is represented by the law firm Berger Montague PC and the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), which filed the federal lawsuit late Tuesday in Washington, D.C.
"The U.S. government, through the U.S. Department of Education (ED or the department), is the country's largest creditor of student loans," the complaint notes. "Today, there are nearly 43 million federal student loan borrowers, with approximately $1.62 trillion outstanding in debt."
As the filing details, Congress "designed this federal student loan program to expand access to higher education and increase economic mobility regardless of one's financial station," and specifically "directed ED to offer income-driven repayment (IDR) plans that tie a borrower's monthly payment to their income."
However, under President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the department has shut down IDR plans and not "indicated when it will—if ever—resurrect the programs," the complaint continues. "The result: borrowers are unable to access affordable monthly payment plans, some borrowers are being thrust into default on their debt, and some public service workers are being denied their statutory right to lower their monthly payment and earn credit towards Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF)."
"This is not occurring in a vacuum for student loan borrowers," the document stresses. "It comes in the context of the president repeatedly announcing his plans to close the Department of Education, which was created by an act of Congress. And, it is on the heels of the recent equally unlawful actions to gut critical student loan protections from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau."
Additionally, as Common Dreamsreported earlier this month, Trump has directly attacked the PSLF with an executive order excluding from the debt relief program "organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose," targeting groups that help immigrants and transgender youth and organize protests that involve actions such as blocking roads.
"A significant number of AFT's membership has student debt, is working in public service, and has sought or will try to seek access to an IDR plan," the suit explains. "These borrowers simply want to pay back their student loans according to the terms that Congress, and their contracts, provide."
The AFT asked the court to declare that the Education Department is "unlawfully withholding" IDR plans and the PSLF program, and prevent the ED from "collecting from borrowers who are eligible for income-driven repayment until it satisfies its statutory, regulatory, and contractual obligations." The union also wants the court to order the department to fulfil those obligations.
"Student loan borrowers are desperate for help, struggling to keep up with spiking monthly payments in a sinking economy, all while President Trump plays politics with the student loan system," said SBPC executive director Mike Pierce. "Borrowers have a legal right to payments they can afford and today we are demanding that these rights are enforced by a federal judge."
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Mahmoud Khalil’s Detention Brings Us to the Edge of a Dystopian Future
Trump decided to up the ante against young activists with this action against Khalil, hoping it gets wide publicity to cow any other students who may consider protesting any policies of his.
Mar 12, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and his police-state goons are trying to frighten people who dare even come close to people protesting his or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies. This is how dictators intimidate citizens, how freedom dies, and is a clear violation of our Constitution.
And, in all probability, this is just the beginning of what historians will someday define as a very ugly episode in American history.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Palestinian green card-holder who graduated from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs with a master’s degree and is married to an American who’s now eight-months pregnant, was seized from his New York residence over the weekend and transported to a barbarous detention facility in Louisiana.
Will students—groaning under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in debt—find the courage to take to the streets like my generation did almost 60 years ago?
He had previously worked for the British Embassy in Beirut, where he’d earned his undergraduate degree in computer science at the Lebanese American University. A legal permanent resident of the United States, he has not been accused of breaking any law.
The day before his seizure, he’d appealed directly to Katrina Armstrong, interim president of Columbia University, according to reporting at Zeteo, writing on March 7, the day before he was snatched away from his family and transported over a thousand miles away:
Since yesterday, I have been subjected to a vicious, coordinated, and dehumanizing doxxing campaign led by Columbia affiliates Shai Davidai and David Lederer who, among others, have labeled me a security threat and called for my deportation.
Their attacks have incited a wave of hate, including calls for my deportation and death threats. I have outlined the wider context below, yet Columbia has not provided any meaningful support or resources in response to this escalating threat.
I haven’t been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home. I urgently need legal support, and I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—which applies to every “person” in the United States, not just U.S. citizens—is unambiguous:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” (emphasis added)
As Ann Coulter—yes, that Ann Coulter—wrote on Xitter:
There’s almost no one I don’t want to deport, but, unless they’ve committed a crime, isn’t this a violation of the First Amendment?
Speaking of that, first President George Washington noted:
If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.
Benjamin Franklin was equally explicit:
Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.
But Donald Trump was having none of it; speech with which he disagrees is to be brutally punished:
“ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas student on the campus of Columbia University,” the president bragged on his Nazi-infested social media site. “This is the first arrest of many to come.”
Khalil’s “crime” appears to have been his taking on the role of a high-profile negotiator between protesting students and the university, trying to achieve a peaceful resolution of the anti-Gaza-bombing students’ complaints.
As The New York Times reported:
Mr. Khalil’s arrest drew outrage from students and faculty at the university. Joseph Howley, a classics professor at Columbia, described him as brave, yet mild-mannered and gentle—a “consummate diplomat” who worked to find middle ground between protesters and school administrators.
Mr. Howley, who has known Mr. Khalil for about a year, having met him after Mr. Khalil began speaking out in campus protests, said he was frustrated by depictions of Mr. Khalil as a dangerous person.
“This is someone who seeks mediated resolutions through speech and dialogue,” he said. “This is not someone who engages in violence, or gets people riled up to do dangerous things. So it’s really disturbing to see that kind of misrepresentation of him.”
Dictatorial regimes around the world have a long history of opposing peaceful protest, particularly by students. Young people in Russia who speak out against President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion and ongoing bombing campaign against civilians in Ukraine, for example, are frequently imprisoned for multiple years in barbaric gulags.
This is because student protests have a long history of successfully producing profound social and political change. It’s unlikely, for example, that the Vietnam War would have resolved when and the way it did without the student protests Louise and I participated in during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Student protests have, for example, a long and storied history including:
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) protests against segregated lunch counters in the South that led to the Civil Rights Act of 1965;
- The Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley (1964-65), led by Mario Savio, which inspired student movements across the nation;
- Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, which sparked youth protests across the world;
- The Soweto Uprising of 1976 saw thousands of Black South African students protest against apartheid; the brutal response drew international attention, bolstering the global anti-apartheid movement;
- The Iranian Student Revolution of 1979, which led to the Shah fleeing the country;
- The 1989 student-led Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, which led to a peaceful transition to democracy in that nation; and
- The student-led Hong Kong Umbrella Movement of 2014 which, although it was eventually sadistically crushed, helped awaken the world to the brutality of the Chinese Communist regime.
Even former President Richard Nixon, wannabe fascist that he was, didn’t consider arresting and deporting students for speaking out, although former President Ronald Reagan’s far more subtle solution was to end free college and thus raise the stakes for student protestors who could lose scholarships or get thrown out of school saddled with massive debt and no degree.
Trump decided to up the ante even further with this action against Khalil, hoping it gets wide publicity to cow any other students who may consider protesting any policies of his; it’s extremely unlikely this type of action will be limited to protests against what Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Amnesty International have called Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing on the West Bank: He doesn’t want students in America protesting in any way at any time.
As a result, we stand on the edge of the fulfillment of Washington’s and Franklin’s explicit warnings of a possible dystopian future.
Will students—groaning under the weight of more than a trillion dollars in debt—find the courage to take to the streets like my generation did almost 60 years ago?
Will Trump next go after student protestors who are American citizens?
Will any elected Republicans find their spine, courage, or principles to defy his takedown of the work our Founders fought and died for?
As they say in the radio business, stay tuned…
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Trump Attacks Public Service Workers With 'Blatantly Illegal' Loan Forgiveness Order
"Threatening to punish hardworking Americans for their employers' perceived political views is about as flagrant a violation of the First Amendment as you can imagine," said one critic.
Mar 10, 2025
Criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order intended to limit a program that forgives the federal student loans of borrowers who take public service jobs has grown since he signed it on Friday.
Opponents frame the order as yet another attempt by Trump to quash dissent. The Republican president directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to propose revisions to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program, in coordination with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to exclude "organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose."
The order targets employers "aiding or abetting" violations of federal immigration law and the administration's definition of illegal discrimination, engaging in a pattern of violating state law such as disorderly conduct and obstruction of highways, "supporting terrorism," and "child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary states for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents."
Student Defense president Aaron Ament said in a statement that "when PSLF was created by a bipartisan act of Congress and signed into law by [President] George W. Bush, it was a promise from the United States government to its citizens—if you give back to America, America will give back to you."
"In the nearly two decades since, across administrations of both parties, Americans have worked hard and made life decisions under the assumption that the U.S. keeps its word," Ament continued. "Threatening to punish hardworking Americans for their employers' perceived political views is about as flagrant a violation of the First Amendment as you can imagine."
Nadine Chabrier, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, similarly highlighted "serious" First Amendment concerns, saying that "by penalizing individuals seeking loan forgiveness for their associations and the expressive conduct of their employers, new rulemakings could infringe on fundamental rights to speech and association."
"The executive order also undermines the very purpose of PSLF, which Congress established to encourage careers in public service across a broad range of fields," she said. "Stripping PSLF eligibility from nonprofit employees based on the nature of their work will deter skilled professionals from pursuing careers that benefit the public good, weaken critical services for underserved populations and hamper efforts to strengthen vulnerable communities."
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten explained that "PSLF is based on the idea that borrowers who make 10 years of repayments, and who often forgo higher wages in the private sector, can avoid a lifelong debt sentence."
The teachers union sued the Trump's first-term education secretary, Betsy DeVos, "and rogue loan servicers for their failure to administer the program—and we won," Weingarten noted. "This latest assault on borrowers' livelihoods is a cruel attempt to finish the demolition job that DeVos started. The goal is to sow chaos and confusion—separately, the PSLF application form has already been taken offline, making it effectively inaccessible."
The Economic Policy Institute pointed out Monday that "since the creation of the PSLF program, more than 1 million borrowers have received student loan forgiveness, largely due to fixes made under the Biden administration."
"More than 2 million individuals currently qualify for the PSLF program, according to the Department of Education," the think tank added. "The executive order could potentially narrow which organizations qualify for the program."
Student Borrower Protection Center executive director Mike Pierce blasted the order as "blatantly illegal and an all-out weaponization of debt intended to silence speech that does not align with President Trump's MAGA agenda."
"It is an attack on working families everywhere and will have a chilling effect on our public service workforce doing the work every day to support our local communities," Pierce warned. "Teachers, nurses, service members, and other public service workers deserve better than to be used as pawns in Donald Trump's radical right-wing political project to destroy civil society. This will raise costs for working people while doing nothing to make America safer or healthier."
In addition to scathing critiques, some groups threatened to challenge the order. Weingarten vowed that "the AFT won't stop fighting, in court and in Congress, until every single public service worker gets the help the law affords them."
Ament declared that "if the Trump administration follows through on this threat, they can plan to see us in court."
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