Appeals court halts fresh Biden administration efforts to cancel some student debt
CNN
The Biden administration’s efforts to cancel federal student loan debt for borrowers who enrolled in its new repayment plan took another Republican-led legal hit Thursday.
The Biden administration’s efforts to cancel federal student loan debt for borrowers who enrolled in its new repayment plan took another Republican-led legal hit Thursday. The fate of the program, known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education), is in flux as courts across the country consider two legal challenges to it. The courts temporarily halted parts of the repayment plan in late June, including the provision that grants debt forgiveness for borrowers who have made a certain number of payments. In response, the Department of Education claimed the borrowers enrolled in SAVE were now technically “enrolled in something of a hybrid” plan, according to a court document. The agency believed that borrowers could still receive debt forgiveness under rules governed by a previous repayment plan known as REPAYE. But on Thursday, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals halted that effort in a one-sentence unsigned order. The court said the new freeze would remain in effect until it decides whether to issue a longer-term block on the effort that was sought by several GOP-led states. The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what the new court order means for borrowers.
FBI says it has disrupted major Chinese hacking operation that threatened US critical infrastructure
The FBI has used a court order to seize control of a network of hundreds of thousands of hacked internet routers and other devices that Chinese government-linked hackers were using to threaten critical infrastructure in the US and overseas, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates for the first time in the Biden era after the White House spent the last three years grappling with Americans’ dissatisfaction with the cost of living, raising new questions about the health of the economy and the impact on voters at the ballot box.
Israeli officials notified the US that the country was going to carry out an operation in Lebanon on Tuesday but did not give any details about what they were planning, according to three sources familiar with the matter, including in a call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant early Tuesday morning.