White House U-Turn: Student Loan Forgiveness Approved for Millions After Court Deal
The Trump administration quietly agreed to a court-supervised settlement with the AFT on Oct. 17, 2025, directing the Department of Education to speed up student loan cancellations under existing federal programs foxbusiness.com timesofindia.indiatimes.com. The deal – awaiting final judge approval – requires DOE to process forgiveness applications for all borrowers who hit the payment threshold in qualifying Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans (original ICR, PAYE, and the classic IBR) as long as those plans exist foxbusiness.com timesofindia.indiatimes.com. In practice, this means millions of borrowers who made 20–25 years of payments will finally see remaining balances wiped out, whereas under the administration’s
