Top Democratic lawmakers and activists alike are calling on the Biden administration to ignore a federal injunction and continue wiping out student loan debt before the president leaves office.
Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Ed Markey, D-Mass, held a press conference alongside a cohort of activist groups on Wednesday from the nation’s capital, calling on the Department of Education to finish granting federal student loan forgiveness for borrowers it pledged to help. These borrowers attended either now-defunct or predatory for-profit colleges.
“I’m urging the Biden administration in the closing hours of their administration – the last seven weeks – come to the rescue of these students as quickly as possible,” Durbin said Monday from the Senate floor.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard Durbin, D-Ill., talks with reporters about the nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be attorney general, outside a Senate Judiciary Committee markup on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
In 2022 and 2023, President Biden’s Education Department announced it would grant student loan forgiveness for 560,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges Inc., as well as to 208,000 borrowers who attended ITT Technical Institute. While most of those students had their loans fully forgiven, according to the Project on Predatory Student Lending (PPSL), at least 145,000 former Corinthian students who were approved to have their loans forgiven still have not gotten their promised relief.
BIDEN MAKES FINAL PUSH FOR STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS BEFORE TRUMP TAKES OFFICE
“The coming weeks are pivotal, and we are focused on two things,” PPSL said in a statement last week, according to Forbes. “First, everyone who was promised relief, must receive their relief. Second, the Department must issue more group discharges for people who went to predatory schools.” Meanwhile, the group’s senior director of policy and advocacy told the Washington Post that the group “definitely want[s] to make sure the Biden administration finishes the work they started.”
An activist holds a sign that reads “Cancel Student Debt.”
On Wednesday, Durbin and Markey will be joined by groups like PPSL to continue urging the Biden administration to maximize student debt relief. The calls come even though the program, known as the “borrower defense loan discharge program,” remains tied up in litigation after a federal court issued an injunction last year.
According to the federal government’s student aid office, “the injunction is effective” until a final judgment in the case has been made.
“The Department will not adjudicate any borrower defense applications under the rule subject to the injunction unless and until the injunction is lifted,” the agency asserts.
Images of protesters calling on the Biden administration to cancel student loan debt stand juxtaposed next to an image of the Supreme Court. (SoFi and Getty Images)
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Nonetheless, the agency still encouraged borrowers to continue applying for “borrower defense relief,” adding that they would continue to “adjudicate borrower defense applications” while the case makes its way through the courts.
The Department of Education did not provide any on-the-record remarks in time for publication when reached for comment.
Durbin and Markey, as well as PPSL, did not respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital for purposes of this story.