Donald Trump Found Some Student Loans To Forgive, If Any Of The New ICE Goons Went To College
The rules are, of course, different for Trump.
Donald Trump is no fan of student debt forgiveness. During last year’s campaign he said that Joe Biden’s efforts to forgive student loan debt were nothing but a “vile” publicity stunt, which he also compared to what he called “illegal amnesty” for undocumented spouses of US citizens. He also pledged — in keeping with Project 2025 — that he would do away with the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which writes down the balance of student debt for teachers, nurses, and other public servants after they make 10 years of payments.
Once in office, Trump left PSLF in place, but tried to end debt forgiveness for folks he considered “anti-American activists.” That’s been held up in the courts. His Big Blowjobs for Billionaires Bill eliminates most other income-based repayment plans that forgive part of a borrower’s debts, replacing them with far more stingy plans.
You get the idea. Donald Trump really hates anything that lets people off the hook for any of their student debt, because he’s a big believer in personal responsibility. Add your own examples in the comments (which we do not allow) of the many ways in which his career exemplifies that commitment.
The Big Buggery Bollocks Bill threw more money at Trump’s Deportation SS than any other law enforcement agency in all of human history, so the agency wants to hire 10,000 new goons to arrest abuelas and day laborers to make us safe.
And so, Dearest Readers, you will hardly be astonished by this list of sweeteners in a just-announced package of incentives to recruit more Deportation Nazis to join ICE. The incentives, the press release burbles, include these goodies:
A maximum $50,000 signing bonus
Student loan repayment and forgiveness options
25% Law Enforcement Availability Pay (LEAP) for HSI Special Agents
Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime (AUI) for Enforcement Removal Operations (ERO) Deportation Officers
Enhanced retirement benefits
Yep, that second one is featured pretty prominently, isn’t it?
Conscientious progressives that we are, we’ll add that the Trump administration didn’t just make up loan forgiveness for ICE Thugs out of thin air: Cops and prison guards have long been included among the “public servants” who qualify for PSLF. Trump’s DHS is simply shoveling loan forgiveness into the signup benefits for new members of the Goon Squad because they’re an option, and never mind Trump’s campaign promise to kill the PSLF program altogether.
The Supreme Court in 2023 shitcanned Joe Biden’s first attempt at broad student debt forgiveness, because red states claimed the plans hurt them, and that the plan supposedly exceeded the limits of what Congress had authorized. Then, not so suddenly last summer, the Court also went on a tear blocking Joe Biden’s income-based repayment plan, as well as several other income-driven plans that preceded Biden, for pretty much the same reasons.
LOL, remember when the Court used to act like the limits of the law might constrain a (Democratic) president? Or for that matter, how it thought district courts had the power to issue nationwide injunctions (to constrain Democratic presidents)?
Certain big policy changes like that are “major questions,” a doctrine the Court pulled out of its ass in 2022 so it could prevent Barack Obama’s CO2 restrictions on power plants from going into effect, long after Obama left office, Trump reversed the policy in his first term, and the case was already moot. Who decides how “major” a question has to be before it needs a new law, instead of an agency just interpreting an existing law, or a president running on a specific promise and then using an existing law to fulfill that promise? The Supreme Boss Of Us Court itself.
We should also note — we’re so annoyingly responsible! — that in those decisions blocking Biden’s efforts to help with student debt, the Court left Public Service Loan Forgiveness plans alone, because that particular plan had its very own law, passed in 2007 with bipartisan support. George W. Bush even signed it into law!
That means that, for once, the Trump administration is actually doing something legal with its inclusion of debt forgiveness for new ICE goons. Isn’t that in itself a remarkable departure?
We aren’t going to give Trump or DHS a cookie as a reward, however, because so many other times when Trump has acted outside specific, statutory, congressionally enacted and presidentially signed law — dumping all the independent agencies, ignoring court orders demanding that immigrants get due process, and of course overthrowing the 2020 election — the Supreme Court nods and says, well yes, Sir, you may do anything you want, but just this once (or twentieth time), and only because you’re special.
Anyway, it looks like there’s finally an answer for all those folks with student debt who couldn’t get it forgiven while Joe Biden was president: Join the ICE Goon Squad.
[DHS press release / Guardian / CNBC]
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OT because fuck that guy;
"The Scottish government has green-lighted one of the world’s biggest wind farms, just days after President Donald Trump ranted about “windmills” while visiting the country."
Right off shore of the new course...
"I majored in gooning with a minor in glass smashing."