5
#000000
#FFFFFF
student debt
Facing Backlash, McMahon Pauses 'Reckless' Plan to Garnish Wages of Student Borrowers
Advocates warned wage garnishment "would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt."
Jan 16, 2026
Billionaire US Education Secretary Linda McMahon has temporarily suspended the Trump administration's plan to resume garnishing the wages of defaulted student loan borrowers, a reversal that came after advocates warned the pay seizures would have had devastating economic consequences for people across the country amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis.
McMahon, who is actively working to dismantle her department from within, told reporters earlier this week that wage garnishment efforts have "been put on pause for a bit," without providing specifics. The Trump administration, which last summer ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, was reportedly set to begin notifying defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages last week.
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Friday that "after months of pressure and countless horror stories from borrowers, the Trump administration says it has abandoned plans to snatch working people’s hard-earned money directly from their paychecks simply for falling behind on their student loans."
"Amidst the growing affordability crisis, the administration’s plans would have been economically reckless and would have risked pushing nearly 9 million defaulted borrowers even further into debt," Canchola Bañez added. "Earlier this month, a coalition of partners sent an urgent letter to ED urging them to do just this. We are pleased to see they have heeded our calls.”
That letter—sent on January 7 by Protect Borrowers, the American Federation of Teachers, Debt Collective, and other groups—called the administration's earlier decision to resume wage garnishment "calloused and unnecessary," warning that it came at a time when "struggling borrowers have been forced to wait amidst a nearly 1 million application backlog to enroll in an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan, and as mass layoffs at the department have made it even harder for borrowers to get help with their student loans or if they are experiencing issues with their student loan servicer."
According to an analysis by Protect Borrowers, 3.6 million new student loan borrowers fell into default during the first year of President Donald Trump's second term in the White House. That's one new default every nine seconds.
"Nearly two-thirds of the borrowers who defaulted during the Trump administration—more than 2.6 million people—live in states that President Trump won in the 2024 election," the analysis found.
Under federal law, the Education Department can withhold up to 15% of a borrower's after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. The Trump administration has already begun seizing income tax refunds from student borrowers in default.
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) noted in a Thursday blog post that "if you have received a notice of proposed garnishment, there are steps you can take to object to the garnishment notice and request a hearing, which is typically conducted through a written review of your objections."
"You must act quickly to avoid a potential garnishment order from being sent to your employer," the group stressed.
Keep Reading
Show Less
'Cruel, Unnecessary, and Irresponsible': Trump Admin to Resume Garnishing Wages of Student Borrowers
One group noted "the irony of a billionaire being in charge of collecting pennies from debtors."
Dec 23, 2025
The US Education Department confirmed Monday that, starting next month, it will resume seizing the pay of student loan borrowers in default as the Trump administration wages a broader war on debt relief and cancellation efforts.
The department, led by billionaire Linda McMahon—who is working to gut the agency from the inside—told the Washington Post that "it will notify about 1,000 defaulted borrowers of plans to withhold a portion of their wages to pay down their past-due debt," beginning the week of January 7, 2026.
"After that, the department said, notices will be sent to larger numbers of borrowers each month," the Post reported. "There were about 5.3 million borrowers who had not made a payment on their federal student loans for at least 360 days as of June 30, according to the latest available data from the Education Department. Many of them were in default before the federal government stopped collecting defaulted loans because of the pandemic nearly six years ago."
Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel of the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Tuesday that "at a time when families across the country are struggling with stagnant wages and an affordability crisis, this administration's decision to garnish wages from defaulted student loan borrowers is cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible."
"As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers' wages instead of defending borrowers' right to affordable payments," said Yu. "There are still nearly a million unprocessed Income-Driven Repayment applications, and this administration has admitted to denying en masse borrowers who applied and requested the US Department of Education’s help in accessing the most affordable payment option."
“Finally, during the last Trump administration, hundreds of thousands had their wages improperly taken at the peak of the pandemic because the US Department of Education was unable to control this tool," Yu added. "It is irresponsible to turn on a debt collection tool that the administration cannot turn off."
In May, the Trump administration ended a pause on student loan repayments that had been in place since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
The administration has also attacked student debt relief efforts launched under former President Joe Biden. Earlier this month, the Trump Education Department cut a deal to effectively end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, jacking up monthly payments for millions of borrowers enrolled in the Biden-era program.
"While millions of student loan borrowers struggle amidst the worsening affordability crisis—as the rising costs of groceries, utilities and healthcare continue to bury families in debt—billionaire Education Secretary Linda McMahon chose to strike a backroom deal with a right-wing state attorney general and strip borrowers of the most affordable repayment plan that would help millions to stay on track with their loans while keeping a roof over their head," Yu said in a statement after the deal was announced.
"The real story here," Yu added, "is the unrelenting, right-wing push to jack up costs on working people with student debt."
"The federal government also wields vast extrajudicial powers to collect student debt, including garnishing wages and seizing Social Security payments."
The Education Department is legally allowed to withhold up to 15% of a borrower's after-tax income to pay down defaulted debt. As the Post noted, the Trump administration has already resumed seizing tax refunds and Social Security benefits student loan borrowers in default.
The Debt Collective, the first debtors' union in the US, noted "the irony of a billionaire being in charge of collecting pennies from debtors."
"The Department of Education pushes debtors toward payment to get out of default," the group added. "They don’t want you to know that you have other options. These include traditional repayment options, nonpayment options, and lesser-known options."
The Trump administration's decision to resume garnishing borrowers' wages comes as advocates are warning of a "default cliff" as borrowers struggle to afford basic necessities, leaving them unable to keep up with loan repayments. A Data for Progress survey released earlier this month found that more than 40% of borrowers report making tradeoffs between covering basic needs and staying current on student loan debt payments."
"Student loan default comes with severe and punitive consequences," Michele Zampini, associate vice president of federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access and Success, wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
"In addition to ongoing credit score damage and hefty collection fees, the federal government also wields vast extrajudicial powers to collect student debt, including garnishing wages and seizing Social Security payments and tax refunds that are targeted to households with very low incomes, including the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit," Zampini added. "These seizures compound financial hardship for those who can least afford it."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Trump's Billionaire Education Secretary Makes 'Backroom Deal' to Shaft Low-Income Borrowers
Amid a cost-of-living crisis, millions of low-income borrowers may now be forced to spend several hundred more dollars a month paying for student loans.
Dec 09, 2025
As student debt exacerbates the financial struggles of millions of Americans, the Trump administration has taken a major step toward killing the Biden administration's student loan forgiveness program.
On Tuesday, the Department of Education announced that it had reached a settlement with the state of Missouri to end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which allowed more than 7 million mostly low-income Americans to reduce their federal student loan payments.
Rather than setting monthly payments based on income, the SAVE program bases them on how much borrowers earn and the size of their families, which is referred to as an income-driven repayment option, or IDR. SAVE cut most enrollees' monthly loan payments in half and left 4.5 million of them, mostly those earning between 150–225% of the federal poverty level, paying $0 per month.
In March 2024, a coalition of 11 states led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach sued in federal court to stop the SAVE plan. The next month a similar lawsuit was filed by another coalition of seven states led by Missouri's former attorney general, Andrew Bailey.
In February, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the states, blocking 8 million borrowers from accessing lower payments under the program. Now President Donald Trump's administration which aggressively opposes student loan forgiveness, has agreed to settle the lawsuit, effectively killing SAVE.
“For four years, the Biden administration sought to unlawfully shift student loan debt onto American taxpayers, many of whom either never took out a loan to finance their postsecondary education or never even went to college themselves, simply for a political win to prop up a failing administration,” said Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent. "The Trump administration is righting this wrong and bringing an end to this deceptive scheme. The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back."
The settlement also includes a provision requiring that, for the next 10 years, the Department of Education notify the state of Missouri at least 30 days in advance before instituting broad-based student debt relief.
As the Debt Collective, a membership-based debtors' union, explained in a post on social media: "30 days is enough notice that Missouri will find standing to sue for relief before it even happens. So not only is Trump gutting the SAVE plan, they're essentially putting a moratorium on cancellation for the next 10 years with this agreement."
"What Republicans admit is that the executive administration does have authority to cancel federally held student debt," the group added. "They just want to make it so that it will be administratively and practically impossible to deliver it because of this technicality. It's stealing in advance."
SAVE was already slated to end in 2028 following July's passage of Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which replaced it with a pair of less generous income-based repayment plans that require many debtors to pay hundreds more per month. The deadline to switch to one of the new plans will now move up, though the administration has not yet clarified when borrowers will have to switch.
The Debt Collective predicted that the end of SAVE "means many more debtors will likely be forced to default on their loans," which the group added "is bad for millions of families and our economy."
According to an analysis of federal student loan data from the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, more than 12 million borrowers in the US are already in default or otherwise behind on their student loan payments.
Since their introduction, former President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness policies have been chipped away at bit by bit through litigation. In 2023, the conservative US Supreme Court struck down the administration's plans to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans, ruling that the plan exceeded the administration's executive authority. A year later, it halted SAVE as well while it considered the merits of the Missouri lawsuit.
The group Protect Borrowers, which supports student loan forgiveness, argues that SAVE is "not a novel use of executive power," noting that Congress gave the Education Department the authority to create IDRs in 1993 and that several other programs have been created since.
"This settlement is pure capitulation—it goes much further than the suit or the 8th Circuit order requires," said Persis Yu, the group's deputy executive director and managing counsel. "The real story here is the unrelenting, right-wing push to jack up costs on working people with student debt.”
A September survey by Data For Progress found that student loans make it more difficult for many borrowers to keep up with other bills amid a growing cost-of-living crisis: 42% of respondents said their debt payments had a negative impact on their ability to pay for food or housing. More than a third, 37%, said it had a negative impact on their ability to cover healthcare costs for themselves or their dependents, while the majority, 52%, said it had a negative impact on their ability to save for retirement.
“While millions of student loan borrowers struggle amidst the worsening affordability crisis as the rising costs of groceries, utilities, and healthcare continue to bury families in debt," Yu said, "billionaire Education Secretary Linda McMahon chose to strike a backroom deal with a right-wing state attorney general and strip borrowers of the most affordable repayment plan that would help millions to stay on track with their loans while keeping a roof over their head."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular