0 out of 15,000 applications for student loan forgiveness in cases of fraud have been processed since Trump and DeVos took power.
Since Trump took office, student loan forgiveness in cases of possible fraud has come to a screeching halt, according to Department of Education records released to Sen. Dick Durbin on Wednesday. The records show that nearly 15,000 people applied for loan forgiveness from January 20 to July 5, claiming their colleges and universities defrauded them. None of those applications have been approved.
This inaction isn’t the only time Trump's Department of Education has halted student loan forgiveness. In June, the department also announced its decision to delay and rewrite the borrower defense to repayment rule, an Obama-era rule that would have made it easier for students to have their loans forgiven if they were deceived by their schools. That rule was set to go into effect July 1, but it was indefinitely postponed.
Sen. Durbin condemned the Department of Education for both actions (or rather, inactions). “This response shows that while the Department of Education has illegally delayed the new borrower defense rule, it has also stopped processing federal student loan relief under current regulations for tens of thousands of defrauded borrowers,” he said in a statement in the Chicago Tribune. “The department can’t ignore these borrowers any longer.”...