Starting this week, some student loan borrowers in default may receive notice that their wages are being garnished directly from their paychecks in order to restart repayment. This is one of many Trump era changes to student loan repayment programs negatively impacting borrowers.
Of the nearly 43 million student loan borrowers in the US, only 40% of them are current on their payments. Since changes made in 2020 to protect borrowers during the early days of the Covid pandemic, confusing rules about payment plans have come and gone between the Biden and Trump administrations. Furthermore, thanks to cuts at the Department of Education, many borrowers are completely lost on how to properly restart their payments or stay on paths they thought would lead to forgiveness of their remaining balance.
Joining us to discuss these struggles and how borrowers can organize to protect themselves and others is Press Secretary and organizer for the Debt Collective, Braxton Brewington. He helps us navigate the current state of the shifting and messy student debt landscape and what rights borrowers have.
Additional Resources
- News Brief: How Corporate Media Laid the Groundwork for a Rightwing Incitement Campaign in Minnesota by Citations Needed
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Episode Guests
Braxton Brewington is the Press Secretary and an organizer at the Debt Collective, the nation’s first union of debtors. He is also a Sociology PhD student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studies social movements and media.