Sen. Elizabeth Warren led her colleagues in pushing for student-debt relief for eligible borrowers.
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Millions of student-loan borrowers are in default. Lawmakers want the Trump administration to keep more from falling deeper into trouble.On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley, and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and André Carson, led over 60 of their Democratic colleagues in pushing Education Sec. Linda McMahon to provide student-debt relief to eligible borrowers.They want the administration to cancel student debt for borrowers who qualified for relief under existing programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the Total and Permanent Disability discharge, and borrower defense to repayment, while also clearing the backlog of income-driven repayment applications.Defaults are at a record high — 7.7 million borrowers were in default at the end of 2025, with another 3 million in delinquency. The lawmakers wrote that President Donald Trump's sweeping student-loan changes, which include new repayment plans, the elimination of SAVE, and the planned transfer of defaulted accounts to the Treasury, could push more borrowers into default."The Trump administration's failure to meaningfully address the default crisis has raised Americans' costs and tanked borrowers' ability to access credit," the lawmakers wrote."It is unacceptable that debt cancellation that borrowers are legally entitled to has been delayed and denied," they said.
