Today, 40M student debtors fall back into the throes of the student debt crisis. Student debt payments resumed in October 2023—but borrowers had a 1yr grace period: no hits to credit, wage garnishment or default. Half of debtors didn't pay.

Those protections ended yesterday. The pause has ended + broad scale relief never happened.

In many ways, we are back to the crisis we had in 2019—the crisis every Dem presidential candidate raced to promise to solve.

Except today is worse than 2019: There is no repayment plan option because of court litigation.

We're the nation's first union of debtors, organizing to cancel unjust household debts like student, medical, housing and criminal legal.

We believe debt cancellation is crucial for resetting the moral and economic order—plus, that means workers taking home a bigger paycheck. Canceling debt is important—and we've been able to get debt canceled both through pressuring local and federal governments and by erasing debt for pennies on the dollar ourselves.

But the true goal is free, reparative public goods so nobody goes into debt in the first place.

People are wondering if they should consolidate their student loans before the April 30 deadline. The answer is yes!!!

Do so here ASAP. It takes 10 min:

Here is a thread with answers to common questions we are seeing 🧵studentaid.gov/loan-consolida… Will consolidating restart my loans to zero?

No! This used to be the case, but it no longer is. Never fear.

This morning the Dept of Education is in court for failing to cancel student debt and issue refunds in compliance with a settlement & court order 🧵 The first question the judge asked was "which one of you is Cordray"

Lawyers for student loan servicers are also there

🚨🚨🚨Instead of cancelling student debt Congress is about to pass a bailout for fraudulent for-profit scam schools with overwhelming bipartisan support

Educate yourself about H.R.6585 the so-called Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, then educate your Representatives 🧵 This bill is a direct assault on Pell Grants, swindling public money had handing it over to scam "coding bootcamps"
highereddive.com/news/governmen…

People's balances are incorrect but Biden is still turning student debt payments back on.

Loan servicers don't answer the phone but student debt payments are still turning back on.

People are waiting to hear back from their PSLF application but payments are turning back on. Millions of people went to schools that defrauded them but student debt payments are turning back on.

The SAVE plan is incorrectly forcing people to pay 2X, 3X and 10X more than they should and payments are turning back on.

There has never been an organized effort to apply or ask the Department of Education to use its legal authority to cancel your student debt—until now.

Today, we're rolling our NEW Student Debt Release Tool:

FILL OUT HERE: bit.ly/StudentDebtRel…
The Dept. of Education has the power to cancel your federal student loans immediately through the HEA.

This first-of-its-kind petition generates an individual appeal to the Department of Education requesting that they exercise that power for you—now.

>> debtcollective.org/what-we-do/cam…

Update: The NYT wrote a sob story for @RepMGP because she can’t handle criticism for voting to resume costly student debt payments on her own constituents. https://t.co/h0pEqeemGp

https://twitter.com/strikedebt/status/1661569807819370497

“Worst car care Ive been to,” one Yelp reviewer wrote shortly after Ms. Gluesenkamp Pérez cast that vote. “My car was dirtier than when I dropped it off.”

“It also didnt help that Marie was bragging about her PPP loan and in the same sentence said f students. Shes hypocritical.”

This is, in fact, wrong. Biden is not doing everything possible. To be honest, this action is perfectly designed to be the worst case scenario. He is resuming interest and payments voluntarily. And as for relief? This "rulemaking" process will take—at a minimum—several months.

https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1674874822202105856

This "rule" might not be implemented until NEXT year. And even *then* it could be caught up in courts.

We want Biden to fight—but this isn't what it looks like.

He can cancel this debt AUTOMATICALLY. NOW.

TODAY. But instead, he's delaying delaying delaying.

Today’s racist affirmative action decision by the Supreme Court is another nail in the coffin of this institution’s legitimacy. There is no such thing as a “race-neutral” admissions process. Plain and simple. This decision leaves admission preferences for legacies and donors in tact—policies that overwhelmingly favor wealthy white applicants. It also leaves young Black people to continue to affirmatively die in military service for this country.

Race x Education x United States. A long-ish thread. It's telling that we're waiting on two specific SCOTUS decisions regarding race and education: student debt relief and affirmative action.

There's a very clear historical trend in this nation: Denying education to Black Americans for the sake of establishing a racial hierarchy.

A Supreme Court decision on student debt relief will come in a few days. If the Supreme Court rules against relief, here's a reminder of why:

Myra Brown & Alexander Taylor—who aren't actually harmed by this policy—served as political pawns for conservative dark-money groups.

Republican Attorney Generals from Missouri and Nebraska—Eric Schmitt and Mike Hilgers—argued before the Supreme Court that student loan servicers' bottom lines matter more than debt relief for millions of Americans who financially struggled through COVID.

They are enemies.

"What life changes will you have to make if student loan payments resume?"

We posed this question on our Instagram last night and got several hundred responses:

1. Delay starting a family
2. Can't afford my cancer treatments
3. Quit my pain management for rheumatoid arthritis 4. Wait longer for a home/age out of having a child
5. Stop saving for retirement. I'm 55.
6. I'll have to work more hours.
7. I don't know how I'm going to pay them when my rent continues to rise.
8. I'll have to stop eating
9. Won't be able to buy a house
10. Less baby money

“The student debt relief program is not ‘protected’ — it is in front of the Supreme Court, which will likely strike it down on illegitimate and hyper-partisan grounds,” Astra Taylor, a leader of the nationwide Debt Collective, told me.
inquirer.com/opinion/debt-d… “This is President Biden turning his back on student debtors,” says Braxton Brewington, press secretary of the Debt Collective.
democracynow.org/2023/6/1/stude…

Today, two Democrats voted with Republicans to say that not only should student debt relief be repealed, not only should the pause on payments end, but that you should make *retroactive* payments from previous months.

Introducing Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez: Jared Golden represents Maine-02. We know there are at least 100,975 student debtors in his district that he voted against today.

Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez represents Washington-03. There are at least 93,749 student debtors in her district that she voted against today.

Shame.

This morning @RepBurgessOwens decided to attack the Debt Collective because we want the Dept of Ed to cut off funding to fraudulent schools

Just like George Santos Owens started his own fraudulent non-profit and kept all of the money for himself 🧵 1/4
sltrib.com/news/politics/… Owens has filed for bankruptcy five times and gotten at least $1.5 million of his own debts cancelled 2/4
sltrib.com/news/politics/…

NEW: The lawsuit against student debt relief claimed student loan servicer MOHELA would lose financial revenue and harm the state of Missouri.

We FOIA'd MOHELA's financial documents and this is simply false. After cancelation, MOHELA will earn *more* revenue than ever before. The Republican AG suit was rushed to SCOTUS without going through a basic fact finding or legal review process.

As a result, some of the basic claims argued before the Supreme Court went untested—until now.

To put it simply, their argument is a lie.
rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/t…

Live tweeting the hearing the GOP is holding to try to kill student debt cancellation 🧵 LOL if @RepBurgessOwens thinks student debt cancellation is about "chaos" wait until he sees what restarting student loan payments looks like. Everything that can catch fire at the Department of Education will catch fire. It will be a shitshow of epic proportions.

Today @RepBurgessOwens is holding a hearing to try to kill student debt cancellation

You might think he would want to avoid pissing of 45 million people to prevent them from looking at his shady financial past. Let's take a look. 1/4 🧵 .@RepBurgessOwens started a fake George Santos-style charity for incarcerated youth but kept all of the money for himself and spent exactly $0 to help incarcerated youth. 2/4
utahinvestigative.org/second-look-bu…

Today, House Republicans are holding a sham hearing to stop student debt cancelation. Here's how much college cost when they went to school—and how much it is today:

1. Virginia Foxx
Tuition Then: $310
Tuition 2023: $7,019 1. Virginia Foxx

Min Wage Then: $1.60 ($14.04*)
Min Wage 2023: $7.25
In 1968 it would take 194 hours of work to pay one
year of tuition. Today it would take 968 hours.

- 75,900 people who live in her district who would get student debt relief.

Folks. Apply for student debt cancelation now here:
studentaid.gov/debt-relief/ap… After you submit your application, take your own screenshot. Keep it.