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us department of education
'A Chilling Alarm': Trump Admin Kills Civil Rights Settlements Supporting Trans Students
"There is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel," said a leader at the National Women's Law Center.
Apr 06, 2026
Continuing the assault on transgender people that President Donald Trump launched as soon as he returned to power last year, the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights rescinded portions of settlements intended to protect trans students at five school districts and one college.
The department framed the move as "freeing schools" from the Biden and Obama administrations' "illegal and burdensome enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972," a landmark civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in schools that receive federal funding.
According to The Associated Press, "One of the school systems, Delaware Valley School District in rural eastern Pennsylvania, received notice of the change from the Trump administration in February and has since voted to roll back its antidiscrimination protections for transgender students."
The administration also rescinded provisions of resolution agreements with Cape Henlopen School District in Delaware and Fife School District in Washington, as well as California's La Mesa-Spring Valley School District, Sacramento City Unified, and Taft College.
This is a cruel step by the Trump administration that will make our schools less safe and welcoming for all.Trans kids deserve what every student deserves — a school that supports their freedom to thrive.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) April 6, 2026 at 6:05 PM
"The Trump administration has opened at least 40 civil rights investigations into educational institutions that provide protections for transgender students," and filed lawsuits in California and Minnesota, The New York Times reported. However, "Education Department officials said there was no precedent for the federal government terminating previously negotiated civil rights settlements with schools. Civil rights lawyers who worked under Democratic and Republican administrations said they were unaware of previous examples of such a move."
Advocates for trans people sharply condemned the rollback, which came on the heels of last week's International Transgender Day of Visibility.
"This sends a chilling alarm that trans students really are a target of this administration," Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the California-based Transgender Law Center, told the Times. "It's extremely concerning. Students should be safe to go to school and get an education."
Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women's Law Center, said in a statement that "there is absolutely no basis for what the Department of Education is doing, and it is unimaginably cruel. Title IX exists to ensure that students are protected from discrimination and treated with dignity so that they can learn and thrive in our schools. It's always been about that. It's what students, families, lawmakers, and advocates fought for when Title IX was passed decades ago. But the Trump administration's Department of Education has spent its limited resources to strip Title IX of that very purpose."
"Real complaints of discrimination and sexual assault are going unanswered by the Department of Education while conservative lawmakers continue to escalate their attacks on a small minority of students," Patel noted. "Parents, teachers, and students need the department to focus on addressing real harms on campuses instead of rolling back policies that keep all students safe."
"We should all be alarmed at the Trump administration's cruel escalation of their anti-trans agenda," she added. "When they push laws that explicitly target trans people or attempt to use scientifically inaccurate language to define sex, they are also inevitably targeting all women and girls. They want to control what we do, how we look, and how we act until we are pushed out of public life. But we are not going anywhere."
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'Shameful': Trump Threatens to Redirect Student Loan Borrowers to Most Expensive Repayment Plans
More than 7 million borrowers booted from a Biden-era loan forgiveness program will have to quickly switch to a new plan using a system that's been backed up for months.
Mar 27, 2026
After axing a Biden-era student loan repayment program, the Trump administration is threatening to kick its millions of mostly low-income beneficiaries onto the government's most expensive plan unless they switch to a new one quickly.
The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Department of Education was beginning to email the more than 7 million people enrolled in the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, telling them they needed to change their plan within the next 90 days.
Around 4.5 million of those borrowers earn incomes between 150% and 225%, allowing them to qualify for zero-dollar monthly payments under SAVE, which the Trump administration effectively killed in December after settling with Republican states who'd brought lawsuits against the program under former President Joe Biden.
Anonymous officials told The Post that those who do not switch plans within three months of receiving the email will automatically be re-enrolled in the Standard Plan. Unlike SAVE, which is income-based, the Standard plan has borrowers pay a fixed rate over 10 years.
Standard typically carries the highest monthly payments, and those transitioning to it from SAVE could pay more than $300 extra per month in some cases, with the poorest borrowers seeing the sharpest increases.
While 90 days may seem like plenty of time to switch to a less expensive repayment plan, it's not nearly that simple.
Due to the large exodus of borrowers, the Department of Education has struggled to process all the forms, processing only about 250,000 per month. Many borrowers who have tried to transition have found themselves waiting months for a reply.
To make matters more confusing, many of these borrowers will have to switch programs again soon, since all but one repayment program will be dissolved on July 1, 2028 as a result of last year's Republican budget law. The remaining plan will also be income-driven, though it is still expected to cost borrowers more each month.
According to a report released last month by the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, two groups that support loan forgiveness, nearly 9 million student loan borrowers are in default. During Trump's first year back in office, the student loan delinquency rate jumped from roughly zero to 25%, which it called "precedent-shattering."
"Much of the rise in delinquencies can be linked to the Trump administration’s actions aimed at increasing student loan payments," the report said. “The US Department of Education blocked borrowers from accessing more affordable payments through income-driven plans, having ordered a stoppage in application processing for three months and mass-denying 328,000 applications in August 2025. As of December 31, 2025, a warehouse’s worth of 734,000 applications sat unprocessed.”
Being in default has major ramifications for borrowers' finances. Those with delinquent loans saw their credit scores decrease by an average of 57 points during the first three quarters of 2025, dragging around 2 million of them into "subprime" territory, which forces them to pay thousands of dollars more for auto and personal loans and makes them more likely to have difficulty finding housing and employment.
The report estimated that if those booted from SAVE defaulted at the same rate as other borrowers, the number of student loan borrowers in distress could rise as high as 17 million.
According to Protect Borrowers, the typical family will pay more than $3,000 per year in additional costs as a result of the end of SAVE.
The end of SAVE comes as oil shocks caused by Trump's war in Iran have spiked gas prices and threaten to raise them throughout the economy, adding to the already elevated costs of food, housing, and transportation resulting from the president's aggressive tariff regime.
"In the middle of an affordability crisis driven by Donald Trump," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "Trump is killing a plan that lowers student loan costs. It's shameful."
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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.
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