Biden has approved $9.5 billion in student loan cancellations this year for defrauded and disabled students
CNN
The Department of Education said Thursday that it will cancel $1.1 billion in student loan debt for some students who attended the now-defunct for-profit ITT Technical Institute -- bringing the total amount of loan discharges approved under President Joe Biden to $9.5 billion.
The majority of that debt is held by permanently disabled borrowers who have long been eligible for loan forgiveness but who have not applied. The Department of Education is making the cancellation automatic by using federal data to identify borrowers who qualify. The change will impact 320,000 borrowers, eliminating $5.8 billion in debt starting in September. Much of the other debt relief will benefit victims of for-profit college fraud, many of whom have been waiting years for the Department of Education to process their forgiveness claims. The most recent action will automatically cancel the debt borrowed by 115,000 students who left ITT Tech without completing their program after March 2008.
The Senate on Wednesday voted down an effort led by Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to block a series of planned US weapons sales to Israel.
Republicans on the House Ethics Committee fell in line behind GOP leaders and voted not to release the results of their investigation into Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, despite growing calls from the Senate GOP to make the findings public ahead of his confirmation hearing.
Senate Democrats have confirmed some of President Joe Biden’s picks for the federal bench this week in the face of President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for a total GOP blockade of judicial nominations – in part because several Republicans involved with the Trump transition process have been missing votes.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.
Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.