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Trump axes Biden’s student loan plan
The end of the SAVE plan, briefly explained.
Cameron Peters is a staff editor at Vox.
Welcome to The Logoff: The last vestiges of President Joe Biden’s student loan plan are on their way out.
What just happened? The Trump administration agreed Tuesday to end a Biden-era student loan forgiveness plan — Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE — to resolve a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican state attorneys general. The agreement will still need to be approved by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
How did the SAVE plan work? SAVE, which has about 7 million enrollees, was an income-driven repayment plan that the Biden administration introduced in 2023. It provided lower monthly payments than other plans — potentially $0 per month — and an expedited path to loan forgiveness.
What’s the context? The plan was already on its way out after the Republican tax law, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, passed earlier this year. Under that law, borrowers would have had to move to a new plan by summer 2028; Tuesday’s decision condenses the timeline significantly, though it’s unclear exactly when the Department of Education will require borrowers to change plans.
What’s next? More confusion. The SAVE plan has been tied up in court long before Tuesday’s agreement and borrowers have been starting to shift to other plans, but the Washington Post reported that that process has been slow thanks to a backlog in applications.
The end of SAVE will also mean a new financial burden for millions of Americans, even as health care premiums are set to rise across the country and voters continue to register the cost of living as a top issue.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Here’s a wonderful headline from my new Vox colleague Hannah Seo: People are nicer than you think. Specifically, there’s often a “liking gap” — we think people feel less positively about us than they actually do, and underrate how much they might appreciate a kind gesture. The takeaway, Hannah writes, is it’s worth putting yourself out there more in your day-to-day; people will probably react better than you expect, and you and they might be happier for it.
Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
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